This content explains how to fix "flubby" low-tuned guitar sounds in metal mixes by using a multiband compressor technique called the "Andy Sneap trick" to control excessive low-end energy during palm-muted passages.
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what's up everyone scotty from triple
studios and today i'm going to show you
how to fix your flubby guitar this is a
huge problem for low tuned guitars
especially in metal with high bpms a lot
of kick drums and a lot of bass
guitar action so let me explain what it
is what the problem is and why it's
happening and how to fix it so in low
tune guitars typically you are moving
the frequency of the notes being played
lower in the spectrum so if i open up
pro q3 here actually what i'll do is
i'll create like a little range like this
this
typically when you have a standard tuned guitar
guitar
the frequency ranges are going to be
between these two
ranges in the low end you're going to
have low end that's sort of about from
100 to whatever and this is going to be
the low end range of your guitar
as you go lower and lower lower on your
guitar tuning you actually are extending
the low range of the guitar
this causes a number of issues with
mixing metal in particular but
practically this means that the notes
are going lower in the frequency
spectrum which are creating new problems
for note separation and audio separation
in the mix so in order to fix that we
need to do what is
essentially called the andy snoop trick
now what we're going to do is we're
going to use a multi-band compressor and
in this instance i'm just going to use
the stock cubase one it really doesn't
matter which multiband you're using and
we're going to focus on the low to low
mid range to help dynamically reduce
this range only during specific parts of
the guitar parts that are being played so
so
typically what happens is you play a
palm mute you're on a low tune guitar
and then the low end energy just
significantly bumps up so what this will
look like again in practice with this
particular guitar riff which is in drop a
a
watch this region here particularly this
region of the frequency spectrum watch
the low end energy and what happens when
[Music]
so essentially when i start doing a paul
mute uh riff on the guitar i'm getting
practically a 3 db bump in low end
energy and this is a huge problem if
you're trying to get a tight mix
especially to get the low end to work
together because there's a kick drum a
bass guitar and now we're throwing in
these low down tune guitars into the mix
so what i'm going to show you is how to
use the annie sneak trick uh it's very
important to understand what you're
listening for when you use this trick
okay and just to let you know i'm doing
no processing on the bass or the drums
and there's no master chain all i have
here is to go into obs nothing is
happening but you're still going to hear
a massive difference when i turn this
multi-band on so let's go ahead i'm
going to leave this eq on and
interestingly you're going to see a
little dip in volume but you're going to
hear a huge difference so i'm going to
engage this and then i'll discuss how to
use it [Music]
[Music]
so right when the multiband is engaged
and set correctly you can hear how the
guitar is quite uniform even when the
palm mutes are happening you can hear
there's really not a gigantic bumping
volume anymore the blue blue the
flubbiness is going away and the guitar
sounds tighter that is what we're trying
to do with the any sneak trick now
what is the any sneak trick okay this
became popular with with on the andy's
mixing forums basically you would take
the waves c4 multiband and you would do
from about 90 to 240 and you would set
it accordingly but what does that look
like in practice okay so here we are
with a multi-band i have disabled every
region that i don't really care to use i
don't need the multiband to do anything
in any of these regions i'm only
concerned about the low to low mid area
now this is going to depend on your
tuning so i'm playing in drop a so you
can see here i sort of have around 92
hertz to around 300 and you can adjust
this accordingly if you're lower or
maybe a little bit higher in tuning and
the whole point is to take care of the
low-end flood that's happening during the
the
paul mutes when the base energy is
drastically increasing so now the key to
doing this what you're listening for
okay it's not enough just to put the
multiband on there because you can choke
the the power and the the the depth and
the body of the guitar by using too much
multiband let me show you what that
so we've kind of just sucked out the
body out of the guitar now like yeah
there's a multi-bank on there we're
compressing the low mids and we're
taking it out but we're actually just
sucking everything under the guitar now
the guitar has no movement it has no
life it's not interesting to listen to
anymore and that's not what we're trying
to do when we get the multiband going
all right so let me show you how to dial
this in now i
prefer to dial in these things with the
full mix going on so i can understand
how everything is working together let
me do it in solo mode so you can
definitely hear the difference and then
i'll turn on the full mix so you can see
what happens when everything is together [Music]
[Music]
so you can hear the
guitar that's what we're gonna get rid of
of [Music]
there so i'm doing around 6 db gain
reduction during the truck the massive chug
chug
peaks with the low end you can still
hear that there's a little bit of depth
to the guitar there's still low end body
to it all right so we're not actually
trying to kill all of the low end out of
it we're just trying to clean it up a
little bit and tighten it so this is a
technique to tighten the low end of your
guitars you don't want to completely
nuke this area and kill that low in
energy but you want to start thinning it
out a little bit and
kind of taking care of it so things like
the bass guitar can handle this
frequency range which is what it was
designed to do alright so let's hear the
difference with everything playing [Music]
[Music]
so it was very obvious when the
multiband was enabled the guitar was
quite uniform right we could still hear
the low end coming in and we have that
low end depth that we look for in the
guitar but it wasn't
overtaking the low end like when i took
it off you could clearly hear how the
low one was getting out of control and
masking the bass guitar okay so this is
precisely why
you need to use the annie sneak trick to
help take care of these frequencies in
the lower part of the guitar especially
when you're down tuning now you can
still use this if you're doing standard
tuning and drop d and stuff like that
you just wouldn't have to do so much
drastic db reduction it would it would
be far less
and depending on how you set up your amp
and how you use like an overdrive pedal
and things like that you may not even
need to do it
but this is a technique you absolutely
must learn how to use if you're doing
metal with
uh really low tuning guitars you know
like c um drop c and lower for example
to really get the clarity out of the
guitar that you're going for so let's
see what the ultimate effect of this is
i'll bring up pro q again now you can
remember how much of a boost we had here
it was like 3 db let's see how much this
multiband is cutting down on the overall levels
levels [Music]
so on average we basically cut the
lowering energy by half now this is just
one part of the example here i just
really wanted to break down how the c4
trick actually works so that you can use
it uh in the other elements of your
processing all right so that's gonna do
it for this one guys if you enjoyed it
please leave a comment below and what
other guitar processing tips and tricks
would you like to see let me know in the
comments below and i will get on it
thanks for watching i'll see you guys in
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