In the days before digital audio workstations, it was exceedingly rare to have more than three or four electric guitar tracks on a song. Even when 24-track tape machines came on the scene, the number of tracks available for the guitarist was limited. Today, of course, track count is seldom a problem; we’re more likely to run out of ideas than available tracks!
Today’s discussion is about managing multiple guitar tracks in the tracking stage of a project, when ideas are coming thick and fast. While this article is Pro Tools-centric, the concepts will work with any platform
Labeling
Name each guitar track — and by that, I don’t mean “Guitar 1” or “Audio 4”; aim for something that will be descriptive, recognizable, and useful. If, for example, you’re planning on having a relatively clean sounding guitar and a heavier, more distorted guitar, you might name them “Clean Guitar” and “Dirty Guitar.”
When it comes time to mix, you’ll know which is which. If you also have acoustic guitars in the song, then “Clean Elec” and “Dirty Elec” are more specific. If you’re planning on doubling a distorted track (and panning the two guitars), Then “Dirty Elec L” and “Dirty Elec R” will show you the information that you need to know.
It’s not uncommon to have different guitar sounds for the verses and the choruses; in this case, it may be more logical to use track names such as “Verse Elec” and “Chorus Elec,” with an added “L” and “R” for doubled tracks. Remember that you’re trying to give each track a name that will make sense as you move further into the project; if “Swirly Gtr” or “Echo Elec” are descriptive enough to be usable, then use them.
If you’re recording multiple tracks for each pass — a close mic, a room mic, and a direct track, for example — then label each appropriately; not only for the track names, but also in the “Comments” section for the track. While it might start to look a little messy once you have names like “Dirty Elec L Rm” (for the room mic), you’ll be able to figure out what each track is whenever you need to know.
Grouping Tracks
If you’re recording multiple tracks for each pass (as mentioned above), it’s a good idea to group those tracks and hide what you don’t need. Here’s one way to approach it: Let’s start with the setup mentioned above, in which the guitar amp has a close-miked track, a room-miked track and a direct track (in case you choose to re-amp or use an amp-sim plug-in at a later time). Create the three separate tracks and name them: “Flange Elec Close,” “Flange Elec Rm,” and “Flange Elec DI.”
Put all the tracks in input monitoring mode and mute the DI track. Set the levels on the close and room tracks to where you like the two in combination. Next, select the three tracks (Command + Click in Pro Tools) and group them (Command + G in Pro Tools).
In Pro Tools, notice that the global mix attributes will put all the tracks in record, input, and solo modes when you enable one of the tracks.
A handy Pro Tools function is “Duplicate Track” especially in those situations where you have two or more guitar tracks for each pass (all selected tracks will be duplicated, so if you’ve recorded one pass with three different tracks and decide to duplicate it, simply select all three tracks and all will be duplicated) — but take the time to re-name each of the tracks after you duplicate, lest you end up with multiple guitar tracks with the same name with “.dup1,” “.dup2,” etc., appended to the names. One last thing: when you duplicate multiple tracks in this manner, a window will come up asking what data to duplicate. Be sure and deselect active playlists, alternate playlists, and group assignments, though you will most likely not have written any automation at this point, deselect that option as well.
Recording
The idea is to create an easy and consistent workflow when recording lots of guitar tracks (from the engineering side; feel free to let your “tortured genius” shine on the playing side). Create the tracks that you know you’ll use, label and group those tracks appropriately (including comments). Record the guitar parts. If, once those parts are recorded, you choose to either add new parts or double the ones that you’ve recorded, it’s easy to duplicate the tracks (without audio), name each track appropriately, group as necessary, and record again.
Not every engineer records multiple tracks for each pass — and not every track requires it. Here’s another tip: when you’re planning on doubling guitars (for example, a distorted rhythm guitar pass) and panning them left and right, go ahead and create both tracks and put them both in record.
The first pass will be recorded to both tracks. For the second pass, simply take one of the two tracks out of record and play the second pass. Here’s what happens: The first pass will sound as though it’s centered in the stereo field (since it’s two identical tracks panned left and right); when you take one track out of record, that track will appear on one side while the second pass you play will be on the other side. This allows you to hear each of the two tracks individually; if both had been panned to the center, it’s difficult to hear (as you play) which of the two guitars is the live track and which is the recorded track.
Organizing
Once all of your guitar tracks have been recorded, it’s worth going back to re-organize them to make the mixing process as easy as possible. Start by putting all of the doubled tracks together.
Since there are three tracks for each of the dirty guitar doubles, it’s kind of hard to see what’s going on. So let’s hide some of the tracks that we might not use, by Control + clicking on the track name. In this case, start with the DI tracks, which will likely only be used in an “emergency” situation, when the recorded tracks aren’t working. And since we’ve pretty much found the balance between the close mics and the room mics for each track, we can hide the room mic tracks. (You can unhide any tracks at need). Finally, the guitar passes with only a single track have been arranged in order of their panning (though there are other ways to approach this including putting them in order of their importance, in order of their first appearance in the track — whatever makes sense to you). In this session, we’ve lowered the visible track count from 16 tracks to 10, and since even the hidden tracks are still part of a group, any adjustments that you make to the visible tracks will affect the hidden tracks.
In a large session, it might still be difficult to see 10 guitar tracks, so let’s take a different approach. You can bus all of the doubled guitar tracks to stereo auxes. In this example, all of the dirty guitars are sent out bus 1-2, and a stereo aux (labeled “Dirty Guitars”) has been set up with the input of the aux fader being bus 1-2. The clean guitars are bused out 3-4, and the distorted guitars are sent to 5-6, with the appropriate aux sends created.
Then, hide the individual tracks, leaving the aux buses visible.
Now you only have seven visible tracks of guitars, though you will still control the levels of all. Since any equalization that you’d do on the doubled tracks would likely be applied to both the left and the right side, you can use one stereo EQ on each aux send instead of 4-6 mono EQs for each set of doubled tracks.
Once you’ve created your final mix (or are close to it), you can un-hide the hidden tracks and ungroup the grouped tracks to make any last minute tweaks; the idea is to create an easy-to-understand overview, simplifying the way that guitar tracks are seen as a way to keep tabs on what’s going on without being overwhelmed by detail.