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Quad Tracking Guitars?


Aster
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Hello peeps, I've seen the topic brought up a few times so I'll show you how I quad track rhythm guitars.

This example comes from a collab track where I needed to lay down some thick and solid guitar for the rhythm.

I will record two guitar takes that have very tight timing. I recorded these tracks with the treble pickup and kept a consistent style of pick attack. I have more presence in the patch and more treble.

I then record another two tracks but this time I reduce the treble, I reduce presence, I cut the mids. When playing this set of tracks, I put the rhythm pickup on and I hit the strings a lot harder, the muted notes in this example now have 2 fingers muting the string to cut the note into almost a click sound.

I will have my definition tracks mixed left and right but closer to the middle. Both here are at 45% pan. The bassier tracks are fully panned left and right so they have similar audible volume. The timing is a little looser on the filler tracks.

quadtracking.jpg

http://soundcloud.com/asterlius/quad-track-guitars

In the example track you hear the filler first, you can hear there's not much definition, it's very murky.

Then the Definition tracks play and they're really aggressive.

Last you hear both together, it still sounds mostly like the second section but it's much warmer and heavy sounding. Hope this helps someone. 8)

Just remember when mixing to adjust the eq to scoop out some of the 400hz range and 2khz range.

Then add low pass filters to protect the bass and kicks from the rhythm sludge.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Quad-tracking is a good idea, but...

Panning the rhythms like you did is not so common I think, they should be hardpanned together so that the tone is a strong, singular unit on both sides. Again it's a matter of taste, not saying you did it "wrong".

Never ever ever put reverb THAT noticeable on rhythm guitars. EVAR. Also NEVER put reverb on a bass guitar. Just sayin' for anyone who happens to read this.

For quad tracks to work well, they really need to fit together so that it's not noticeable that there are 4 tracks going. That's why I pretty much stopped doing 4 tracks, I may revisit it sometime in the future though. But using a real amp, it would be less a matter of screwing with EQ and more a matter of just moving the mic an inch or two away from the center of the cup just to get a somewhat more low-endy tone. I wouldn't even change the settings on my EQ pedal. But I haven't experimented with that.

I know I recorded quad-rhythms at some point but I don't remember what song I did it on, it could even be one of my earlier mixposts, or one waiting to get posted (like my BadAss track) *shrug*.. wish I could remember so I could point to it as an example..

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I usually do 4 tracks when I want a thick and heavy sound. I do two identical takes though and duplicate them and nudge the copies over about 10-15ms. Guitar rig makes it easier to do this since you can just apply different amps and effects to a duplicate track.

I don't like scooping around 400hz because I hear it affecting the warmth and tone of the guitar too much. Unless there's a lead or vocal that absolutely needs that cut to be heard, I leave it alone, and even then I automate it to just cut when those necessary tracks are playing. I usually just dump the sub-120hz frequencies and do about a 3db cut around 2k and that's it. Unless your pickups are wacky and have abnormal frequency response you shouldn't need to do much else to the guitars.

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  • 2 weeks later...

When I quad track I usually do something like 95/80/80/95 and I try to keeo the gain pretty low (usually about 50% gain on most amps). Gives a nice wall of crunch.

Never ever ever put reverb THAT noticeable on rhythm guitars. EVAR. Also NEVER put reverb on a bass guitar. Just sayin' for anyone who happens to read this.

Yeah, because reverb on rhythm guitars

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Well I ain't talking to Whitesnake, Ozzy, or Metallica! If you start telling people around here it's ok to put reverb on rhythm guitars, you're going to open a can of worms! Do you want that, sixto? Huh? People submitting songs to OCR that have like a 50% reverb send turned on for both rhythm tracks. I think not! Nobody here even makes 80s rock! Not even Willrock! So don't be sassin' me, boy!

Ok, I will concede that I may have been a little over-dramatic, and sixto is right about those songs -- I've even heard reverb on Opeth guitars like on their Deliverance album, but for the sake of not getting into some trouble, save that kind of stuff for far later... I just recently started using reverb on rhythm guitars... And certainly not all the time..

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Reverb done well and correctly for certain types of sounds with Rhythm guitars does work.

Especially for example, if you were trying to mimic a "live concert" type of mix.

Or just trying to get them to fit in to the space you are building with your sound. Which can be subtle or not.

People even use multiple mics on one cab at different mic positions (or with custom made ones) to mimic the small room quality of a recording studio rather than a purely direct approach.

All depends on context and what you want out of it.

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