Depending on the genre you’re mixing in, guitar may play a larger or smaller role in the mix. In genres like rock, guitar remains a focal point, second only to the vocals and oftentimes surpassing the vocals in order of priority. In other genres, guitar may be more of an accenting piece.
Regardless of how you’re using guitar in your mix, this tutorial will cover how to mix guitar from start to finish with every aspect of the processing chain covered.
Note that this overview on how to mix guitar is more geared toward electric guitar; refer to my complete tutorial on how to mix acoustic guitar for more information on that.
With that said, let’s get into this guide on how to mix guitar to get your guitar sounding its absolute best in your mix, including my personal mix chain.
How to Mix Guitar
Let’s get into my mix chain from left to right, start to finish, starting with a completely optional one (as I’ll explain).
Tuner
Just like with my guide on how to mix bass, I begin with a tuner.
As I mentioned, this is my guitar mix chain which I use in every mix, taken from my mixing template.
While oftentimes I’m just importing prerecorded guitar tracks into my template in which case a tuner is unnecessary, I’ll also use this template to record to when I’m working on a new song, hence the tuner, which saves me time later.
Make sure you put the tuner ahead of any subsequent audio effects as some of them will affect the interpreted tuning enough to give you an inaccurate reading which will cause you to tune your guitar incorrectly.
Gain
After the tuner, I like a gain plugin for adjusting imported (meaning prerecorded) guitar to the best level to establish gain staging.
If I’m recording fresh guitar into my template, I’ll set my input gain on my recording interface before I start rolling, aiming for a -18dB average with -12dB peaks. This keeps the track in accordance with gain staging so that I’m feeding the best level into any plugins/audio effects later in the chain.
More than that gain staging keeps my mix at a responsible level so I have more headroom for the audio mastering stage.
Guitar EQ
Now it’s time for an EQ to cut out what’s detracting from the recorded tone and enhance what’s left.
Before we start cutting or boosting, one of the fundamental aspects of understanding how to mix guitar is understanding the frequencies of the guitar.
Taken from my guitar frequency range chart, these are all of the different characteristics at the different frequency ranges on the guitar, from the body to the inaudible top end:
Now that we have a better idea of how the different frequencies ranges affect the tone of our guitar, let’s adjust our guitar EQ.
Taken from my dedicated electric guitar EQ cheat sheet, here is a snapshot of how to treat each of the important frequencies on your electric guitar:
Note that this cheat sheet can be found as part of my greater ULTIMATE EQ Cheat Sheet which shows where to cut and boost on EVERY single track in your mix, so grab that for free. Now let’s get into the EQ portion of how to mix guitar, starting with the low end.
High Pass at 150Hz to Compliment Bass (Sweep)
You may be surprised to hear me recommend that you high pass at 150Hz considering we JUST established that the fundamental frequencies of the guitar in standard tuning extend down to almost half that at 82Hz.
You WOULD be surprised at how often the professional, clean mixes that you love high pass guitars well into that low end fundamental of the guitar.
Incidentally this is a good time to remind you to use reference tracks when you’re mixing to keep your ears fixed on your ultimate goal, both when focusing on mixing guitar and otherwise.
Getting back to the point, high pass filtering accommodates the bass, creating space for the elements of your mix which need that low end.
You should always mix your guitar in the context of the rest of your mix rather than in solo mode, but pay attention in particular as you’re high passing the low end to how that guitar is sounding in combination with the bass.
When the bass has those low end frequencies below 150Hz to itself, you get a cleaner sounding mix as opposed to the guitar and bass fighting over those same frequencies.
Certainly trying sweeping to find the best balance, but the point is to let the bass represent roughly 150Hz and down while gently filtering back in the body of the guitar at that point for the hand off into those low mids.
Cut/Boost at 250-500Hz to Clean Up Mud/Add Clarity OR Add Warmth/Body
250-500Hz are those low-mids of the guitar which should be cut or boosted depending on what you’re hearing.
On the one hand, you tend to get a lot of mud or unflattering frequencies which aren’t contributing to the guitar tone here in which case you may want a small cut, or even better a dynamic EQ cut.
The latter means that you’re only cutting when necessary and proportionately at that. You can use my favorite dynamic (or otherwise) EQ in FabFilter’s Pro-Q 3, or you can grab a free dynamic EQ option.
On the other hand, you’re starting to get the first overtones of the body here, so there’s still a decent amount of top end body in this 250-500Hz range.
If the guitar feels a little thin, try a small boost here to supplement that body and anchor that guitar tone a little bit.
Boost Around 2k for Presence
Presence is that half clarity, half bite character of the guitar.
Too much 2k will make the guitar sound too bright. Too little will make it sound in need of some clarity.
Cut at 4k to Remove Abrasive Sound
With distorted guitar in particular, you tend to get an abrasive sharpness between 3-5k which can benefit from being treated with a light dynamic cut here to smooth things out.
Once again that dynamic cut helps to only cut as necessary when certain guitar parts or notes are sharper than others, thus maintaining and preserving the notable clarity which exists around here, as well.
Low Pass Around 5-8k (Sweep)
Lastly, I like to low pass my guitar generally in that 5-8k range, though there are no hard and fast rules here about that specific range and you should sweep to find the cutoff point which preserves your tone while removing unnecessary tones.
This helps to add a little mix headroom, not to mention it gets the inaudible or unnecessary frequencies out of the way of the instruments which need them like cymbals, synths, and even vocals.
Note that I did a dedicated overview on distorted guitar EQ, so refer to that for genres where you’ve got more heavily distorted guitar like metal or punk to get that perfectly molded distorted tone.
Guitar Compression
Admittedly compression isn’t as necessary on guitar as other instruments, depending on the type of performance. For instance, strummed chords rarely need much to any compression, whereas some riffs, arpeggios or anything picked can benefit from compression to ensure every note is at least heard.
A little light compression can help to give you a more even tone so you don’t need to automate the guitar while keeping enough dynamic range to sound natural.
All that to say, here is my recommended starting point for guitar compression, though you may want to experiment with these settings slightly depending on your exact audio:
Threshold
The threshold is the level at which the guitar needs to meet on its peaks before the compression engages.
Generally I like to set the threshold alongside the rest of my parameters to get about 3dB on average in gain reduction, but as I just mentioned, this target will vary depending on the type of guitar track you have.
You may want more with a picked part where some notes may get lost versus less compression for a strumming part where everything is more or less even anyway.
Ratio
As I covered in my overview on the best compression ratio, you generally can’t go wrong with a 4:1 ratio. Still, on guitar I like a slightly and relatively lighter ratio when compressing guitar and typically go with 3:1, meaning every 3dB which exceed the threshold, they’ll get output to 1dB over that ratio.
This doesn’t assert quite as much control over that guitar as a 4:1 would, instead smoothing out those peaks as opposed to yanking them down quite as aggressively.
Go with a higher ratio for more energy, or a lower ratio for more dynamics, but I like a ratio of 3:1 when I compress while mixing guitar.
Attack
The compressor’s attack is essentially the delay in milliseconds after the threshold is exceeded before the ratio kicks in and pulls down the peaks.
I like offsetting the compression on guitar with an attack of 5ms as this allows that initial “bite” of the guitar (also known as the guitar’s audio transients) to poke through before we get that nice sustain on the backend.
Transients help the guitar or any track assert itself in the mix, keeping the listener tuned in and aware of that track without our having to needlessly boost its level an extra dB after we’ve already found that perfect level for the guitar relative to the rest of the mix.
Release
I always like the describe the compression release as the off ramp – how long it takes for the guitar to get back to its uncompressed state once the threshold is no longer met.
A 50ms release is enough to create a natural transition to where the listener won’t hear the guitar compression happen, something you can get if you set it too fast (or long).
Output
One last note – compression turns down the volume of your guitar by reducing the extremities of the peaks and consequently the dynamic range. Set the output to make up for whatever gain reduction you achieve on average (like the 3dB I like to aim for on average) to more or less maintain the level you had going into the compressor.
Note that this was taken from my ULTIMATE Compression Cheat Sheet which details the best settings to impart on the compressor on every single track in your mix which you can ALSO grab for free.
Guitar Delay
Delay works well on certain types of guitar more than others, though you can make an argument there’s a type of delay for just about every type of guitar.
For instance, on lead guitar you can’t go wrong with a classic 1/4 note delay. This helps to thicken up that tone, add depth, and make it sound so much bigger in the stereo field which is huge when it’s carrying the mix.
I did an entire overview on lead guitar delay, specifically the best settings to dial in on your delay plugin of choice. I also cover dotted 1/8th note delay which can sound perfect on the right part.
On rhythm guitar, you can use a very short slapback delay. This works well when you only have one guitar track in the mix but it’s not taking up enough real estate for your liking.
Remember that according to the Haas Effect, any delay less than 40ms will generally be interpreted as being an extension of the same sound rather than a delay or separate sound.
With that in mind, really any short delay sub-40ms will help to thicken out the tone without drawing too much attention to it.
Saturation
Of course if you want to thicken out your guitar, you might try some parallel processing or some saturation (or saturation VIA parallel processing).
I love a classic saturation plugin called Decapitator from Soundtoys which adds some very light distortion to the mids and low-mids of the guitar to seriously warm up a thin, top heavy, or weak sounding guitar in seconds:
This is also simultaneously a great way to tame the aforementioned overly abrasive bright guitar while thickening out that midsection. Just turn the tone dial left or right to adjust the overall vibe of the guitar track to be darker or brighter, respectively.
Lazy yet effective, my favorite combination!
Guitar Panning
Of course we couldn’t finish talking how to mix guitar without addressing panning.
As I covered in my audio panning guide, I generally pan guitars wide with some exceptions:
This works especially well in the case of double tracked rhythm guitars.
Simply record the same track twice exactly the same, maybe flipping the tone switch or adjusting the tone dial between takes to create a slight contrast, and pan the two hard against one another to make the guitars sound HUGE in the mix.
For lead guitar, if it’s truly a lead in the case of a solo and it’s not playing against a vocal, I’ll pan this right up the center or just off center.
When it comes to riffs or little parts we’re adding in for flavor while we have vocals or lots of other instruments sounding off in a denser mix, I like to be mindful of those other tracks and simply avoid frequency conflicts, using the stereo field to fit the guitar in where I have room.
Keeping similar frequency range instruments spaced out from one another to avoid those conflicts – that’s a huge part in attaining a cleaner mix.
Remember in the broader context of mixing that you also have reverb at your disposal to manipulate that third dimension of your mix as another layer to avoid frequency conflicts.
How to Mix Guitar Tips
And there is my recommended processing chain when it comes to how to mix guitar.
- Use a gain plugin at the start of your chain to adjust the level to -18dB on average to establish gain staging.
- EQ can be used on your guitar to adjust the overall tone of the guitar to a cleaner or warmer tone with more body.
- A light compression with a ratio of 3:1 helps to smooth out peaks and bring a little added cohesion to your guitar, not to mention add a little thickness and sustain in some cases.
- Delay can add size or even ear candy to your guitar but the type you use will vary depending on the type of part you’re mixing.
- Saturation is useful for adding some warmth and body to a top heavy, thin, or weak sounding guitar; it can also be used to favor the tone in one direction or the other.
- Double tracked guitars work well to establish a huge wall of guitar sound for rhythm guitars when panned hard opposite one another whereas leads should go up the middle assuming there’s no conflicts. Other parts work well when sent off center assuming they don’t conflict with other instruments in those ranges.
- Remember that you can use a bit of reverb to help the guitar sit better in the mix as well as avoid frequency conflicts in busier, denser mixes with a lot of tracks.
