What is happening to my guitar tracks? Stereo to Mono.

ShanPeyton

ShanPeyton

Member
I have two identical guitar tracks. One take. Two mics. I slid the tracks together so they were as close to being in in the correct time and place as i could possibly eyeball.

I pan one hard left and one hard right and it sounds as though the stereo image just turned mono?? What monster have i just brought to life?

If i mute one of those and un-mute a separate mic'd take *POOF* my stereo pan is now back to life. I think i may be missing some fundamental principle here. Help?
 
You don't want them lined up exactly in time. One track needs to be delayed a bit relative to the other. Depending on how you placed your mics, you may already have it. Otherwise use a delay. It doesn't take much. Then you can study up on comb-filtering and phase issues...

J
 
Mono = the same thing coming from both speakers

Taking two copies of the same performance and routing each to a different speaker = the same thing coming from both speakers = mono.

Stereo comes from the difference of the sound coming from both speakers.
 
Have you ever recorded a guitar on a stereo track and then broke it into two monos and then panned them? It'll come out in mono, no matter what you do.

Since they are the same take the waveform is going to be near identical, even through two different microphones and the waveform will collapse into mono. Your brain can't interpret them as separate signals.
You'll have to do two takes or delay and pitch shift one of the takes. I'd recommend doing another take.
 
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