Guitar - Getting that professional sound - Stereo

[Mattitude]

Hi everyone,

I just have a question about making things stereo in Pro Tools. I want to make full, professional sounding music. I use an 003 Rack and Pro Tools LE 8.

I plug my electric guitar into my effects pedal to get a good sound and then plug the effects pedal into the 003 Rack. I used to use Guitar amp simulators in Pro Tools such as Eleven Free and Guitar Rig but I found the effects pedal so much better and it doesn't clog pro tools up with all the plug-ins!
I record my Electric Guitar using a mono track. I'm wondering how I can make these mono guitar tracks sound full and professional! I've read that duplicating the track, putting a slight delay on the duplication and panning both tracks left and right does the trick but to me this doesn't sound right! I also read that the guitar can be recorded twice on two different mono tracks and panned left and right. But when I've listened to music by well known musicians I can tell that there aren't two guitars playing at the same time and obviously just one is playing (mostly in the verses).

I'm just wondering what is the right way to do this! What do major recording artists do?

Thanks guys,
Matt.

[Craig F]

make a few tweaks to the tone, play it down again panned to the other side

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by Mattitude

But when I've listened to music by well known musicians I can tell that there aren't two guitars playing at the same time and obviously just one is playing (mostly in the verses).

Well Matt... you've started to stumble upon the most important part of production and producing "big" sounding recordings... ARRANGEMENT!

The guitars might be two guitars playing (panned hard L/R) in the chorus, but in the verse it just drops down to one guitar. Maybe that one guitar is panned in the C, maybe it's off to one side just a little bit....

But the point is the contrast between the one guitar in the verse and the two guitars in the chorus MAKES the song sound big and full. If everything is big and full all the time throughout the song, then NOTHING will sound big and full. You need that contrast in order to really "feel" the difference.

Arranging the song and how different parts are recorded is one of the most important parts of producing a song. I might suggest you start really going with this a little bit and start listening to songs you like to hear when they switch between one guitar and two guitars and when they have mulitple guitars playing different parts or layers.

Listen on speakers and listen in headphones. You'll hear thing in speakers you won't hear in headphones and you'll hear things in headphones you won't hear on the speakers.

Whenever I talk to someone about recording rock guitars... I always end up coming back to AC/DC's "Back in Black" album. Two guitarist... panned left and right... but they aren't always playing all the time... In "You Shook Me" for example, There is only one guitar from after the intro all the way until half way through the verse. The guitars noticeably get bigger sounding when the second guitar comes in... the bass doesn't come in until right before the chorus adn with both guitars and bass playing together for the first time in the song, it makes the Chorus feel huge in comparison.

You'll start to notice a lot of songs do this sort of thing. It is a big part of keeping the song from feeling repetitive and helping to build the song from beginning to end.

[obiwan177]

Also, the reason you can't necessarily hear two distinct guitars is because they record until they get two takes that are identical with no mistakes. I often dual track my guitars and playing to make it sound like that takes a little bit of practice but you'll get the hang of it. My best advice would be to write the part so it's well within your skill level, not something you can barely play if you focus really hard. If you make it super easy for yourself you'll be able to concentrate on the recording.

[Tritonemusic]

There's an interesting technique described in a video from the AIR user blog. You can check it out at the link below:

[TCM]

Sometimes I do this:

mono guitar track, put a send to an aux track with a chorus, mono guitar track panned to one side, chorus to the other.

[DonaldM]

This has been a great thread. I'd like to ask would the same techniques work well for acoustic guitar? I'm an acoustic guitar guy, not electric. I love that deep, rich guitar sound I often hear on good folk recordings (Dan Folgeberg for ex). I have good sounding acoustic guitars with great tone. But I've yet to be able to capture it the way I want for recording. The closest I got was using both the mic and the plug in pickup built into the guitar on two different tracks. By bringing the volume of the line in track underneath the mic'd track I got a slightly fuller sound, but still not what I hear in my head.

I probably need a different mic, too. Unfortunately, budget is major factor here. Right now all I have to work with is the Shure KSM27.

Suggestions, tips, tricks? Thanks

[nst7]

Donald M,

Acoustic guitars are often double tracked and panned left and right in the same way as electrics.

But another thing you can try for just one guitar is two mics on it, either a spaced pair or XY placement. Then pan the two apart a little bit. This might be a happy medium-not as wide as double tracking, but a little bigger and wider than just one mono mic panned in the center. You don't even have to pan them all the way to left and right, just a little bit apart.

There's also the mid-side technique, which is beyond my expertise, but someone can chime in here.

[lank81]

One thing that I found worked this past recording of a friend was doing a close mic with the SM57 and using a condenser about 3 ft back, 2 ft up in the air angled towards the speaker. This is something the Beatles did and I found it worked out well. If you can play the same part twice try it with a few different settings on the amp and do a clean track, od track, distortion track but not too heavy of a distortion. The heavier the distortion the less heavy it will sound on the the track. Anyways, I hope some of that helps. Also listen to stuff that Butch Vig produces - Nirvana, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins. There are tons of guitars on those albums and it sounds full and heavy. Different voicings can be done or even some different tempo / accents. Tons you could do really.

[TCM]

Originally Posted by DonaldM

This has been a great thread. I'd like to ask would the same techniques work well for acoustic guitar? I'm an acoustic guitar guy, not electric. I love that deep, rich guitar sound I often hear on good folk recordings (Dan Folgeberg for ex). I have good sounding acoustic guitars with great tone. But I've yet to be able to capture it the way I want for recording. The closest I got was using both the mic and the plug in pickup built into the guitar on two different tracks. By bringing the volume of the line in track underneath the mic'd track I got a slightly fuller sound, but still not what I hear in my head.

I probably need a different mic, too. Unfortunately, budget is major factor here. Right now all I have to work with is the Shure KSM27.

Suggestions, tips, tricks? Thanks

I get great results with a Chameleon Labs TS-1 tube SDC.