Something i came up with, comments?

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Typo Szar
Member Since: Jul 04, 2002

I just had an idea of been toying with but havent tried yet wanted everyones opinion on it. Concerning giving guitars a really big thick rock sound i remembered when i was a kid in highschool and our band recorded onto tape and on cakewalk when we lugged our computer into the practice room, we use to get a really good thick guitar sound when playing around and we never really realized how. Well i just realized that back then, we recorded our whole band at once, with only one guitarist, and we hooked every mic up to our PA mixer and then into our tape or the computer. We didnt use headphones either, so the PA was going full blast, with the guitar amp at the same time.
So im thinking the PA's that were elevated over us, around the room, plus the guitar that was being mic'd with the fact that our PA had a slight delay to the speakers coz its of low quality.. is that maybe a similar effect to layering your guitar? But without the need to record several tracks, and without needing to do the far "mic'ing" technique.. just kind of putting them all together with different speakers all around the one mic on the amp.

Doesnt that make any sense?

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edit0r
Member
Since: Aug 17, 2004


Oct 30, 2005 05:36 am

Well, some people say that duplicating a guitar track and delaying it by about 20 ms will give the effect of double tracking. I've heard of people that record the first take of the band live to tape, shoot it through a P.A. and mic the P.A. to give a live sound (always wanted to try this). I've also seen people get a bi directional mic (royer 121), and place different guitar cabinets with different phase relationships (wiring of the speakers) around the mic, which sounds pretty cool. But in your case, I'm assuming you were close micing with a cardiod dynamic mic, so IMO Idon't think you would have picked up much bleed from the P.A. at all. Maybe it would have contributed a bit more if the mic was omni? I would think that any major bleed from the P.A. would only cause phasing issues. ALSO, a thought that just came to me, if there was major bleed from the P.A. to the guitar mic, massive feedback would occur! It could be bleed from the guitar amps to overhead or vocal mics, but again, I don't think it would make much of a difference. The OH's could have captured more of the band's live room sound I suppose?

Well, thats my opinion anyway. However, I think that having multiple speakers around one microphone would work, just not in a live situation.

Conclusion? Everything sounds better live!


Typo Szar
Member
Since: Jul 04, 2002


Oct 30, 2005 08:15 am

yeah, i guess thats what i was getting at, like instead of layering, i could just get lots of differnet cabs with differnet sounds around one omni mic.. could get muddy though i suppose.

Member
Since: Sep 23, 2005


Nov 01, 2005 09:03 am

Then play each cab one at a time, to hear how each cab sounds. Then, you could get some EQ's onto each cabinet path, so that the cab only creates the frequencies you like from each cab. Say, perhaps, you've got a Mesa Road King cab with the half-n-half cab, and you only like the open backed speakers. Then you've got a Marshall that has great mids. Then you've got a Peavey that's got great lows. And a Fender combo that has crisp highs and sounds best for clean guitar parts. You can then consider which cabs you want to use, or how much you want to balance them all together.

So set up all the cabs, tweak the amps and/or EQ's running to each cab, and just get the tones you like from each cab. Then blend the volume levels til everything sounds the way you like it.

This is going to take a tremendous amount of time, you know. You're gonna have to force yourself to walk away every once in a while, so you don't let your ears fatigue and get sick of the sound. You'll get done, sleep on it, come back, and hate what you changed. You'll spend more time tweaking again. You'll start over again.

So remember before you even start considering this project, that you're gonna need a ton of patience, and lots of spare time to do all this setup and testing.

But the result, man! THE RESULT! You'll have exactly what you want!

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