I've been recording a lot of stuff lately just to get the hang of it. I'm basically building my songs, orchestrating them if you like. I'm gonna re-record everything once everything is finished, good guitar sound is not something I'm after right now. Besides there's lots of advice on the forums just for that. Now I have this little question for you guys.
Let's say I have 3 guitars playing simultaneously on a part of a song. Guitar 1 panned left, Guitar 2 panned right and Guitar 3 is in the center. Guitar 1 and 2 play rhythm, each one of them playing basically the same thing apart from some 7th notes being played on Guitar 2. Guitar 3 plays a melody. Let's call this Part A of the song. On the next part (Part B) There's only one guitar playing just rhythm. The level difference between Part A and Part B is quite noticeable. Part A is louder than Part B.
How do you get both of the parts sound the same levelwise?
My recording technique consists of recording a guitar part twice and then panning each take left and right. I did a little bit of research and a few people recommend quadrupling the guitars. Wouldn't that sound very muddy?
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kostein wrote: How do you get both of the parts sound the same
My first question would be why is there only one rhythm guitar on part B of the song? The whole reason for dubbing guitars is to make them sound sound fatter. If you just have one guitar playing rhythm it won't sound as fat. Furthermore, if one part of the song has the guitar dubbed and the next part doesn't, then it's probably going to sound awkward no matter what.
Also, on part B of the song is the one rhythm guitar panned hard right or left, or is it in the middle? If it's panned then of course the volume is going to be lower because it's only coming out of one speaker.
One solution to the problem is volume automation. Just raise the volume on that part of the song. If you have a DAW this will be very easy.
If you don't have any way to run automation then one possible solution would be to bus all the guitars to the same compressor, that way making the volumes more even.
But the best thing to do would be just over dub that part with another guitar that way you don't have to worry about anything.
Well you shouldn't really have to concern your self with muddyiness as long as your running your guitars through high pass filters.
The real problem when overdubbing is tighness. Some times when you have alot of guitars playing the same part is starts to sound sloppy, and not as tight.
The best thing to do is overdub as many guitars as possible until it starts to sound sloppy.
One method of ovedubbing lots of guitars but still keeping them tight is to quantize them. Which means making every note perfectly on. This however can be a very long and difficult process. I myself have never tried it, although I plan to soon.
Hope this helps 8-)