On the discussion of cloning guitar tracks

Myself and others here have had a discussion going about cloning and its usefulness...I tend to think that 2 separately recorded guitar lines become weak and thin sounding if full panned on their own..at least in my mix and recording abilities.

So....I experimented with it a bit and have set up a A / B situation where i demonstrate cloning both guitar lines.

I used "Signs of weakness" as the example....changing nothing but the guitar in the mix.

In the original which is the first song in the list, there are 2 guitar lines, panned 85% each way respectfully..

In the one titled "Signs with cloning" I took the original left , cloned it, made them 100% L and R. Took the original right guitar and cloned it making it 60% L / R. also offset the clones by a few milliseconds. - very important to do this.

adjusted the volumes to match the original track and voila....

So if you want to listen to the first 20 seconds of both, you will hear the difference in panning technique...

My initial thoughts were that it sounded more full on the cloned version. and might sound better in a car if you have your left speaker obstructed by your legs.

This is just a demonstration of cloning, not an attempt to make you listen to my songs again.. I know you are sick of them, or not..... lol.

Please let me know your thought on this matter.

www.reverbnation.com/enemyofearth

If your asking for a critique or  a what happened or what should I do.... post it...we don't get tired of listening to music.... if we did we'd go hang out in the coffee house with Bapu & Mooch.

The song sounds good to me - very nice. 

In the second example you moved the cloned part a few milliseconds which would create a very subtle phase or flange.  I never had much luck with cloning guitars like that.  For me the best is to record two separate tracks and pan then left and right.  But the timing has to be right on otherwise it can sound very sloppy.

you might try cloning and then put a different eq on each track. say, one with a low pass and one with a high pass to start. depends what you're looking for. 

You can't really hear the phasing effect when it is only a few milliseconds.  It doesn't sound bad in any way - I didn't mean that it would be detrimental.  This thickens the sound just slightly.  It sounds good.

Tim's suggestion of doing different things with each track would also create some interesting effects and spaciousness. 

Line6 Pod Farm 2 has the ability to split a single guitar into two signals for separate processing.  Some of the presets they created are really cool sounding.  It is the same principle as what you are going after.  And in a live situation, a lot of guys will split the signal into two different amps for the same type of effect.  A friend of mine would use a chorus pedal, and send one out of the chorus to a marshal amp, the other to a yamaha solid state amp.  The two together create a big sound.

I was just telling you my experience because I tried this technique a while back and didn't have much luck.  As soon as I started actually recording 2 separate parts, the song really came alive.  It is more work of course - because your timing has to be near perfect, but, for me, it takes it to a whole different level.  On very few occasions, the two parts were so close that I experienced phase cancellation where the whole signal dropped out.  But this is very rare, and another guitar take got rid of it.

I'm glad you posted this thread.  It will be interesting to read other peoples comments.

that's a pretty song johnnyv...i hear the difference in the guitars as you said. its full..love that snare

I much preferred the track without the doubling on it 7-string-guy. Normally when you clone a track it doesn't really do anything to help. You normally would want to record a second track and mix it together.

As for the tune posted by johnnyV, the snare was way too loud and hollow sounding, and the guitar was really tinny. Sounded like an Ovation which I'm not a fan of. Couldn't hear the vocals on it either. Nice song though, I can see why you would want to redo that one.

7-string_guy

it is a matter of taste...Had i done it this way without your knowledge of the cloning. you would say it sounds fine. well... i believe so anyway.

Ok, well whatever you did to the first one, it sounds better to me. I listened to it on my monitors and headphones and the first one sounded better to me on both.

My style differs from a lot of yours. So i expect bias towards my heavy rocking.

I've done all kinds of music over the last 25 years from Hank Williams Sr. to Metallica live. I have no bias, except for Jazz. Can't stand it, and I ain't even gonna pretend to even remotely like it.

After a day or two of listening on different sources, i totally agree that the original "signs" sounds better. Now my other one that I didnt post "Justone" I think i'm going to keep the cloning on it.. I only cloned one guitar part and had multiple other takes with it so it blends in nicely and fattens up a guitar part i could not re-create. thanks for helping in this experiment and thanks for listening.