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Fast work flow for editing double tracked guitar


Ninecows

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Hi

 

First of all - I'm very new to logic. I've been using reaper for a decade and before that cakewalk. So I'm generally still struggling to find a good work flow for most things. Anyway here's the deal:

 

I have a basic rock song where I want a double tracked rhythm guitar track panned left/right to get that fat and wide powerful effect.

 

The issue is that my guitarist (that's me :oops: :wink: :lol: ) has a hard time recreating the first take or just doing to somewhat identical takes. He's doing his best but there's too much difference in timing and other stuff, so once in a while (like at least every second bar) the illusion of good double tracked guitar false apart and I'll get sort of a ping-pong effect that is not really what I want.

 

So I have >7 takes now and none of them are identical enough and I cannot maintain the overview once I start chopping them up with the scissor. The flex-tool helps a bit with the timing, but it cannot create stuff that should have been there or the opposite.

 

Any ideas for how to do this quickly? It's getting late and my eyes are getting confused and tired.

 

After this many takes I don't think that more takes will help. And he'll never become Jeff Beck anyways... ;-)

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I'm afraid there's no better way than to learn to play the takes as close as possible. Work on your timing as a guitar player. I haven't heard your recordings so I'm only basing this guess/advice based on your own descriptions obviously. But the best way to double track something is to try to get it as close as humanly possible albeit with a different sound: different guitar, different pedals, different amp. But the timing should be impeccable. Working with a metronome a little every day can help improve your timing.

 

One thing that most musicians focus on is to get their attacks lined up but you also want to line up the positions where you STOP the sound. If you sustain a note a little longer on the left than on the right, it creates a sort of fat-sounding sutained note that is balanced around the center of the stereo field that all of a sudden collapses into a thing-sounding tail end of a note on the left of the stereo field = horrible effect. So pay attention to getting the attacks AND the endings in sync.

 

Tell your guitar player he doesn't need to become Jeff Beck! If more takes won't help, stop recording and go back to practicing a bit, then come back and record 2 good takes.

 

What I'll do (which may be obvious already?) that helps a lot is to steal parts from other positions in the song. Let's say the beginning of the first chorus is impeccable, but at the beginning of the second chorus the left guitar is out of time, I'll just steal the left guitar from the beginning of the first chorus and copy/paste it at the beginning of the second chorus. If you track your guitars dry and use plug-ins for pedals and amps, then you can even use a right guitar for the left and a left for the right...

 

And if you really have to cheat because there's a couple of note you just cannot get to sound in sync, then for those two notes from the best sounding guitar and copy/paste them on the other side, move them ever so slightly ahead or behind: with the different sounding pedals/amps on the two tracks, no one will be the wiser. Don't abuse it but it can help getting that tough part to lock in.

 

If there are still some jarring desynchronized bits, use Flex Time...

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