Layering rock guitars 101

Ok let me be clear, when I speak of doubling a track I mean " Play it again as perfect as you can and record it" I thought that it was clear considering I mentioned panning the first track right for reference.
It would never mean anything else, thanks for thinking I would just copy and paste a track. I have been recording since before that was an option and it would never occur to me.
As for bashing me for recording 5 tracks of rhythm guitar is is a matter of skill and auditory aesthetic, it is an opinion and everyone has their own.. just like an ....
 
I think of forums like these as asking for directions. You may know exactly where you want to go, or you may just have a general idea. The people giving directions know the area better and have been driving around there longer, and while they can't necessarily tell you exactly what turns to make (Google Maps style), they can give you some pointers and help you avoid some wrong turns.

So if you pull into a gas station in Idaho and ask the guy there "So how much longer do I have to keep going North before I get to Tecate, Mexico?" the guy can answer one of several ways:

"That's actually south. What you want to do is go that way (pointing south). If you go North you'll end up in Canada."

That is a straightforward, helpful answer. It's the kind of answer most of us on here are looking for.

Or, the guy could say,

"First of all, you're driving an old Tercel with no A/C. Mexico is going to suck unless you buy a newer car with air conditioning."

That is technically true, but it's not immediately helpful, and it might be something you already know.

Or, the guy could just go,

"You have no idea where you're going! What are you even doing on the road? You're a loser."

That's the kind of answer that is both unhelpful and just downright baffling.

What kinds of answers are you giving?
 
Speaking of corpses....I love how this thread almost faded away, and then suddenly came back to life...and is now proving to be quite entertaining, and could end up being the strong weekend contender for Newsletter infamy.

:D
 
Ralis said:
Ok let me be clear, when I speak of doubling a track I mean " Play it again as perfect as you can and record it" I thought that it was clear considering I mentioned panning the first track right for reference.
It would never mean anything else, thanks for thinking I would just copy and paste a track. I have been recording since before that was an option and it would never occur to me.
As for bashing me for recording 5 tracks of rhythm guitar is is a matter of skill and auditory aesthetic, it is an opinion and everyone has their own.. just like an ....
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OK, there's a lot of mis-understanding and assumptions going on, and I'm as guilty of some of it as anyone.

First of all, let me say that the only reason I thought you might have been talking about copying and pasting is because of the wording. That's why I asked. It just seemed vague and sounded like that's what you might have been refferring to.

As far as the 5 guitar tracks, I don't know if you were directing that at me, but I didn't bash that idea or method. I said "one guy's telling you to do 5 tracks, one guy's telling you to do 3", etc.....I wasn't implying that I disagree with those methods.

As far as Hazard's concerned, I didn't mean to derail your thread, but I think it already got derailed a few pages ago, then came back to life and then just got redundant. For some reason you got offended by my saying the thread is making me shake my head. That had more to do with the fact that it's at page 12 or something and getting redundant . It wasn't an attack on you, but you seem to have taken that personally, and it lead to you sending me a PM and both of us getting a little stupid back and forth. I'd rather apologize to you here in public for my part in all that, even though I think we both got a bit stupid.

So, that's why I stepped out of the thread. I probably shouldn't have come in in the first place. I seem to be pissing off people the last couple of days. I'm either too serious or too funny.

I'll figure it all out one day. :eek: :D

But either way, I'm sorry for my part in all the friction. :cool:
 
Hazard Nova said:
I think of forums like these as asking for directions. You may know exactly where you want to go, or you may just have a general idea. The people giving directions know the area better and have been driving around there longer, and while they can't necessarily tell you exactly what turns to make (Google Maps style), they can give you some pointers and help you avoid some wrong turns.

So if you pull into a gas station in Idaho and ask the guy there "So how much longer do I have to keep going North before I get to Tecate, Mexico?" the guy can answer one of several ways:

"That's actually south. What you want to do is go that way (pointing south). If you go North you'll end up in Canada."

That is a straightforward, helpful answer. It's the kind of answer most of us on here are looking for.

Or, the guy could say,

"First of all, you're driving an old Tercel with no A/C. Mexico is going to suck unless you buy a newer car with air conditioning."

That is technically true, but it's not immediately helpful, and it might be something you already know.

Or, the guy could just go,

"You have no idea where you're going! What are you even doing on the road? You're a loser."

That's the kind of answer that is both unhelpful and just downright baffling.

What kinds of answers are you giving?
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I would think that a huge part of the blame would have to be on the driver for not having the basic common sense to know that heading north in Idaho is not going to get you to Mexico.
 
Greg_L said:
I would think that a huge part of the blame would have to be on the driver for not having the basic common sense to know that heading north in Idaho is not going to get you to Mexico.
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Blame? Nobody's accusing anyone. Maybe the guy's driving north because he has no common sense, maybe it's because he was given bad directions somewhere else, maybe it's because he never learned to read a map.

But if your goal is to help him get to Tecate, does any of that matter? Probably not.

So, if you're focusing on who's to blame then you probably have the goal wrong.
 
RAMI said:
As far as Hazard's concerned, I didn't mean to derail your thread, but I think it already got derailed a few pages ago, then came back to life and then just got redundant. For some reason you got offended by my saying the thread is making me shake my head. That had more to do with the fact that it's at page 12 or something and getting redundant . It wasn't an attack on you, but you seem to have taken that personally, and it lead to you sending me a PM and both of us getting a little stupid back and forth. I'd rather apologize to you here in public for my part in all that, even though I think we both got a bit stupid.

So, that's why I stepped out of the thread. I probably shouldn't have come in in the first place. I seem to be pissing off people the last couple of days. I'm either too serious or too funny.

I'll figure it all out one day. :eek: :D

But either way, I'm sorry for my part in all the friction. :cool:
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Trust me, I don't take anything that's said in online forums personally, ever. I get kind of baffled when people get emotional over technical questions, but I don't take it to heart--even when people childishly insult me. This is the internet, and we're all adults here (or mostly?).

I wasn't offended by you shaking your head earlier, I just thought you were doing that because you disagreed with the 2 or 3 comments previous to that so I was curious what your disagreement was. I figured you might have better advice, like "Actually, most people would say don't record 5 guitar parts and don't pan hard left or right because X Y and Z."

So, with text-based communication a lot can get lost (or inserted) in translation, which is why it's useful to answer questions directly and not be emotional.

I'm glad this thread has gotten reignited though because there's still people contributing their personal sets of guidelines, and I still find those useful. I can't restate enough that I don't interpret any of this as an easy 1-2-3 step instruction manual, but it is really great to see how more experienced people do things. That's why there are things like masterclasses, for example.
 
Hazard Nova said:
Blame? Nobody's accusing anyone. Maybe the guy's driving north because he has no common sense, maybe it's because he was given bad directions somewhere else, maybe it's because he never learned to read a map.

But if your goal is to help him get to Tecate, does any of that matter? Probably not.

So, if you're focusing on who's to blame then you probably have the goal wrong.
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Nah, you offered up a scenario where some hapless doofus is lost in Idaho trying to get to Mexico. I'm saying that if you're that far fucked, then it's a whole bunch your own damn fault.
 
Greg_L said:
Nah, you offered up a scenario where some hapless doofus is lost in Idaho trying to get to Mexico. I'm saying that if you're that far fucked, then it's a whole bunch your own damn fault.
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Well obviously. But the point of giving directions isn't to ascertain whose fault it is, it's to help the poor guy get to Tecate!

So, if he's got no common sense, then you give him some basic pointers on common sense: "In the morning, keep the sun on your left," etc.

If he was given bad directions, figure out what those directions were and point out why they're bad, then give him good directions.

If he never learned to read a map, be like "Check it out, here's a map. This is where we are. This is north and this is south. Here's Mexico down here," etc.

That's what I would do if I was the guy at the gas station giving directions.

Back when I worked in the film industry, I'd sometimes be mentoring kids who it was their first day on set. I often would see them wrapping cable hand-over-elbow. Yes, it was probably their fault and nobody else's that they were doing it like that--that's what you learn watching your grandfather wrap up extension cords in the garage, and you can hardly blame Gramps for doing that with his $10 extension cord--but my goal was to make sure those kids left set that day knowing how to wrap cable properly.

So, I'd say something like "Ooh, you don't wanna wrap cable like that, it makes it tangle easily and can even damage the wires inside," then I'd show them how I wrapped it. I'd let them know "There's also the over-under method, which some people find easier," and then let them figure out which way they liked better.

If I had just been like "WTF are you doing? What kind of idiot wraps cable that way??" the kids wouldn't learn anything, and a lot of them probably wouldn't come back the next day.
 
Lol. I think that you think that I think you're doing bad for asking questions. That's not what I'm saying. Not at all. I get your gas station analogy but it doesn't really apply. This is a place for asking questions. I have no problem with your questions. I don't really have a problem with anything in this thread besides some of the wacky suspicious random posters that show up just to chime in. And that's fine too. I'm definitely not trying to play policeman or anything. My cynicism always peaks when low post count people pop in to write a book. My advice to you is to be careful of what advice you decide to follow. This is where just trying this shit for yourself is way more valuable than anything anyone can tell you. The most important thing I've learned in here is who to pay attention to and who to dismiss. That simply takes time. You have to decide that for yourself. IMO some of the "advice" you've been given is asinine. That's all I'm saying.
 
Greg_L said:
Lol. I think that you think that I think you're doing bad for asking questions. That's not what I'm saying. Not at all. I get your gas station analogy but it doesn't really apply. This is a place for asking questions. I have no problem with your questions. I don't really have a problem with anything in this thread besides some of the wacky suspicious random posters that show up just to chime in. And that's fine too. I'm definitely not trying to play policeman or anything. My cynicism always peaks when low post count people pop in to write a book. My advice to you is to be careful of what advice you decide to follow. This is where just trying this shit for yourself is way more valuable than anything anyone can tell you. The most important thing I've learned in here is who to pay attention to and who to dismiss. That simply takes time. You have to decide that for yourself. IMO some of the "advice" you've been given is asinine. That's all I'm saying.
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Ok, fair enough. I must have misinterpreted your "blame" comment then.

So yeah, I'm basically on the same page as you. I recognize that some of the advice I've been given stands out in that it conflicts with most of the other advice and with other stuff I've learned about audio recording in general, and so that's the stuff I'm likely to find suspicious. But I'd still try it for the sake of learning, I just probably wouldn't try it first. And fortunately, stuff like "pan hard right and left", laying down one too many tracks, etc. is basically one click to fix if I don't like the way it sounds.
 
I think it's down south. LOL! This should be made into a sticky:
quote_icon.png
Originally Posted by jimmys69 You can't layer shit with another layer of shit and expect it to sound like anything other than multiple layers of shit
 
Hazard Nova said:
I recognize that some of the advice I've been given stands out in that it conflicts with most of the other advice and with other stuff I've learned about audio recording in general,
Click to expand...
As has been brought out a few times there is rarely a "one size fits all" in recording. You read any one of those books where they interview a number of engineers and you'll see that right away. But of course, there's an implication that jumps right out that surprisingly seems to get missed when people have a go {rightly, as it turns out} at those that appear to be looking for the magic button/bullet ¬>if there is no magic button, then by necessity, there must be a variety of ways to reach the required destination.
Part of the reason threads like this ramble on endlessly is because some people become dismissive or contemptuous of certain advice given. So the defensive games become inevitable.
We're very big on saying "whatever works for you" and "experiment" {both of which I agree with}.....until we find something we don't like in what someone else has offered up.
Let me stress that there's a difference, a big difference, in calling people out on advice that is plain dangerous and/or factually incorrect. That should be done and often is.
But opinion based stuff is precisely that. It's not really our concern to save an enquirer time. That's their affair. That's where all the advice to experiment comes into play. And personally, I'm very much on the "try it and see how you go" wing but everyone starts from somewhere and I'd say the OP has plenty to go on.
 
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