Stereo delay trickery for guitar leads?

[MarcusGHedwig]

Gentlemen, this is something that's always puzzled me - I often hear talk of people using stereo delays to fill out a single-tracked lead part (especially the type going under the chorus of a song, e.g. Nevermore's "Born,"), but I never really know how it's being set up as far as delay times on each side (which I assume is how a stereo delay works, forgive my ignorance). Tips on this and any other ways to make said leads sound more huge and epic would be appreciated!

 

[Plankis]

Born's awesome chorus riff sounds double tracked to me. But I think I know what you mean, send a track to a mono delay, turn delay time to somewhere between 5-30 ms.
Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haas_effect


Listen around 1:10, where they play a lead as well.

 

[Skinny Viking]

^ everything that guy just said minus the stereo widener thing (for me)

 

[Nimvi]

Yup, Plankis already summed it up.
I use ReaDelay like this, if I want to broaden up a single take, or create a hole in the center without things sounding offbalance; for example if there is a solo and a vocal playing at the same time.
Set dry signal to 0%. Set first tap to 0 delay time, and pan it to how broad you want the final stereo image to be. So for example 0.3 panning. Then set the delaytime of the second tap to somewhere below where the 2 signals start to sound like individual tracks. I usually end up between 12 and 18ms delay. Now pan this second tap to the mirrored position of the first one. So in this case -0.3.
If the panning and time difference is extreme, you may have to add a db or 2 to the second tap, to make it sound balanced again.

An important note here: check in mono when setting this! Especially on low delaytimes it can cause severe combfiltering, so find a nice balance between what sounds good in mono and stereo.

Btw, I think adding a second tap with a similar short delay works incredibly well for thickening up vocals and leads, even without the panning and stereo trickery. Thickens thing up nicely, while still being more subtle than chorus or the classic slapback delay.

 

[53Crëw]

I use a ping pond delay with 1/8 and 1/4 note delay times, or occasionally 1/4 and 1/2...

Sometimes I'll use ducking to have the delayed sound only stand out between lead phrases. Depends on how dense the mix is....

A slight chorus effect is also helpful to thicken up leads and give them more character.

 

[Keregioz]

Don't be a pussy, just double track the lead part . Michael Romeo of symphony x does this with solos I believe (not all of them though).

example (at 4:00)...


Personally for me just delay/reverb works fine for solos. If it's a lead part similar to the chorus on born then I would double track it.

 

[kev]

Ffs, michael bastard romeo. The bloke gets better every time I hear him.

 

[slaytah]

http://www.benvesco.com/blog/mixing/2009/mix-recipes-heavy-guitar-haas-and-eq/

This is something I've started using, to good effect.

 

[Sloan]

I've been experimenting with sending a mono centered track to a big stereo verb, and dropping the mid a bit from the verb with m/s processing. mix to taste for a retard huge sound.

 

[Audio X]

Divide 60,000 (Number of milliseconds in a minute) by your BPM for the quarter note, & divide down from there for other subdivisions.

 

[mharwood]

Btw, I think adding a second tap with a similar short delay works incredibly well for thickening up vocals and leads, even without the panning and stereo trickery. Thickens thing up nicely, while still being more subtle than chorus or the classic slapback delay.

I've used a similar approach on a number of occasions with lead vocals and guitar solos. I'll set a short slap delay (anywhere from 10-25 ms) or even two on occasion as a send effect, low pass and high pass it so the delay stays out of the bass but clearly below the presence region, pan it dead center (or to wherever the original dry track sits in your mix), and fade it up until there is just a subtle thickening of the midrange. When done right you wont even notice its there, but when you mute it you'll instantly notice that its gone. It's essential to keep it out of the presence region or it starts to sound really phasey before it reaches a level where it really becomes useful (though this can be a cool trick to if that's what you're going for). This works really well when you want to fatten something up a bit, but don't want it to sound like an effect per se (some mixes just don't handle the traditional delay/pitch shift stereo widening/thickening trick very well). Adding just a little spash of stereo reverb to this combo works well for getting a very clean, natural sounding vocal to sit within a very dense rock mix.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Hey Marcus,
I send the dry stuff to an aux track, set up a stereo doubler/chorus and drown that with a 50% blend of delay and reverb.