| brandondrury wrote on Mon, 23 August 2004 00:24 |
I always double electric guitar and sometimes go crazy with it just for fun.
|
There's your answer right there: More Guitar tracks. Talk to any guitarist these days and he'll tell you:
"We need more guitar tracks."
This is probably one of the mo(i)st significant reasons why recordings today sound so much better than the musty old recordings of yesteryear. You simply cannot have enough guitar tracks. Let me repeat this: No matter how many guitar tracks you have recorded you need more. Much more (o.k. many more). Each guitar out, after passing through an array of effects pedals and, of course, a compression pedal, should be mutled and fed to at least four amplifiers and each one of these should be close mic'ed with at least two SM57's, two ribbon mic's, (Royer 121's, for instance) a tube mic (such as a U67) and a solid-state condenser (e.g.AKG414). That's ten microphones for each one of the four amps so a total of forty tracks. These should be combined with a pair of SDC room mic's (Schoeps, DPA, or Neumann K84's) and a stereo tube condenser mic (e.g. AKG C24, Manley Stereo Gold Reference, etc.). A good trick with a stereo mic is to place the two capsules 0 degrees apart, reverse the phase on one of the preamps and combine the line outs with a Y-cable. Note that you may not hear any actual "audio" on this track but it is adding essential "vibe" to the overall guitar tone. You should also attach a pair of PZM mic's to the wall (to avoid reflections) and mix these in as well. Now you have forty-five tracks, (because two were combined with that Y-cable) which everybody knows isn't enough to get that "big" modern guitar tone.
Absolutely every guitar part--and you'll need at least ten or twelve guitar parts in every section of the song--simply must be doubled or even trebled. So, assuming that your guitarist is lazy any only doubled the part, you now have ninety raw tracks but you'll still need to thicken up that guitar tone for a truly "big" sound. First mult all the tracks five times (for a total of 450 tracks), send the first ninety tracks through an Eventide and lower the pitch by ten cents, then pan the return hard left. Next take the return from the second group of ninety and run them through an Eventide with a boost of ten cents and pan the return hard right. The third group should be run through an Eventide up an octave, the fourth group down an octave, and the fifth group should be unprocessed. These last three groups should be panned dead center.
Now reamp these 450 tracks with a different set of four amplifiers and record these. Mult these 20,250 tracks and reamp the first set of 20,250 through a Pod and the second set of 20,250 through a Sansamp and blend in these 40,500 tracks in with the first 20,700 to taste. Next, you'll need effects, flanging, chorusing, slap echo, tap echo, convolution reverb, outboard reverb, etc., etc. As a start, each one of your 61,200 guitar tracks should be processed with plugins (e.g. Ampfarm) and then sent to a plate, a room, a hall and a church reverb all with stereo returns for a total of 489, 600 reverb returns. If you want a really "big" sound, you may want to put a plug-in reverb such as Altoverb on the effects return from your outboard reverbs, or mult these returns and put the plugin on the first set and leave if off the second set and then blend to taste. A neat trick is to remember that many reverb algorithms will slightly lower the pitch of the reverb tails; Autotune should clear this right up.
Next, remember that guitar tracks need compression--lots of compression--even if you tracked with a compression pedal. The best way to compress your guitar tracks is to mult them all (including the effects return) compress the first set, leave the second set uncompressed and blend to taste. Don't be afraid to chain compressors together to get that "modern" sound. You'll need, at minimum, an 1176, an LA2A, a Distessor an Alan Smart, a Fairchild 670 (or 660) an SSL and a Waves L1, L2, or L3 Plugin compressor. Go ahead and run them all in series with a maximum ratio on each. Next run each track (you should have at least 1,101,600 at this point) through an EQ with a 10db boost around 500Hz and a maximum Q.
Congratulations! You have now successfully recorded one basic electric guitar part. (Unless you want to double the track in thirds, then you will need to repeat the process) You will need at least nine or ten more for an arrangement that really "fills out" the song. After this you should double all the guitar parts with a slide guitar, a pedal steel, a bass VI, a dobro, a tiple, a banjo, and a ukulele.
Finally, I recommend summing out-of-the-box. First, go ahead and bounce your tracks down to a stereo (or 5.1 or 7.1) bus ITB, run this through an L(X) plugin, out to an SSL and back into the DAW. Now mult the bus and reverse the phase on all the tracks of the second bus; run these tracks out of the DAW along with their phase reversed "twin" and combine them with an (OTB) Y-cable and back into the DAW. Presto: A guaranteed modern, "big" sound.
Of course, you could always try the old fashioned method of starting with one great player--playing a great instrument--into one great amp recorded with one well-placed mic into a great preamp. But then you run the risk of a getting a "small" guitar tone like the ones recorded by...well...
Charlie Christian
Dave Davies
Jimmy Hendrix
Wes Montgomery
Johnny Smith
Terje Rypdal
Angus Young
etc....
