Doubling guitar tracks

  • Thread starter Thread starter P-J
  • Start date Start date

What's your preferred solution?

  • Play it again, sam!

    Votes: 105 76.6%

  • Copy it, paste it, offset it

    Votes: 8 5.8%

  • Neither, or maybe both

    Votes: 24 17.5%
  • Total voters
    137
I always have bands play it twice...even when you copy and paste and offset it, you still have some slight, weird phase issues.

I usually have guitarists do at least two tracks of everything. Two mics up close to the cab and a room mic. Depending on the song (one song a recent band did sounded exceptionally cool like this), I'll pan the two cab mics left, the other two tracks right, but I keep the room mic MUCH quieter and centered, so whenever they play something strictly on the left or right, it doesn't give you that weird "hey, I kinda feel like I just went deaf in one ear" feeling (especially with headphones on).

Just my two cents. :D
 
Carny1122 said:
I always have bands play it twice...even when you copy and paste and offset it, you still have some slight, weird phase issues.

I usually have guitarists do at least two tracks of everything. Two mics up close to the cab and a room mic. Depending on the song (one song a recent band did sounded exceptionally cool like this), I'll pan the two cab mics left, the other two tracks right, but I keep the room mic MUCH quieter and centered, so whenever they play something strictly on the left or right, it doesn't give you that weird "hey, I kinda feel like I just went deaf in one ear" feeling (especially with headphones on).

Just my two cents. :D
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I'm hearing lots of things I need to try. Interesting approach Carny (the centered room mic)!
 
This was an issue for my band as we were recording. We only have one guitarist, and I felt that double tracking is kind of lying.
Especially when you've got a "ghost" guitar playing rhythm during a lead portion.
Bah, studio tricks.

So we eventually settled on using two mics. Both right in front of the cab. One pointed at it and the other flipped backwards. Then we panned the two tracks hard. It sounds pretty good.
Of course it will always sound better to double track it, but I'm much happier having a recording that at least sounds like it could've been recorded live as opposed to piece by piece in a studio.
 
tsswitch said:
This was an issue for my band as we were recording. We only have one guitarist, and I felt that double tracking is kind of lying.
Especially when you've got a "ghost" guitar playing rhythm during a lead portion.
Bah, studio tricks.

So we eventually settled on using two mics. Both right in front of the cab. One pointed at it and the other flipped backwards. Then we panned the two tracks hard. It sounds pretty good.
Of course it will always sound better to double track it, but I'm much happier having a recording that at least sounds like it could've been recorded live as opposed to piece by piece in a studio.
Click to expand...

I see your point. But for me, when the tracks are the same, I don't feel like it's cheating. Think about it--when you see a band live, even if there's one guitarist, and even with a mono mix, there's a stereo spread. You have two ears, and the guitar sounds hit your ears differently, as they bounce around the room.

The way I see it, double tracking just recreates this illusion of size--even if it has to exaggerate it to compensate for the fact that it's coming out of a 5 inch speaker in my dashboard.
 
I voted play it again... I've always done it that way. You can use delay and stereo ambient programs, but I've never been happy with anything but truly doubling the guitar by playing along with the first take. The subtle timing of playing live can’t be duplicated with processing and IMO it gives the most spacious and interesting effect when each is panned Left/Right to taste. I do the same with vocals… sing it again.

IMO you don’t risk loosing subtleties. On the contrary; the fact that humans can’t play a piece exactly the same way twice is what gives the play it again approach it’s magic… it’s fuller and more complex… more interesting musically to my ear.

:)
 
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tsswitch said:
This was an issue for my band as we were recording. We only have one guitarist, and I felt that double tracking is kind of lying.
Especially when you've got a "ghost" guitar playing rhythm during a lead portion.
Bah, studio tricks.

So we eventually settled on using two mics. Both right in front of the cab. One pointed at it and the other flipped backwards. Then we panned the two tracks hard. It sounds pretty good.
Of course it will always sound better to double track it, but I'm much happier having a recording that at least sounds like it could've been recorded live as opposed to piece by piece in a studio.
Click to expand...
Right. Have you ever taken a live video that you think sounds pretty good and made a tape (showing my age) of the audio and listened to it in the car? It sounds strange
(bad) and doesn't have the impact because you aren't getting the visual.

When you play in a club, the audience is immersed in the whole experience. They see the band, they are drinking (which makes the band sound better than it does), the sound is hitting them in the chest and bouncing off all the walls, etc...

When you listen to that same performance on a CD in your car, it wont have the same effect. This is why you add things in the studio, to try to immerse the listener in an environment that isn't physically there.
 
how about 2 takes panned hard left and 2 takes panned hard right?

just been reading up a lot on recording high gain guits and stacking tracks with low gain seem to be the way to go to get that high gain sound but still with clarity.

hence 2+ takes of low gain panned left and 2+ takes low gain panned right. end result should be an awesome crunchy large stereo guit sound if im not mistaken?
 
It depends on the guitar sound. Normally, the more layers you add, the thinner each layer has to be to fit in the mix without employing some major processing.

Normally, 'size' comes from a sense of space. When there is no 'air' in the music, it starts to sound small and pinched.

For example, Pantera used at least 3 rhythm tracks. It sounds 'big', but each track isn't thick. The vocals on a Def Leppard album, there are 40 or 50 vocal tracks going most of the time, it's big but not thick. If you tried to layer 50 tracks of vocals that weren't really airy and breathy sounding, you would run out of room really fast and it would just sound like a tiny mess that would swallow up the music bed.
 
Farview said:
Right. Have you ever taken a live video that you think sounds pretty good and made a tape (showing my age) of the audio and listened to it in the car? It sounds strange
(bad) and doesn't have the impact because you aren't getting the visual.

When you play in a club, the audience is immersed in the whole experience. They see the band, they are drinking (which makes the band sound better than it does), the sound is hitting them in the chest and bouncing off all the walls, etc...

When you listen to that same performance on a CD in your car, it wont have the same effect. This is why you add things in the studio, to try to immerse the listener in an environment that isn't physically there.
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When you listen to a cd I don't think you want to be immersed in a studio environment. You want to be immersed in a live environment with energy and spontaneity.
When I listen to a cd I want to be able to picture the band playing the music all together. Like they are performing the songs live and simply capturing it to tape.
When I'm listening to a 3 piece, yet there are magically 2 guitars playing, it takes me out of the experience. The picture I have in my head is not of the band rocking their brains out, but of people huddled over computers recording bits into pro tools.

I'm sure most people don't think about this when they listen to music and probably consider sound quality more important, but it's something that bothers me.
 
I see what you mean farview. I know that big sound comes from great rooms and ambient room mics. I really meant powerful guit i guess. Not so much that big room sound. Do you agree with me on the whole stacking low gain tracks to get that high gain crunch? Cause in my experience recording amps with high gain settings sounds pretty terrible wen its played back
 
skiz said:
I see what you mean farview. I know that big sound comes from great rooms and ambient room mics. I really meant powerful guit i guess. Not so much that big room sound.
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I'm not talking about a big room sound. I'm talking big, as in huge, massive, etc...

skiz said:
Do you agree with me on the whole stacking low gain tracks to get that high gain crunch? Cause in my experience recording amps with high gain settings sounds pretty terrible wen its played back
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Yes. Again, it has to do with having enough air. Crunchy sounds have 'air', high gain fuzzy sounds don't have 'air'.
Crunchy sounds aren't as dense (maybe that is a better way of saying it) as super gained out sounds. So super gained out sounds don't stack as well because they already take up too much room.
 
Interesting thread, but why double tracks anyway. If you're going to play the same thing live, and you have only one guitarist in the band, how are you going to recreate it live? I think your audience will really be disappointed with you live.

That being said, I have doubled vocals before, recording twice... :D
 
How do you delete double posts? Can't find a delete button anywhere. :mad:
 
Oh right, farview. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks! Still cant believe the whole 50 track def lep thing. Would have to get your vocal parts pretty tight!
 
cmhansen said:
Interesting thread, but why double tracks anyway. If you're going to play the same thing live, and you have only one guitarist in the band, how are you going to recreate it live? I think your audience will really be disappointed with you live.

That being said, I have doubled vocals before, recording twice... :D
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Because live, a singe track can fill a room as it bounces about and hits your two ears differently. In a recording, playing back on small speakers, that same single track can sound weak and anemic. I double track when I record not to fool listeners, but to recreate the same "size" and energy of a live performance.

And actually, live performances may benefit from some chemistry and energy--but studio recordings have the opportunity to just plain sound better. I'll take it...
 
skiz said:
Oh right, farview. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks! Still cant believe the whole 50 track def lep thing. Would have to get your vocal parts pretty tight!
Click to expand...
Any time you do more than two tracks and pan them hard, you need to get them really, really tight. Any slop will stick out like a sore thumb.
 
play it twice. put 2 mics on the amp--one on the grille and one a foot back (say sm57 close and V77 far). pan the first take with the 57 L and the V77 R. then for the 2nd track, reverse the panning--V77 L and 57 R.

this works real well for me for rhythm tracks. two takes, 4 tracks, nice and fat.

but if you can't play the part the same twice it's not going to work. in fact, you might as well not bother recording and oughta go practice some more instead. :p


cheers,
wade
 
Reamp it with something different. Either amp, cab, amp+cab, or just different settings on the same gear. This will keep the performace tighter since it's the same thing, but should make it different enough to keep you from BIG MONO.

I'm also a fan of the two mics on the best speaker method, but I combine those to one track, essentially giving me 4 separate tracks with two performances. 4 Performances is common nowadays, but I've never had a use for it yet.
 
I got a pretty good distorted wall-o-guitars sound by running through my distortion factory and into my amp from the amp output, direct in through the mixer output, and an additional mic inside a glass jar a couple feet away. Jar in the middle, the other two panned hard. The jar was an experiment that probably won't work for most sounds, but it played nice for what I wanted.

Sometimes I do a similar thing with acoustic with the direct out from the pickup going into the interface and a mic pointed at it, too. I don't really like the sound of the pickup, but it works alright for doubling purposes.
 
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