Why Electric + Acoustic Guitars Get Double Tracked (and NOT copy pasted)

previously on signals music studio now what's important here is that you have to record the part twice you can't just copy paste it in your daw you actually have to record it twice and it has to be as close to perfectly identical as you can get i'm jake lizio and in this video we're going to explore the effect of double tracked guitars why should you be double tracking when should you be double tracking and more importantly what does it sound like and what is the effect that we are given it's important that this is a demonstration and it's meant to be heard as well as seen so i really suggest you listen to this on a decent set of speakers or a pair of headphones and do not listen to it just coming out of your cell phone or a cheap portable speaker either i actually suggest you listen to this on headphones and speakers so you can actually hear some of the differences between how these phenomena come across through each of those mediums so let's get started i've written this little rock riff in a minor it's being recorded on my electric guitar through the instrument cable into my interface onto one track this is recording in mono mono means one [Music] [Applause] [Music] now if i play back this mono track and as long as my panning knob is set in the center then what we will hear is the identical thing in our left speaker as we hear in our right speaker [Applause] you can think of a mono signal as being one sound and half of it gets sent to one speaker and half gets sent to the other speaker now let's take this track and pan it all the way to one speaker and now let's duplicate this entire track but pan it all the way to the other speaker and now let's listen to what both of these sound like at the same time [Music] [Applause] now compare this to the single mono track we heard before [Applause] do you hear a difference there is a difference it's a subtle one some people will say that that first one sounded better than the second one and i would agree and that's because the first one was louder that's the only difference and loud things usually sound better so we're still not utilizing the stereo effect here remember stereo means two it means we have two different signals whatever's coming out of my left speaker is different than what's coming out of my right speaker so let's try to create some differences between what happens in each speaker i'll keep these copy pasted tracks in place but what i will try to do is slightly offset one of the tracks so they are no longer playing at the exact same time to do this i'm just going to take one of the tracks and add a simple delay to it i'll turn the wet dry up to 100 so the entire signal gets processed and then i'll turn the feedback down to zero so there are no repeats i'll switch off from quantize mode and delay this entire track forward by about 30 milliseconds and now if we press play take a listen to what this effect is [Music] hopefully you agree that's drastically different than just copy pasting something now i encourage you to experiment with how far away can you offset something before it starts sounding unlistenable there's a principle known as the haas effect that states that under 40 milliseconds two different tones can sound like the same produced note so pushing past that haas principle of 40 milliseconds into something like 60 milliseconds starts to create more differentiation between both parts and it gets a little sloppier and at a 100 millisecond offset the difference becomes striking and very disorienting now let's listen back to these two tracks where one is just delayed by 30 milliseconds since these two signals are being completely separated in the stereo field we're not experiencing the phasing effect that many people talk about but if we sum up this entire track to motto or if we simply put both of these tracks into the center instead of panning them left and right listen to how different it sounds so once again here's these two tracks panned hard left and right and here they are both in the center that wishy-washy effect is known as phasing and it's something that many producers try to avoid but you'll probably agree that it's kind of cool so there's a lot of times where you actually want phasing now let's try something different instead of offsetting our rhythm let's just try changing the tone of one of these recordings so we'll still have a copy pasted recording but instead of using the exact same amplifier preset on one i'll change my amplifier preset on the second one to something pretty different and now if i keep these hard panned left and right you can hear what that sounds like so i think these are drastic improvements over how we started by just playing a single track and mono but i really don't think that any of these techniques compare to the power of an actual double track where you actually get on your guitar and you re-record note for note everything that just happened the reason this works so well is because i am trying my hardest to recreate that riff a hundred percent but i will always fail i will always be off by milliseconds my pick stroke will always hit a slightly different angle which will create a slightly different transient which will create these subtle little variations so by panning these two performances left and right we get a complete full stereo effect with far less of the phasing issue that many producers try to [Music] [Applause] [Music] avoid [Music] now hopefully you agree that that sounds really good but this is a matter of taste and preference too there are certain kinds of songs where you're not going to want tight punchy guitars and you might want something a little fuzzier like these fake double tracks but for most modern rock and metal compositions double tracked guitars are a must they're one of the core components of the mix one thing to look out for in metal songs is when they just drop out one of the double tracks so you're left with just a single guitar in one speaker and it sounds kind of wimpy but then later on the other guitar comes roaring in with the bass and the drums and things sound a lot bigger you can hear this little trick right after the last chorus in enter sandman by metallica [Music] now we've already gone through the work to double track this so we might as well just record one more performance and call it a triple track this one will just plop dead center and we'll raise it up in the mix just to add more flavor to it i'm also going to record this third track on a completely different guitar amp and that way i'm mixing in a new flavor of tones all together [Music] [Applause] [Music] now there's no denying that this is a much richer sound than where we started where we were just working with a mono track but once again it all comes down to taste and preference but i really do want to comment that the real magic of triple tracked guitars comes when there is a bass guitar also playing and when there's a drummer also playing most of the energy this is one thing i've learned out has learned as a producer most of the low end energy the real punch from a guitar comes from the bass and the drums so the guitars are actually filling in more of the mid-range space and the high end space and not so much of that low end space [Music] [Applause] [Music] now let's completely shift gears here and talk about acoustic guitar instead i'm gonna record myself strumming a simple c major to a minor [Music] and what you're hearing is the signal recorded from a single microphone a shure sm57 and this sounds fine a single mono acoustic guitar sounds really good in my opinion if you're doing kind of like a lo-fi indie emotional intimate acoustic-y folk song i don't want to hear over-produced guitars for something that's supposed to feel much closer for something that's supposed to feel you know more sparse and that's supposed to be more honest i think something like this actually works just fine but the most common way to record an acoustic guitar is to have two microphones on it so i actually have the other sm57 recording as well and the signal that microphone recorded does sound different than my initial signal take a listen so what i'm going to do is take that signal and pan it all the way to one speaker and then take the other microphone signal and pan it all the way to the right speaker and this gives me a stereo recording of an acoustic guitar [Music] i think this sounds much better than a mono recording because each ear each speaker is getting its own independent signal and yes it's the same performance but the signal is different the way the microphone is placed the way that the microphone the electronics and the microphone you're not hearing the exact same thing in each speaker and that comes very obvious when you split them apart like that now for a different kind of double track what you could do is take everything we just recorded and throw it all into one speaker then re-record things with both microphones and then throw that all into the right speaker i think this works really good for a part like what we're hearing right now acoustic strums with a little bit of picking i feel it really fills up the stereo field it gets very twinkly the little tiny mistakes and discrepancies get sloppy but in a twinkly kind of good way not only does this technique work really good if you're doing strummed chords but if you're just picking through arpeggios i highly recommend doing as many tracks as possible if you're trying to get a more ethereal tone for example here's some arpeggios in d major with just acoustic guitars panned hard left and hard right and for a track like this i think it's a really good idea to complement that with an extra guitar layer of electric guitar instead so really just mimicking the exact same parts on electric guitar and that will float in really well on top of those acoustic layers often what i'll do is i'll remove a lot of the low end from my electric guitar and i'll maybe add some chorus and some compression but it's just a lovely extra guitar layer for acoustic parts like this [Music] now where i really would not double track an acoustic guitar and that means record it two times i wouldn't do that if it's more of a jammy improvisational acoustic-y bluesy kind of thing something with lots of hits and pops and percussion stuff that stuff can be a real mess if you try to double track it because then you're getting very very loud discrepancies as opposed to subtle ones take a listen to the beginning of taylor by jack johnson it starts off with this cool acoustic lead which is not double tracked but then a lot of the rest of the song has multiple acoustic layers because you just don't want to double track for that acoustic that acoustic intro that lead sticks out really nice and fine as just a single mono layer and yes it may have been recorded in stereo but it certainly wasn't double tracked so there are a ton of options when it comes to the stuff i'm only showing you the very basics and trying to explain to you why you should be really considering learning to double track and being able to record your parts twice in a row three times in a row four times in a row one it's really good practice and two this is what happens in studio sessions there's this strange idea that playing perfectly is somehow not rock and roll but i'm sorry go listen to metallica albums from the 80s there was no click track back then there were metronomes but they weren't recording digitally and they're right on time because they were playing their parts perfectly multiple times that's what happens with good rock musicians listen to steely dan listen to you know van halen they were doing their job and they were doing it very well so there's nothing anti-rock and roll about playing on time and being able to repeat your parts over and over again it's one of those silly myths that i'm not sure where it came from and i'm encouraging you to dispel of that myth as soon as you can the simple fact is that your favorite rock icons were able to recreate their own parts time and time again accurately and that's what helped them get such a great studio tone the only thing i didn't mention in this video that i probably showed up was unison leads and that's double tracking a lead guitar it doesn't happen a lot but randy rhodes was known to do this quite a bit so you can hear the effect in some of his songs but you can basically get a lot of the exact same effect just by putting on a chorus or a flanger or some other similar sounding device so the trend of double tracking solos has kind of faded away with time also it's really hard to do there were very few players that could do it besides randy rhodes and lastly if you'd like a little bit more information on this topic i do encourage you to watch my video on john lennon's imagine that has double tracked pianos and i do go into a little bit of detail on what the effect is there in that production as well so i hope you enjoyed this video i hope you learned something if you did enjoy this video please thank my patreon supporters for making these videos possible they are wonderful people and they are the only reason that these videos exist so if you'd like to support the production of these videos you can consider joining them at my patreon or you can consider buying my music theory course available on my website or my ultimate modal poster so thanks for watching i'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Signals Music Studio

Views: 1,173,083

Keywords: jake lizzio, dole mansion, crystal lake, free lesson, guitar lesson, cool guitar, play solos, how to play guitar, music production, producing guitars, double tracked guitars, double tracking, double track electric, double track acoustic, haas effect, producing rock guitars, producing rock, rock guitar recording, recording gutiar, recording guitar, recording rock guitar, producing rock guitar, stereo guitars, guitar stereo, double tracking guitars

Id: iu1P-cAhWJw

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021