Here is something only experience could have taught me that I learned a while back. As some of you guys already know, the way to get the fattest sounding riff is to record it twice and pan it L and R. Some guys even do quad tracking of the same riff, but for me I only do it twice. Now, with electric guitar it is a little easier to create double and quadruple takes of the same riff and have them be identical. Here is why: the strings are thinner and it doesnt take as long for the pick to scrape across the string and produce sound. The winding of acoustic strings is not as tight, and there is more scrape when the pick travels across an acoustic string. So lets say you have a riff where you are chugging the 6th and then alternating at times with the 5th and 4th strings. We can see here that the resistance that the pick will encounter varies with each string. Therefore, you cannot program your hand to use the same amount of movement and strength for each strike when strings change. It will take a few milliseconds (or less, not sure exactly how much) longer for the pick to finish travelling across the 6th string as oppose to the others. When you mix up the strings in a passage or riff, you are creating what I call millisecond flux that will appear when you double-take riffs and stack them on one another (panning them). With electric guitar, the resistance levels that the pick encounters do not reach the levels encountered on acoustic guitar. So when recording metal riffs on acoustic, there will always be some level of millisecond flux. One way to see this, is to record a bunch of the same riffs to a specific BPM and get them tight. Then try mix and matching them on two channels panned L and R. Although each take may be fine when you bounce it off the metronome as a solo track, as soon as you stack them you encounter millisecond flux especially on notes that are picked on the 6th string. The flux issue is also seen when you pick licks or passages that involve travelling from plain steel strings, all the way down to the 6th string. As the resistance changes, so does the attack that you put into striking the string also need to change to compensate for the resistance. The change of the resistance will also affect the rhythm tightness, usually only visible on the grid within your recording software (as you change strings that become thicker and encounter more scrape resistance, there will be some minor change in the rhythm if you zoom in to see). The ear generally wont hear it on its own. It really becomes mind boggling when you have to double record licks and pan them. Each lick as a solo track is fine to the ear, but when you layer two waves on top of one another, the flux appears. I find the experience of recording double-layered riffs and licks is best enjoyed when listening to it on good headphones. The minor variations in the takes panned L and R creates a fuller sound and emulates a live experience to a certain extent. IMO all of the above. The thinner the strings, the more likely you are able to double and quad track without encountering flux in the recording. The thicker the strings, and when on acoustic guitar with the larger coil, the more likely you will experience imperfections where on layer 1 the pick crossed the string in X milliseconds and on layer 2 it took a few more to cross the string. Depending on how sensitive your ear is, you can get to the point where it is never perfect enough regardless because you can hear those milliseconds. Each string on the acoustic guitar has a specific amount of time it takes for the pick to scrape across the string and produce sound (technique varies the time it takes, but each string will have a set resistance in response to your attack). When mixing strings in picked passages, you are creating variations in the timing regardless of how perfect your picking technique because as perfect as your picking technique may be, you cannot take into account the specific level of attack required for each string and be completely conscious of that on every change of string. So in the end, harmonizing metal licks on acoustic guitar presents quite a challenge. When you stack the waves, you will notice these minor variations and will have to settle on one eventually. The challenge goes through the roof when the pattern of the harmonized lick does not match the melody in consistency. For example, if one lick is three notes per string, and the other is two while also involving an open string. This is quite tough to nail because the resistance is different yet has to be in the same rhythm and flow as the melody you are recording over. These are just some thoughts I have had while recording metal stuff on acoustic guitar. Shred guitar normally harmonizes licks using the same string and picking pattern on both the melody and the harmony (not always, just usually). The most difficult one I ever recorded was the harmony for the version of Ievas Polka I did. I recorded the melody, and then went bananas trying to record the harmony because it is a completely different picking pattern and uses different strings (sometimes an open string here and there where on the melody it was not open). Although I could play it so that it sounded ok to the ear bouncing off the metronome, I kept on encountering millisecond flux between the harmony and the picking on the melody track) .
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 07:02:14 +0000
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