Recording guitars.

Danny1969

octatonic said:

Some general advice not aimed at anyone in particular.
All the creative techniques in terms of editing and effects tricks should never really be a replacement for 'play it tight twice'.

If you can't play a repetitive 2 bar riff tight enough to put on the left and right channels without it sounding wrong then that is the thing to work on. You won't edit your way out of that particular problem.

I think in general this is good advice across the whole recording process. Many of us including me look for magic bullet tricks and plugins  to improve things but get it right at the tracking stage and it doesn't need any tricks . 

Bill_S

Cirrus said:

Bill_S said:

Cirrus said:

Bill_S said:

You can also record the part just once, copy to another track and then nudge the copied track along the timeline very slightly. Pan one track hard right and the other left. 

Noooooo - unless you want it to sound like there's an out of time guitarist in the band, anyway. Short enough nudges that feel isn't ruined and you're in comb filter city.

I respectfully disagree. The nudge can be short enough so that there is no possibility of sounding out of time. You do have to watch the phase issue, but it’s easy to adjust the nudge to ensure it doesn’t become a problem. I have successfully employed this technique many times and it can work really well. 

How short a nudge, and what happens when you collapse the mix to mono (or play it on a system with a narrow soundstage?

Genuine question - of course, it's your mix and if it's right to you it *is* right. But my experience of duplicate-and nudge in time is that if it's enough of a time difference to avoid comb filtering with the un-nudged track, it's enough to hear as out-of groove (groove and feel being a matter of milliseconds). I just don't see why you'd ever do it over either getting a proper double done, or just being happy with the single track - and I'm not alone in that.

I have done this to get a really tight doubling effect (tighter than two takes) - and in my experience, comb filtering is not a problem on many occasions. I do check my mixes in mono too, and mix in a fully acoustically treated studio. How much of a nudge? I can only say that I use my ears - I also use my eyes  to zoom in on the waveform. Of course, doing two takes is also a very good option and probably preferred by many, but sometimes the really tight copying and nudging works better for me. 

LastMantra

It's good if you can play it in a different position too.

WiresDreamDisasters

Bill_S said:

Cirrus said:

Bill_S said:

Cirrus said:

Bill_S said:

You can also record the part just once, copy to another track and then nudge the copied track along the timeline very slightly. Pan one track hard right and the other left. 

Noooooo - unless you want it to sound like there's an out of time guitarist in the band, anyway. Short enough nudges that feel isn't ruined and you're in comb filter city.

I respectfully disagree. The nudge can be short enough so that there is no possibility of sounding out of time. You do have to watch the phase issue, but it’s easy to adjust the nudge to ensure it doesn’t become a problem. I have successfully employed this technique many times and it can work really well. 

How short a nudge, and what happens when you collapse the mix to mono (or play it on a system with a narrow soundstage?

Genuine question - of course, it's your mix and if it's right to you it *is* right. But my experience of duplicate-and nudge in time is that if it's enough of a time difference to avoid comb filtering with the un-nudged track, it's enough to hear as out-of groove (groove and feel being a matter of milliseconds). I just don't see why you'd ever do it over either getting a proper double done, or just being happy with the single track - and I'm not alone in that.

I have done this to get a really tight doubling effect (tighter than two takes) - and in my experience, comb filtering is not a problem on many occasions. I do check my mixes in mono too, and mix in a fully acoustically treated studio. How much of a nudge? I can only say that I use my ears - I also use my eyes  to zoom in on the waveform. Of course, doing two takes is also a very good option and probably preferred by many, but sometimes the really tight copying and nudging works better for me. 

Bill do you have an audio example of something? Because in my entire history of audio engineering, I've always avoided this because every time I tried it, it sounded terrible.

It's the same principle more or less than doubling pedals like the TC Mimic follow - add a random amount of phase shifting and time shifting to generate a "unique" variation on the input audio, and output it on the opposite channel to fake a double tracked feel, and IMHO it never sounds as good.

But would be happy to have my mind changed!

Bill_S

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Bill_S said:

Cirrus said:

Bill_S said:

Cirrus said:

Bill_S said:

You can also record the part just once, copy to another track and then nudge the copied track along the timeline very slightly. Pan one track hard right and the other left. 

Noooooo - unless you want it to sound like there's an out of time guitarist in the band, anyway. Short enough nudges that feel isn't ruined and you're in comb filter city.

I respectfully disagree. The nudge can be short enough so that there is no possibility of sounding out of time. You do have to watch the phase issue, but it’s easy to adjust the nudge to ensure it doesn’t become a problem. I have successfully employed this technique many times and it can work really well. 

How short a nudge, and what happens when you collapse the mix to mono (or play it on a system with a narrow soundstage?

Genuine question - of course, it's your mix and if it's right to you it *is* right. But my experience of duplicate-and nudge in time is that if it's enough of a time difference to avoid comb filtering with the un-nudged track, it's enough to hear as out-of groove (groove and feel being a matter of milliseconds). I just don't see why you'd ever do it over either getting a proper double done, or just being happy with the single track - and I'm not alone in that.

I have done this to get a really tight doubling effect (tighter than two takes) - and in my experience, comb filtering is not a problem on many occasions. I do check my mixes in mono too, and mix in a fully acoustically treated studio. How much of a nudge? I can only say that I use my ears - I also use my eyes  to zoom in on the waveform. Of course, doing two takes is also a very good option and probably preferred by many, but sometimes the really tight copying and nudging works better for me. 

Bill do you have an audio example of something? Because in my entire history of audio engineering, I've always avoided this because every time I tried it, it sounded terrible.

It's the same principle more or less than doubling pedals like the TC Mimic follow - add a random amount of phase shifting and time shifting to generate a "unique" variation on the input audio, and output it on the opposite channel to fake a double tracked feel, and IMHO it never sounds as good.

But would be happy to have my mind changed!

Here are two examples - the first is with an acoustic guitar:

https://soundcloud.com/bill-saunders/master-1

The second example is on electric rhythm guitar used in the choruses of It Pays to Join the Army, which is the 6th song down on this link:

https://billsaunders.hearnow.com/

You may think they sound terrible, I don't know! 

DiscoStu

This is a great article about double tracking

https://www.prosoundweb.com/in-the-studio-techniques-for-double-tracking-guitars/

Rowby1

I’m in the always play it twice camp on this. Even if it’s not played “exactly” the same twice it always sounds much better than duplicating and nudging in my experience. 

Cirrus

Bill_S said:

Here are two examples...

You're a good player and singer, and hats off to you for linking the tracks!

So, in the first one, it sounds good despite the slight performance-muddying effects of the time slip - but if you collapse it to mono you can hear the acoustic transients sort of like a very short slapback, which is quite distracting. Collapsing to mono might not matter to you, and that's cool, but it's something to consider as mono compatibility tends to mean the mix is just more robust on a wider range of playback systems.

The 2nd one (love the way the bassline moves) I don't think it matters as much because even in the choruses, the arpeggio panned guitars aren't the focus of the mix - so it doesn't matter so much if they smear a bit in mono, musically. I actually think there's enough going on in the arrangement that there was no need to do the faux-stereo trick - without it, you could have made that part louder on one side and balanced it with something else on the other.

But... I have to admit I'm a sucker for an asymmetric mix 

WiresDreamDisasters

Bill_S said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Bill_S said:

Cirrus said:

Bill_S said:

Cirrus said:

Bill_S said:

You can also record the part just once, copy to another track and then nudge the copied track along the timeline very slightly. Pan one track hard right and the other left. 

Noooooo - unless you want it to sound like there's an out of time guitarist in the band, anyway. Short enough nudges that feel isn't ruined and you're in comb filter city.

I respectfully disagree. The nudge can be short enough so that there is no possibility of sounding out of time. You do have to watch the phase issue, but it’s easy to adjust the nudge to ensure it doesn’t become a problem. I have successfully employed this technique many times and it can work really well. 

How short a nudge, and what happens when you collapse the mix to mono (or play it on a system with a narrow soundstage?

Genuine question - of course, it's your mix and if it's right to you it *is* right. But my experience of duplicate-and nudge in time is that if it's enough of a time difference to avoid comb filtering with the un-nudged track, it's enough to hear as out-of groove (groove and feel being a matter of milliseconds). I just don't see why you'd ever do it over either getting a proper double done, or just being happy with the single track - and I'm not alone in that.

I have done this to get a really tight doubling effect (tighter than two takes) - and in my experience, comb filtering is not a problem on many occasions. I do check my mixes in mono too, and mix in a fully acoustically treated studio. How much of a nudge? I can only say that I use my ears - I also use my eyes  to zoom in on the waveform. Of course, doing two takes is also a very good option and probably preferred by many, but sometimes the really tight copying and nudging works better for me. 

Bill do you have an audio example of something? Because in my entire history of audio engineering, I've always avoided this because every time I tried it, it sounded terrible.

It's the same principle more or less than doubling pedals like the TC Mimic follow - add a random amount of phase shifting and time shifting to generate a "unique" variation on the input audio, and output it on the opposite channel to fake a double tracked feel, and IMHO it never sounds as good.

But would be happy to have my mind changed!

Here are two examples - the first is with an acoustic guitar:

https://soundcloud.com/bill-saunders/master-1

The second example is on electric rhythm guitar used in the choruses of It Pays to Join the Army, which is the 6th song down on this link:

https://billsaunders.hearnow.com/

You may think they sound terrible, I don't know! 

It doesn't sound terrible no. At the end of the day, it's the song and the emotion that matters. We can quibble about production techniques till the moo-moos start destroying us all with their farts.

For something like this, if I really didn't want to play the part multiple times for whatever reason, I'd be tempted to get my double-tracks by dividing the blocks of chords up and re-arranging them.

So if I've got CGCGCGFC(rep1) CGCGCGFC(rep2)...

That'd be the left track. Then the right track would be rep2 followed by rep1, if that makes sense. Giving me a true stereo-image.

I think your acoustic could sound wider doing something like this.

Bill_S

Thanks guys - I take the point about mono compatibility, and I understand your suggestion about  the two reps, which is valid. I found it quite difficult to play those triplets that quickly and accurately on the acoustic, hence my choice to copy 'n' nudge on this occasion, rather than play it twice and risk it sounding sloppy. I have on many occasions simply played it twice, and agree this is often preferable, so long as it's pretty tight. And yeah, buried in a mix with a lot going on, it is easier to "get away with" copying.