Mixing: Acoustic Guitar – A Clear & Concise Method TUTORIAL

Oh the wonderful instrument of acoustic guitar! Though a tricky instrument at times, it’s definitely one of my favorite acoustic instruments to play, record, and mix. We will focus on the latter for this course, the mix. The real challenge when mixing an acoustic guitar is to retain it’s natural sound, while most accurately treating it to fit the context of the mix. And in this course, we will assure that you gain all the skills necessary to do so with ease.

We will cover topics such as:

comping the best takes to assure the song has the absolute best performance throughout

Editing to assure there’s no unwanted background noise and that the guitar sits well rhythmically in the mix

EQ to sculpt the tonality of the instrument just right for the context of the mix

Compression to balance out any dynamic peaks and make the guitar level and smooth throughout

Time-based fx such as different types of reverbs, delays, and even chorus to assure you provide a sense of space accurately for the mix

For this course, I intentionally use stock plugins that come with Ableton to assure those of you that use Ableton, can follow along step-by-step. However, since each DAW comes with basic EQ, compression, reverb, delay, and chorus fx, the techniques in this course can be applied to any DAW and any set of plugins you have.

I’ve kept this course quick and concise to assure you are able to retain and apply the techniques on your own mixes in no time. So with that said, let’s jump right in.