Fattening up guitar tracks whilst retaining phase goodness

[radmike]

Now i like my guitar tracks to be big, huge and heavy-sounding, in general this requires me to double a recorded guitar track and in protools I'll separtate the two tracks by a 10-50 milliseconds and then i'll pan one this way and the other that. This sounds keen until I switch to mono and lose the guitar completely. I have been trying to first get a good sound out of the doubled guitar parts and then flipping the phase on one- this doesnt seem to be doing much////

what gives?

[greatmagnet]

I think you gotta do the doubled-and-panned thing to get what you want. In my experience (I'm a heavy hard rock guitar sound guy too) that's the way you do it, and by the way you don't even need to nudge the second take out of place IMHO. Just the difference in playing technique and string vibration between takes is just enough to maker it sound huge without it starting to spund like a stereo chorus type of effect.

It's by the very nature of sound that this becomes a phasing-type effect when you bring the two together as mono. By the same rule it's the spread across the stereo field thatmakes it sound so big and full. I wish I knew more about the science of audio to explain this better but that's the best I can do. Mono is mono...the only way to make it sound more alive is to get some really badass preamps or put some kind of spatializer effect on it, which is basically turning it stereo anyway.

Hope that helps.

[cgarges]

Are you artificially doubling a single track? That could be the problem. It's really difficult to deal with phase issues that way. My favorite guitar doubling trick is to record the part twice (using the same tone and mic setup) and reverse the polarity on the mic pre during the second pass on the way in. Pan these hard left and right and it can be pretty freaking big. You might get a LITLLE more cancellation this way than by doubling the part without the polarity reversed, but it's a negligible amount. There's not any weird comb filtering or anything, though. To me, the trade-off is worth it.

If you are really trying to get a mono part doubled (using a delay), the delay times become pretty critical to determining where the cancellations occur. Sum the mix to mono and adjust the delay in 1ms incriments until the sound seems least offensive. Then, play with the polarity of the delayed track.

Hope this helps!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[penrithmatt]

couple of ideas for you....
1.get an A/B box and record two amps as you play the part once.
2.play part.change the mic and play it again.
3.don't use as much distortion as you think you want.
4.use the A/B box.send one out to the amp and take the other into a distortion box and take that direct.double the part by playing it again.experiment with panning tracks to 9,11,1,3.
5.don't pan hard left and right.try 9 and 3 or 10 and 2.keeps it a bit more focused and the bleed from one side into the other can help to stick yer wall of noise together.
6.use two mics.one up on the grill and one about three feet back.the close mic will give you the punch and the room mic will allow the low end to develop.print to seperate tracks and play with the balance between the two.double part.
7.move yer close mic towards the edge of the speaker cone.you will notice more low end.angle towards the centre of the cone if you loose punch and brightness.
8.tune the guitar to an open key,like an E.play part.now double that playing the fifth's of the chord...so if yer song goes E,A,B double it by playing B,E,F#.experiment with the blend between the two,it can sound a bit 80's hair metal.double both parts and pan them out.actually you don't have to open tune the guitar to do this,but it can sound cool.

and that's it for now
cheers
matthew
www.allairestudios.com

[skinnyemo77]

My tip would be DO NOT DIGITALLY DUPE A GUITAR TRACK...it's very tempting to lazy people like you and I, i know, i know ;-P j/k

Seriously though, Record it again playing the same thing and hard pan it, but change the EQ on your amp a bit in this way:

If your first track had lots of mids, hollow out the mids for the second track and vise versa, that way when you switch it down to mono, the tone won't collapse on itself.

If that doesn't work, leave the EQ on the AMP the same, but plug into a different cabinet with different sized speakers than the first one.

That should work.

[Lazy_Q]

Another possibility would be to record three parts (I know, it's overkill) and have them hard left/hard right/center and basically adjust until the stereo width is appropiate. You could also vary this by changing the tone between the left/right tracks and the center track. since low frequency information seems to go towards the center anyhow, cut the lows from the L/R guitars and boost it on the center, or let the bass guitar take over those frequencies (if it sounds alright).

It seems like a lot of the modern heavy guitar sound is a loud midrangey bass guitar (doubling roots)that doesn't step on the toes of the guitars at all. Does anyone else but me think this is the case?

[fuzz1964]

i usually do this in protools for things i want to beef up.....create a compression sub group, just aux the guitar channel into a compressor, and squash the shit out of it, and then bring it into the mix until it sound right....i usually use this for drums more than anything

[djslayerissick]

It seems like a lot of the modern heavy guitar sound is a loud midrangey bass guitar (doubling roots)that doesn't step on the toes of the guitars at all. Does anyone else but me think this is the case?

yes, i'm becoming more and more aware of this phenom. it seems really odd, but i'm noticing it every where.

the first time i fully realized it was on Blur's Song 2. holy jeebus! the speakers are aching to just blast out of the cab. and its all grungy bass tone, but it feels like guitar.

then i did remix of Static-X's 'Black and White'. the whole time, i always thought that wallop was coming from their marshall jcm800's. nope. it was all just monstrous bass tone. its so clanky, gnarly and dirty and it works. with hard panned, double tracked guitars.

[onedyingtim]

What do you guys do to make two guitar parts super huge? To keep the parts seperate, you can't really pan them out left and right, right?So how do you avoid phase problems in these circumstances?

[djslayerissick]

What do you guys do to make two guitar parts super huge? To keep the parts seperate, you can't really pan them out left and right, right?So how do you avoid phase problems in these circumstances?

dont just pan one part hard left and the hard pan the other right. that wont sound huge, just unbalanced (which can be a good thing in the right context).

this is my techinue lately. leave the center open for the vocal. and then choosing these ocations for the 2 guitars.

one way is to send each guitar part through 2 different signal chains each - 1 bright, sharp, intense chain and one a little dull with more oomph.

send guitar 1 through chain 1 and pan at 10 oclcock.
send guitar 1 through chain 2 with 2 different mic placements and pan each hard left and right. the balance should be a little to the left. but the overall stereo spectum is wide as hell.

send guitar 2 through chain1, mic twice, pain at 11 and 2 o clock. now guitar is a little different in each ear, but a little to the right.

guitar 1 seems to come from everywhere and guitar comes from straight ahead.

its working for me so far.

[fuckface]

I always have the phase problem with guitar...
I've always put 2 mics on the cab but the phase is so nasty it sounds awful...
I've always found you cant go wrong with double tracking guitar parts, especially loud distorted ones, it actually makes it easier to mix IMO