Andy: One guitar per side? Kreator. All input welcome!

ArtisanBass

I like a nice salad......
Nov 13, 2001
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Andy, I'm going to be mixing a friend and there's a good chance it'll be one guitar per side as opposed to double tracking. Would you, or any of the people here have any advice on EQing or approach I should be going for. I like double tracking because I can make the guitar sit differently than just turn things up. I know this is immature mixing and I'm looking for some new angles. A type of presence I should be listening for I believe the last Kreator album was done such a way.


Thanks to all.
 
I'm not Andy, but...one trick I learned a while back, was to just double the guitar tracks and then move the two new ones over like a few milliseconds. One track back a few milliseconds, and one forward a few milliseconds. Nothing too drastic. It's not going to give the same exact effect as double-tracking, but it gives it that feel still. It really only works with high-gain amp tracks, for anything cleaner it's more robotic sounding. It doesn't always work, but usually it does for me, just depends on the tracks. It takes some messing with but it creates a similar effect.

Then, what I'll do is EQ the new tracks completely different than the first two, as to kind of give it the effect of using different amp settings. Again, this is just a simple cheesy way of achieving the same quality. I only do this for when bands come in for like 3 or 6 song demos and they don't have time to double-track guitars. For anything coming in for more than a day, I make them double-track. Try it out, see if it works for this project, it may work, it may not...only way to find out is to try it.

If it doesn't, I dunno what to tell you other than make sure the two guitars sound kinda fat from the eq if the duplicating and offsetting doesn't work. Good luck.

~006
 
Well, it's not good idea to to double the track and to delay it (or back it) because of the phases.

You can just try with one guitar per side.
 
Don't pan the guitars hard left and right, pan them in slightly and they'll sound thicker.
If they need more beef, you could take a send from your guitar channel and compress it, than mix this with the original guitar channel. This is better than just straight compressing, which crush all the air out of guitars and make them lifeless.
If you eq use the same bands for both, to minimize phasing. If it is the same setup used for both sides the guitars will sound very close in the middle even if panned wide, so you will then need to use eq to spread them out. But use as little as possible.
Sometimes if the sound needs brightening or livening up you can use valve-emulator or exciter-type plug-in instead of eq to brighten up, but again be very cautious, only a very little!
 
Thanks for all the thoughts so far. The sounds are pretty good for single guitar. I am trying to convince the guitarist to let me post a sample for examination. He's not comfortable yet. What can I do? An how. I'd like to keep the high and low of what the guitars have but get a bit more of a tight scoop. I'm thinking the core tone is good to work with. Just need an angle. I'm going to take some time and try all suggestions.
 
Why not record two tracks per side, both panned hard left and right?

I take it each guitarist wants a side. Double track, but pan 'em hard.

Oh, and I'm betting that a double track of guitarist L panned 100 and 80 would sound close enough to hard left (and better) to his ears... just sayin...
 
KeithRT99 said:
sometimes it sounds better to do 2 per side, but when its a thick mix, it can be good to go "less is more"

I mis-read the original post I reply'd to, I fully agree with your statement...mine was in referance to those who try and use one guitar performance panned left and right.
 
Omega_Void said:
Don't pan the guitars hard left and right, pan them in slightly and they'll sound thicker.

This is good advice. Also if you think they might not know exactly what they're doing and they haven't recorded already, you may want to ask them to record guitars with 2 microphones as this will give you more thickness and more mixing options.
 
heres my idea, i dont know if its a good thing or not...
you have 2 tracks of guitar, cant you "double" by editing them?
lets say you have one riff played two times, keep the original guitar tracks untouched, but create two other tracks with the second time in the place of the first and the first in the place of the second...
is it understandable? i dont know if my idea sucks or not, but at least it wont be the exact same tracks just copied
 
That's in an interesting idea. Save the file under a different name and try it! Best way to find out if most things work. :)