Guitar Layering...sounding weird...help

symbolofmylife

Hey guys,

So we started tracking our new songs on Friday night. So far the guitars are sounding damn awesome. We are following the layered approach.

Now each of us (2 guitarists) are doing 2 rhythm parts per track. Like mentioned, it's sounding awesome and ballsy as hell!!

But there is a bit of an issue though.

When all 4 guitar tracks are playing at the same time, some sections sound a bit "chorussy", for the lack of a better word. Now, we use 2 different guitars for our individual takes, perfectly tuned and all that bla bla bla. One amp, eq'd differently for every take (thanks to line6's eq savings), and slightly different fx for every take. Also, every take is 100% the same. No playing in different octaves or anything like that.

When my two parts are played in isolation with the other player's two takes muted, it sounds fine, and vice versa. But it's when all of them play in unison that it sounds "chorussy".

Any idea why this is? Is it a phasing thing between the two guitars or something? What's the problem here? Could it maybe be better to at least record all these parts on the same guitar instead of two different?

Any pointers?

DonovanB

Have you tried panning them?

so you have 4 rhythm tracks? all playing the same or similar parts? that will sound chorussy because it is essentially a chorus of guitars. imagine 4 people singing the same words?

symbolofmylife

Donovan Banks wrote: Have you tried panning them?

so you have 4 rhythm tracks? all playing the same or similar parts? that will sound chorussy because it is essentially a chorus of guitars. imagine 4 people singing the same words?

Ya, we've played around with the panning. Still remains.

All guitar tracks playing exactly the same thing.

guidothepimmp

not sure I understood, but, are the guitar parts 100% in sync, ie, no lag issues? miniscule lag on just 1 track may do this ithink

symbolofmylife

guidothepimmp wrote: not sure I understood, but, are the guitar parts 100% in sync, ie, no lag issues? miniscule lag on just 1 track may do this ithink

I am sure they are yes. See, like I mentioned, it's only when both our takes play together. When my two plays solo, it sounds fine, and vice versa.

AlanRatcliffe

Donovan Banks wrote: that will sound chorussy because it is essentially a chorus of guitars. imagine 4 people singing the same words?

+1. Exactly this - Chorus is an attempt to make one player sound like two. It does this by introducing a slightly delayed and modulated sound to mimic the slight difference in timing and pitch you get with two players.

Difficult to say without a clip of the guitars </subtle_hint>, but if it really sounds out, like chorus overdone, you could be describing a comb filtering from a short delay which can be introduced by latency in one track when tracking some of the guitar parts. Zoom into the four tracks and see how well the waves align. If one or more tracks are consistantly lagging behind by a few milliseconds, try dragging the offending track a bit closer in time.

Also, when you say "both perfectly tuned", is it with the same tuner? When you say "slightly different fx" - what FX are you referring to?

symbolofmylife

Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
Donovan Banks wrote: that will sound chorussy because it is essentially a chorus of guitars. imagine 4 people singing the same words?
+1. Exactly this - Chorus is an attempt to make one player sound like two. It does this by introducing a slightly delayed and modulated sound to mimic the slight difference in timing and pitch you get with two players.

Difficult to say without a clip of the guitars </subtle_hint>, but if it really sounds out, like chorus overdone, you could be describing a comb filtering from a short delay which can be introduced by latency in one track when tracking some of the guitar parts. Zoom into the four tracks and see how well the waves align. If one or more tracks are consistantly lagging behind by a few milliseconds, try dragging the offending track a bit closer in time.

Also, when you say "both perfectly tuned", is it with the same tuner? When you say "slightly different fx" - what FX are you referring to?

Hi Alan,

We will check how the tracks line up again.

Yes, tunes with same tuner. The fx are distortion mostly, slightly different sounding each, but without other fx like chorus or flange...just straight distortion.

VellaJ

I agree with all said. I have a question though: If you don't want it to sound like a chorus of guitars, why do you have 4 guitars playing exactly the same thing at the same time?

symbolofmylife

VellaJ wrote: I agree with all said. I have a question though: If you don't want it to sound like a chorus of guitars, why do you have 4 guitars playing exactly the same thing at the same time?

Well, to get that "wall of guitars" sound, in short. A lot of bands have used this approach to get the guitars thicker, including myself in previous projects, and it worked perfectly without it sounding like there's a chorus fx in the chain. Yet this "chorussy" sounding occurrence have not been encountered before.

DonovanB

That wall can be easily created by 2 rhythm tracks, panned hard left and right and some compression.

Although that works best with loads of drive, I've yet to hear a clean wall...

symbolofmylife

Donovan Banks wrote: That wall can be easily created by 2 rhythm tracks, panned hard left and right and some compression.

Although that works best with loads of drive, I've yet to hear a clean wall...

Ya I've also been thinking that we should maybe drop it down to two rhythm tracks.

The clean wall? Challenge accepted...lol

majestikc

This sounds more like a glitch to me, to get a chorusey/phasey sound on mutlitracked guitars you would have to play each of the 4 parts with god like precision and if one is out CONSTANTLY by a millisecond or so it would cause an issue...........so I doubt that's the problem.

Have you checked that one of the tracks doesn't have the "phase switch" engaged or that there aren't issues with the soundcard's setup. What setup are you using? Maybe there's a plugin not reported it's delay properly so your daw isn't compensating for it etc etc etc.

Even 4 sloppy played guitar parts shouldn't cause this, it should just sound like a huge wall/mess of guitar sound.

Malkav

symbolofmylife wrote: Ya I've also been thinking that we should maybe drop it down to two rhythm tracks.

If your looking to make incredibly heavy sounds this is generally the better way to do it, add to that a lot of side chain compression if you want that heavy modern metal sound. Also less drive actually gets you more punch and articulation which you want for heavy sounds, I'd recommend turning down the gain and low end and upping the midrange. In the case of gain it has a cascading effect when you use multiple high gain tracks that can and normally does make the final track quite muddy.

With 4 tracks you've gotta be incredibly tight, and there's a chance that one of you not being as in time as you'd like that's creating said chorussing effect. If everything is only slightly out with 4 tracks it cascades and can be quite unreasonable.

Also for heavy sounds you want it as dry as possible, no delay, no reverb etc - if you wanna add that do it in post production or you take away from the tightness. You've also said that you use slightly different EQs for each take, in most if not all of the interviews with guitarists and producers talking about multi-tracking they prefer to use one sound for each side of the take, I know I've tried using multiple amps and seperate EQs for doing multitracks and the results tend not to be as complimentary as having one good powerful thick sound and just doubling it.