Part of this remix project I’ve undertaken this weekend is adding effects to tracks that should have had effects to start with.
It didn’t occur to me till I was recording these guitar tracks that to emulate the feel of a room, I needed to add reverb. Usually, guitars are recorded with a microphone strategically placed in front of an amplifier. A bit of the room sound might end up on the track. I don’t have the real estate nor the acoustic — let alone the gear — to do it that way.
So I recorded my guitar parts straight into the mixer, then add effects later, hence Guitar Rig 4 Pro. When I tried to pan the guitar tracks, they sounded flat. So I put a reverb plug-in on an auxiliary bus — essentially, a track to which you can route all your other tracks to apply effects — and adjusted the reverb to sound like a room.
I didn’t stop with guitars — I did the same for drums and a few keyboards. Bass is the only thing that never gets reverb — it gets too muddy.
I didn’t change “Without Nothing” very much, but I think the difference is in the depth of the track. Emulating the sound of a room can make all the difference.
Here’s the remixed track: