left right

Hi all,
Am I correct that making a clone track of my acoustic and then panning one left 90% or so, and one right 90%, I end up with one track dead center with no pan, or am I getting a wider sound with left and right 90% each?  Is it best to change the EQ of one side to make it stand different? Thanks for your help!

A lot of hardware synths use the concept of "multisamples", where they activate as many as two, four, or more samples with each keypress.

A really pretty piano sound can contain samples from two or more pianos, a couple of violins or string sections, as well as a bell, chime, or xylophone, along with a few dozen internal EQ's, reverbs, a delay or two, and other effects.  Even with all that going on, a lot of people would still call it a piano.

I know this doesn't help you with your acoustic guitar recording, but I thought it might help contribute to general understanding.  Maybe you'll win a trivia contest one day.

Bristol_Jonesey

kmsomethingmore


Hi all,
Am I correct that making a clone track of my acoustic and then panning one left 90% or so, and one right 90%, I end up with one track dead center with no pan, or am I getting a wider sound with left and right 90% each?  Is it best to change the EQ of one side to make it stand different? Thanks for your help!

To answer your questions, 1 - you're right - all you're listening to is mono
2, doesn't matter what you do with the EQ, as you need to introduce pitch and/or time variations to get a stereo spread.
 
You could try nudging the clone up/down a few cents and/or a few milliseconds, but don't be surpirsed if the result is horrible.
 
The best way is to do what droddey suggets, and record the thing twice. Now you can pan it and it will sound huge.
 
When recording the second take, try using a slightly different playing/picking technique, but also try and get the rhythm as close to the original as possible.

+1

in case you have melodyne, you can import your recording there and use a special preset they have which moves every single note randomly by 5-10 ms. usualy they do it in vocals and I have never tried it on a guitar, but i think that it'll work.

try going 100% hard left/right with the 2 tracks...

leave one alone.
move the other somewhere between 20-40ms. i'd move it back on the timeline (AFTER the original signal)

mix them at the same volume (you can link them to move together) for a upfront sound....

or, blend the 2nd moved track more to the background, and let the original stand louder, basically you'll move the 'panning' towards the original.

you could also put a reverb on the cloned-moved track, and move it back even further..
there are a hundred different variations of this theme....

only time and experimentation will tell you what works for you.


i prefer what philip suggested, which would be to actually play the part again, and pan them hard L/R, and blend.

I would say though, even if you play it twice, which is very preferable, nudging the two parts 20 or so MS apart from each other will drastically widen them and reduce how much they have in common (which is the same as saying drastically reduce how much they have in the middle of the stereo image.)

As mentioned, it has to be more than just a few MS, which often just makes it worse due to cancellations. Once you get somewhere up above 15ms to 20ms, it starts really widens out. You might want to slightly play with the relative volumes once you do that, to reduce any apparent difference in timing, i.e. the last one heard might now slightly louder since it happens later, that kind of thing.

But with two really differently played parts, which using a complementary tone, and then nudged, it can become very wide. Also keep in mind that our ears are much more directional at higher frequencies. So if you really want it to sound wide, reduce the low frequency content. That's partly why if you have something like a shaker or really high passed tinkly acoustic guitars hard panned they really sound like they out there a long way because it has very little low frequency content, and becomes very directional.

+1 for recording two different takes and panning hard left and right.  You'll be suprised at how much difference that makes - without moving either one.  You've got to make sure your timing is good otherwise it can sound sloppy.