Duplicating a mono guitar track for stereo.

In general- Track it a second time. It'll sound better than if you fuss with a duplicate of the original.

The double track effect (where I play two parts) isn't what I'm going for here. I'm trying to get a solo to sound more "stereo" and, free up space in the center of the stereo field. During the solo the sound breaks down to 3 piece. Guitar, bass and drums. Drums are panned, bass center, guitar as described above.

That's what I'm asking about. What are some of the "many ways" to do this?

GrottoRob....that's the Judge in your avatar!

I ride a 2001 V92C.  Do you ride a Vic?

So... you want a stereo sound from a mono source? 

Bouncing and using FX and off sets of a few milliseconds can work.... they do have a unique and distinctive sound. Be careful of the comb filtering that may occur with this.  I have been known to use this a time or two.

Recording a duplicate track is another method..... and since it it generally not an identical track comb filtering is usually not an issue...(but can occur) and offsetting the time is not needed. 

On a lead, this may take some effort to get it exact so it doesn't sound sloppy.  

I do use record twice ALL ...well most of the time on acoustic guitar and electric rhythm. The tracks don't even have to be exact... just close....it works to give some interest to the 2 parts. 

No matter what you do to make a mono guitar solo into a "true" stereo track will be obvious. 

The question is... does it work in the song, and do you like how it sounds? 

Ok those are all good things to try. If I were to nudge a track...Is there a way to nudge it accurately to say 10ms? Or is this a see it, hear it deal? Sorry I'm at work and don't have Sonar 8.5 in front of me right now. I'll play with all of your ideas when I get home. What I did sounds good but, I thought there has to be a better way of doing this simple thing. Thanks

The haas effect is what most are describing. You can do that with either a clone of the track or use a hard panned delay on a buss. Basically pan one track hard right, and then a copy of that track (or use a delay) that is panned hard left. Delay the hard left version by somewhere between 1 & 35 msecs and then lower the volume slightly as well - about 3dB lower is a good starting point.

You'll end up with a big sound that still appears to have it's source from the right. It works very well on distorted guitars. Don't over do it though. As a rule of thumb I only use it on a couple of tracks per mix.

If you want to learn a lot more about that and mixing techniques in general "Mixing Audio" by Roey Izhaki is a great investment. There's a DVD with audio examples so you can hear all the techniques he writes about. Worth every penny.

This is all good stuff. Thanks guys and/or girls. I've got some reading to do...hahaha. With your help I've been able to acheive the desired effect for the guitar solo I'm mixing. Now I'll study and practice to get a better understanding of what i actually did!

In Craig Anderton's latest Sonar video he took an acoustic guitar track, cloned it, panned them hard left and right. Next he put an EQ set something like at 200, 400 ,800 ,and 1600Hz with a fairly high Q with like somewhere around 8db, -8db, 8db,-8db on the gain knob and then the same settings on the other track except the gains were at -8db,8db,-8db,8db to alternately boost and cut the bands. I tried it once. it's not super wide but it does enhance the stereo image and there is no phase problems like you would get with slightly delaying the cloned track.

This little freebie is worth investigating

Bristol_Jonesey


This little freebie is worth investigating

I found that same thing while googling the "haas" effect. I'll download it sometime and try it.

Dang!

I keep on forgetting how versatile the CT plug is.

Thanks for the reminder Dave