Metal without double tracked guitars

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Ex3vious

New member
Hey guys,
I'm experimenting with a new track and I am interested in recording it with just one rhythm guitar part, I usually double track all rhythm guitars. My question is, does anyone here know of any good metal songs in which a single guitar track is used but a heavy sound is achieved?
thanks.
 
If you go back to classic metal (everything from Sabbath to Judas Priest to Iron Maiden), I'll bet you would find many examples. Can't say for sure, it's been a while since I've listened to much of that. "Heavy" doesn't come from massive guitars alone. It's the connection between guitars, bass, and drums. Just do it and see what happens. For my tastes, doubling, tripling, quadrupling of guitars is overused and often sounds more cluttered than heavy.
 
Robus said:
If you go back to classic metal (everything from Sabbath to Judas Priest to Iron Maiden), I'll bet you would find many examples. Can't say for sure, it's been a while since I've listened to much of that. "Heavy" doesn't come from massive guitars alone. It's the connection between guitars, bass, and drums. Just do it and see what happens. For my tastes, doubling, tripling, quadrupling of guitars is overused and often sounds more cluttered than heavy.
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I completely agree.

The sound of 'modern' metal is often characterised by multiple guitar tracks, but it's not the only heavy sound out there. I'm not a fan.
 
Double tracking is great for the guitar sound provided your rhythm playing is decent. Sloppy rhythm playing will just sound like a mushy mess.

I can't think of any relatively modern stuff with a single rhythm guitar track.
 
There are lots of metal albums with only one guitar performance. Ozzy's Bark at the Moon has only one rhythm in the verse, with little fly in licks, then gets doubled in the chorus. Motley Crue's Shout at the Devil album is mostly single guitar. The classic Sabbath stuff is mainly single guitar.

Judas Priest is all doubled, since that was the point of having two guitar players

Most early Van Halen was single performance.

Get on to youtube and think of classic songs from single guitar bands, search those songs with the words "guitar isolated" and listen to what was going on in these mixes.
 
Lamb of God's Ashes of the Wake was recorded using only single tracked guitars. The reason being, they wanted to hear the detail in the riffing. I remember being really excited about this because I was recording a riff-heavy band at the time and was looking for a similar sound but then quickly realized that talent is half of the equation. Go figure.
 
Lots of older stuff has only one rhythm guitar on it... Sabbath & early Motorhead spring to mind...

Could try double micing the cab instead of double tracking the guitar parts. You can get different sounds without things getting sloppy.
 
I have a metal band I'm mixing that did a single track of guitar... wasn't sounding very full. Luckily, they tracked a DI of the guitar. Ran the DI through an amp simulator (or could have reamped), delayed it 10ms and panned it right while the original track was panned left. Doesn't totally make up for the "wall of guitars" sound, but the resulting stereo spread of the guitars really helps. However, the problem with reamping through a different amp is that the amp may not respond to the guitarist's playing the same way, and metal can be very nuanced. Gotta be careful, don't want to lose that nuance in the process. The band I'm mixing has a loose playing style, so it wasn't an issue in this case. But the key is that the tones are signficantly different enough that the ear perceives it as a different guitar track once the "delay and panned stereo trick" is put into place. Would recommend running the same amp through a different cab w/ a different mic for the "second take".

Also, as others have mentioned, make sure that bass guitar is pounding. I create a new track and distort just the low end and blend it back in a bit. A plugin like Rbass not a bad idea, either.
 
UberGawkman said:
...the amp may not respond to the guitarist's playing the same way, and metal can be very nuanced...
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I agree. Importing guitar wav's onto new amp tracks doesn't have the same vibe/feel. Most of the time, you need to "play according to what you hear" for the right feel, energy, vibe, hand motion etc... A lot of how I "play" something depends on what the amp is telling me.
 
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