I think that tape is expensive and there isn't a single emulation that sounds exactly like it. :( But... the softube TAPE plugin I find myself using a lot, not for a realistic tape effect, but just for adding a bit of grit to the audio. On the lowest speed it can also act like a nice vocal de-esser. xD
I use mainly the same concept, tape emulator, compressors... but Marc is on another level, very precise, small steps, awesome. Anyway I agree with digital being “worse” than analog for acoustics guitars. My old 4 tracks cassette recorder sounded “better” than today guitars on digital. I think that the tape speed fluctuations made a difference.
I found Izotope Neutron 3 to be an amazing tool for acoustic guitar. It's basically the same chain of processing than Marc presented but in one tool. I'm not a huge fan of presets but the Neutron 3 presets are pretty awesome and very good starting points. Once again thanks a lot to Marc and to Produce Like A Pro for this great video. Cheers
Hey all, I'm the artist featured in the video. First off, Marc did an amazing job with this song - he's incredibly talented and a joy to work with. For anyone interested...the acoustic guitar was actually a Hofner Archtop that I believe was mic'd with a Vanguard V13. We recorded it as a scratch track with the intent of mic'ing up a proper acoustic later, however, the track ended up with a lot of dense elements towards the end, and the percussiveness of the instrument made sense so I decided to keep it. What Marc did with it is nothing short of genius - he really made something that was just passable come to life in a beautiful way by retaining the dynamic nature of the guitar but limiting the harshness. A delicate balance. Marc is the man. Thanks PLAP for posting!
Hi Brandon, Corbin here. I'm a singer/songwriter, guitar player. I love what little I'm hearing of your song. "The wind's blowing cold but it's warm in the sand". Clever writing, I'd like to hear the rest. Where/How can I get a copy? I'm not on any social media other than you tube.
@@HenryC7625 hey Corbin thanks for the kind words. This track will be released later in the summer. You can find me on any of the streaming platforms. I have a song called “colors” Marc mixed and a new track dropping June 11 he also did for me. Thanks!
Your ideas are the best! I had a mix I was working on that needed something extra on the acoustic guitar and tried this. As soon as I added the virtual tape machine the guitar sounded better, more real, somehow. I really like hearing the reasoning behind your mix decisions as well, because they inform what to look for or try to bring out in a mix. Thanks again!
I'm going to try this with my stock plug ins in Cubase Elements 11. 1. Channel Tape Saturation 2. Standard Channel EQ 3. Tube Compressor 4. Roomworks Reverb 5. Envelope Shaper It might not sound as great as the paid plug ins, but I'm sure it will improve the sound for sure!
@@MrHhkrohn Always after. Get a decent signal while recording (I usually set about 75% level peak). Then apply the plug ins. Sometime I might not use a tube emulator if I want something extra clean. Check how it sounds in the mix and see how it sits.
What a pleasant moment it is to receive a notification about how to learn to improve the sound of an acoustic guitar with a few simple and subtle steps. The result is incredibly organic. I have some very similar guitars to mix. Right now I get to work! Thanks Marc for your contribution and Buena Vida!
waves req +waves c1 compressor (low reference to brings out the high frequencies) +waves veq4 for tonal eq +waves cla 3a to eliminate clicks and peaks .
The recording of the guitar is really good! Marc manages to make it fit in the mix and make it sound like a record with some great tricks. I work with acoustic guitars a lot and this is definitely something I'll try out! :)
Another fantastic tutorial from Marc! Your channel has been extremely helpful. I'm always picking up cool things to try, and finding artist I really enjoy. Thanks Warren!
Wow Marc! That sounds amazing! Interesting how that Trans X didn't just lower it in the mix ...it's as if it moved it in the room. So many layers in that song as well. Great mixing! Like you could stick your head in and see around in there instead of just a wall of sound coming out of the speaker. Humbled by your skills .
Softube tape is by far the best tape emulation. For all you Studio One users, on your mix bus insert it on the Mix FX drop down. Not on the insert section but above it there's a Mix FX option. This allows all your channels to hit the plugin individually but only have one instance of the plugin running. Also hit the right hand tab on the plugin for more options
Thank you so much Marc, I've been struggling with an acoustic piece for months, trying to get rid of the spikiness and keep it sounding natural, I've kept United Plugins AG and CLA Guitar at the start of the chain and added a couple of additional Q3 points to taste, but otherwise your suggestions have transformed a painful, unnatural sounding piece into what was originally intended. Thanks again.
Your tips and tricks continue to be a huge source of ideas/inspiration, and in this case perfectly timed. I'm struggling with the placement of acoustic guitar tracks in a current mix with heavily competing piano and harpsichord. The character of the song is circa-Tusk period Fleetwood Mac, with the Bass carrying an above average role in driving the melody (i.e. contributing more traffic in the mids and high-mids than normal) . My mix is cleaner after a series of precision boosts and corresponding cuts, but I'd describe the remaining acoustic guitar tone as "spikey transients featuring the shrilly harsh 5k freq." that you demonstrated shelving down. In just 8:39 spent watching your approach I learned: 1) Even though I built the saturation on my tracks in small incremental steps (from multiple plugins), the cumulative effect was too much and probably wasn't even the right kind of saturation for acoustic guitar. Fortunately I own the Softube Tape plugin you used. Significant tonal improvement after greatly reducing the old saturation buildup and adding Softube Tape. 2) I had established a mentality that 2-3 dB of gain increase or reduction IS being conservative, but I'm rethinking this after hearing the impact of the subtle 1-1.5 dB moves you were making. Especially in the higher frequencies. 3) Similar to #2, the 2-4 dB that I believed constituted gentle compression was negatively impacting the guitar tone. Much better now after reducing it to a little over 1 dB. 4) A transient designer isn't always the best tool for taming transients. What?!? I've been using Punctuate by Newfangled Audio for a while now and in most cases it provides really good results. Except... not so much on my current song. It's actually helping me make things worse. Without watching your video I wouldn't have known to consider using something like Trans X by Waves in this instance. . I've only been at this for a few years, but I think I've recently entered a "golden period" of hyper-improvement. Now that I have a reasonable handle on process/tools and have the experience of creating enough sub-optimal mixes, I can conceptualize the impact of the information I'm consuming. The advice you and Warren are providing is absolutely invaluable for someone like me. Thanks!
what I would have liked is that he compares it with a very fast limiter. I don't really get what's the difference from what I saw/heard here. I'd have to compare it myself.
For sure once I went to digital recording vs. tape, the most difficult instrument, for me, to get the sound I wanted was acoustic guitar. It's also one of the instruments that varies so much with the player, the guitar, the mic, and the mic placement. Put the "sterility" of the digital medium on top of all that and your acoustic guitar track(s) can be a pretty big challenge. As far as plug-ins, my "secret" is also a tape saturation plug-in. Once I found one I liked and figured the parameters that sounded good to my ears, I got nothing but compliments and questions about how the hell I got that sound. Compression is pretty touchy on the acoustic guitar tracks also. Like Marc, I generally use just a "taste" to sit it in the mix. Too much kills the...damn, describing aspects of music with words is so hard sometimes...kills the overall "vibe" I guess you could call it. The totality of what makes acoustic guitar such a beautiful sounding instrument gets smeared and squashed. Dulls the vibrancy. That's my feeling on it anyway. Another great video, thanks. Peace.
A perceive a very common theme from nearly all the producers here on PLAP: first use a very precise parametric EQ and/or a de-esser to find and surgically attenuate offending frequencies and high pass and/or low pass the track in order to clean it up; then modestly compress it in order to tame transients and bring low volume content forward enough to be heard; then add a broader analogue color EQ to sweeten it up. There are lots of exceptions to this methodology, of course, including adding that tape plug-in so early in the chain as MDN does here, but it does seem a good general practice. Do I have that right?
Marc gets real good arrangements, like "Jeremiah Jones - Make My Lonely" and this one, love every single one. Very great material to exercise. Cheers all :)
Marc as usual master the art of acoustic with his amazing ears an taste, plus the knowledge about when and how using it. Thanks so much, guys!! The song is also beautiful!!
Yet another fantastic lesson from Marc. This has helped me in so many ways honestly, I was working on an acoustic guitar song before I saw this video and it's been a godsend. Thank you so much.
Honestly, with the entry level mixing skills I have I found that panning the guitar then blending in chorus on the other side through a bus was the best trick to get the full way when I was almost done and not that happy. It doesn't need to be noticed in the full mix.
Listening again on the cans and back at some new recordings I’m on with I’m liking more and adjusting my opinions. Thanks Marc, Brandon and Warren of a course
Great video! I love Softube Tape, I like it on acoustic guitars as well. The only difference is I open the expanded controls and add a bit of crosstalk.
such great content! I've always used the same accumulative approach to processing acoustic instruments with small steps spread out over several plugins instead of the sledge hammer method.
This is great, thanks Marc and Warren. I think a massive difference to the acoustic sound comes from having the right strings - steel and silk strings really tame the transients and almost make a guitar have built in compression.
I’ve yet to try recording with silk and steel strings but I knew there was something I was hearing just acoustically that dragged my ear to favouring them over other strings. Gonna have to try them on a track now
Acoustic Guitar is hard to record right, and hard to mix right, it's so dynamic. MDN is a magician and so smooth. Big ups and thank you. BTW the guitar tone on the Make.Music.Happen intro is awesome, would love to know the guitar, amp and chain.
I love listening to him. It is so calming to hear his thoughts about music and sound. Really helps me out and pushes my mindset for sound. Thank you for all this good work 👏🏽
Good one, Marc! I have been struggling with some acoustics over the past few months, a very brightly recorded acoustic that just has too much click for the song. I've tried de-essers and all sorts of EQ combinations, without reaching my goal. This combo should definitely get me a lot closer. Thanks for sharing!
How do 'I' mix acoustic guitar ... ? ... you ask. Well ... the story goes back a long ways (and I so love to talk about myself). But now days I don't do much but it's still the most important instrument on anything I do. I always use acoustic as a guide track along with a guide vocal even if it's not intended to be in final mix (but it almost always is, and it almost always gets retracked after drums are recorded). I track it with a condenser pointed at the ninth (roughly) fret maybe angled toward the sound hole a bit then double it and hard pan. then I process it pretty much like a vocal lowpass, cut at 600 wide, boost at 5k wide. That's it, maybe slight reverb if there is room in the mix. Saturation is something I have not experimented with. I keep seeing Marc's antique Akia and wondering if he is ever going to use it to side effect a track. I have the same machine and intend try it on something, perhaps acoustic. The hiss that comes off it stabs me with nostalgia every time I hear it.
I noticed that you barely had to take any low end out of that. In my mixes I find myself often having to scoop out many dbs of low end to reduce boom, especially with acoustic guitar, sometimes with multiple passes of EQ. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Is it inadequate recording room (no bass traps) or perhaps my hard playing style?
I use an assortment of rubber coated and rubber material picks and this takes a lot of the noise from strumming out of the mix. It is easier to remove it with the pick pre recording than it is post. I use Ibanez rubber coated pics off Amazon and there are a few other brands that make a softer material than the typical plastic pic material.
I think there's a key plugin missing in this chain that would make it sound 100 times better and sweeter, and that's Soothe 2. Settings: Hard, Attack: Fast, Depth: 0.8, Sharpness: 9.0, and focus all around 11k, cut at around 6k. Don't cut the highs.
Awesome video, thank you. I really appreciate the angle you give in looking for creative and subtle ways to tame and enhance the acoustic guitar within the mix, it really does sound tape-like. A beautiful song too, seems like all the right elements have come together and nothing is overcooked.
I definitely need help with my own acoustic guitar recordings and they often sound as harsh as the one in this example, but Marc really tamed the transients without making it dull or without energy. I'll keep working on the recording process, but it's good to know that all hope isn't lost if isn't perfect. Thanks.
What do you think of Marc's tricks for amazing sounding acoustic guitar? What do YOU do when mixing acoustic guitar? Let me know by commenting below!
I think that tape is expensive and there isn't a single emulation that sounds exactly like it. :(
But... the softube TAPE plugin I find myself using a lot, not for a realistic tape effect, but just for adding a bit of grit to the audio. On the lowest speed it can also act like a nice vocal de-esser. xD
I just know that acoustic guitars will sound in my compositions and should sound great.
I use mainly the same concept, tape emulator, compressors... but Marc is on another level, very precise, small steps, awesome. Anyway I agree with digital being “worse” than analog for acoustics guitars. My old 4 tracks cassette recorder sounded “better” than today guitars on digital. I think that the tape speed fluctuations made a difference.
definitely apply tape sat; also use the decapitor
I found Izotope Neutron 3 to be an amazing tool for acoustic guitar. It's basically the same chain of processing than Marc presented but in one tool. I'm not a huge fan of presets but the Neutron 3 presets are pretty awesome and very good starting points. Once again thanks a lot to Marc and to Produce Like A Pro for this great video. Cheers
Hey all, I'm the artist featured in the video. First off, Marc did an amazing job with this song - he's incredibly talented and a joy to work with. For anyone interested...the acoustic guitar was actually a Hofner Archtop that I believe was mic'd with a Vanguard V13. We recorded it as a scratch track with the intent of mic'ing up a proper acoustic later, however, the track ended up with a lot of dense elements towards the end, and the percussiveness of the instrument made sense so I decided to keep it. What Marc did with it is nothing short of genius - he really made something that was just passable come to life in a beautiful way by retaining the dynamic nature of the guitar but limiting the harshness. A delicate balance. Marc is the man. Thanks PLAP for posting!
Hi Brandon, Corbin here. I'm a singer/songwriter, guitar player. I love what little I'm hearing of your song. "The wind's blowing cold but it's warm in the sand". Clever writing, I'd like to hear the rest. Where/How can I get a copy? I'm not on any social media other than you tube.
@@HenryC7625 hey Corbin thanks for the kind words. This track will be released later in the summer. You can find me on any of the streaming platforms. I have a song called “colors” Marc mixed and a new track dropping June 11 he also did for me. Thanks!
@@NoEBITDuh It's a great song - can't wait to hear the whole thing!
@@lenmusic123 thanks! I’ll post a link when it’s released.
@@NoEBITDuh nice work all round, and thanks for posting PLAP
I see a video with Marc, I click.
I'm right there with you!
I click and Like , just to come back to the same later when I am doing the mix myself. Awesome tips, every time. 👍
Yep
Same 😀
100%, I thought he was great right from the first one. But he is getting better and better as an educator
This is great. I think I'm going to have to add the Trans-x to my list.
Your ideas are the best! I had a mix I was working on that needed something extra on the acoustic guitar and tried this. As soon as I added the virtual tape machine the guitar sounded better, more real, somehow. I really like hearing the reasoning behind your mix decisions as well, because they inform what to look for or try to bring out in a mix. Thanks again!
3:12 Softube Tape Emulator
4:31 Fab Filter Pro Multiband EQ
5:37 Klanghelm MJUC Tube Compressor
5:57 Abbey Road Plate Reverb
6:11. Waves Trans-X Wide
I'm going to try this with my stock plug ins in Cubase Elements 11.
1. Channel Tape Saturation
2. Standard Channel EQ
3. Tube Compressor
4. Roomworks Reverb
5. Envelope Shaper
It might not sound as great as the paid plug ins, but I'm sure it will improve the sound for sure!
@@D_Tuned How did it work out for you? I wanne try the same in cakewalk 😉
@@MrHhkrohn It worked well. I'm starting to use an EMT reverb type instead. It's got that classic plate sound I like.
@@D_Tuned cool. are you using this chain during recording or after the recording is done?
@@MrHhkrohn Always after. Get a decent signal while recording (I usually set about 75% level peak). Then apply the plug ins. Sometime I might not use a tube emulator if I want something extra clean. Check how it sounds in the mix and see how it sits.
What a pleasant moment it is to receive a notification about how to learn to improve the sound of an acoustic guitar with a few simple and subtle steps. The result is incredibly organic. I have some very similar guitars to mix. Right now I get to work! Thanks Marc for your contribution and Buena Vida!
Very useful. Thank you for sharing your experience!👍
waves req +waves c1 compressor (low reference to brings out the high frequencies) +waves veq4 for tonal eq +waves cla 3a to eliminate clicks and peaks .
The recording of the guitar is really good! Marc manages to make it fit in the mix and make it sound like a record with some great tricks. I work with acoustic guitars a lot and this is definitely something I'll try out! :)
Thank you for all these educative and easy to watch videos! Hello from Greece!!!
Another fantastic tutorial from Marc! Your channel has been extremely helpful. I'm always picking up cool things to try, and finding artist I really enjoy. Thanks Warren!
Wow Marc! That sounds amazing! Interesting how that Trans X didn't just lower it in the mix ...it's as if it moved it in the room. So many layers in that song as well. Great mixing! Like you could stick your head in and see around in there instead of just a wall of sound coming out of the speaker. Humbled by your skills .
Better than I thought it would gonna be. I really like that you left the original guitar sound in tact. Subtile but noticable. Thanks
I've been searching for this video for a long time! Many thanks for posting!
Actually it´s all about sound and feel and fury. Marc is the man.
I absolutely love all of Marc's videos! His stuff sounds amazing!
Thanks for the MJUC set up, love it !
Awesome lesson, MD! THANK YOU
Great Great Great .Waiting for more such videos.
One of theee best tutorial series on the web! Likeable guy, great tips, good music.
Thanks! I'm a guitar player and I've been trying for many years to teach myself how to convey the sound of my acoustic guitars. This helps a lot.
Im working on some acoustics right now, cant wait to try this!
Fantastic William! Thanks ever so much!
Thanks for the tip. Wow, even just the tape plugin darkened the transients and warmed up details.
Softube tape is by far the best tape emulation. For all you Studio One users, on your mix bus insert it on the Mix FX drop down. Not on the insert section but above it there's a Mix FX option. This allows all your channels to hit the plugin individually but only have one instance of the plugin running. Also hit the right hand tab on the plugin for more options
Thank you so much Marc, I've been struggling with an acoustic piece for months, trying to get rid of the spikiness and keep it sounding natural, I've kept United Plugins AG and CLA Guitar at the start of the chain and added a couple of additional Q3 points to taste, but otherwise your suggestions have transformed a painful, unnatural sounding piece into what was originally intended.
Thanks again.
Well articulated; super thoughtful. Grounded with intent. Excellent.
I always learn something useful when I watch Marcs videos. He is such a great wealth of mixing knowledge. Thanks for sharing.
this got me interested in recording again.
Fantastic
Your tips and tricks continue to be a huge source of ideas/inspiration, and in this case perfectly timed. I'm struggling with the placement of acoustic guitar tracks in a current mix with heavily competing piano and harpsichord. The character of the song is circa-Tusk period Fleetwood Mac, with the Bass carrying an above average role in driving the melody (i.e. contributing more traffic in the mids and high-mids than normal) . My mix is cleaner after a series of precision boosts and corresponding cuts, but I'd describe the remaining acoustic guitar tone as "spikey transients featuring the shrilly harsh 5k freq." that you demonstrated shelving down.
In just 8:39 spent watching your approach I learned:
1) Even though I built the saturation on my tracks in small incremental steps (from multiple plugins), the cumulative effect was too much and probably wasn't even the right kind of saturation for acoustic guitar. Fortunately I own the Softube Tape plugin you used. Significant tonal improvement after greatly reducing the old saturation buildup and adding Softube Tape.
2) I had established a mentality that 2-3 dB of gain increase or reduction IS being conservative, but I'm rethinking this after hearing the impact of the subtle 1-1.5 dB moves you were making. Especially in the higher frequencies.
3) Similar to #2, the 2-4 dB that I believed constituted gentle compression was negatively impacting the guitar tone. Much better now after reducing it to a little over 1 dB.
4) A transient designer isn't always the best tool for taming transients. What?!? I've been using Punctuate by Newfangled Audio for a while now and in most cases it provides really good results. Except... not so much on my current song. It's actually helping me make things worse. Without watching your video I wouldn't have known to consider using something like Trans X by Waves in this instance.
.
I've only been at this for a few years, but I think I've recently entered a "golden period" of hyper-improvement. Now that I have a reasonable handle on process/tools and have the experience of creating enough sub-optimal mixes, I can conceptualize the impact of the information I'm consuming. The advice you and Warren are providing is absolutely invaluable for someone like me. Thanks!
I tried the Trans-X as suggested in the video. Really love that touch to my acoustic guitar track. Very Good.
Great info, thanks Mark!
Very thoughtful explanation. Guitars mixed for the song.......natural
Great video, many thanks. The Trans-x was/is the missing link I've been looking for.
Truth be told I didn’t know about it either! - Warren
Brilliant - thanks as always, Marc!
Thanks ever so much
Simple but so suttle, so effective, this is lovely! Can't wait your next video Marc.
Great vid! Even the picture and his narration sound and look top quality. Thanks for sharing.
Another Fantastic Insight to the Mind of Mr Marc D Nelson and how to elevate mixing to the Top level. Love It.
Tape modulation is beautiful thing
That trans-x trick was really good , and def something that can be used on too transient heavy sounds ! Thanks for the told tutorial.
what I would have liked is that he compares it with a very fast limiter. I don't really get what's the difference from what I saw/heard here. I'd have to compare it myself.
For sure once I went to digital recording vs. tape, the most difficult instrument, for me, to get the sound I wanted was acoustic guitar. It's also one of the instruments that varies so much with the player, the guitar, the mic, and the mic placement. Put the "sterility" of the digital medium on top of all that and your acoustic guitar track(s) can be a pretty big challenge. As far as plug-ins, my "secret" is also a tape saturation plug-in. Once I found one I liked and figured the parameters that sounded good to my ears, I got nothing but compliments and questions about how the hell I got that sound. Compression is pretty touchy on the acoustic guitar tracks also. Like Marc, I generally use just a "taste" to sit it in the mix. Too much kills the...damn, describing aspects of music with words is so hard sometimes...kills the overall "vibe" I guess you could call it. The totality of what makes acoustic guitar such a beautiful sounding instrument gets smeared and squashed. Dulls the vibrancy. That's my feeling on it anyway. Another great video, thanks. Peace.
Great information... well done 👍
Awesome video. Acoustic guitar is so tricky, great advice
Man, sounds really warm and present. Great ear and job.
Thanks ever so much
Damn. That first minute said everything I felt when first recording and mixing acoustic guitar.
A perceive a very common theme from nearly all the producers here on PLAP: first use a very precise parametric EQ and/or a de-esser to find and surgically attenuate offending frequencies and high pass and/or low pass the track in order to clean it up; then modestly compress it in order to tame transients and bring low volume content forward enough to be heard; then add a broader analogue color EQ to sweeten it up.
There are lots of exceptions to this methodology, of course, including adding that tape plug-in so early in the chain as MDN does here, but it does seem a good general practice.
Do I have that right?
Great stuff Marc! Cheers!!
Marc gets real good arrangements, like "Jeremiah Jones - Make My Lonely" and this one, love every single one. Very great material to exercise. Cheers all :)
Awesome videos, Marc. I always learn something. Thanks!
Agreed 100%! Me too!
Marc as usual master the art of acoustic with his amazing ears an taste, plus the knowledge about when and how using it. Thanks so much, guys!! The song is also beautiful!!
Saturation is so useful and don't 'alf 'elp you out, guv'nor. Great video, Marc's great !
So good. I’m still learning from this years later.
THIS IS AMAZING, and just what I needed, I have been wrestling with an acoustic on a record for months. The Trans-X is magical!
Super helpful as always! Thanks Marc!
Yet another fantastic lesson from Marc. This has helped me in so many ways honestly, I was working on an acoustic guitar song before I saw this video and it's been a godsend. Thank you so much.
Honestly, with the entry level mixing skills I have I found that panning the guitar then blending in chorus on the other side through a bus was the best trick to get the full way when I was almost done and not that happy. It doesn't need to be noticed in the full mix.
Fantastic Video, very insightful and "organic" view of the subject; much appreciated.
I always love Marc's videos!! Thank you for this. I'm about to track some acoustic guitars this weekend.
Great video Marc. Gonna try it on my acoustics. Thanks
Listening again on the cans and back at some new recordings I’m on with I’m liking more and adjusting my opinions. Thanks Marc, Brandon and Warren of a course
This guy is a gem💎
Thank you so much. I will be applying these concepts this evening to an acoustic guitar track.
Great video! I love Softube Tape, I like it on acoustic guitars as well. The only difference is I open the expanded controls and add a bit of crosstalk.
This is really ace work on acoustic guitar. It's really a tough instrument to get just right.
such great content! I've always used the same accumulative approach to processing acoustic instruments with small steps spread out over several plugins instead of the sledge hammer method.
This is great, thanks Marc and Warren.
I think a massive difference to the acoustic sound comes from having the right strings - steel and silk strings really tame the transients and almost make a guitar have built in compression.
True. Silk and Steele make a big difference. Most players don´t have that on the radar.
I’ve yet to try recording with silk and steel strings but I knew there was something I was hearing just acoustically that dragged my ear to favouring them over other strings. Gonna have to try them on a track now
Would pay a good amount for an acoustic version of this track - the guitar sounds just amazing...
Acoustic Guitar is hard to record right, and hard to mix right, it's so dynamic. MDN is a magician and so smooth. Big ups and thank you. BTW the guitar tone on the Make.Music.Happen intro is awesome, would love to know the guitar, amp and chain.
This may be noted in another video I've yet to come across. What in ear monitors are being used here?
They are Meze Rai Penta’s
@@marcdanielnelson317 Thank you!
It sounds fantastic as Always Marc. Thanx.
Marc or Warren, what settings on Valhalla Plate will be more or less like the Abbey preset here?
What the heck, man. I was just about to exit youtube and be productive, but it's impossible not to watch when a new MDN vid comes out. Thanks a *lot*!
No shit me too. Glad it was short. But then I got to not spend too much time composing a comment.
I know, Right?!
Haha nice!! Thanks Justin!!
Always love your videos and approach! Thanks for sharing!
I love listening to him. It is so calming to hear his thoughts about music and sound.
Really helps me out and pushes my mindset for sound.
Thank you for all this good work 👏🏽
I love how Marc mixes. Mindset and approach just seem right…. 🎵🎛🎚
Would you take this same approach to an acoustic guitar that features heavy strumming?
Thank you so much for this.
Thanks ever so much
What a gift thank you
Thanks Marc! How do you address/tame acoustic guitar finger squeaks on chord changes? (I was hoping that would be in this vid!)
Just use clip gain and take it out! ZIPP!
@@marcdanielnelson317 Hey Marc-thanks for taking the time to answer my question!
Right on time, I'm about to track some acoustic and do the mix ITB - thanks for this Warren! 😀
Good one, Marc! I have been struggling with some acoustics over the past few months, a very brightly recorded acoustic that just has too much click for the song. I've tried de-essers and all sorts of EQ combinations, without reaching my goal. This combo should definitely get me a lot closer. Thanks for sharing!
I like the guitar sound !
Thanks! Marc rules!!
How do 'I' mix acoustic guitar ... ? ... you ask. Well ... the story goes back a long ways (and I so love to talk about myself). But now days I don't do much but it's still the most important instrument on anything I do. I always use acoustic as a guide track along with a guide vocal even if it's not intended to be in final mix (but it almost always is, and it almost always gets retracked after drums are recorded). I track it with a condenser pointed at the ninth (roughly) fret maybe angled toward the sound hole a bit then double it and hard pan. then I process it pretty much like a vocal lowpass, cut at 600 wide, boost at 5k wide. That's it, maybe slight reverb if there is room in the mix.
Saturation is something I have not experimented with. I keep seeing Marc's antique Akia and wondering if he is ever going to use it to side effect a track. I have the same machine and intend try it on something, perhaps acoustic. The hiss that comes off it stabs me with nostalgia every time I hear it.
You speak my language. I appreciate this pointed out so clearly
Awsome content! Thanx a lot Marc.
So well explained. Thank you.
I noticed that you barely had to take any low end out of that. In my mixes I find myself often having to scoop out many dbs of low end to reduce boom, especially with acoustic guitar, sometimes with multiple passes of EQ. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Is it inadequate recording room (no bass traps) or perhaps my hard playing style?
That trans-x is a cool idea. I'm really interested in knowing more about that kick!
Very nice! I would love to hear how you work with fingerpicking, ala phil keaggy or someone like that. That is my predominant acoustic style.
I use an assortment of rubber coated and rubber material picks and this takes a lot of the noise from strumming out of the mix. It is easier to remove it with the pick pre recording than it is post. I use Ibanez rubber coated pics off Amazon and there are a few other brands that make a softer material than the typical plastic pic material.
I think there's a key plugin missing in this chain that would make it sound 100 times better and sweeter, and that's Soothe 2. Settings: Hard, Attack: Fast, Depth: 0.8, Sharpness: 9.0, and focus all around 11k, cut at around 6k. Don't cut the highs.
as per great video lots to learn thanks guys
Really good stuff. I wonder what’s Mark’s take on working with sample based Instrumentes and how he gives them a little more space in the mix?!
Thanks for the TransX tip.. Just trying it now. Didn't even know I owned it. Must have had it for years without trying it.
Total hit and makes 100 % sense - Marc you are just a rock star dude ;-)))
Great tricks! Thanks Marc! Have a nice day! ;-)
Awesome video, thank you. I really appreciate the angle you give in looking for creative and subtle ways to tame and enhance the acoustic guitar within the mix, it really does sound tape-like. A beautiful song too, seems like all the right elements have come together and nothing is overcooked.
Thank you - how fantastic is this advice!
I definitely need help with my own acoustic guitar recordings and they often sound as harsh as the one in this example, but Marc really tamed the transients without making it dull or without energy. I'll keep working on the recording process, but it's good to know that all hope isn't lost if isn't perfect. Thanks.
Hi, could do a video on how you did reverse, delay. Please