how to layer with Virtual instruments?

[hduncan]

so, I know that for thick textures, you can for example, layer several guitar takes to get the wall of sound feel, but how do you layer for that texture when all you have is Virtual instruments? there is no interaction of air and microphone placement and room to give the subtle differences needed, the volume would just increase due to the same exact part being played...

how do you go about simulating this with digital instruments?

some Ideas I had would be, say if you are using a soft synth, change a few modifiers slightly each time and export it as a different audio file, then layer all of them, maybe moving them slightly off center so that the sound ever so slightly off-time.. any other ideas?

[gsilbers]

just to be clear, what are refering with virtual instruments (samplers?, synths?) and what type of sounds u are looking for/?

in theory you should have a million more of the same type of sounds than with acustics.
layered basses and leads are rapant in electronic music.
you would select dfrent patches (better to make your own of course) of the same type of sound.
a trick is to use 3 synths playing at the same time. one has a patch to handle higher freq, another a round maybe sampled , mid range patch and another for low freq.
thats for basses, leads, kicks and other percusion.

and of course , to double u can also add a amp simulator like guitar rig2.

if its for sampled instruments , then just grab difrent libraries which are recorded difrently. thats whats done to do film scores.

[nic]

Yeah using different sounds entirely is a good idea. Also changing the timing of individual notes on each layered track slightly will make a pretty big difference. Usually to accomplish this I'll just play the parts on a midi controller and not quantize them. If they are too complex to play (I'm a pretty bad at anything beyond single notes), Logic has this thing that lets you 'humanize' midi events (basically it just changes the position/velocity/etc. of midi notes subtly).

Some other things that can help too are using delay on some of the instruments (like a tape or stereo delay), using different modulation types on the same synth sounds, or if you have guitar amp plugins those work in strange and sometimes cool ways on synths... You can also slightly detune some of the instruments (1-5 cents? more?). Or if you have the resources you can use a re-amp and actually mic up an amp or some monitors or something... but that is usually kind of overkill!

[hduncan]

I am dealing mostly with Synths and having them replace guitars in my music. dirty synths that sound somewhat guitar like, or at least fill that distorted guitar niche.
say you would usually have a guitarist record his part 4 times and lay the tracks all on top of eachother, the slight differences in the takes make it sound fuller. how do you do it with virtual instruments where there is no slight nuances in the tracks? what are some tricks to make them "layerable" without it just sounding louder, and getting you that full sound? I dont know if Cubase 4 has a "humanize" feature.. I'll look into that.

[YUGA]

Originally Posted by DarkEcho

I am dealing mostly with Synths and having them replace guitars in my music. dirty synths that sound somewhat guitar like, or at least fill that distorted guitar niche.
say you would usually have a guitarist record his part 4 times and lay the tracks all on top of eachother, the slight differences in the takes make it sound fuller. how do you do it with virtual instruments where there is no slight nuances in the tracks? what are some tricks to make them "layerable" without it just sounding louder, and getting you that full sound? I dont know if Cubase 4 has a "humanize" feature.. I'll look into that.

detune them, and use LFOs to modulate pitch and cutoff freq (and other parameters) of each synth differently. slightly and slowly modulating delay time can create very interesting effect. 1-5 cents of difference doesn't make much difference you can go up to 15-20cents. but note that too much detuning can cause phase problem.

[Stiff]

Originally Posted by DarkEcho

how do you go about simulating this with digital instruments?

some Ideas I had would be, say if you are using a soft synth, change a few modifiers slightly each time and export it as a different audio file, then layer all of them, maybe moving them slightly off center so that the sound ever so slightly off-time.. any other ideas?

I think you've pretty much gotten the idea. I don't layer VI:s usually but here's what I would do:
* Record each part separately
* Change the sounds slightly
* Add some funky effect (distortion or whatever), either to just one part or different amounts to each, if possible, use different types of distortion.