Should You Quad Track When Recording Metal Guitars? | VQA31
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Should you even bother quad tracking when recording metal guitars?
Also, is it a good idea to clip your guitars in your mix?
Welcome to "Viewer Questions Answered" Episode #3
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Bobby always has the best information, tips, and tricks for recording and mixing metal. Absolutely one of the best channels on the internet. Thanx for everything you do, Bobby.
He is awesome
Man since I applied your tips for a distorted bass I prefer 2 guitar left and right. Not a fan of clipping guitars too.
Balance is the key for sure dude. I don't use a bus comp on the master ever. 2 limiter trick is my favourite way.
I so agree with everything you've said. Double-tracking each guitar is just not worth it. Unless the guitar on the left and the guitar on the right are double tracked so they lock in perfectly, you can occasionally get this weird chorus-like effect when the tracks aren't locked in perfectly on fast melody lines, especially those played with a lot of legato. What I've found is that nothing beats a simple pair of hard-panned guitars. Maiden's Live After Death is a good example of how effective a simple hard-panned guitar on the left, and a simple hard-panned guitar on the right can be. I've tried panning guitars slightly inward, but it just never sounds right. Hard panning is super simple and works great with close-miked guitars. The one thing I've noticed in a home recording environment is that the recorded guitars can sound quite woolly, but that seems to be the nature of close-mic'd tones. If I had a nice live room, I'd try adding a room mic (Martin Birch did that on The Number of the Beast and on Piece of Mind, with the latter being one of my all-time favorite productions) to get that tight low end and thick midrange that one gets at a distance from a cab, but in a home recording situation, close-miking is really the best option.
Dude Im loving your videos....
I live outside of the United States. Where I live most people can't afford to buy new drum heads, and bass strings. I made a drum sample kit on logic and just used that. I didn't sample over their performance. I would fade in the sample just enough to get to sound clean. Now I have my own drum kit but drums and bass would constantly be a issue. Most bands excepted it, specially when I would show them the difference. Listen to their drums then turn on the sample kit on top of their kit. It took me forever to do it, but I needed to make money. Now I am pretty steady booked, so if they don't have something that sounds good and they still want to use it I absolutely would turn them down.
I quad track all the time, however I try to ensure that I use different guitar sounds. So for example, play the rhythm guitar part twice, identically, using the same guitar, then pan them left and right. Then repeat the process for lead guitar, using a different guitar, or a different amp, different pickup, or in a different position on the neck, or all of those variations. Consistently sounds great.
Awesome tips as always. I usually quad track my guitars just in case. If i feel that some points of the song needs more clarity, I just remove two tracks. I prefer remove something rather than re-record a guitar track in different condition than the others.
Btw, do you have some news about the mixing challenge? 😁
Yeah, i'd like an update on that too :)
I've been quad tracking my heavy guitars. I tried just double before, and it sounded too thin to me. It may have been that I didn't try hard enough to get a thick sound with double. I may try double tracking again, see what I think of it now that I'm a bit better.
thanks for the reply. I had seen a couple people quad tracking and was wondering if it was worth all the time and trouble to do it. Probably not worth it most of the time i would guess.
This was very helpful! Question, do you doubletrack your bass ever?
I was just talking to my friend about guitar levels going in to the daw. He still has the mindset of red on the channel is best for signal to noise ratio. I told him being digital it can be much lower to give headroom, its digital. It's an old school thought but only works with old school analog gear. Thanks for the great tips.
yes, red is DEFINITELY not good when recording digitally.
hey bobby, maybe you've been asked that already but I probably missed it.
How do you deal with loudness when it comes with youtube, Spotify and other streaming services.
Thanks for all you do.
Davi
I have had good outcome when I quad track. I usually hard pan the guitars I want as my main tone and hard pan a separate tone (usually something more mid range) but turn them down in the mix so they’re just filling things out. This is probably not ideal but I’ve had good outcome with it. At least for me it gets the tones I want
I wish u had more followers dude.
Also I have a question about Reaper cliping..
So my DI track is not clipping at all, but reaper is saying the track is too loud, when it's clearly not... I'm rly confused
I quad tracked some tracks before. Lots of work for a tiny payoff. Also clipping into a track causes a massive amount of noise
When you said Birch Custom kit, I thought you meant the Yamaha Absolute Birch Custom kit, which is expensive as hell. I think you meant the Stage Custom (Birch) which is easy to find and decently priced, and actually a great kit! I've had one of those since the early 2000's
4 tracking is really, really nice. Especially if you use different amps per track.
But what I usually do is 2 rythm guitars (left/right) and duplicate them to reamp them f.i using on one side a Engl Extreme Aggression in combination with a jcm800+hm2 (duplicated track) and the other side a soldano +jcm setup.
That's a good idea, you get extra depth without having to double the amount of takes
Hey, Bobby. What psi do you tune your drum heads to? Thanks.
I cannot imagine recording a metal track without quad-tracking. I used to abhor it but now I love it. I think rock is a genre where you can get away with double tracking, but metal? At least 4 tracks.
How do you quad track 4 perfectly seems impossible without punching in parts /
Love you Bobbaaaaaaaaay
Thanks Bobby.
I wonder do you ever use 3 guitar tracks?
L R and middle guitar
I know it from a local band. Sounds great sometimes tho
Thanks Bobby
It depends. The middle spot is where drums and bass sit. Rhtythms hard right and left. Leads can go up the middle too
I do that, but the centre track is usually a thin, nasty little tone mixed low so that you really only notice it in a few spots here and there during the song. My band has usually had three guitars, with me playing the lower volume centre part. I'm the lead singer, so I just turn my guitar up until I can hear it, then turn it down a bit. You don't really notice that there is a third guitar, until it's not there.
Just try it, and mute the centre track on and off to see if it's worth having.
Personally, I like to have a guitar in the centre to glue the other two together, but I think if you can hear it, it's probably too loud.
A question about guitar layering.
What do you do if you want to use two amps to create one guitar sound?
For instance, I’m currently tracking rhythm guitars, and I’ve found a really nice tone by using a fender and a soldano together, so I’m in theory quad tracking, but I’m using two different amps to each side.
How would you go about this situation?
Misha from Periphery and Lassa Lammert do something similar to that. What they do is pan one of the amps 100% left/right and the other amp slightly inside, but they each balance the amps differently. I think Lassa treats one as the primary tone and ducks the other amp a few dB below it while Misha keeps them equal but I might have that backwards. I actually enjoy overcomplicating my life at every possible moment so I keep it at 2 tracks, one amp on each, and pan them 70% L/R then use a stereo widener on the bus to get it to sound like 100% wideness. It does sound slightly different and I like it better because even on headphones you get a slightly more live feeling of a band with 2 guitarists and hearing a mixed tone of both amps, but it's certainly more involved.
A Lot of things we learn or hear is about not metal. So, we stick with those things that we can't apply on metal.
I agree!
Nice videos! I've been mixing for some years now and I even stated to have paying clients. All thanks to channels like yours, so thanks for that!
Question:
What I feel most missing from my mixes compared to the top mixes is depth, like the clear perception of some instruments being further back and others closer to the listener. I kind of do it by ear and common sense, but I lack knowledge on the area. Could you help, please?
All the best
As far as guitars, how do you handle when you have two players playing two different parts? Still one on one side and one on the other or do you double track each and hard pan each?
What, like a dual solo? Like Megadeth? Pan one each way. Don't overthink it
I had an engineer ask me to quad track only once. He liked to do it for his chunky old school stuff that was pretty simple. For more technical stuff it’s just a mess. If it’s not PERFECTLY edited you have weird phasey artifacts. I ended up having Bobby take the 2 best takes of the 4 and remix it 😂
The good ol' days!
What do you think of using a compressor on the guitar bus to kinda glue your guitars together?
Update: I see you kinda addressed that.
Hey Bobby, can you talk about where your RMS level is averaging when you are recording the DI signal for rhythm guitars?
Shoot for yellow but never red, palm mute to see where you peak. Thats the sweet spot
Anywhere between -15 and -5db. I don't worry about it too much, I just make sure I don't clip on the way in.
@@FrightboxRecording Thank you!
@@erickmazur807 Thank you, sir.
Counter: I run stereo at all times, do I need a quad?