How to Record and Mix Guitars at Home: Tips from George Lever and Forrester Savell

Gone are the days of the inferior bedroom producer. As production gear and software becomes ever-more affordable, spare rooms become more viable alternatives to Abbey Road

Gone are the days of the inferior bedroom producer. As production gear and software becomes ever-more affordable, spare rooms become more viable alternatives to Abbey Road. 

Whether your homemade productions are for sharing with bandmates, seducing industry professionals or official releases, the tech is more accessible than ever – but making your music stand out in a saturated market isn’t.

With so many variables to self-recording and mixing guitars, as well as a raft of conflicting information online, Guitar World sat down with esteemed producers George Lever (Sleep Token, Loathe, Monuments) and Forrester Savell (Karnivool, Tesseract, Caligula’s Horse) to learn about what to do, and what not do, to make your productions pop.

Before recording

Like everything, preparation is key. Savell stresses the importance of players learning their parts before entering a recording environment; but Lever goes one step further by emphasizing the value of players “understanding their instrument to the best of the ability”.

He says: “There’s an assumption that recorded guitar should sound like MIDI, but that ignores the builds of different guitars – the way it's set up, the string tension relationship with the tuning that you’re playing in, and how the left-hand influences microtonal changes to the tuning.

“Or whether the pickups can perform in the way you want them to. The best thing someone can do before hitting record is become the most intuitive musician that they can, based on what they want to achieve with their instrument.”

He also recommends tuning to a piano at full volume, rather than relying on a tuner, as they “don’t tell you about the variation that might be occurring above and below the pick attack, or during the sustain.” He adds: “When tuning to a piano note, you can hear how in tune you are versus the piano – that’s why you’ll see orchestras tuning to each other.”

Safety first

Savell says bedroom producers can be guilty of “poor tonal choices,” so it’s important to set up a get-out-of-jail-free card. “As a safety mechanism you should be recording your guitars with a DI so that your tone can be rescued if needed.”

You also want a suitable gain level. If it’s too loud there’s the risk of clipping, which is a difficult thing to fix. But if you overcompensate, a recording may include too much of the electrical noise inherent in guitars, cables and pedals. Says Lever: “I’ll make the loudest sound I can make on the guitar until it doesn’t clip on a preamp, then go back one notch.”

Setting the tone

In order to avoid the tone-chasing rabbit hole while recording, familiarity outranks experimentation. “Always record with a guitar sound you like,” Savell says. “It’s good for comfort and it also gives mixing engineers – if you’re going to work with one – a reference point if they want to build new tones.”

If you’re demoing your new track with your favorite tone, how should you dial in the double track’s tone? 

Savell says it comes down to trial and error, but adds: “There are characteristics of different amps and tones that I find work well together.

The more guitar performances you start stacking on top of each other, the smearier they can become

“A high-gain, smooth-sounding amp like a Peavey 5150 or Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier pairs well with a slightly backed-off breakup amp like a Marshall. It gives you a combination of saturation and a more percussive sound.”

Lever’s approach is a little more streamlined: “You can’t use one rule for everything: add what you think is missing from that first tone. You don’t want to compromise either tone.”

Less is more

Both engineers agree that recording more guitars isn’t necessarily conducive to a bigger, punchier sound. “Quad tracking is something that I only really do when I know that the guitarist is exceptionally tight,” Savell says. “The more guitar performances you start stacking on top of each other, the smearier they can become – you lose the articulation of what’s being played.

Lever adds: “Instead of tracking more of the same, I’d be thinking about playing something different with other layers, like higher or lower octaves, ambient or lead parts to fill out the sound. Then it becomes more melodious and interesting.”

Tracking

Recognizing that many of us record their demo parts in isolation, Savell stresses that it’s “important to listen to what the other instruments are playing. If each member records to an earlier demo version, they’re not bouncing off each other’s performances – it gets a little stale and things can fall out of sync.”

Asked if it’s better to aim for fluid takes or a more fragmented approach, Lever says: “