Double-tracking

  • Thread starter Thread starter Elton Bear
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Elton Bear

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I read a Butch Vig interview once where he said his biggest tip was 'double track everything'. I know what it is, how to do it, yadda yadda - but how far would you guys go? Do you double track Vocals? Guitar? What about Bass or even Drums? And how about backing vocals?

Basically, what would you suggest to double track, and what to leave alone for a full but workable mix?
 
WOW! Everything???? I find that hard to believe (not saying I don't believe you). Drums???, Bass??? All guitars, solos and all??? Weird, wild stuff.
 
I only find the need to double guitar parts. Especially distorted guitar parts!
 
i usually double the guitars, drums, and vocals. well, i actually only technically double-track the guitars. the drums and vocals just get copied and pasted into a new track giving me 2 tracks of each. i record my drums in a terrible room with marginal mics, so doubling up the drums allows me to EQ the hell out of them and get a halfway decent sound......sometimes. i do this for the vocals just for fun. ill record my vocals, and copy the finished vocal track into a new track, and pan each one all the way to both sides. then ill add a little delay to one, and a little more or less to the other to give them some dimension. i think it sounds pretty cool, so thats what i do.
 
When recording someone else I double track if they want me too. When recording myself I double track (sometimes more) almost everything, even drums. I'm not a great drummer so what I do is record one track for timming and then add a second track for rolls and fills, blend them together and make it sound like a lot better drummer. Go ahead and laugh, but it works for me.
 
No, nothing to laugh at...This is music, if it works, it's good. However, I don't think what you're referring to is double-tracking in the context that the first post was mentioning. It's more over-dubbing, I guess.
 
I`ve done olads of double tracking, it usually gives me a better sound IMHO.

I`ve tried it on bass, wass not to keen on the results.
On vocals it roawks most of the time.
Accoustic Guitars is a bitt tricky, but distorted works well.

Not tried drums yet, dont think it will be an issue either :)


Experiment have fun :)
 
We double track main vocals and some backups. We are usually in the acoustic guitar realm, but on some tracks, double tracking an acoustic rythym part is great. I almost never do it on bass, but i'm willing to try it if the bass sounds thin, more often than not, reamping the bass part does a better job bringing it out.

Which is also a good tip i think. Double track if you want slight inconsistencies between the two and the neat sound that provides, reamp to bring ambience or to fatten the sound. I say that only because when you manually double track you are introducing slight variances between the orig and the new, if you don't want that, reamping works better. IMHOBIAOAARA
 
Cool. Cheers for your help guys. I'm guessing Vig doesn't DT absolutely everything on his recordings, but he does a lot of it. DT'd drums or bass might sound weird, but I'll give it a go.
 
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