Doubling Guitar Tracks in REAPER

in this video I'm going to show you doubling guitar tracks in Reaper [Music] so the project set up here with a guitar track drums bass and vocals let's hear it first without the guitar [Music] I'm trying I'm trying best now it's here with the guitar [Music] now let's hear it without the vocal so we can hear the guitar part a bit clearer [Music] as you can tell there's one problem with the production or tracks are mostly coming out of the middle or the center of a stereo image a guitar is pinned in the middle the drums and bass and vocal are all mostly in the middle which you can see in the sconiometer [Music] making our production mostly sound mono typically you want to choose something or a few things to come out of the left and right channels and not the center making the stereo image sound wider and more effective and guitar is a perfect candidate for that having one guitar to the left and a double of it to the right but you could also mimic the effect in a few different ways and we're going to compare that in this video but I also want to mention before we move on that you should really watch this video with a good set of headphones or speakers if your head is between the two speakers really hearing the stereo image now this track was recorded direct to Reaper and we're hearing it back using the amplitude 5 plugin I'm using the free version that looks like this and it's creating the amp sound we're hearing so the first thing you could do is just duplicate this track select it right click duplicate tracks now we have two guitar tracks we could Pan the first one to the left and the second one to the right and let's hear the difference [Music] as you can tell there's no difference the guitar is still coming out of the center [Music] so we didn't really do anything because basically mono is the left side and the right side being the same which is what we created here instead we could trick The Listener into thinking that hearing two different things just by changing one of them a few different ways one way is to delay it in time so it plays back later than the first one so get out of the way to the second track we'll just go to the routing on this track and turn on media playback offset and change the timing right here you can push it ahead or behind typically I'd move it about 30 milliseconds weight and what's here the difference now the right side is a bit later than the left and notice the guitar doesn't sound like it's in the middle anymore let's hear it in the track [Music] we hear in the guitar on the left and right but not really in the center so we're creating that stereo effect without doubling the guitar but there is a problem with this method if we listen Back In Mono or if the listener isn't in the middle of the two speakers it's going to sound like this [Music] sounds like one guitar with a slight chorus or short the way effect doesn't sound very good in mono that's a downside of using this technique although it's still very useful if you don't want to double but you can't double the guitar another thing we could do is change the pitch of the second track go to the second track and I'm going to add the rear pitch plugin which looks like this we can adjust the pitch on the second track right here lower or higher to give the impression that one of the guitars was tuned differently than the other let's pan them left and right again and adjust the pitch [Music] foreign obviously if we go too far it's going to sound at a tune so just a bit will be effective [Music] right about there sounds good let's hear it in the track [Music] so timing is changed along with the pitch giving us the impression that two guitars were performed when really it's just one but this method still has the same problem if we collapse it tamano it still sounds a bit weird it's obviously still one guitar now another thing we could do is change the sound of the amp so if we go to the effects on the second one we can change the setting on the Sam simulator let's just hear the second one and let's change the sound of the amp [Music] let's bring up the preamp and the presence [Music] in the pedal bring up the Distortion and the tone so it's a bit more distorted than the first one sweet champ sounds a bit different again mimicking the sound of two different performances while it's still one [Music] notice the right speaker has more gain than the left let's hear it in the track [Music] let's hear it with the vocal s [Music] so he simulated the effect of two different guitars playing using delay pitch and even changing the sound but it's still not quite as good as actually doubling the part so it's here the difference here's a track that he actually doubled and it has the same preset and everything else exactly the same but the performance is different so the timing pitch and how hard I hit the guitar is going to sound different on every single note creating a more natural and more varied stereo effect let's hear this in Solo [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] notice the part almost sounds sloppy in sections but because they're different they make up for each other and create a more natural stereo effect as they're constantly changing and they're constantly different let's hear it in the track without the vocal [Music] thank you we can still vary it a bit more by changing the amp on the second one let's do the same thing by adjusting the preamp [Music] so it varies more with the sounds being a bit different but it's much more varied Because the actual performance is different it's not a pseudo effect and it'll sound more realistic in mono let's hear that [Music] notice has no phasing or flanging but delay effect sounds more natural in model but it's going to sound a lot wider in stereo let's hear it with the vocal it's hard [Music] thank you [Music] so as you can tell doubling the guitar makes the production sound wider having certain things in the middle While others on the sides or the left and right only and not in the center but there are times we only have one guitar if you're the mixer and you're only given one guitar but sometimes the guitar part is so unique that it's not able to be doubled so in those situations using delay pitch or changing the sound can be very useful but in most situations it's always better to double the guitar in pan one to the left and the other to the right so that's pretty much it that's doubling guitar tracks in Reaper I hope you learned something hope you can use it and I'll see you next time thanks [Music] thank you Bingo boys let's go [Music]

Channel: REAPER Mania

Views: 16,383

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Id: k5xlTkAII5M

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023