Mixing a single guitar track, tricks

S

sarge117

New member
Hi,

A coworker of mine let me in on how he mixes his single guitar band. He told me his method is very common and I was surprised I hadn't heard of it before.

I was curious how many of you do this, and if you had reasons why or why not.

They record the guitar to a single wave file. He then assigns that same wave file to two seperate tracks. He pans one hard left one hard right. Next he will take one of the tracks and adjust the start time by a small amount, measured in milliseconds (no idea how many he uses).

I tried it tonight and was blown away (I offset it between 15 and 20 milliseconds). It's not that it made it sound like two guitars. It still sounded like 1. But it sounded fuller and in stereo and sounded great on it's own with drums and bass. It sounded more like what I expect guitar to sound like when I am in the room with it.

I know when people hear, it is not only that we hear volume differences from left to right, but we also here delays although we don't conciously perceive them.

I just wanted to get some feedback on why you guys may like or hate this idea, and if you have any other suggestions, let me know. However rookie they may be, I probably haven't heard them
 
Hate it, except for some situations (i.e. live recordings) where the mix begs for it but overdubs aren't possible. That guitar part would collapse to very little if you listened to it in mono.

If its possible, record the part twice (or more) and hard pan them.
 
sarge117 said:
Hi,

A coworker of mine let me in on how he mixes his single guitar band. He told me his method is very common and I was surprised I hadn't heard of it before.

I was curious how many of you do this, and if you had reasons why or why not.

They record the guitar to a single wave file. He then assigns that same wave file to two seperate tracks. He pans one hard left one hard right. Next he will take one of the tracks and adjust the start time by a small amount, measured in milliseconds (no idea how many he uses).

I tried it tonight and was blown away (I offset it between 15 and 20 milliseconds). It's not that it made it sound like two guitars. It still sounded like 1. But it sounded fuller and in stereo and sounded great on it's own with drums and bass. It sounded more like what I expect guitar to sound like when I am in the room with it.

I know when people hear, it is not only that we hear volume differences from left to right, but we also here delays although we don't conciously perceive them.

I just wanted to get some feedback on why you guys may like or hate this idea, and if you have any other suggestions, let me know. However rookie they may be, I probably haven't heard them
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It's a terrible way to do it and I've never heard it sound good.
mattr said:
record the part twice (or more)
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That's the way to do it.
 
Or, just use a stereo chorus set for maximum width, speed or modulation as low as you can set it, and depth to taste (probably a fair amount). It'll get you to about the same place.

It STILL isn't a substitute for overdubbing, however. Even using a chorus to get this effect (which will sound a little more natural due to the slight, but periodic, variation) doesn't really do it for me - it seems to rob a guitar of a lot of its body and "presence" in the mix (not high end like the presence knob on an amp, but rather the space it takes up).

Just double track the part. Assuming a halfway decent player, it'll sound WAY better.
 
I've always preferred to just record two separate guitar tracks, instead of copying just one. I often play different chords (I'm a HUGE fan of counterpoint), so I always record separate tracks anyway. But even if I'm going to play the same parts on both tracks, I still record them separately.

I've tried this millisecond offset technique with a duped track, and I just don't like the way it sounds. It's not 'natural' to me, I guess.

By the way, hello forum. First post. :D
 
mattr said:
Hate it

If its possible, record the part twice (or more) and hard pan them.
Click to expand...


or.. get enough gain going on your amp to engage the speakers in the first place, or A/B two amps or why no 3.. or 63... (that leaves a track left for the drums, bass, vocals, keys and maybe a cowbell)
and here's what I don't get.. (please forgive my newbieness)
If you want something to sound like you were in the same room with it, why add a bunch of stuff which makes it not sound like you were in the same room with it.. whether that's offsetting the timing, which I might call echo, or double tracking it, adding chorus or whatever. :confused:No argument that it will sound 'bigger'....
I fully expect to get blasted on this one... :)
 
bunt said:
If you want something to sound like you were in the same room with it, why add a bunch of stuff which makes it not sound like you were in the same room with it..
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But a good recording doesn't always mean "it sounds like you're in the same room with the band".
 
Running the same guitar-signal into two amps and then pan the result can be cool. Panning and offsetting the very same take is more of a last resort than a cool mixing trick, really. It can cause headache too.
 
sarge117 said:
It sounded more like what I expect guitar to sound like when I am in the room with it.
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Sorry. I was reacting to quote above. I totally agree with this below:

But a good recording doesn't always mean "it sounds like you're in the same room with the band".
 
bunt said:
Sorry. I was reacting to quote above. I totally agree with this below:

But a good recording doesn't always mean "it sounds like you're in the same room with the band".
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. I missed that. :cool:
 
six said:
Running the same guitar-signal into two amps and then pan the result can be cool. Panning and offsetting the very same take is more of a last resort than a cool mixing trick, really. It can cause headache too.
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If you pan them narrow with a barely noticable delay it can fatten the track but still give it a single-track feel while leaving the middle free.
But if you are going to pan hard...recording seprate takes is the better way to go, and use different guitars for an even better sound.
 
This is actually an old trick used in studios to create delay. There was a machine around years before the digital age called an "echoplex" , it did the same thing. It was mostly used for vocals though. It doesnt matter what others think , if you like it then do it!
 
sarge117 said:
It sounded more like what I expect guitar to sound like when I am in the room with it.
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When you are in the room with the amp you are hearing all the complex room reflections in addition to sound coming directly from the speaker. Your ears are picking up countless reflections with differing intensities and delays, coming at you from all directions. You perceive the sound as having more 'space' and 'width' (health warning: descriptive and subjective terms alert... always take with a pinch of salt)

So when you throw a single mic right up against an amp, which I'm assuming is how you have been recording, you lose all of this spatial information and are left with a very dry, mono signal. When played back, it will generally sound very narrow and what I would call 'claustrophobic' (again, don't read too much into these words). Basically, its nothing like what you've been hearing in the room.

If you don't like that sound, you have a multitude of options to give the guitar part that 'extra dimension'. You can mic from further away. You can add another close mic. You can add a room mic, or two, or three. That's just to name a very select few. The choice is yours!


Unnaturally wide guitars parts obtained by double-tracking (or more) are by no means the only way to go and in the end it always comes down to what you think works with the song/mix, but there are good reasons why people chose to go this route in a lot of cases.

Firstly and without question, they can sound awesome! You can get a kind of full sound and width that can't possibly be achieved with one performance (no matter how experienced you are at recording guitars and how intricate your amp / room / mic setup is). Hard panned guitar parts can not only sound more 'full' and powerful, they also free up space in the centre of the mix so they aren't fighting with things like drums and vocals.

I've been tentatively talking about this all depending entirely on the context of the mix and the type of music you are working with, which applies as much as ever, but that doesn't mean this kind of thing is restricted to modern rock and metal-type recordings... with tight players and appropriate application/execution, you can pull this off for almost any genre in order to open up the mix and create space for everything else.
 
bunt said:
Sorry. I was reacting to quote above. I totally agree with this below:

But a good recording doesn't always mean "it sounds like you're in the same room with the band".
Click to expand...

Yeah - I think it's worth considering that really, we're the minority of music listeners, in that we all probably have a pretty good idea of what a guitar sounds like alone in a room, or a drum part sounds like live in a room, or what a vocalist sounds like when you're standing in the room with him or her and nothing else is playing, etc. For most listeners, what they hear isn't these solo'd instruments, but rather finished mixes, played on the radio or a CD.

So, while it's good to keep in mind how a guitar sounds in the room, it's arguably more important to think about how a guitar usually sounds in a finished mix.

mattr, I suspect is right about why a multitracked part sounds more natural more often than not - you're hearing the amp in reflection from different angles as much as you are dead on.
 
Thanks for all the feedback.

I was a bit surprised that pretty much no one liked it.

The only issue I found was that depending on the millisecond offset, certain notes would blend loosig the chorus effect.

For instance, (going by memory, the times could be wrong) 15 milliseconds and it seemed the a chord would lose the stereo effect. 20 milliseconds and it was fine for the a chord, but now the G was losing the stereo effect.
 
Mattr mentioned this - you can put two mics on the amp and pull them away from the speaker a bit so that some room sound manages to get in. Pan the tracks for each mic left and right. See, if you're gonna double-track, you have to be a really tight player, and if you're not tight, or if you like adlibbing stuff when you play, then recording the part once only might be a better way to go. But if so, the two mics (different mics, with different sounds) make it possible to pan the guitar left and right.

I'd also like to try that idea of two different amps miked separately too. Good idea. Good excuse to buy another amp. :)
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
we're the minority of music listeners, in that we all probably have a pretty good idea of what a guitar sounds like alone in a room
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that's why kids buy stuff like L6 spiders. ;)
... and probably still don't get that this "cool" vocal trick is autotune and not something the singer pulls off. :p
 
dobro said:
I'd also like to try that idea of two different amps miked separately too. Good idea. Good excuse to buy another amp. :)
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Hey, tis the season, right? I'm (obviously) in learning mode when it comes to the ins & outs of recording, and I very much appreciate Mattr's linking the technical explanations to the things we hear. Thanks for that.

I can, however, say with great confidence that if you A/B 2 amps on a stage, guitars can benefit in a huge way. First, they will sound a lot fatter, but moreover, the tonal possibilities are pretty awesome. If you link up a vibrolux with an AC30 you can get plenty of jangle, but also get nice full deep mids and wider range of attack points for crunch. (just an example)
Hmm.. as I type this I'm getting an insatiable need to go home and see what happens if I fully overdrive one amp, and go for clean rich, but fully saturated:D on a second amp, to see if it fattens up the overdrive in a good way
 
sarge117 said:
Hi,

They record the guitar to a single wave file. He then assigns that same wave file to two seperate tracks. He pans one hard left one hard right. Next he will take one of the tracks and adjust the start time by a small amount, measured in milliseconds (no idea how many he uses).
Click to expand...

This is sort of the digital version of what the Beatles did with Artificial Double Tracking. I've done it too on my Roland vs1824. Makes background vocals sound full if you dont overdo the delay. If you put in too much space it sounds choppy or phased.
 
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