Duplicating and delaying a guitar track

[krokit]

Hi guys

This is my first post, so I wanna say hello to everybody and say what an excellent community this. Great to be with my own kind.

Ok. When I record a single guitar which plays both rhythm and lead together kinda like Dimebag/Eddie V H, I usually do the duplicate the track and pan left and right routine. I then delay one side by a few ms and maybe pitchshift a few cents also. How do the big boys do this? (Andy) How can I avoid that wierd 'cheapo delay' pedal effect that can sometimes happen?
I know I can avoid this by recording two seperate tracks but I like to improvise so I prefer the one take method, duplicate and pan technique (on my own stuff mostly).

How many ms or samples should I delay the duplicated guitar and what about pitchshifting ammounts?

Cheers

Dave

 

[Noumenon]

Don't really know a way besides doing a 2nd track that makes it sound good. I've always ended up with this phasey sound.

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

Uh, if you use the search function here I think you'll find that your approach is rather unconventional here, and not to discourage you from doing it your way, and not to put words into anyone's mouth, but I think most of the people here will probably agree that most rhythm takes should probably be doubled if not quadrupled.

 

[gumplunger]

Yeah copying and delaying is usually not a good idea, although I've seen people do it. Actually, I was interning at a studio here in Atlanta for a short while and we were listening to something and one of the engineers says "Oh dude we should totally copy those guitar tracks and delay em by like 20ms" and the other engineer gives him this "Why the hell would you want to do that?" staredown for like 10 seconds. I laughed.

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

haha, we all have embarassing moments:

When my first band did our first demo, it was this free deal for like 1 song because my drummer was taking a recording course, we had no right to be recording, gaht DAMN I was bad back then. Our engineer put a positive spin on my guitar playing saying, "hey how about we just double that take and delay it, that way you'll sound really tight." I was like, "sounds good dude." It took me several years to realize that what he meant was, "damn dude, you suck, can't even play your own songs tight enough to double the tracks!"

 

[EtherForBreakfast]

ashlee simpsons loves that technique..where you copy / past and do a lil 30ms paste ahead thing.

do that 8 times each and you will have huge rad swirly garfunkle guitars.

 

[Tachy]

If you delayed a track copy of your guitar you can hear an effect like flanger or chorus, becouse you are change the phase...I prefer to do another rithm egual, the micro variations do the best work.

 

[krokit]

Cheers guys, good stuff

I love doubling rhythm guitars too definately but i also like doing one take, off the cuff kinda things that would be impossible to repeat! Thats why I love Dimebags stuff with Pantera and Damageplan. Obviously this kinda technique rarely happens when there are two guitarists in a band but in a one guitarist situation it can sound awesome. Each to his own. Thanks again

 

[brandy]

Delaying 30ms??

This is allmost a 16th @ tempo 240! (Or something like that)

Should work for Bluesrock...

Ok, serious:

There is only one situation where i would douplicate Tracks and delay/pitch them:

In a Mix-situation where additional tracking is impossible, but you just realize that there is only one track of guit/vox but you wanna create some pseudo-stereo effects...

brandy

 

[guitarguru777]

I always thought dime doubled everything ???

Even Solos

 

[Sinister Mephisto]

I always thought dime doubled everything ???

Even Solos

Well he was just badass and probably worked everything out.

Also EVH to my knowledge is a single track snob and says he doesn't overdub anything... I don't know if this is still true but I read it a while ago.

krokit, sounds like you want to be able to improvise so I think you might just have to get a really good sound and pan it to the middle no doubling, get the kind of lame delay double or just work everything out before you record. Would it be possible for you to play one track and then learn it and do it over again? I do that with solos occasionaly.

 

[estigma2001]

well Jeff Waters only played the rhythm track twice and use 2 lines ( miced and line from the amp or pre amp) then he panned the 4 tracks, also he said that quad guitars works well for less complicated riffage like open chords but in the case on annihilator he must be 100% tight playing them twice

 

[krokit]

Thanks for the suggestions guys

I'm gonna experiment some more. By the way, my stuff sounds kinda like a cross between Carcass/The Haunted and maybe Caliban with a hint of Mastodon with some mindless shredding thrown in! :hotjump:

Thanks again

 

[STINNETT]

No question, if I needed to do that I would record a mic'd amp along with a DI signal from the guitar and then re-amp the DI track through a different amp, or the same amp with different gain/tone settings/ microphones to double or quadruple up that single performance. I do this alot for solos and lead lines. I have even taken to doing this quite a bit for rhythm tracks (although I still insist on recording at least 2 performances) because it will maintain a very good clarity and articulation in the sound. Don't get me wrong, for most stuff you can't beat the sound of layering up several performances, but for a situation like this I would do re-amping.

I would NEVER copy and duplicate the track.

And by the way, this is my first post, so HI EVERYBODY!