Recording 2nd pass - when to use it?

I was watching this video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DVJ3Z0oiFU&feature=related 

They recorded the same guitar part twice panning them l&r. Is it always a good idea to do that to make the guitar sound more full?

Ok a few questions.

1. When do you not use this technique? (bass guitars and drums?)

2. Does it make the mix muddier?

3. By common practice...Most of the time do you do double passes for let's say a guitar and stack it or pan them differently?

4. How many passes is too much being stacked or panned?

Thanks

Doubling a part will tend to make the part loose impact.
Then again, some styles may call for this. It basically depends on what sounds good to you.
You could quadruple the part if that's what floats your boat.
Actually, I would disregard this video. It was pretty stupid.

Thanks for all the responses.

So really it comes down to what type of sound needed for the project. Its a choice between clarity, crisp/thin sound vs full fat/thick sound?

Timidi - Would you care to explain what is wrong with the video? 

Timidi - Would you care to explain what is wrong with the video? 

Because of what Danny said. 

 "I don't do it on voice because it gives me that "Ozzy" sound. There are times when I will double a voice that is singing the same part for impact on something, but I don't use it as a part of my common practice like a lot of other engineers do. If I can't make a single lead vocal sound good on its own, I keep recording it until it does. Doubling it in my opinion, only doubles the lack of performance x2. "


Are you talking about the lead vocal? What if you are trying to make a choir effect? 
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Would this also work nicely on stringed instruments like violin, viola, cello and double bass?

sharpdion23


 Are you talking about the lead vocal? What if you are trying to make a choir effect? 
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Would this also work nicely on stringed instruments like violin, viola, cello and double bass?

Yeah, lead vocals. If I'm going for a choir effect, I try NOT to double the lead voice so it stands out a little more and doesn't sound like this choir comes in and the lead vocal has to take a back seat as the focal point because of all the others. When you go for a choir effect, you're most of the time going to print several harmonies. So even though it's the same voice, it's a different take and a different part. I find that when I double a lead vocal in a choir situation, that the lead vocal can stand out a bit too much. If you drop it back in the mix to make the choir shine as "an entity" you no longer have a focal point lead vocal in the mix....the whole choir sings the part. That's just my way of handling it though. Ther of course are times when you WANT lead voices to take a step back and let an entire choir take over. It depends on the situation.
 
As for stringed instruments like you mentioned, sure you can do it. In a large orchestra ensemble with several "chairs" so to speak, there are usually several instruments per chair so you may be tripling a part depending on how many and much you want that section to stand out. If you thought of it that way and wanted to simulate that, you'd need to decide how many chairs per instrument. 1st, 2nd, 3rd chair trumpets....and how many in each....the same with violins....cello's etc. If you have sections of violins, you decide how many will be first chair that usually have the hardest parts to play. Say you have 3 first chair violins. That means you would track that part independently 3 times. Say you have 3 second chair violins playing a part under or a lower harmony. That's 3 more independent takes. 3 third chair violins playing under the 2nd chairs...there's 3 more independent tracks.
 
If you want to simulate an orchestra, you have to simulate what an orchestra consists of. This is why they sound so big and full of life. They have several instruments playing the same parts as well as several playing different parts. In my school band, we had 8 people playing flute broken up into sections like I mentioned. First chair, second chair and so on. We had 6 alto sax players broken up into chairs and one tenor sax. We had 3 first chair trumpets, 3 second chair trumpets, 3 third chair trumpets. We had 12 violin players all broken up into chairs. We had 7 on clarinet and 2 on bassoon. To simulate something like this and make it authentic, you're not going to get it with 1 or 2 instruments playing these parts. You'd have to record them several times even if it were one person playing the parts.
 
When you start to layer the parts, the stereo field will kick in due to how you have things panned as well as the human timing inconsistencies due to no one playing anything perfectly. You'll even get less of a stereo effect if one guy plays it all because part of the fun in stereo and layered tracks is how they are NOT perfect. Get two good cello players in the same room playing the same part. It will sound great, but there will always be human timing inconsistencies between them. This is what makes them sound good believe it or not. If they played the parts perfectly, it would sound mono.
 
Here's a test for you to further demonstrate what I'm talking about with the mono thing if I've lost you. Import a stereo piece of music into Sonar. Then, clone that track so you have two of the same thing. Pan the first one all the way to the left, and pan the second one all the way to the right. Now press the stereo interleave button on each track so that both are mono. Press play. They sound mono and right down the middle, right? Ok...
 
Hi-lite the second track, go to process, select slide and set it for "ticks" and enter 20 into the box and press enter. Now press play. You'll notice the track sounds like it's in stereo now even though you are in mono, right? That's called "The HAAS effect" but my reason for showing you that is so you can see what happens when you have some time drifting when you are presented with 2 of the same parts.
 
When you first loaded this up, both parts playing the exact same thing were completely mono and down the middle. Once you off-set the timing on the second one, it became more stereo sounding because of the timing difference. You slid the other clip back 20 ticks. When we record musicians and double their parts, the timing not being perfect is what contributes to the stereo field. Add in different musicians with different timing and you form an orchestra. The tighter people play timing wise, the less you actually get the stereo effect. It's the loose-ness, execution start time/end times and little inconsistencies that make this so grand. Tighten it all up and all that goes away. Understand now? :)

-Danny

any time you decide to use 'an effect'......
you are becoming 'the producer'.

the choices you make, are what define you as a producer and engineer.


maybe the correct question is only 'how'?

the 'when' part, might never happen!

and of course, i always suggest just diving in and experimenting....


with all these questions you are asking, i think it's obvious you are just getting into the game...
if so, then do what most of us have spent many years already, doing, and that's experiment.



just because i tell you to do something one way, doesn't mean that it is THE way.....
the fun part, is figuring out how to do stuff 'differently'.

so that you can differentiate your sound, from everyone else's.



the "HOW" to use these effects, is as elementary as simply cracking the manual open.

Thanks Danny. What are vocal beds?

(edit)

Jeff Evans


In my opinion the word 'bed' to describe vocals is a bad choice of words. Usually the word 'bed' means several instruments eg laying down 'bed' tracks in the rhythm section usually means bass, drums and perhaps one or two rhythm instruments.

I think the word 'bed' or vocal bed the way Danny has used it could make it confusing. Vocals are either lead Vox or backing Vox or BV's. That is it! A vocal is either lead or backup harmonies etc. BV's is the much more common terms used here anyway.

It's cool, I guess it depends what school you come from. :) "Beds" to me are anything with several instrument voicings creating a part as an entity whether they be all the same instrument or different ones. Bed meaning "several" or "group". If you use bass, drums and two rhythm instruments wouldn't that be "the rhythm section" or "rhythm bed"? Why wouldn't a vocal stack/choir or of back-up vocals be considered a bed? It's just a group of instruments really. I was never under the impression it had to be several DIFFERENT instruments. We just say beds when they equal "groups" of any kind. If it's the wrong term, my apologies...I'll have to inform all of PA, NJ, NY and DE to let them know. :) LOL!
 
-Danny

sharpdion. I don't mean to be rude or anything but, all your questions are looking for answers.
Most of the time there are none. Bottom line is, do what sounds good to you.
And, I don't mean to say the responders are wrong.

The trick is, putting in the time to know in your head, heart and ears what something will sound like.
In other words, you hear something in your head, you know what to reach for to achieve it.

As for your question about chorus, "use the chorus fx to make a choir effect". If you put a chorus on something, it will sound like you put a chorus on it or not, depending how you mix it in and the settings of the chorus that you use. It can be useful in any situation or not. Especially depending on what you are trying to achieve. 

All that said, I think that whatever questions you have and whatever answers you get, I think it is most important to consider the style that you are going for. That to me is the deciding factor in most decisions if you want to put it into a "this does this and this does that" kind of thing. As the doubling a guitar thing goes, there are certain styles that this works great for and some not so much. And, it matters much as to what level/volume any effect is at. Is it supportive or just an all out effect?

I don't know if I'm getting across what I'm trying to say and I should probably just delete this.
But, oh well. That's all I got.

sharpdion. I don't mean to be rude or anything but, all your questions are looking for answers. 

Most of the time there are none. Bottom line is, do what sounds good to you.
And, I don't mean to say the responders are wrong.

The trick is, putting in the time to know in your head, heart and ears what something will sound like.
In other words, you hear something in your head, you know what to reach for to achieve it.

As for your question about chorus, "use the chorus fx to make a choir effect". If you put a chorus on something, it will sound like you put a chorus on it or not, depending how you mix it in and the settings of the chorus that you use. It can be useful in any situation or not. Especially depending on what you are trying to achieve. 

All that said, I think that whatever questions you have and whatever answers you get, I think it is most important to consider the style that you are going for. That to me is the deciding factor in most decisions if you want to put it into a "this does this and this does that" kind of thing. As the doubling a guitar thing goes, there are certain styles that this works great for and some not so much. And, it matters much as to what level/volume any effect is at. Is it supportive or just an all out effect?

I don't know if I'm getting across what I'm trying to say and I should probably just delete this.
But, oh well. That's all I got.

I get what you are trying to say. I'm just trying to get the general rule of thumb so I don't head in the wrong direction and try to use it in ways that will actually benefit the project and not just use it for every scenario.