Getting A Better Guitar Tone: Part 3

Today marks the last part of my series on getting a better guitar tone. Electric guitar is such a crucial part of many genres, and I hope that you take away something from these articles that can you help you get better sounding guitars in your mixes.

Let's get started!

Compression

Compression is your friend when it comes to electric guitar. Especially a lead guitar part of a real driving electric. If you are producing a song and you need the guitars to punch, and stay punchy, you need to be using compression. Set your compressor that it's constantly compressing the guitar and until you see about 3 to 6db max of gain reduction. You'll want to play with your attack and release settings a little bit and get it sounding like you want. 

The point here is to get a nice consistent guitar part that cuts through and keeps cutting through. This is especially important for a lead guitar part. Often times guitarist can hit a lot of notes quieter or louder than others unintentionally. Compression to help remedy this. Do keep in mind that sometimes the guitars may intentionally be adding their own dynamics. In this case leave it be or do some light compression as needed. 

Less Distortion

Electric guitarist are notorious for being using a lot of distortion. That's just who we are and that's what most of like. That's okay! It sounds good a lot of times. However, in recordings 90% of the time the guitar will sound better with less distortion than you normally use. I'm not sure why this, but it works. Don't just take my word for it but go try it for yourself. Using less distortion on your guitars will help them sit better in the mix and be more balanced making them easier to notice. Less is more. 

Don't Solo the Guitar

I cannot stress this enough. "Don't solo it," is really a good rule of thumb for most tracks. However, this is especially important when it comes to guitar. A lot of times when an electric guitar track is solo'd, it can sound kind of weak. And to be honest, by itself it is weak! Guitar is a layering instrument and is meant to drive behind and carry along the song. If you solo it, you'll be making compression and EQ changes that probably aren't needed and end up having the guitar stand out too much or not be balanced with the rest of the tracks. Resist the urge to solo! 

That sums up this three part series on electric guitars. I hope you found some of these tips helpful and are on your way to getting better sounding mixes and recordings!