I'm hardly a pro, but I'm a totally addicted hobbyist, and I've learned a lot both xperimenting and talking with others at
www.gutiarwar.com, so here's my thoughts. But keep in mind a production style is a very personal thing, so adjust to your taste.
1.) first, get a good reference mix. I've always liked the soudn of Satc's "The Extremist" album, so a lot of the times I gravitate towards that, but it depends on my mood and on what's at hand, really. Just find an album where you really like the mix and the way it's recorded. While mixing down, every once in a while toss it in your player to recalibrate your ears to a fixed reference point.
2.) my personal feelings are that you should get the right sound on tape to begin with, rather than recording it and then trying to tweak it to fit. Spend a lot of time working on
amp settings and mic positions, and unless you're 100% happy with the sound as it's being picked up by the mic (or as close as you can concievably get- let's be realistic, lol), then don't hit "record." It's easier to get it right at first than it is to fix it later.
As for mixing advice...
-gutiars. I'm a guitarist, so this is the one sound i ally want to be "right." I usually roll off all the lows below 120hz or so, with a sloping graphic eq from that point down to 80-100 or so, and full cut below that. This will change the overall character of the guitar tone very little, yet free up a lot of room for the kick drum and the bass. Distorted guitar is already pretty compressed, so i generaly pass on that, but clean guitars might benifit from a little light compression- maybe 4:1, a few dB below the peaks, just to take the edge off. I generaly eyeball it to set a threshold, but my rule of thumb is, unless i'm looking for a radically effected tone, if i can hear the change with my ears, it's too much compression. I'm into
Devin Townsend and Hum and groups like that that tend to go for an echoey rhythm sound, so of late I've been reverbing the rhythm tracks a bit. This is personal.
-bass. I hate the sound of my bass, a Squire P-bass 5 string. Well, haes a strong word... but i generally record it direct, ocassionally using my j-station. I chop out everything below 40hz and everything about 2k or so, and compress it quite a bit- 4-5:1 or so, but with the threshold pretty close to the "average" volume outside the attacks. Basically, i don't like the tone anyway,s o i try to minimize its effect on the rest of the mix.
-drums. The biggest improvement I've made to my drum sound was sequencing individual loops for the kick, snare, and cymbols, and processing them independantly. I keep the reverb pretty constant between them so as to hold onto a little of that "live room" feel, but i generally leave just the highs on the cymbols and hi-hats, and focus on the upper mids for the snare. sonce I play a 7-string, i tend to go with a kick sound that's got a strong, "high" attack, rather than a deep rumbly kick tone. I EQ the deep bass back a bit, then use a compressor with a slow attack, so it doesn't really close down until a few ms after the kick's attack comes through. this helps keep the kick drum sound audible and distinct amidst the 7-string gutiar and 5-string bass. It's not a kick sound I'm really in love with- i'm more intot hat deep, bluesy, rumbly low end- but it works better than the alternatives, to my ears.
Also, you don't want to mix down to 0db- go for about -3-6dB to leave yourself some room while mastering, and then bring it up to 0 as the last thing you do before going to CD or mp3. I don't do much EQ work while masering, but I'll usually put a light compression (2:1 or so) on the very peaks before i normalize. Once again, you don't want to hear the change, just see it in the faders.
Oh, and good speakers are a must
-D
