Quote:
Originally Posted by Sad But True
I'm not sure how to explain it really, it just seems that when I listen to proper recordings, the guitars won't be loud but they'll still be really clear and really separated (ie left/right) whereas when I do it, even hard panned, they just don't seem to have any clarity or separation until I turn them up quite a bit. I know part of it is using a pod but is it also that I need to notch out frequencies in other instruments to give the guitars space?
|
Three quick things that you might want to consider:
(01) Be sure you avoid "big mono": hard-panning two identical (or near-identical) tracks will only result in a louder track in the center of the stereo image. Even if a modeling device has stereo outputs, that doesn't mean that the left/right channels are particularly distinct from each other.
(02) Convectuoso already said it: "good guitar tone" is about how the guitar parts will sound in the mix, and not by themselves. Typically if the guitar sounds "awesome" by itself, it will basically get in the way of everything else (or vice-versa). Note that this assumes quite a bit about your definition of "awesome" for guitar tones.
(03) A lot of it may boil down to distinctions that are less obvious: placing two different-sounding mics at different distances from a physical amp provides differences in tone (i.e., slight differences in what each mic "hears"), color (i.e., the frequency response of the mics themselves) and timing (i.e., sound arrives at each mic at different times because of the distance disparity). You might have better success with double-tracking using multiple Pod sounds, or possibly with providing additional processing to each track that distinguishes them in terms of frequency (EQ), transients (dynamics) and timing (pure delays of a few samples). You can also use all-pass filtering (or other specialty filters) to mess with the phase of one or more of the tracks as well (basically a form of very short delay in practice).
Keep in mind that you want to make sure you get some separation while still keeping track of your mono-collapsed image: if your signals are very similar or different in a "bad" way, you can get phase cancellation, comb-filtering, or a big muddy mess when you collapse the image to mono.