GMC:er Posts: 25.297
Joined: 23-December 09
From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Sometimes, one wants HUGE guitars in a mix. So, how to go about it? Well, the first thing folks tend to do is hard pan two guitar tracks left and right, then add some reverb. This works just fine of course. However, there are some tricky ways to get a bit more BIG out of your guitar tracks. Try this.
DOUBLING:
It’s a time honored technique. It’s also very simple, you just take a given guitar part, and record it again. You can leave both tracks of the same part panned to the center, or you can start playing with panning them As always trust your ears as to what sounds best It’s the little inconsistencies that make this trick work. So it’s not the same as just duplicating the track using copy/paste. You actually need to play it again and have two recordings of you playing a section of the song. Trust your ears as to how far you pan if you pan at all.
1.)Record the guitar part.
2.)Make a new track and record it again.
3.)Pan each track to taste.
PSEUDO DOUBLING
If you have the time, it’s always best to actually double a track to get the best doubling effect. However, if you are doing rough demos, if you are mixing for someone else and there is only one guitar track availablee, if you just don’t have time, you can do something similar without actually recording twice. To “fake it”, you can simply re time the track you want to double.
1.)Copy the section of guitar track you want to double.
2.)Make a new track and paste it in.
3.)Depending on your DAW, you can then use whatever time based track tools or plugins you have to essentially slightly slow down the pasted track to create some degree of difference between the tracks. Don’t take this too far or the tracks will fall out of synch.
4.)Pan the two tracks to taste. REVERB TRICKS
1.)Take a given guitar track, pan it towards the left. Then take the reverb and pan it toward the right. Use your ears as your guide.
2.)Move to the next guitar track, add reverb and do the same trick. Pan the guitar to the opposite side of the previous guitar track and now pan it’s reverb to the opposite side.
3.)Rinse and repeat. For each guitar track you are working with. So if you have four guitar tracks, you’ll pan track1 to the left, and it’s reverb to the right. Track 2 to the right and it’s reverb to the left and so on.
4.)Pull up your favorite E.Q. and high pass each guitar track around 150hz. This prevents guitars from being “Boomy”.
This trick works great for CHORUS sections in your song. It makes a given part of a song sound very big and the chorus is often the most important part of your song. So this widening draws attention to that part of the song.
QUESTION:
These are just a few tricks. What are your fave tricks for making guitar tracks sound HUGE???
Todd Simpson Top Tips To Make Your Guitar Tracks Sound Huge! Aug 15 2020, 03:29 AM
