Gtr doubling Fail, help?!

[jaguarundi]

Ok so the setup: I have a rock band with an instrumentation similar to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, just vox, gtrs and drums (with occasional ambient loopy stuff in the background).

I'm tracking and mixing 3 songs at the moment that all have something in common, they all have a dynamic arc where towards the end the song is more intense and I was attempting to enhance the build by overdubbing a second overdriven electric guitar. Nothing tricky or weird, pretty strait forward double tracked big rockin rhythm guitars, a la The Killers, that kinda sound.

The issue, i'm a little rusty, it's been a while since I tracked and mixed and I was never especially good at it but after my first attempt yesterday, i thought i'd come here for advice cause all songs sound terriblely unnatural where the new gtr comes in in the later part of the song.

Why? Well for starters i'm not sure how people usually pan something like this, maybe someone can think of some good examples where a song has the gtr part double late in the song?

What I did was the main gtr is panned center until the second one comes in where the main one moves to hard left and the new one comes in hard right. This just doesn't sound right in my headphones today though, maybe i shouldn't go hard L and R? I tried a few different ways of panning the main part. In one song there's a break before, which helps and the other one there's not.

in one song for instance the progression goes like this:

main gtr clean panned center for first 2 min - main gtr overdriven center for 30 seconds - doubled overdriven gtrs for rest of song panned hard L and R

maybe this is a crappy way to do it though, maybe when the overdriven gtr happens the first time that's when it should be doubled?

What are conventional approaches for this type of thing, recording and recording arrangement and mixing wise? Thanks in advance!

Adam

[kslight]

For a 3 piece and most rock bands I would generally double the guitar everywhere, then add an accent third guitar as necessary. However if you don't want to do that then my suggestion would be to pan the main guitar throughout the whole song a bit to the right...not hard right. Dependent on the drum panning this could easily work and sound balanced. Then add the second guitar center or a little left. If things don't feel balanced in the rest of the song perhaps add a low level delay panned opposite the guitar.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

if i have two guitars and a rock song, those guitars are almost always hard left and right.

or you could keep the main one in the middle and have the double off to the side. maybe roll some high end off the double. or double the double, pan that to the opposite side and take even more high end off that one.

[kslight]

Oh and in conventional rock bands hard left and right guitar doubles usually work best for me. If there were a keyboard player though I would probably pan the doubles hard left and middle left, then keys opposite on the right.

[JefffM]

Instead of doubling, how about tripling the part (the extra guitars panned left and right) but instead of playing full chords, play just the top 2 or 3 strings on one of the parts and the bottom strings on the other one.
Effectively 1 main part plus 2 "half parts".

[jaguarundi]

or you could keep the main one in the middle and have the double off to the side. maybe roll some high end off the double. or double the double, pan that to the opposite side and take even more high end off that one.

by "double the double" would you be inclined to record a new gtr track or just duplicate it and move separate them by a few ms on opposite sides for better results?

On that note too, I was messing around with the duplicating a track hard left and right and moving the one on the R forward a few milliseconds to create that slight delayed sound. What is the standard range of milliseconds people tend to use to make this effective but still natural sounding?

[jaguarundi]

Instead of doubling, how about tripling the part (the extra guitars panned left and right) but instead of playing full chords, play just the top 2 or 3 strings on one of the parts and the bottom strings on the other one.
Effectively 1 main part plus 2 "half parts".

oooooh. that's a great idea, on one of the songs in particular that might be the way to go!

[kslight]

or you could keep the main one in the middle and have the double off to the side. maybe roll some high end off the double. or double the double, pan that to the opposite side and take even more high end off that one.

by "double the double" would you be inclined to record a new gtr track or just duplicate it and move separate them by a few ms on opposite sides for better results?

On that note too, I was messing around with the duplicating a track hard left and right and moving the one on the R forward a few milliseconds to create that slight delayed sound. What is the standard range of milliseconds people tend to use to make this effective but still natural sounding?

I would avoid duplicating the part for "doubling". This never sounds natural to me no matter how much modulating delay you add. Definitely have them perform all extra parts.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i would be inclined to record another take. i am a man of many takes (and much sorting out after the fact). but sometimes the copy/delay thing is cool though. thing to watch out for there is comb filtering in mono. you're invariably going to have some, it's just a question of how bad it is.

as far as time, you're probably looking at less than 20ms. anything more than that is going to be heard as an obvious echo. which can also be cool on occasion. with certain guitar parts, if you copy them and delay the copy like an 1/8, dotted 1/8, or even a 1/4 note, it can sound pretty damn awesome.

[jaguarundi]

So it's sounding like, maybe starting out with one guitar and going to 2 or 3 later in a track is hard to do? Most of you guys prefer, even if you're clean and quiet at the beginning to start with at least 2 in these circumstances and maybe add a 3rd for accent later?

It's the "mid song panning change" with the guitars, when a new one gets added that sounded awful to me on my first try.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

Instead of doubling, how about tripling the part (the extra guitars panned left and right) but instead of playing full chords, play just the top 2 or 3 strings on one of the parts and the bottom strings on the other one.
Effectively 1 main part plus 2 "half parts".

this is a real good idea. anything you can do to have all the guitars doing something slightly different will pay off in the end.

[Dan Rosato]

If you are trying to widen the sound of the song at the point where the double comes in, just experiment with different distances (ie. 15% L/R, 40% L/R, etc) until you find one that fits the best.

Another option is to record the double with a slightly different tone (overdriven, echo, different guitar/amp combo) and keep the gtr tracks in the same panning positon (i.e. 20% L), then double both tracks, and put them on the other side (20% R). This may give a more consistent sound to the effect and will surely give the section a little lift.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

So it's sounding like, maybe starting out with one guitar and going to 2 or 3 later in a track is hard to do? Most of you guys prefer, even if you're clean and quiet at the beginning to start with at least 2 in these circumstances and maybe add a 3rd for accent later?

no way! i like to start songs with just a totally dry vocal and have them end with like 45 symphonies throwing shit at each other.

nothing is more boring to me than a rock song where both guitars and the bass are all hacking away on every 1/8 note for the whole song. like, watching my nails grow is more interesting than that.

i agree that having a guitar move via panning can be weird. on the song where there's a break it should be no prob, but on the other one, if you have to move it abruptly, then yeah it might be tough to make sound right. but if that's the case just leave it in the center and work the other guitars around it.

another thing to think about is instead of having the double and/or triple guitars come in like a house on fire, maybe instead you want like 6 tracks of guitar, all doing different, simple things, and mixed more in the background. this keeps the focus on the main guitar but lets the arrangement build as well.

[jaguarundi]

no way! i like to start songs with just a totally dry vocal and have them end with like 45 symphonies throwing shit at each other.

Awesome

[wren]

I've run into situations before where having hard-panned doubled guitars sounded a little too "wide" to me, so I also sent both guitars to a single mono channel, possibly dirtied up/compressed a bit, and had that just sitting in the middle, mixed a bit quieter than the 2 "main" panned tracks (til you get in the you-don't-quite-notice-that-it's-there-but-you-definitely-notice-when-it's-gone kind of territory).