Recording guitar w/ 2 mics on a cab

Genius Gone Insane said:
AWESOME!! A FRICKEN MIRACLE!!
wow.. 5 keystrokes.. miraculous :Smug: well, i have an american keyboard and i just hit Option +U then the letter i want the ümlauts over... but then again.. i have a Mac :loco:
 
Genius Gone Insane said:
Is it blasphemy? j/k

I was talking to an acquaintence (who some of you probably know) recently about recording guitars and he said as opposed to using 4 separate rhythm takes, he records only 2 takes but uses 2 mics on each take; both are sm57s.

He points one mic in "sneap position", straight on, maybe a bit off center. The second one is basically the same location however it's angled upward toward the rim of the speaker. He said if you do this well it sounds better than 4 separate takes.

I'm curious if any of you actually prefer this method.

I tried it out last night and, despite some phasing difficulties, it came out pretty cool. :cool: I ended up combining both styles for the hell of it--a total of 8 guitar tracks. The fizz is a bit thicker, but it's a good fizz if you feel me. If I was recording only two rhythm takes, I would most definitely use this approach. :headbang:
benifits/detriments of using multiple mics aside, since i think this is an entirely different issue, there is no way at all to get the sound of 4-tracking rhythm guitars except for tracking 4 guitars.. 4 seperate passes. the thickness of the "quad" tracked sound comes from the slight differences in each perfomance.. not from different mics. i've covered this before in another very similar thread on here... if you want the sound of quad tracked guitars there is no trickery that will substitute.. buck up and play it 4 times like a man:D

the sound of mixing mics is "tone stacking" ..not quad tracking nor a reasonable facsimile thereof... you just end up with a composite sound. it doesn't matter if you blend 17 mics.. if you want it to sound quad tracked you will have to track those 17 mics 4 times. no shortcuts.

:headbang:
 
A small tip that works in some situations (talking about doubling here, not multiple mics takes).
_You have to use a click.
_It works only if each guitar part is played at least twice in the song:
Cut/Copy/Paste...
Example:
Original track:
X1 / Y1 / X2 / Y2 / Z1 / Z2
Doubling track:
X2 / Y2 / X1 / Y1 / Z2 / Z1
Don't forget X-fades....
Confusing? Sorry.......
 
I hate being one of those "you need this piece of gear to solve your problem" people (especially when I don't own the gear myself), but if you're gonna go the two mic route on a regular basis, one of these might come in handy:

http://www.littlelabs.com/ibpjr.html

Otherwise, when you're setting up the two mics you often have to compromise the best placement of one of the mics for phase reasons.

Also, once you cut the track, you're pretty much stuck with either a 180 degree flip and/or manually alligning the waveforms -- neither of which will ever totally resolve phase problems, just make them less noticeable.


I'm more and more a fan of a single close mic on guitars.

It just seems to make mixing faster if you narrow your focus to one good, solid tone per track, plus it eats up less processing resources, of course.

If you (like me) don't totally know what you're doing, the two mic technique can be deceptive in that it sounds good while you're cutting the tracks, but doesn't sit in the mix for some reason, so you spend a lot of time tweaking two tracks to fit instead of just one.

This is currently biting me in the ass on one project I'm working on. I just ditched one of the tracks and it's working out a lot better.
 
James Murphy said:
benifits/detriments of using multiple mics aside, since i think this is an entirely different issue, there is no way at all to get the sound of 4-tracking rhythm guitars except for tracking 4 guitars.. 4 seperate passes. the thickness of the "quad" tracked sound comes from the slight differences in each perfomance.. not from different mics. i've covered this before in another very similar thread on here... if you want the sound of quad tracked guitars there is no trickery that will substitute.. buck up and play it 4 times like a man:D

the sound of mixing mics is "tone stacking" ..not quad tracking nor a reasonable facsimile thereof... you just end up with a composite sound. it doesn't matter if you blend 17 mics.. if you want it to sound quad tracked you will have to track those 17 mics 4 times. no shortcuts.

:headbang:

Word. I asked you about this last year and you set me straight. ;)

Just so everyone knows - my friends DevilDriver released their new album
this month, and the killer guitar tone on that record is two mics on the cab, four unique passes tracked.
 
black sugar said:
I hate being one of those "you need this piece of gear to solve your problem" people (especially when I don't own the gear myself), but if you're gonna go the two mic route on a regular basis, one of these might come in handy:

http://www.littlelabs.com/ibpjr.html

Cool unit... but is there anything wrong with just sliding the waveforms in your DAW until they line up to correct the phase?
 
There's three mics on these pics (devildriver recording sessions) + two ambient mics...
Cabs1_LG.jpg

R-121_On_Cab2_LG.jpg
 
~BURNY~ said:
There's three mics on these pics (devildriver recording sessions) + two ambient mics...
Cabs1_LG.jpg

R-121_On_Cab2_LG.jpg

Yes, that's from the FIRST DevilDriver album, produced by Ross Hogarth. My post is referring to the NEW DevilDriver album, "The Fury Of Our Maker's Hand," produced by Colin Richardson. I have pics from the session, the guys are my friends, but I have been told not to post the pictures, sorry!
 
Am I missing something or the guy explains that sliding the waveforms is the best solution? (I'm non native english speaker)
 
Yeah, he prefers sliding the waveforms over the Little Labs box! Haha. Funny that by indirectly answering Kazrog's question I totally shot down my own IBP suggestion!

But, really, I have heard from people that prefer the Little Labs box over sliding the waveforms.


How about both?!
 
Ditto on what James said. But I would add, you have to decide if your total sound will be better with 2 or 4 performances. Are you playing one finger chord shit like Disturbed and are you a tight player with the time available? Yes? Do 4 tracks. If you cannot duplicate yourself very well then you wont get a better sound this way so better to do 2 tracks instead. Or if your playing really riffy fast picking stuff you would probably get a better sound with 2 cause its really impossible to get that stuff tight with 4 performances. Depends on how tight you are really.

Of course you can do a test run and see for yourself.

Also if you are doing 4 performances, I think most guys would just use 1 57 to avoid any problems and get the fatter sound from the added performances. When you are stuck with doing 2 tracks you want to add some space to the tone so use 2 mics on the cab. Your original technique with 2 mics should work great.

This is what I have observed form trying it myself or learning from countless trys back and forth at Trident Studios next door. This seems to hold true all the time.

Colin
 
vile_ator said:
Ditto on what James said. But I would add, you have to decide if your total sound will be better with 2 or 4 performances. Are you playing one finger chord shit like Disturbed and are you a tight player with the time available? Yes? Do 4 tracks. If you cannot duplicate yourself very well then you wont get a better sound this way so better to do 2 tracks instead. Or if your playing really riffy fast picking stuff you would probably get a better sound with 2 cause its really impossible to get that stuff tight with 4 performances. Depends on how tight you are really.

Yeah well my band's not quite as fast as Vile, so doubling the guitars is less tricky. :worship: Add to that a lot of patience (alongside a lot of cutting and pasting) and I can play my music tight enough twice :D . But I'm about to record my first band and I'm thinking that I'll definitely go one track w/ two mics on the guitars just to be safe.