Do you want to find out how to get wide guitars to achieve a spacious mix. Creating space in your mix is a key component of a lively and interesting mix.
When we talk about space in a mix, we’re talking about perceived width, height and depth.
The space is only perceived because we’re still technically hearing the audio out of two speakers, it’s just our brain that’s hearing the audio as wide or narrow, near or far etc. Similarly, to how a 3D drawing on paper is only perceived as 3D.
Getting your mix to sound wide is great for a few reasons –
- It frees up space in your mix for vocals and other centrally panned instruments
- A spacious mix creates aural excitement
- It helps boost choruses, hooks and other areas of the song where you want your mix to ‘open up’
There are many ways that we can trick our brains into hearing our mix as wide, and guitar tracks are a great opportunity to create some width. If you’re mixing a track with no guitars though, these techniques can still work wonders with almost any other instrument.
I’ve put together a video on how to get WIDE guitars with my three favourite techniques.
The first two are straightforward, the third one is a little more involved but is by far the most effective.
Here it is –
I hope you find this useful and now have a good idea of how to get wide guitars in your mixes. If you’d like me to cover anything else at all about mixing guitars, feel free to drop a comment below.