What to do when multi tracking heavy guitars?

[NathanEldred]

Originally posted by jeronimo When you guys double, triple,......-track guitars, and you have two different players, do you make one of the players track them all or do you let each one track once or twice?


If it's one guitarist I try and get them to play a minimum of 3 x stereo guitar parts (6 tracks used total), if it's two guitarists they get 2 x stereo tracks each (8 tracks used total). I'm talking about overdriven sounds, not clean. Clean get 2 stereo tracks total regardless of one or two players. If it's one player and they don't have a countered clean part, I have them do something simple and solid just to make it thicker or more interesting.

Different amps are the most important thing, then a different guitar, and then also maybe a different micing setup. My bread and butter micing setup is a 421 and a Royer 121. Also have been known to use U47, E47, Coles 4038, iFET7. I won't touch an SM-57 on guitar.


I'm worried 'cause the more tracks you put together, the tighter the guitar playing have to be


That's what seperates the boys from the men...


If you have 4 tracks of ryhtm guitars, you better make sure the tracks are damn tight!!!


Yep


How do you tell one player that he/she won't be playing the rythm tracks?


With confidence and tact.

[littlelabs]

Try this .. .
Use the PCP box and you can have the parts playing back to the amp re-amp mode and play along with them on top of them through the PCP this is a doubling techniqe but doubling through the amp itself, which makes it very thick and the guitar player is playing with and over himself which makes it easier.rollz

[alphajerk]

damn... i have a problem that when guitars are tracked once they are so damn think you dont need anything else.

[RKrizman]

Originally posted by alphajerk
damn... i have a problem that when guitars are tracked once they are so damn think you dont need anything else.

Yep, and I have the same problem with singers. I do like doubled shakers, however.

-R

[jeronimo]

Hey little... I didn't quite get it... could you breake it down a little more? How do they (re-amp'd guit and player) play together?

[Jules]

Stand over the musician with a baseball bat.

[Nutmeg II.]

I have a guitar player that is not fun to double track!
He is so damm tight that you'll only hear a little phasing now and then!
Right now I'm micing the amp with a AKG414 (don't know the type right now) in figur 8, with the back of the mic hard center. It sounds much deeper than the otherway around!

[alphajerk]

actaully the one person who amazed me double [triple and quadruple] tracking his guitar is tim sult... the guy has a way of blending all of them together playing certain parts on one track and other parts on another. its absolutely amazing. whats even more amazing is seeing it live where you would never miss any of the multiple tracks.

[Fletcher]

Well... if you have a couple of spare hours... there was a thread on this on PSW: a problem with heavily distorted guitars...

As for your more immediate question... if there are two guitar players in the orchestra... I prefer to track them both during 'basics'... and then overdub additional parts.

A couple of neat tricks I've found that have worked exceptionally well for me with additional overdubs is to have the guitar players "open up" their additional parts... in other words, having them play a bunch of 'whole note chords'... these are to 'reinforce' the main hits of the original parts without adding to the timing clutter.

If possible, I also try have them do the additional "fattening" parts in a different tuning than they used for the basic parts. Something like an 'open G' tuning [sometimes a capo will be required] or an 'open D' tuning [sometimes a capo will be required] will add a different texture to the supporting parts... the net result being an added dimension of "thickness" while still permitting a sonic arrangement that will allow you to keep the drums "large" sounding, and allowing the vocals to cut right through.

Hope this is of some use... best of luck with it.

[jeronimo]

Damn, that thread on PSW is huuge, I wish I had the time to read it now, before going to the studio
What I did was double tracking each player (2 stereo tracks) and tracking the open chords once for each guitar player.
By the way, they are already drop-c and drop-d, so it is starting to sound good. Both players are very good, actually they are the first ones that could double track and make things sound bigger instead of crowded...
They had a problem in the day I started the thread 'cause one wasn't playing exactly the same strokes as the other... but they sit down and "cleaned" their parts and now things are ok.
But one point that Fletcher mentioned about the different tunings:
I love it, they are the first ones that play on different tunings and the result is amazing, very, very nice!

[Jules]

Tele & Les Paul

[Rab]

I'd go along with the different chord-voicing thing. Also, if you use Pro Tools a couple of other things which are worth playing around with...

• Use Vocalign to tighten up one of the parts against the other. This seems to work best if you use it on occasional notes that are a bit slack (say beats 1 and 3 in a 4/4 track) rather than the whole recording. You'll have to spend a bit of time crossfading any cuts together, but this maintains the feel of 2 guitarists playing together.

• Run another track clean into Pro Tools then use PSA1/ AmpFarm to play around with different amp models. Sometimes if the various guitarists' amp sounds are getting a bit muddy, having the flexibility to radically change one part can open up the mix. Pretty much every guitarist I know (including myself!) is very precious about his guitar sound, so you'll have to be tactful when mixing in your "fake" amp track with the original part.

[Avalon Adam]

I usually have each player do 2 tracks each (one panned left, the other panned right) while also running a direct guitar track for each performance bringing the total to 8 tracks but only 4 actual performances.

As far as who plays what, I usually let each player perform their own parts provided they can pull them off. If a player is sloppy and needs someone else to record their parts it can be a sensitive issue that is usually up to the band as a whole to decide. It is all about who can perform the part the best to make the song sound as good as it possibly can.

Another thing to consider when going for heavy huge guitars is what amps you are using (Marshall, VHT, Bogner, and 5150's are good starting points), the mics, mic pre's, and don't forget to throw in an overdrive pedal like a Maxon OD808 to get an extra boost out of the amp.

Hope this helps ya.

[SittinIdol]

Hopefully the OP isn't still working on the same project 5 years later !!

[kmandude]

Hey these tricks still work 5 years later. The one i can offer is one I used with tape machines, putting the machine into varispeed and record the double track in a different key, gets awesome sometimes otherworldly results.

[Slikjmuzik]

All I can suggest is don't track each player and then give each one a side in the panning scheme. VERY few bands can have that sound right. Track each player twic and place each player's rhythm track hard left and right, unless they are different and complimentary tracks, then just double track the one that can be most considered a rhythm part and track the other part like a lead. As long as it's a completely different part, then it doesn't really matter, but you do need both a left and a right of anything that's a foundational part with kick and bass, like palm mutes. Palm mutes especially sound ridiculous if only single tracks or aren't both left and right provide a bed with bass.