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falkon2 9 August 2003

Ever doubled up a track for two totally different purposes? Let's start getting creative!

Some things I've done:

Double a vocal track, run one through a compressor, then mix the compressed track with the dry one - the original dynamics remain, but the volume never dips below a certain threshold thanks to the compressed track.

Double a vocal/lead track, put one through 100% wet reverb, then mess with separate envelopes for both - bump up the reverb at the end of lines or long/emphasized notes. Works wonders with some delay as well.

Doubled up a bass track, use one for >400Hz (everyting above 400 is cut drastically) and another one for some crisp high-end. What I do is boost 1-1.5kHz on this track, then overdrive it, then take the 2-6kHz range of the resulting harmonic white-noise mess. It really works once you get the relative levels down pat, believe it or not. The low-end track retains the solid feel, while the overdrive track adds sweetness to a frequency range not usually reached by the bass.

Doubled-up kick-drum track... one dry and EQ'ed, the other used to retrigger an impulse of white noise boosted at 4-10kHz and run through a hall reverb unit at 50% wet/dry mix. It's almost the same trick as the bass - get some high-end not usually reached by the instrument, and give it the airy, open feel of a large hall, while not compromising the tightness and solidity of the low end.

Any other ideas for doubled-up tracks, or fancy aux sends, or enveloping?

Edit: Whoops, just to clarify, by "double-up", I mean copy/pasting - an exact duplicate, not rerecording the same part

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Comments

Opus2000 Sat, 08/09/2003 - 16:28

When I double vocals I typically copy the track and add a delay to it to give it the seperation needed for the stereo imaging. Simply copying a track and paaning it does nothing but make it a double mono signal.

I rarely find the need to double a bass track but sometimes if I am given a song to mix where there is a bass amp track and a bass DI track I will pan them very slightly and add a little bit of grunge to the amp track to give it a little punchiness...it really depends on the style of the song though.

Kick drum..typically only if the kick itself doesn't have any punch to it will I add anything. Even still the main thing I will do is use the program Drum-a-gog to have another kick drum be triggered.

That being said there's a waves plug in called the Doubler which is fantastic for getting that natural chorus doubling feel!

Opus

Alécio Costa Sat, 08/09/2003 - 22:22

if you copy an acoustic guitar part, once it was recorded in mono, and slightly delay it to make a false LR couple, add PAZ to verify anti-phase. SImportant to obeserve, sometimes, what can sound fine for ears is not exactly what would be ok for mono summing, specially if you are adding efx like chorus, reverbs and so.
Also, with stereo content or doubled tracks, check the latency ( delayplugs).

falkon2 Sun, 08/10/2003 - 00:50

Hell yeah. Drumagog rocks!

I really wish there was an easier way to "draw" the thresholds on the thing, though. Maybe an envelope shown across the waveform would have been a much more flexible alternative.

Just thought of another common use - precision de-essing - Double vocals, dry track goes through compressor, EQ-boosted track at sibiliant or pop frequencies goes into side chain.

Though sometimes I prefer to just split hi/low then multiband compress to get rid of certain pops - it sounds more balanced.

falkon2 Sun, 08/10/2003 - 07:50

Yeah... I've always found a good chorus FX preferable to duplicate/delay, though you're right - rerecording is preferable to both.

Oooh, just remembered. Ever tried those sweeping EQ effects and wanted more surgical precision in getting only specific frequencies? (Usually you have to boost like crazy and drastically reduce overall volume if you want only a specific band to be heard)

Copy/paste a track, invert the copy, then parametric EQ the copy with a really slight boost (give or take 3dB tops, maybe 0.5 - 1 Q), then use automation to control the center frequency of the EQ.

Because the two tracks are reverse polarity to each other and mixed at equal volume, the only sound that comes out is the *difference* between the two tracks, which is whatever changes are made by the EQ.

Works great on snare rolls.

falkon2 Sun, 08/10/2003 - 08:25

Holy cow... a little experimentation with the above technique yielded some really interesting possibilities.

I have this two-track where the kick doesn't have enough click (It's all but inaudible on systems which can't reproduce low frequencies).

I did the copy/invert/EQ thing, and used a single band of EQ with very high Q centered around 45Hz. The resulting waveform was near-silence that peaked every time the kick went off - even not much of the bass made it through thanks to the narrow Q.

I fed this into Drumagog which retriggered another kick sample that had undergone the same surgical process of taking only specific frequencies. I took only the "snap" part of the sample by doing about 0.3Q at 4kHz.

What does this mean? I have Drumagog playing a snap sound everytime a kick is detected in the original track. Mix back with the original track, and boom, suddenly the kick has some extra snap which is right on time. (Had to delay the original track by a few milliseconds to get it right smack on top of each other, though).

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