Fatten up guitar sound?

if the sound is thin, you might try some tasty compression (the multiband is my favorite)

if it's weak, you need to bring the level of her track down, and then the Master volume up

i am looking through the presets for compression and I don't see "multiband."

it's not a preset, it's an effect. click one of the empty slots under the "simple" compressor to find all the other effects

Where should I be as far as noise gates, compressor, eq, reverb, etc.

i'm afraid it's more then just "taste," every song is different. i don't think i've ever used the same settings on any two songs, you really have to add "what each one needs" (and conversely, NOT use what a song doesn't need).

mess around, then put it to bed and listen to it the next day. if you don't cringe, you're headed in the right direction.

Hi Elizabeth. This might seem complicated, but the end result is so worth it. I use it on any track that needs a little more 'oomph'.

First, play around with some of the EQ and compression presets in under the 'Edit' tab in your Track Info pane (on the right of your screen). You have to enable the effects by pressing the little light button next to the graphic, then, by selecting the 'Manual' drop-down menu, you will see the first two selections - for instance in the 'Compressor' effect slot - are for acoustic guitar sweetening. You will find similar options in the 'Visual EQ' slot.

Next, (and you can skip this part if it seems too difficult or unnecessary), highlight one of your original guitar tracks by selecting (best to click on the track icon at the far left), place the playhead (the red line with the little triangle on top that moves when the song plays) at the very beginning of the track, then press command+D to duplicate that track, or go to the 'Track' menu and select 'Duplicate Track' - this merely duplicates the type of track along with all of the settings from that track that you have saved.

You will next have to physically place a duplicate of the original track recording by highlighting and press command+C or go to the 'Edit' menu and select 'Copy'. Now go back and highlight/select the new track and paste the duplicated original track recording there by pressing command+V or 'Edit'>'Paste'.

Now you have two identical tracks, which I suggest you offset by manually nudging the duplicate the smallest increment you can. At this point, it's probably best if you disable the 'Snap to Grid' function by selecting it under the 'Control' menu. Open your 'Track Editor', if it's not already open, on the bottom of your screen by clicking on the 'little blue scissors' button on the lower left. When you click and drag the actual track recording to the right in the timeline, you will see it correspond in the 'Track Editor' pane. If you've nudged the track more than half a notch down there, you've gone too far - a little goes a long way here: too much and you have an undesired echo effect.

Lastly, on the duplicate track of your first guitar track, nudge your pan-pot a very small degree to separate the sounds. What this basically does is create a stereo-chorus effect, and is a very common professional recording practice.

If you made it this far, you can repeat the process on your secondary original guitar recording track. 😀

Just a thought...considering you have not used a compressor or eq before....

I would suggest you download the demo version of Ozone 4 which is fully functional.

Comes with many presets. Just go through them and see if it gives you what you need to fatten things up for you. Pretty simple...A good guide also if you prefer to roll your own.

Anyway it may be all you need to do is apply a preset in Ozone and get the result you are looking for...in this case.

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/OzoneMasteringGuide.PDF

I think there are good suggestions and I am just adding my two cents to a pretty useful thread.

While I'm something of a newb to Garageband, I'm not nearly as much with an actual studio. Not that I worked at one but in the things I've done, I been in a position to be involved with participating in engineering and producing some stuff. Long story but I've been able to see how some pro studios make things work.

Multiple tracks are your friend. I think that's been mentioned. However, my point is that you may be trying to make one channel from each side do all the sonic work. Particularly since you can add tracks ad nausea.

I saw this at a pretty decent studio when they were doing a mix down and the bass was a little too round and not defined. They re-ran the sound through a different bass set up and back to a new track. This gave them a more dfined tone and another track from which to EQ.

In your case, you have the original, you can just copy and paste to a new track/channel.

My point is that if you try to make one channel per side try to do all the sonic work, you may not even get the sound that you want. Possibly do multiple channels per side and EQ them to fill in the empty sonic space.

For me, when I'm creating drum tracks (I use EZDrummer) and specifically bass drums. The basic sound from EZDrummer is good acoustic drums but not the final sound I would want. In order for the bass drum to both have the chest pounding thump but also that snap that defines the 'hit'. I have 3 total tracks. 1 panned left, 1 right and 1 center. Then per each panned 'side', I EQ a lower end thump on each track. The centered bass drum track I do a higher end snap on another track. For bass drums I never pan too wide, just a mid-pan (I do pan guitar wide most of the time).

What your looking to do is fill in space without overcrowding it. A single track of the same instrument is probably not going to fill in all the space you need. Make more tracks and EQ some with a higher end shimmer and others with more of the 'less audible but must be felt' lower end. This could lead you to get both that shimmer of the acoustic and the roundness you hear when your ear is to the sound hole.

Also work with panning these tracks. Having them spanning the aural spectrum fills in the sound if you have enough tracks to mess with panning.

You may also might want to see what a very small amount of chorus will do. If you apply to on track or one track per side, it ever so slightly makes it a little out of phase sounding which invariably adds to the broadness of the sound.

Others have said to use compression and it is a great tool but in this stage of the game, I would lean towards avoiding any compression if possible. Compression is a destructive effect by nature since it is stripping out parts of the spectrum to accentuate other parts, because of that, if you rely on too much compression too early, when you go to master the song and add an overall compression to the song, you may have over-compressed the guitars and now the mastering compression pushes them further. I think compression is one of the best tools in sonic quality but I always feel it needs to be used as little as possible.

So, just a coupla cents from me.

Message was edited by: JeffS65

JKSBass wrote:

Now you have two identical tracks, which I suggest you offset by manually nudging the duplicate the smallest increment you can.

I am not sure if this it is the same thing as you are describing JKSBass, but I have been getting results I really like by using the AUSampleDelay that is in the AU Effects menu. I follow your steps to get a second identical track, then on one of the tracks drop this effect into a slot and adjust the sample delay to taste. A small delay gets the results I like in combination with, as you suggest, panning one track slightly left and one slightly right, to taste of course.

tunelawyer wrote:
Hi, I am new to this forum. I usually use Garage Band for quick work tapes (I am a songwriter), but have just started working on my first real high quality demo. I recorded two guitar tracks, and sent them off to a pro singer who sent me back the wav files of her lead and harmony vox. Unfortunately, her vocal tracks sound so phenomenal, they leave the two guitar tracks sounding a little thin, and I wondered if there is a simple way to fatten them up (I am not engineerically gifted to say the least).

Hi Elizabeth,

If you are working with a pro singer (and are a "tune lawyer") and might be able to put a little money into this, a solution that's both easy to use and gives results beyond what you can get with GB's onboard effects would be to check out Vintage Warmer II by PSP Audio. It's a relatively inexpensive plugin that does exactly what you are looking for - fattening up a track. It also has a demo period so you can test it out for free.

If you download and install it, you can find it in your list of available effects. You simply add it to your track, and select a preset from the bar at the bottom. It will automagically fatten up your tracks. In fact, it works so well you have to be careful to use it judiciously and resist the urge to overuse it.

http://www.pspaudioware.com/indexen.html?url=http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins /vintage.html;

Ooh! That looks like a fun mix technique! Thanks for sharing that, gjmnz - can't wait to try it out! 😀