Doubling guitar tracks

[Genius Gone Insane]

Hey,

I'm still somewhat novice with regard to recording so my ears are not as attuned as they hopefully will be one day. My question is this: are rhythm guitar tracks always doubled on metal cds? Andy said on the Nevermore album he doubled each guitar with different left/right pannings. Is that standard?

Just recently I've started doubling guitars with two on each side, one to bring out the high frequency sounds and one to bring out the low frequencies. I've found that these sound better if it is actually four different guitar takes (two for the left and two for the right) as opposed to just two guitar takes where you duplicate each once to get the two other tracks. The sound is just so much thicker with four guitar takes, know what I mean?

I hope this isn't too confusing. Any advice or personal stories would be greatly appreciated.

 

[egan.]

You are right. The sound will be thicker b/c there are actually four guitars rather than just 2. Duplicating a track does nothing besides make it 3dB louder. Unless you're running a compressor or some fx that you aren't running on the original tracks then a duplicate track doesn't acomplish anything.
Also, if you are recording everything with one amp (and if other people have different ideas please weigh in) then I don't really see an advantages to eqing one guitar for the highs and one for the lows. why not just dial in 4 good guitar tones? The situations where I would consider eqing one gutiar for highs and 1 for lows and summing them would invovle two different amps with differrent characteristics. This technique is totally useless when using duplicate tracks.

 

[Briody]

Hey,

Andy said on the Nevermore album he doubled each guitar with different left/right pannings. Is that standard?

It's used quite often.

I've done four albums with producer Jim Morris and this is the way he does it also.

Mark

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

thanks to both of you...Briody--are the doubled guitars ordinarily EQed differently or the same for all four tracks?

 

[Hewy80]

You are right. The sound will be thicker b/c there are actually four guitars rather than just 2. Duplicating a track does nothing besides make it 3dB louder. Unless you're running a compressor or some fx that you aren't running on the original tracks then a duplicate track doesn't acomplish anything.
Also, if you are recording everything with one amp (and if other people have different ideas please weigh in) then I don't really see an advantages to eqing one guitar for the highs and one for the lows. why not just dial in 4 good guitar tones? The situations where I would consider eqing one gutiar for highs and 1 for lows and summing them would invovle two different amps with differrent characteristics. This technique is totally useless when using duplicate tracks.

Totally agree man. When you just duplicate a track and Eq it or whatever it just doesnt really do anything to fatten the sound. But when you play another take it just has the subtle differences between the first take and the second that help to fatten the sound. Guitarist has to be pretty tight tho cos if theyre not it will sound messy instead of fat.

 

[FrostGiant]

You can duplicate a track to thicken the sound as long as the duplicate track has some predelay(?) on it. But doing 4 separate takes makes it much more interesting. Also recording those different takes with differnt tones, effects, eq, pickups, etc. helps out a lot too.

 

[97reb]

It's great to see so many posts on this forum recently, especially experienced people answering questions for some of us that are less knowledged. I saw that Mark is in Jag Panzer from their new forum, but I am in the dark about the rest of you people. Any others out there willing to fess up about your more public personna? Rock on my brothers and sisters(if there's any here)!

 

[jamesboyd]

hey Briody what albums/bands did you do with jim?
I'm quessing they were mostly death metal bands so I was wondering if you would recommend a mic/mic placement for that style?

I like Andy's classic 1 57 on axis sound for lighter styles and whatnot but I don't think it would necessarily work for some types of death metal.

the band I'm hoping to be recording soon are going for that full/smooth Morbid Angel 'Domination' type of sound with quite a bit of the low mids still in the sound- any suggestions?

cheers

james

 

[FrostGiant]

Any others out there willing to fess up about your more public personna? Rock on my brothers and sisters(if there's any here)!

FYI, I'm nobody. I don't know a whole lot about this recording thing. I just do some homerecing on a Boss BR-8. I record everything direct except vox and acoustic guit so I know nothing of mic placement. But I throw in my $.02 every now and again. Also, links to my music can be found through the link to my webpage in my sig if you care.

 

[jamesboyd]

Well I'm from New Zealand(precious)
and am a major guitar/gear geek :Spin:

just finished my second year of a commercial music degree(most of which is theory/harmony and production)

on holidays now and it's fooking great!!

peace

james

 

[Barnyard]

What about playing through a stereo splitter device and have it splitout to two different amps to get 1 super tight doubled sound that isnt quite the same on both sides.

For instance, I was going to experiment with running out of an RP-12 or similar, into a 5150 on the right and a Dual Rect on the left for the main bed guitar track, then have the second guitarist come in ( with a different guitar ) possibly re-tweak the amps for a slightly different sound, and have him play his tracks through the same config.

This way, one still gets the 4 tracks to work with in the mix and the chances of them being tighter are much better.

 

[egan.]

Using a splitter and two amps can be cool (and is good if you want to try the 1amp for the highs 1 for the lows thing), but you need a transformer isolated splitter or you will get shitloads of noise when there is no playing going on....even between palm mutes.

 

[alphaWave]

Can you name some examples of such transformer isolated splitters?

 

[Barnyard]

Well in my case, I was going to use a Digitech RP-12 which has stereo outputs. The obvious cons are tweaking the RP-12 to a decent sound, although I have yet to try bypassing all effects and still using the stereo output.

And unlike the horribly noisy RP-10, the RP-12 is quiet.

 

[alphaWave]

I don't like the thought of using something that has a shitload of effects in it and will probably degrade my tone. But anyway, I have actually found what I was looking for. Axess electronics make a simple splitter-box that does just that.

 

[Briody]

hey Briody what albums/bands did you do with jim?
I'm quessing they were mostly death metal bands so I was wondering if you would recommend a mic/mic placement for that style?

I like Andy's classic 1 57 on axis sound for lighter styles and whatnot but I don't think it would necessarily work for some types of death metal.

the band I'm hoping to be recording soon are going for that full/smooth Morbid Angel 'Domination' type of sound with quite a bit of the low mids still in the sound- any suggestions?

cheers

james

I play guitar for Jag Panzer, Jim produced our last few albums (with the exception of the retro release we currently have out). I engineered some of my own guitar parts, so I got lots of hands-on training from Jim.

I also had the pleasure of playing a festival gig with Fozzy in Europe, so I bothered Andy with tons of questions about recording guitar

Here is how we do guitar - Typically 2 or 3 SM-57's into the SSL console, or the 57's into a Vintech mic pre (when recording at a remote location). The mics are right into the cone, maybe 2 inches from speaker center. Mics and on-axis.

I tried a large diaphram on a Marshall cab. Didn't sound as 'in your face' as the 57's.

I am trying a Royer ribbon mic when we start work on the new album (in April).

Mark

 

[carcrash club]

You dont need to buy an expensive splitter (unless you want to) to avoid amp hum from using two amps. Just use a ground lift plug on one of the amps, and it should solve the problem.

Using two amps is cool and all, but it wont sound like two tracks. I normally split between whatever the guitar player brings in and a dual rec. That way I can get the players 'sound', and still have the rectifier, cause i know itll sound good. Normally if the player asks for help I'll set up a 5150 and dual rec together, for one side, and a dual rec and jcm 800 on the other. That way theres lots of choices when you're mixing.