Stop me if you've never had this problem:

Your guitar tracks keep getting in the way of the vocal. They drown out the vocal, whether it's from the rocking riffs or spacious chords.

Not that the guitar isn't sounding absolutely amazing. It's just that the vocal is the main focus of the song. It's what the listener cares about. The vocal is what conveys the emotion most clearly.

And unless there's a solo, the guitar shouldn't be drowning out the vocal.

However, before you start resorting to tricky EQ tricks like scooping the high-mids out of the guitar to make room for the vocal - a trick commonly used to make those two instruments fit together - try this.

Turn the Guitar Down!

Just use the volume stupid. It might even just be a matter of a dB or two. It could make all the difference.

If you are a guitarist(and I am) then you have probably made this mistake time and again(I have).

If the vocal fits with everything else, maybe the guitar is just being a big fat bully. Turn that sucker down and notice how much space the vocal gets immediately.

There's this tendency to keep pushing the volume up on everything while you're mixing. The first order of business while mixing is to get the levels right. You can make a well recorded song sit right from the start by just using the faders. Then, after all the EQ and compression, you should keep track of how that affects the levels you set in the beginning.

Then you rebalance.

Side-Chain Guitar Dance

If you can't get a good result using just the volume of the guitar, try using side-chain compression to make the guitar breathe with the vocal. That way the guitar can duck out of the way every time the vocal comes in. It's a nice little dance between the instrument that works well without you having to resort to any drastic EQ changes.

I show you how to do this in my masterclasses that I've got inside the Mixing With 5 Plug-ins members area.

The first video, the Hard Rock Masterclass, shows you how to side-chain the guitar to the vocal so the guitar ducks out of the way every time the vocal enters.

The second video, the Top 10 Vocal Effects Tips, shows you how I add crazy amounts of reverb and delay to a punk rock vocal. The side-chain pushes the effects down so that they only swell up between the vocal phrases, keeping the vocal clear and intelligible every time the singer is singing.

Get these two masterclasses free with the Mixing With 5 Plug-ins video course here.