Have you ever wondered how to get that really fat, wide, electric guitar sound? There is a technique that has been around since the days of analog recording. It's call automatic double tracking.
It's original purpose was to create a wide stereo sound from a single mono track. Today this technique can be used on a stereo file as well within your DAW.
In this quick tip video, I'll show you how I use automatic double tracking to widen out a stereo electric guitar in my mix. Be sure to click share and also leave a comment below after you view this video.
Thank you for the video, very interesting. I just mixed a song, using copy and paste to double track, then I set each track to left and right respectively. This for solo acoustic guitar. I put eq reverb and limiter on a bus. I double tracked mainly to get more volume. I just checked it out and it sounds good in my car!
Hi david I’ve just watched your video and I couldnt download the Automatic Double Tracking plugin cause the page doesnt exist anymore ..Could you send me the link please?
Take a look here Paulo. http://www.nullmedium.de/dev/audioplugins/
Hi Dave. I just tried this real quick in Reaper. Seems I lose some bottom end. But again I just tried it out for a couple of minutes. Don’t know what the other controls do. Tried sliding them around and could get panning effect but could not recover the lower frequency’s. This VST sounds like what I need though. I’ll have to play with it more. Being poor and not able to pay for the good quality VSTs. I have come to rely on tricks the old timers used In the past with out the use of gadgets. I have tried double tracking by copying one stem and placing it next to the other to fatten up a particular part. I usually pan one stem L and the other R to various degrees, and maybe nudge one track or the other a few ms. Maybe ad chorus or EQ on one track or the other. Anyway I’m still new at this, always trying new things. Especially if they are free. Thanks for the tip!
I’ve never noticed losing a lot of bottom on guitar however… I never have any lows below 150Hz in the sides of my mix anyways. This keep the low end concentrated to the middle and in mono which how the human ear perceives low. If you had a lot of heavy guitars like in a metal song or something, you could get by with a bit more lows but much below 100 starts to feel very unnatural. Thanks for the comment.
Ok after reading up more on this plugin and playing around with it again, I found out it makes a difference to use a mono track not stereo. I just happened to use an old gutar track that was in stereo. I split it and tried it again. Big difference this time. Works pretty good!
Great!
Do you happen to know if this plug in will work with Mixcraft6?
If Mixcraft can run VST plugins than yes, it will work.
Unfortunately the plug in does not work on Pro Tools. But I am going to try it on FL Studio anyway. Thanks a lot! Does this aplly for any kind of instrument? Acoustic guitars e.g?
Yes, this will work in many other tracks as well. Though I often record acoustic with two mic any can pan to get the same affect.
Re: acoustic guitars. A simple process if you use acoustic/electric guitars is to mike the guitar through one channel clean and route the line out to another channel and incorporate whatever effects like reverb, compression etc into that track and then bounce the two down to one track later on in the mixing mastering. Creates a really full wooden sound and helps diminish the flat sounding of an electrified acoustic guitar.
Interesting idea Martin. Thanks for sharing.
Very cool David! Do ypu have any tips on mastering in Studio One?
I just finished this song using Studio one v2 tell me what you think.
http://www.soundcloud.com/michaelbmusic/shepherd-song
Hey Michel, thanks for the link. On mastering with Studio One, I don’t actually use that DAW so I don’t have any specific input there. On mastering the first thing is to start with a great mix. Then go from there. I did an episode talking about what mastering actually is intended to accomplish. You might find that helpful. Check it out here. https://homemusicstudio1.com/ep-25-mastering/
Bottom line though is your trying to make sure the mix is balanced freq wise and bring up the volume as well as decrease the dynamic range a bit. All of this is done primarily with EQ, Compression and Limiting. So you’d need a good clean EQ, both a multiband and stereo compressor, and a good mastering limiter. Perhaps Studio One has these options in its default plug-ins? If not, take a look at the replugs from reaper. They can be downloaded as a VST here http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/index.php
On the mastering process, I am covering this as part of the Backstage Coaching Club training. You can look at that more here. https://homemusicstudio1.com/home-music-studio-recording/
Thanks David,
Thanks for your time and input.
As far as signal processing tools that are not virtual. What are the must haves on a reasonable budget for my home studio?
Thanks,
Michael Burke
http://www.fountainoflifemusic.com
All depends on what type of talent and how many tracks your trying to record at one time. Outside of my audio interface and a good power conditioner (or 2), the only outboard tool I use is an older model DBX compressor, this is just for my voiceover work and I don’t do any tracking with this.
If your wanting to recording more than a few tracks at one time or have a better monitoring options (live FX and separate monitor feeds) than a typical audio interface, then you might wan to consider a mixer. Again, all depends on your goals.
I do have an external headphone amp that I use from time to time. This just allows me to blend the output signal from multiple audio interfaces (I use one for voice narration and the other for my DAW).
Thanks, David. I don’t think I’d have thought to further widen a track this way. Sounds cool too.
Ya, this really has a lot of uses as long as you don’t go overboard. One little tip there is to check your mix in mono. You can lesson the delay time is thing start to disappear when listening in mono. Thanks for the comment Tom!