Double tracking

[Mongillo19]

When double tracking or quad etc, do you all replay the part x amount of times or do you do the old nudge left and right trick to add the thickness.

Any pro or con to either way? Or am I just talking nonsense?

 

[JiveTurkey]

One leaning left, one leaning right, one up the middle. Back when I used to record things Thickness is for the bass guitar!

 

[Mongillo19]

One leaning left, one leaning right, one up the middle. Back when I used to record things Thickness is for the bass guitar!

Do you offset them all or just keep them as is?

 

[JiveTurkey]

Do you offset them all or just keep them as is?

Noooooo. Tight as I can get it \m/

 

[Mongillo19]

Noooooo. Tight as I can get it \m/

I'll give it a go!

 

[JiveTurkey]

Try a couple of different approaches and see what works for you

 

[Lopp]

I prefer individually recording each part, but will pan a single take L/R if I'm being lazy. I think tweaking a single take is what you mean by "nudge left and right."

I recently realized I prefer to have only two guitars each panned L/R instead of quad or more, unless I want a wall-of-guitars sound, but I prefer the tightness of only two. Maybe I'd like quad more if I tightened up my rhythm playing.

 

[Mongillo19]

I prefer individually recording each part, but will pan a single take L/R if I'm being lazy. I think tweaking a single take is what you mean by "nudge left and right."

I recently realized I prefer to have only two guitars each panned L/R instead of quad or more, unless I want a wall-of-guitars sound, but I prefer the tightness of only two. Maybe I'd like quad more if I tightened up my rhythm playing.

Yeah by nudge I mean duplicate the track, pan one L and one R, move one of them some odd milliseconds forward.

 

[the-trooper]

Always play.
It's not humongous amount of work and it sound much better. That's the whole point, to have two different recordings.

 

[bigcupholder]

Yeah by nudge I mean duplicate the track, pan one L and one R, move one of them some odd milliseconds forward.

You'll get a lot of phase issues if you do that. Be careful if you're doing all your mixing on headphones because you won't notice phase issues.

I play everything twice and use slightly different tones for each track. I sum it to mono to check for phase issues and adjust the tones as needed to minimize that cancellation (using Helix Native with a DI track so I don't have to repeatedly record parts).

If a riff is too hard to play cleanly enough for double tracking to sound tight, in the past I've triple tracked it instead: the best take in the middle and the other takes hard panned and dialed back about 9 dB so they're barely audible but add some width and texture. Haven't done that in awhile but it works. It's a different sound than double tracking though.

 

[Mongillo19]

You'll get a lot of phase issues if you do that. Be careful if you're doing all your mixing on headphones because you won't notice phase issues.

I play everything twice and use slightly different tones for each track. I sum it to mono to check for phase issues and adjust the tones as needed to minimize that cancellation (using Helix Native with a DI track so I don't have to repeatedly record parts).

If a riff is too hard to play cleanly enough for double tracking to sound tight, in the past I've triple tracked it instead: the best take in the middle and the other takes hard panned and dialed back about 9 dB so they're barely audible but add some width and texture. Haven't done that in awhile but it works. It's a different sound than double tracking though.

Thank you for the input! Great info from you all so far

 

[la szum]

If a riff is too hard to play cleanly enough for double tracking to sound tight, in the past I've triple tracked it instead: the best take in the middle and the other takes hard panned and dialed back about 9 dB so they're barely audible but add some width and texture. Haven't done that in awhile but it works. It's a different sound than double tracking though.

Pretty sure that is similar to what Max Norman/Randy Rhoads did. Kind of a quasi W/D/W method to multi-tracking guitar parts.

 

[Stone]

Id love to know how to do that double track thing
unfortunately im a noob, but i will learn how to do that in due time

 

[Mongillo19]

Id love to know how to do that double track thing
unfortunately im a noob, but i will learn how to do that in due time

Double track just means you play the track 2x as the name suggests. It seems the traditional way is to then pan one all the way to the left and then one all the way to the right

 

[Fireproof]

You'll get a lot of phase issues if you do that. Be careful if you're doing all your mixing on headphones because you won't notice phase issues.

I play everything twice and use slightly different tones for each track. I sum it to mono to check for phase issues and adjust the tones as needed to minimize that cancellation (using Helix Native with a DI track so I don't have to repeatedly record parts).

If a riff is too hard to play cleanly enough for double tracking to sound tight, in the past I've triple tracked it instead: the best take in the middle and the other takes hard panned and dialed back about 9 dB so they're barely audible but add some width and texture. Haven't done that in awhile but it works. It's a different sound than double tracking though.

That’s a really cool idea.

 

[Fireproof]

Double track just means you play the track 2x as the name suggests. It seems the traditional way is to then pan one all the way to the left and then one all the way to the right

That’s always been my assumption as well.

 

[Mooselake]

I go overboard sometimes. Record each part 6 times, then pick 4 out of those and pan 2 left and the other 2 right.

 

[paisleywookiee]

When double tracking or quad etc, do you all replay the part x amount of times or do you do the old nudge left and right trick to add the thickness.

Any pro or con to either way? Or am I just talking nonsense?

I play the track in a loop several times, then pick my two favorite takes, and then pan them left/right.

Logic makes it super easy to do multi-takes, and then copy one to another track, add different effects, etc. even better with Amplitube, because then I can change the amp model after the fact.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

Multiple takes back to back, select the two that I want to keep and pan them opposite 50/50

 

[DrewJD82]

I always play it twice, the subtle differences are what make all the awesomeness! Panned hard left/right.

If I’m feeling really adventurous I’ll quad track it and set the panning 100/80/80/100 but depending on what you’re playing, it can be a bitch to get every take lined up perfectly and those subtle differences start becoming nasty issues. It definitely does the wall of guitars thing great, though!

This was quad tracked (there’s a chorus on an expression pedal I pop in and out, that‘s not the guitars being slightly out of tune, I actually used an Evertune for this because quad tracking + tuning…..eek)


I particular love the sound of pick slides or just sliding your hand down the strings between chords when 4 of them are going at once, or pinch harmonics when they’re lined up right.

Some people prefer tracking two different guitar tones, one on each side, but I get really OCD about it and even if it adds to the stereo imagine, I don’t dig having a different tone on each side. I’m getting around that with a dual amp preset with each amp panned hard left/right, for the double track I reverse the cabs so each amp ends up on each side. (Can’t remember how I had this preset dialed in in the clip, it’s a dual amp preset but can’t remember how I had them panned)