"Fake stereo guitar" question

[TACurtis]

Hi, I've been faking stereo guitar in Cubase by taking my mono guitar track (set at about 30-right), copying and pasting it another track, lowering its volume, panning it hard left, and setting a delay.

Which gives an acceptable faux-stereo sound except when the guitar hits a single note. Then the stereo-guitar sound to the left and right either centers itself momentarily or drops to the right side only, since that's the louder side.

Anyone else do this, or have this problem? Any suggestions, comments, etc?

[JeffBarnett]

Another technique is to double the track, pan the two tracks hard left and hard right, but vary the EQ on the two tracks. Create EQ curves that mirror each other - a 3 dB bump on one corresponds to a 3 db notch in the other at the same frequency. Use a good parametric EQ, like Waves Q10 for this. (or even better - use Waves PS22 "Pseudo-Stereo" plugin!)

It also might help to nudge one track 20-30 milliseconds.

[gcjammin1]

I record my original guitar track, dump it into cakewalk and then copy it to another track. I offset the second track by 1 tick using the slide feature in cakewalk and then hard pan each track hard left and hard right. It seems to give me a wider sound than 2 tracks just panned hard left and right.

[Brandon Hook]

picking the right delay also plays a big role in how it "pans" out. As your music track is playing back, count out 25 beats while recording time on a stopwatch. Basically, you want to figure out how many seconds it takes for 25 beats. multiply that value (in seconds) by 41.81 (some conversion factor) and you now have a quarter note delay (in milliseconds). if you divide that number by 2, you have an 1/8th note delay, and so on. If you divide you original quarter note delay time by 1.5, you now have the dotted 1/8th note delay.....etc. Once you get under 35 ms, I find that delay times are less critical, yet still sound better when calculated and not random.

Also, mirroring eq's is a great way to bring out 2 distinctive guitar sounds from one original. (As mentioned above)

I've also noticed that adding compression differently to either side helps. A neat trick I've done in the past is to mic the frets of the guitar on one track, while mic'ing the bridge on a separate track. I use the bridge as my main track and I delay the fret track (according to the tempo of the song...of coarse) Then I'll place a gate on the fret track so that when a finger slide, or pulloff, or some fret-based transient happens, the gate opens up and the delay is heard. I can't confirm this, but I think that the song "Stay" by Dave Matthews Band uses this technique on the opening riff. (That's what sparked me to use a gate)check it out....pretty cool effect.

Hope this helps TACurtis

:D

[TACurtis]

These are all useful posts. Keep 'em coming!

[Ernest828]

I used to use the same technique. Now I just put up two mics and record guuitar stereo. Gives me a great sound and I control the EQ from the positioning of the microphones.

Peace,
Ernest

[Brandon Hook]

Hey Ernest, does that give you a more true to life sound than adding a gate, delay, and eq (phase shifting)? Just kidding. Of coarse it does. Always remember TACurtis that cutting frequencies will "clean" up a sound, whereas boosting frequencies will "change" your sound. Boosting eq for some reason or another adds a noticeable phase shift. A good trick for keeping the sound more "natural" is to cut the frequencies that are troublesome, or otherwise unimportant, and boost the overall volume of the track....blah...blah...blah.....ok....I'm done now.

Later,
Brandon