Tweaking a mono guitar track

[Adrian W.]

I posted this as part of a thread in the recording section, but it may be more appropriate here:

Does anyone have any tips for opening up a mono acoustic guitar track recorded to a single mic? Delays, reverbs, etc? This is for songs with just a single acoustic guitar and vocal. Mics are a MXL 603s (guitar) and a MXL 2001 (vocal). No double-tracking. I don't want to overdo it, just make it a bit fuller. I have access to Cool Edit Pro for mixing.

Thanks.

 

[JR#97]

A few tricks that can help:

- Some slight delay.. not echoing or anything near that long.. I"m talking slight.. you'll hear what I mean

- Pan the reverb a little more to one side and pan the guitar track a little towards the other. Not dramatic, but it's noticeble.

- Using EQ to simulate stereo... boost the upper end, but a litte of the lower end and pan it left. Boost and cut opposite of what you just did and pan it right.

Since you have Cool Edit Pro, why not take your mono track and copy it a few times and make slight eq and compression changes to each one? Pan a few left, some right, some right up the middle. That might end up being a bit much against a vocal track, though.

 

[Alchemist3k]

The EQ thing I've never tried but the delay panning technique is often effective for a lot of types of instrument or sound. It has to be a short delay though, 40ms perhaps.

 

[Adrian W.]

Thanks for the suggestions. Just a followup on using delay to see if I understand it: I would make a copy of the original mono track, pan one left and one right, and add delay to each track. Maybe slightly different delays to each, say 15 ms on one and 40ms on another? Does this make sense? Guess I'll have to experiment but I'm pretty new at this and appreciate the help in narrowing it down. I really don't want anything artificial sounding, which is why I suppose the delays have to be so short.

Thanks again.

A.

 

[JR#97]

Thanks for the suggestions. Just a followup on using delay to see if I understand it: I would make a copy of the original mono track, pan one left and one right, and add delay to each track. Maybe slightly different delays to each, say 15 ms on one and 40ms on another? Does this make sense? Guess I'll have to experiment but I'm pretty new at this and appreciate the help in narrowing it down. I really don't want anything artificial sounding, which is why I suppose the delays have to be so short.

Thanks again.

A.

that's an option... however, I'd start out with just adding some delay to your 1 mono track and adjusting to taste. Something you could do would be to convert the mono track to a stereo of file of 2 mono tracks.. and then add stereo delay. Be sure to keep a backup copy of your original mono file somewhere.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Thanks for the suggestions. Just a followup on using delay to see if I understand it: I would make a copy of the original mono track, pan one left and one right, and add delay to each track. Maybe slightly different delays to each, say 15 ms on one and 40ms on another? Does this make sense? Guess I'll have to experiment but I'm pretty new at this and appreciate the help in narrowing it down. I really don't want anything artificial sounding, which is why I suppose the delays have to be so short.

Not quite. Pan the original signal one way and a delayed signal the other way. How you do this depends on how you are mixing (hardware, DAW, etc.) I like doing that with picked guitar parts but not really on strumming.

If you want a really full strumming sound then double track the part. That is where you record the same part over again and pan the different tracks. It gives a much fuller and stereo sound then just adding delay.

 

[Adrian W.]

Got it, thanks. This seems to work pretty well at around 35ms on a fingerpicked acoustic. Brings down the volume a bit on the one track but that's easy to adjust in Cool Edit if I have to.

A.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Got it, thanks. This seems to work pretty well at around 35ms on a fingerpicked acoustic. Brings down the volume a bit on the one track but that's easy to adjust in Cool Edit if I have to.

Your brain actually plays tricks with you on quick delays up to around 40ms. Even though you have 2 tracks playing at the same level your brain will associate the source to the first sound and will simply intrepet the delayed signal as a quieter echo of the first sound even though they are the same level.

This is the principle that fake stereo and surround works off of.

If you want your brain to intrepet them as 2 seperate signals of equal volume than you need a longer delay time or you have to jack up the level of the delayed signal (be carefull of clipping or unbalancing the L/R levels too much.)

 

[Adrian W.]

Your brain actually plays tricks with you on quick delays up to around 40ms. Even though you have 2 tracks playing at the same level your brain will associate the source to the first sound and will simply intrepet the delayed signal as a quieter echo of the first sound even though they are the same level.

The volume of both tracks SOUND even, but after adding delay to one there is a drop in the wave display peaks for that track. If you went to normalize them one would boost slightly higher than the other. In any case it sounds as if the slight difference in volume contributes to the overall effect. Currently I have the two tracks panned hard right and left, but I'm gonna experiment with letting each bleed a bit into each other. Your suggestions for vocals sounds interesting too. Since this is just one guitar and vocal I thought a tiny bit of reverb might help but I'll try it both ways. I appreciate your explanations and help. Thanks again.

A.

 

[JR#97]

The volume of both tracks SOUND even, but after adding delay to one there is a drop in the wave display peaks for that track. If you went to normalize them one would boost slightly higher than the other. In any case it sounds as if the slight difference in volume contributes to the overall effect. Currently I have the two tracks panned hard right and left, but I'm gonna experiment with letting each bleed a bit into each other. Your suggestions for vocals sounds interesting too. Since this is just one guitar and vocal I thought a tiny bit of reverb might help but I'll try it both ways. I appreciate your explanations and help. Thanks again.

A.

You do get a little bit of phase cancellation when using a delay. That would account for some of the drop in level. Basically, the similiar principles as a flanger or chorus.