Emulating Two Guitars with Digital Instruments

[Conker]

I'm under the impression that when recording rock and metal, guitarists will gun through a song twice and they'll pan one to the left and one to the right. This is done because the recordings can never be 100% similar. Some notes will be struck a hair sooner or later while others will be hit softer or heavier. Put together and you get a fuller sound.

I can't play guitar.

I do have guitars in FL studio, and my goto for this has been to copy my first guitar layer into a second, tweak some minor settings, and then manually move some notes a nudge to the left or right. I then do the panning.

Thing is, I honestly don't know if this is helping me at all. Like, for those who make music and know music, is what I'm doing just dumb as rocks or what?

Also, I fucking suck at mixing, but that's a different rant altogether

[Kaizan]

Something you could try would be to have one mono track sent to two busses, one panned left and one panned right. Then you pitch shift one bus up by a few cents and the other down by a few cents. Typically the busses will be really quiet so you just barely hear them. This will create a slight chorusy effect, but it also fills up the track. You could also put some other subtle effects on it like different reverbs or delays to make them slightly different. Thats what i do with acoustic guitar tracks and it works pretty well for quick mixing solutions. Im not super familiar with FL studio so not sure what capabilities you have with it, but maybe theres something like that that you could try.

[Conker]

21 hours ago, Kaizan said:

Something you could try would be to have one mono track sent to two busses, one panned left and one panned right. Then you pitch shift one bus up by a few cents and the other down by a few cents. Typically the busses will be really quiet so you just barely hear them. This will create a slight chorusy effect, but it also fills up the track. You could also put some other subtle effects on it like different reverbs or delays to make them slightly different. Thats what i do with acoustic guitar tracks and it works pretty well for quick mixing solutions. Im not super familiar with FL studio so not sure what capabilities you have with it, but maybe theres something like that that you could try.

If the end result is a slight chorus effect, wouldn't it be easier to just add a chorus effect and turn it down low so it's only kind of audible?

 

1 hour ago, 6tails said:

FL Studio? Look for the humanizer effect and toss that on your tracks.

Hmm. Not seeing it. Will google though.

Edit: Those things seem to be in the piano rolls. Damn. This is kind of a game changer.

[Kaizan]

3 hours ago, Conker said:

If the end result is a slight chorus effect, wouldn't it be easier to just add a chorus effect and turn it down low so it's only kind of audible?

Its not exactly like a chorus cuz theres no modulation, its constant. It will sound more full if you do what I described as apposed to just using a chorus. Although, it works best for audio tracks, i think the humanizer will work better for midi tracks and such. 

[Conker]

8 hours ago, 6tails said:

Never used the piano roll before, eh?

I use it all the time, I just don't mess with like 90% of the things on there because I dunno what they do.

 

6 hours ago, Kaizan said:

Its not exactly like a chorus cuz theres no modulation, its constant. It will sound more full if you do what I described as apposed to just using a chorus. Although, it works best for audio tracks, i think the humanizer will work better for midi tracks and such. 

I'll give it a go then!

[Kaizan]

Let us know how it goes!

[Conker]

2 hours ago, Kaizan said:

Let us know how it goes!

Ended up doing a bit of both, I guess. I stuck with the two guitars but "humanized" them in different ways. I then added a light delay to the one which really seemed to give it some width.

But both of hte guitars are now different enough where it seems worthwhile, so that's cool.

Rest is just mixing shit, which I'm still learning how to do because it's hard. Mastering is hard too. But the song DOES sound better after all of this, so hoorah! I now have to go back and humanize all my other songs...and remix/master them. And probably other stuff But the video game ain't gonna be ready for awhile and there are so many more songs to write that I figure by then I"ll know what I'm doing.

[grassfed]

You could essentially do the same thing by recording your tracks separately into the piano roll and then pan them. Unless you dont have a way to record live and have to piece it together note-by-note.

[Conker]

29 minutes ago, grassfed said:

You could essentially do the same thing by recording your tracks separately into the piano roll and then pan them. Unless you dont have a way to record live and have to piece it together note-by-note.

I don't know how to play instruments so everything is done note by note in the piano roll. I'm strictly stuck with digital stuff, even if I try to make it sound real