Did Hendrix record guitar parts twice ?

[ameetnsharma]

So recently I've been recording rhythm guitars twice... pan them left and right.... The results are great, but I find it very tedious.

Is this what Hendrix did? (especially on heavy tracks like Manic Depression). I've heard about Artificial Double Tracking (identical left and right recordings but with a slight delay) used in the 60s... but was this done with guitars or only with voices?

Thanks for any info.

 

[Teleguy61]

Eddie Kramer has said that most of his recording decisions re:track assignment had to wait until Jimi decided how many guitar tracks he would lay down on any song.

 

[JL_LI]

There was always more going on than could be played on a single guitar. It drove me crazy back in college. That and the echo. And the words I never heard right. “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”

 

[wabashslim]

I'd tend to record a rhythm track, pan it hard to one side, copy it hard to the other side and experiment with the delay to get the right fatness, often the delay itself wasn't perceptable.

Not just rhythm guitars either, sometimes almost everything.

 

[StrangerNY]

There was always more going on than could be played on a single guitar. It drove me crazy back in college. That and the echo. And the words I never heard right. “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”

A lot of the work on 'Axis' was more going on than could be played on one guitar...

but it was only one guitar. Between the upside-down lefty and his enormous hands, he could play some pretty radical stuff on his own.

- D

 

[bluesfordan]

back when I first started out, i didn't know about such things as double tracking. If the band had only one guitar and there were more than one on a record, that used to upset me. "How am I supposed to play this if it's more than one person?" Who was playing what? How do I decide which part to play?

Hendrix double a part? maybe 5 or 6 times, possibly more. And let's not forget that tricky reverse playback. Yet people can do it. Eric Johnson obliterated my mind when he did "Are You Experienced?" live. I talked to him after the show and asked how did you do that? He laughed and said "weeks and weeks of working on it. One little section at a time."

 

[Ed Driscoll]

So recently I've been recording rhythm guitars twice... pan them left and right.... The results are great, but I find it very tedious.

Is this what Hendrix did? (especially on heavy tracks like Manic Depression). I've heard about Artificial Double Tracking (identical left and right recordings but with a slight delay) used in the 60s... but was this done with guitars or only with voices?

Thanks for any info.

If you're recording in a DAW, it's often quite easy to create a fake double track a part without having to re-rerecord, particularly if the song is recorded on a grid and it's in the standard verse, chorus, bridge format. As Mike Senior writes in Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio:

Some of the most effective stereo enhancements at mixdown can actually be achieved surreptitiously without loading a single plug-in. My most common trick for inflating the sonics of Mix Rescue submissions, for example, is to generate fake double-tracks, which can then be opposition-panned for instant width and extra arrangement density. Tracks that offer this possibility will be those that include the same musical material performed more than once—not an uncommon occurrence in a lot of rhythm-section, riff, and hook parts. If you duplicate the track in question and use your audio editing tools to shuffle its repeated musical sections around, you can generate a version that combines with the original just like a separately overdubbed double-track. So let's say your song's chorus is eight bars long, but the chord pattern repeats twice within that. (If it doesn't, then it's your own silly fault for mixing prog rock.) It'll frequently be plain sailing to generate a double-track from a single strummed acoustic guitar part within that chorus, simply by copying the part and switching the order of the copy's two four-bar sections. When you mix the original and duplicate tracks together, they'll still sound like independent performances, because the original part will be playing bars 1 through 4 while the “double-track” plays bars 5 through 8, and vice versa.

* * * * * * * *

Some small-studio users try to create this effect by simply delaying a copy of a single track, but it's important to realize that this won't create nearly the same result and may cause serious phase-cancellation problems in mono. (There are some useful applications of that idea, though, which I'll get to in a moment.)

I'm not sure if Hendrix used ADT or manually double-tracked his guitars, but the Beatles would use ADT on guitars as well as vocals. The engineers could adjust the timing of the ADT effect to also create chorus, phasing and flanging effects. I just posted these photos I took from the epic 2006 Recording the Beatles book to a recent thread on how the band Spirit might have double-tracked a part:

 

[schmee]

So recently I've been recording rhythm guitars twice... pan them left and right.... The results are great, but I find it very tedious.

Is this what Hendrix did? (especially on heavy tracks like Manic Depression). I've heard about Artificial Double Tracking (identical left and right recordings but with a slight delay) used in the 60s... but was this done with guitars or only with voices?

Thanks for any info.

pretty sure he did.
Interestingly, when you do "(identical left and right recordings but with a slight delay)" you end up with a bit of a chorus effect.
Jaco Pastorius figured out how to do this live and that's one reason why he has that sound.

 

[wabashslim]

Interestingly, when you do "(identical left and right recordings but with a slight delay)" you end up with a bit of a chorus effect.

Generally you get chorus when one side modulates slightly against the other, like if one side runs a little faster or slower. If they remain stationary relative to each other you'll get some comb filtering where some frequencies cancel, others boost, as in a frozen flange. If the two sides are panned completely so they don't "touch" the chorus effect is reduced or eliminated but you get that fatness spread.

With the right positioning you can get some chorus effect by playing under a ceiling fan, but it can be disturbing. Can also make it hard to tune up.

 

[monkeybanana]

back when I first started out, i didn't know about such things as double tracking. If the band had only one guitar and there were more than one on a record, that used to upset me. "How am I supposed to play this if it's more than one person?" Who was playing what? How do I decide which part to play?

Hendrix double a part? maybe 5 or 6 times, possibly more. And let's not forget that tricky reverse playback. Yet people can do it. Eric Johnson obliterated my mind when he did "Are You Experienced?" live. I talked to him after the show and asked how did you do that? He laughed and said "weeks and weeks of working on it. One little section at a time."

cool, I Googled it:

 

[TokyoPortrait]

Hi.

I sometimes do the ‘duplicate a track and cut up sections and move them around’ thing to get ‘same but different’ guitar parts for panning (as mentioned above in that extract). In the past I did it to make double tracking easy, but now, if I do it, I mostly do it cos I can’t be bothered recording a new verse or something. But, only if it suits - like something else is going on to add energy to that later verse or whatever.

Now, if I want to get faux double tracking I just use Waves ADT plugin.

But, I prefer actually double tracking, cos I like to use different guitars (or pickups) or different amps for each. Then I get a fatter sound that, because of my way less than precise playing, results in parts that at moments sound a little like they are interacting.

But yeah, that Waves plugin has a lot of scope, for chorusing, flanging, phasing, as well as general thickening and wide stereo panning. Probably others that do similar.

Incidentally, Klevgrand has a ‘new product release’ sale on an interesting panning plugin at the moment, which is tangentially rated to the topic - if you want you can keep lower frequencies centred and filter higher ones off to the side, and it also uses a delay technique.

Pax/
Dean

 

[Dano-caster]

Bad MoFo right there. Wow...

 

[ameetnsharma]

Thanks everyone for the information.

 

[Hamstein]

If I'm not being lazy I'll play and record the same part twice, as identical as I can manage, and pan them 3/4 left and right, I just think it sounds better than using the DAW magickery. I do this with synths too, even though they'll be running off the same midi track that I've recorded, the discrepancies in the two tracks make for a more interesting sound I reckon!

 

[jaxjaxon]

I use to do double tracking either with two takes or using a DAW. I just dont anymore, if I want a fatter sound I will just use a delay set at milisecond difference but for the most part I will fill in the space with a different guitar part like simple inversions or use bass line to fill it out more. I do use a pitch shifter and a wet dry wet setup and record that with three mic. So I dont need to copy a track over to the left or right or center.