Why is it that so many of us are addicted to recording a torrent of guitar tracks per song?
It’s almost like a badge of honor, having as many guitar tracks as possible. And we justify it by saying we’re “layering” tracks to get a huge wall of sound.
I mean, isn’t that what the pros do?
Maybe – or maybe not.
Via Art Bromage Flickr
The Irony Of Huge Guitar Tone
I get it – if you’re in the rock or pop (or even country) genre you usually want huge massive guitar tone. You want impact and power from your guitars.
I know I sure do.
But the irony is that we do the exact opposite of what we should be doing in order to achieve our goals of sonic awesomeness.
Instead of recording more and more guitar tracks (which follows the logic that if one guitar sounds cool – more guitars will sound cooler) we should be recording as few guitar parts as possible.
I’ll give you two big reasons why this is true.
Less Frequency Masking And Overlap
One reason mixing is so hard is that we need to take a handful of different recordings (tracks) and shove them all through a 2 channel pipe (your stereo output).
But if you have 10, 20, or 30+ tracks all squeezing through two speakers you get a lot of frequency overlap – or masking – where one track’s frequencies are covering up those of another track in your song.
In essence some of your tracks get hidden – or lost in the mix.
That’s why we all reach for things like panning and EQ to get as much separation and clarity as possible. We are trying to uncover our track’s true potential.
The more tracks we add to our song, the more potential exists for masking and overlap. Especially if we are adding a lot of the same type of instrument (i.e. guitars).
With every guitar part you “layer” you make it harder and harder to hear what’s already there. And at some point you are losing ground with each track you record, not getting ahead.
You’re in essence making your job of mixing harder – and potentially impossible.
This concept is reason enough for me to keep my guitar track count low, but there’s a second reason (or should I say benefit) to doing this that I want to share.
A More Intentional Arrangement
I’ve said it many times (and I’m sure I didn’t invent this) but good mixing is good arranging.
If you have an arrangement that is perfectly crafted (all the right parts in all the right places) your song will virtually mix itself.
So many of the songs I’ve listened to (or mixed) from home studios are doomed from the start – not because of the audio quality, but because of the lazy and poorly thought out arrangements.
And this is why there is a second benefit to recording as few guitar parts as possible – it forces you to craft a better, more effective arrangement of your song.
If you aren’t going to have a ton of guitar tracks – then each part must play a critical and complementary role.
Take the song we’re doing for the $300 Studio Challenge.
Last week I laid down the guitars and if you listen to the ending section (where all the guitars are in) you’ll hear only five parts. At its busiest moment there are only five guitar tracks.
You have the bass guitar holding down the bottom (and rhythm), the acoustic giving the texture and vibe of the song, the overdriven chords on the left, the complementing and harmonizing whole notes on the right, and then finally the solo up the center.
That’s it.
Every guitar part in that moment has a purpose. If I took one of them away, the song would feel empty. If I added one more to group, the mix wouldn’t improve at all.
That is a sweet spot – and that’s where you want to be.
Some Homework For This Week
I want to give you a little assignment this week (and don’t worry, I’m not gonna grade you) to further push this point home.
Go find one of your favorite songs that has (in your opinion) very full guitar sounds. Put on some decent headphones, find a quiet place, and then listen to the song with a critical ear.
I want you to count how many guitar tracks you can hear.
Not only count them, but take note of what they are doing for the song or what they are adding to the arrangement.
Then come back here and report your findings:
- How many guitar parts could you hear? …and
- Were you surprised by your findings?
Do Not Create Another Song Until You Read This Guide
(Price: $17 Free Today)
Discover the 6 Steps for Creating a Radio-Worthy Song From Scratch
My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
Graham,
I love getting these posts! They more often then not reinforce so much of what I believe. I try not to record something if I can’t play (reproduce) it live. Spicing together performances into something impossible to play makes little sense to a gigging musician and creating a recording that sounds nothing like what you’re band can produce live defeats you on many levels. I know even great bands like Queen would have to resort to playing the Tape of the Opera section of Bohemian Rhapsody live – Great song, Great Recording but that is big let down in the show.
I use this minimalist approach in recording but for this reason, that fact that it may be helping my mixes is a bonus.
thanks again,
You’re quite welcome!
i stumbled accross this a few weeks ago. In an effort to improve my mixing, I have been recording covers at home.and had doubled up pretty much every guitar part to get a big sound. The mix was awkward and muddy. I listened to my mix and then to the reference and I realised there were actually only a couple of parts going on. Not the 10 I had. Mix to was rationalised to the parts I needed and no more. I used rides to give more emphasis and power where needed and it all came together much better. I know, some people layer for a particular effect (Brian May) and that’s cool, but I like the minimalism this way. It makes easier work. I also think it’s natural for guitarists to balk at this since we all suffer from 6-string narcissism to some extent. I think it’s great advice generally though that EVERY track should have a purpose. A great landscape artist doesn’t simply keep adding castles to their painting because they think they’re cool.
Cheers again Graham, food for thought as usual.
6-string narcissism – great name for an album!
“A great landscape artist doesn’t simply keep adding castles to their painting because they think they’re cool.” Hit the nail squarely on the head with that one. A truly excellent quote when applied to musicians, and ESPECIALLY we guitarists, haha!
Hey Graham,
I have a habit of when recording guitar tracks, doubling the main rhythm guitar and panning one left and one right… Would you agree with doing this? I know how you feel about this sort of ‘less is more’ idea, but do you think this would be an exception?
Great article, thanks man!
Zeph
I do it from time to time – but only one one part, not on every part. It must bring something to the table to make the mix better.
Here’s a version of a song I’m working on. I use 5 guitar tracks plus bass to try to get a big wide guitar sound. I think there’s a plce for this many tracks… Still working on lyrics for this one,, and learning to track midi drums (sort of)…
https://soundcloud.com/tgraph/01-taxis-tattoos?in=tgraph/sets/still-demos
Thanks for these insightful posts.
Tom
MIDI Drummz, you say?
I use Guitar Pro to TAB out my songs on guitar, then create the drum track to that in same program. I open a new file, copy/paste the drum track only into that and save as: “?… drums for Cubase”.
I then Export it as MIDI to then drag&drop into Cubase. I have Toontrack EZDrummer and set the MIDI drum track to use the VST Plug-in for EZDrummer.
AMAZING Real sounding drums & panning of cymbals & drum rolls/fills, etc…
I may also use the MIDI Bass guitar for recording my Demo/EP soon… once I’ve finished creating all the drum tracks.
Very creative approach! Thanks for sharing it!
Yes!
I think it all depends on the song, of course, but Intentional Arrangement is key. I actually wrote a post about this recently as well.
Sometimes, we forget that we need to be the *producer*, along with the musician, recording engineer, mixer, etc. We need to maintain the vision for the song, and be intentional about what parts we put into it. Don’t just keep layering stuff until it sounds full. Only add tracks that contribute to the song.
Great post, Graham. I’m enjoying your challenge 🙂
I can say Achilles Last Stand by led zeppelin…almost half dozen of guitars at the same time in som points? But nothing is wasted. On achilles last stand there are many subtle guitars lines that adds fullness and makes the song richer.
During the epic ascending scale part one guitar plays the scale (panned on the right), another one harmonize this solo playng the same theme one fifth lower (panned on the left), a third guitar plays and arpeggio (panned right) with some flanger and a final fourth guitar strums one chord on the left.
The last two guitars may not be fundamental, but surely they make the song bigger and richer, and every one of them makes something different (while on the verse two guitars plays almost always the same thing, with some different eq and both panned hard left and hard right), during some parts, other solo guitars come in, so i think there are mh, 5 or 6 guitars in some points at the same time.
Another very very full guitar sound is the one on “I wanna be your dog” by the stooges. One guitar always on the left and another solo guitar hard panned right during the end of the song.
Both songs are very different and sound superb, and in no one of them there are “wasted” guitars that makes useless noise. As you said, every guitar part has got a particular role, and we’re not talking about 10 or 20 guitar parts of course!
(And for me, 5 guitars at the same time are in fact a lot of guitars, 10 (except if I want to do some ambientpsychedelic “noisy” stuff) of them are something I consider almost “impossible”)
Great post Graham!
Joshua made also an interesting statement, but I don’t fear the live situation, with some open-minded approach (for example rearrange the song for play the effective part on few instrument, or use some useful technlogy…) almost everything nowaday is possible.
Well,I should mention the fact than my band still sounds better live and alive for me, but we still have to face with a true album recordingproductionmixing.
Graham! My favorite song to listen to when I start feeling like I’m adding too many guitar tracks is ” Your House” by Jimmy Eat World. Everyone should Check it out on some headphones if you haven’t critically listened to it. Each guitar part has a purpose and each part compliments the other. Side note – I heard The Edge in an interview once say there’s 5-6 different guitar parts going on in U2’s “where the streets have no name” and one of them is in a total different key of the song. That man is a guitar wizard .
I insist, nine inch nails : we’re in this toguether. Multiple layers of guitars and sounds HUGE. Or even the foo fighters used at least 2 amps for one guitar part, there are pictures documenting this.
But any ways, I liked this, and I’ve also notes that it is in fact easier to record minimal way and it’s better for mixing. Also, I’ll give this assignment a try, especially with STONE TEMPLE PILOTS. Dean Deleo has a thing for arranging very nice guitar parts that all of them sound separately in the mix.
Dean Deleo is one of my absolute favorite guitar players of all time – for that very reason. STP brings me back to the glory years!
Hi Sir Super
I have been trying to push myself in this direction for about a month now. As I am exploring different avenues of songwriting, I am writing a lot of different types of songs. I found that my heavy approach of doubling tracks for the left and right fields doesn’t work for a lot of songs. It does still work of that’s the sound you’re after, but I am trying to improve my skill set as a songwriter, engineer and producer. I have been consciencously paying more attention to arrangements in some of my favorite songs and attemptin tout those concepts into practice. This is a great way to see fast improvements in overall songwriting skills in my opinion, as you quickly see how often things can get in the way of each other.
As Carlos Aguilar said just before, there are several bands that used multiple layers of guitar.
Look at the DVD “Classic albums: Nevermind”, about the song called “Drain You”. Butch Vig make us listening to the 5 same parts of electric guitar recorded by Kurt Cobain, with 3 different amps.
To tell the truth, I do have a problem I’m sure a lot of people also have; my recordings doesn’t jump out the speakers -including the guitar parts. And damn it, I just don’t know how to do that, where does the problem comes from. So I try to multiply the layers, with diferent sounds and pan, just hoping it will sound better. Sometimes, it works, sometimes, it doesn’t, and it’s really frustrating.
If someone wants to, I can give you 2 links and make you listen what I’m talking about; a “flat” recording and a “jump out of the speakers” recording…
I do
I think this homework is inherently flawed because you cannot necessarily here the layering that goes into a single guitar parts sounds. Here is a quote from Jack Douglas but is affirmed by such engineers as Eddie Kramer, Joe Barresi and Frank Filipetti:
“The “phase EQ” is easily my favorite guitar overdubbing technique, because it’s so easy to experiment with new sounds and textures, and great to do this in collaboration with the guitarist themselves if they’re sitting in the control room with you. It’s also excellent when you’re layering up several distorted guitars, because being able to give each layer its own unique sound tends to create a much thicker and more impressive multitracked texture.”
Frank Filipetti said:
“You can create certain comb-filtering effects that work to your advantage.”
These can be used to create great sounding guitars. Great arrangement is needed regardless but simplicity of recorded guitars does not have any direct bearing on how good or bad the recording of the guitars is.
If you do not have the extra time to put in the work necessary to record/mix layered parts well then by all means go with simplicity. But I think we should avoid sweeping statements such as:
“Instead of recording more and more guitar tracks (which follows the logic that if one guitar sounds cool – more guitars will sound cooler) we should be recording as few guitar parts as possible.”
This may hold some truth in the amount of guitar “parts” it does not necessarily hold true when it comes to guitar “tracks”. Especially when it comes to layering.
Just my two cents,
Luke
Luke – the message to record as few parts as possible means to record only the bare minimum that the song NEEDS to have the impact you want. That might be two guitars. That might be 20. But you don’t want any more than is necessary to make the sounds you hear in your heads.
1, 2, 3, 4,5 🙂 huge guitar tone comes with perspective … to have a climax within the songs the count of guitar track (and eqing and panning) should represent this also i think…. bridge part guitar alone with less bass the full band kicks in and with it the gutiar get a second track with pannig and maybe an additional middle track … if another part that should appear even fatter i fill it up with not totally l/r panned guitar tracks … but it always gets a bit muddier the more guitar track you have so the recording should be tight and the mixture of sounds should be also good … for example using a stereo widener can cause problems but if you filter different frequencies on the left and right track , let`s say 5k left and 5,3k on the right track the guitar appears to be wider and ther`ll be more room and a better mono compatibility… oh and OZONE!!! Ears get tired … check guitar sounds by matching it with pink noise just to see whre the uneven spots are
Graham, Funny I was just listening to “Whole Lotta Love” with headphones a day ago & was surprised at how few guitar tracks there were. Today I listened again & there is 1 elec guit panned left, a reverb of that guitar panned right, mainly at the beginning, bass guitar and that’s about it. There are a few guitar fills here & there that jump in and out, especially in the middle climax section. Amazing!
A trick question: What’s less – one heavily overdriven electric guitar or two lightly overdriven guitars playing the same part panned left and right?
I think it’s a given that you shouldn’t have more guitar parts than your band has live guitarists, and if you’re a one-man project and never play live, then sticking with 2 simultaneous guitar parts (not counting the bass guitar) max seems like a good starting point unless there’s an incredibly good reason to have three. You can always use other instruments when you need to play more notes at the same time.
Multi-tracking with panning and detuning does seem like a good idea for achieving a massive sound, though.
Try doubling a rhythm acoustic part panned left/right with two different thickness’ of picks. That really fills out the sound. You would actually be surprised.
Contrary to this constructive advice, If I want a big sound I occasionally like to record a set of rhythm guitar tracks with differing chord inversions, together with a track containing regular melodic riffs that blend in, EQ and balance them up, and mix them to one spread-out stereo track. I then place this single stereo track somewhere in the background of the full mix, which gives me a rhythmic wall of sound. Of course, it’s necessary to be careful with the level of this background track in order to avoid overall muddiness, but it does simplify the final mix.
I think it depends on what you are doing. How many other instruments your working with. This is going back in time a bit but, the first Van Halen album is a great example of guitar defining sound, with minimal tracks. While RR with Ozzy also had guitar defining tone, and was known for lots of guitar tracks within a song.
I think it all depends on what your doing, music style, guitar tones, how many other instruments are involved with the song.
Hello,
Thin guitarsounds? I’m familiar with the problem, but I did find out that less defenitely more!
As far as I know, many great guitarsounds were recorded with multiple microphones: one in front of the speaker, one a few ft away, one room- microphone, one at the back of the cabinet etc. Then they put these four/five tracks together (beware of the phasing problems)and… there you have your wall of sound. The tricky part is, that there might be multiple tracks, but it is still ONE GUITAR playing (Steven Lukather from Toto once told this in an Interview, for example). We, at least I, don’t have the possibility to record like this.
Yesterday I found out, that when I plug my guitar into my DI800 Behringer DI-box, use the thru-connector to go into my amp with iso-box with a sm57 to record the amplified signal AND use the XLR out to go to the second input on my interface, route this direct to two tracks in my DAW, I have three guitar signals: one amplified, two directsignals (no effects, whatsoever). I have the amplified signal centerbased. The di-signals panned Left and Right. Since these signals are” prepared” for working with my Plugins, I insert a compressor and a virtual amp (bother standard Plugins), both with slightly different virtual microphone positions. I use these virtual amps to fatten up my guitarsound. Although I have three different sounds, it is still one guitar and not a doubled guitar part.
And as Gary says, it depends on what you’re doing…and what YOU want.
I am new here, so maybe someone (Graham?) already explained this. Then, sorry for the time you lost with reading this. If not, maybe you should try it, it works for me. Use a di-box, that doesn’t cut too much of your original signal, otherwise your real ampsignal sounds powerless. The DI800 is very good, although they weren’t build for this purpose (check eBay).
Peter
what about this philosophy in regards to vocals?
anyone?
I recently saw a youtube video called something alone the lines of “layering pop vocals”
that gives vocals a nice pop feel been spread out across the track so it sounds as if its coming from everywhere, also with harmonies doubled (each part done twice)
So I’m not as used to picking out different guitar lines as many of you. I was wondering if someone here could hazard a their own guess as to how many different guitar lines are in this song:
I’d like to add that I can easily tell the difference between the synths and the guitars, so that’s not hampering me. I’m not pulling down six figures, but I’m no beginner either.
Thanks!
Forgive me, I apparently forgot everything I know from HTML school:
Soukyuu no Hikari by Faylan
I really enjoyed this article, I am in the middle of laying down some guitar track for a song a buddy and I are working on. I wanted to keep it as simple as I could but I was fighting the urge to keep adding and adding guitars to it. This opened up my eyes to stay on track and use a minimalist approach. Thanks for posting it!!!
Completely agreed, Graham! May I just add that the same goes for everything else, too! 😉 Like vocals, drums, synths. One should always be aware of how many instruments are there in the arrangement, or part of it, and how much frequency spectrum they consume. That is one of the great tips for a better mix – good quality recording, having one track but a great sounding one, and good arrangement of tracks not just according to verse/chorus/break, but also according to frequencies.
Either this is a rock/pop thing or I am missing something. Our praise team at church has two guitars, one acoustic, one electric. The electric is on lead, the acoustic strums (as a general rule). No layering of anyone there.
At home I tend to play/record bluegrass/folk gospel. Typical arrangement is one guitar, a mandolin, a banjo, a fiddle and a bass. There are times when I might add in an autoharp or a mountain dulcimer. I like a Celtic influence now and then, so I am also looking at a low whistle. But even with the added instruments, it is still just one of each.
I must be missing something. I simply don’t understand why you would have multiples of the same instrument, playing the same thing.
It can be done for multiple reasons. In rock and metal you’ll two guitarists playing the same parts but in the studio you pan one left and one right. The subtle differences in the performances help create a large space and sense of separation. Also, often times the same instruments will be playing different parts such as a harmony or chords and lead like you mentioned before. Multiple guitar part tend to interact with each other in a way similar to strain sections in classical music. Playing different parts that are complementary to each other. It’s like when you have an acoustic and banjo part expect both are being played on the instrument.
When you have different kinds of instruments covering the exact same line of music (or maybe an octave or two apart), and you blend their sound well enough, they can give you a new texture not attainable in any other way. Film-scoring is full of this concept – epic or cinematic music can feature only a few different musical parts, but use an entire orchestra’s power to bring those lines home.
Basically, the more instruments that are playing the same line, the bigger and richer the sound in theory. In practice, of course, this can sometimes result in only muddled lines and an overall loss of clarity or definition.
Listen to any Queen/Brian May guitar or Queen vocals (Killer Queen) & you’ll have your answer.
I mostly work with metal so often the guitar is as focal as the vocals if not more so. I’ve been doing a lot of double captures of individual parts lately. I put two mics on the speaker because they both bring something different to the over all sound. I usually do the same parts for rhythm left and right and let things like harmonies be separated in those channels like they would be live but I use a third set of tracks for solos and such. At most it still only works out to 6 tracks and I always bus the double capture together so I think of them as one track. So far it hasn’t caused me any problems but if it did I have a mute button 🙂
Switchfoot : Dark Horses
At the most complex moments, there were only three guitar parts: the main riff, a chucky rhythmic countermelody-ish thing, and the bass guitar… no noticeable pan either (though some parts may have been mic’ed in stereo)
Either way, there’s only three parts competing with the drums and vocals… and the song RAWKS because of it.
I keep telling guitar players the same exact thing.
Stop Quad Tracking!!!
I have our band sound, and recording template setup up the old nwohm (new wave of heavy metal) style, ala Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy, Queensryche, Metallica.
1 guitar player on the left, the other on the right.
I have multiple channels assigned, but they are as follows:
Left: Crunch Guitar
Left: Clean Guitar
Left: Lead Guitar
Right: Crunch Guitar
Right: Clean Guitar
Right: Lead Guitar
and a couple for special effect/overdubs, if used.
Even if I don’t have clean guitar on that particular song, this allows me to have that option, and use it, or don’t.
I can treat each of these dynamics individually, unlike the old days where I used one channel and had to make extra adjustments to compensate for my cleans to crunch and back & forth.
I then go back later, and set up a track so that I can plug my POD HD500X in, and then level match my POD according to the mixed volumes, so that my live tones match the level of my recorded tones with regards to clean/crunch/lead.
Thanks so much for posting these Graham. I find them to be very valuable, and I have a folder that I keep them in my Hotmail so that I can refer to them by category as needed.
Hey Graham. Here’s a tip you might want to pass on. Cheap paper/poly tarps you can get at any hardware store make excellent whole-wall sound dampeners (cloth-like paper side exposed). They cost about $7 each 9 X 12′ and can be put up temporarily with push-pins. You can dampen an entire room for next to nothing and the sound absorption is amazing.
Greetings friend…
Playing around with a GP5 file of one of my originals (I’ve never been happy with the way the guitars sounded hard paned L & R with only 2 gtr parts) I doubled up on each guitar part.
I then approx one 3rd panned one Rhythm gtr track each way, whilst hard-panning one Rhythm/Harmony guitar part each way.
This has resulted in my getting something much more pleasing to me by achieving great separation with a “wall of sound”, yet everything sounds much better balanced than before.
Where the guitars are doing their diferent parts the Higher Harmony parts are coming out both L & R, HARD, whilst the main Rhythm parts are coming out both sides partially, and the Bass and Drummz right up the middle.
As I earlier stated, this gives great separation of the guitars whilst also giving a more pleasing balance between L & R. I have one guitar part doing a stacato, sharp stopping while the other rings out on the same notes. It was a little offputting before, but now sounds AWESOME! At least with very heavily distorted Extreme Metal.
😉
Please, give this a try with a recording and let me know what you think.
Thanks heaps for all your lessons.
Nimir Anu/Narayan.
Awesome advice as always, Graham! I love the powerful, in-your-face, punchy guitar sounds My Chemical Romance and Foo Fighters produce, and they have a giant wall of guitars, and from what I’ve researched, it’s a nightmare to mix even coming from Chris Lord-Alge. Would you say that it’s essentially the same concept as mixing with stock plug-ins? Get GREAT at mixing with the basics, to understand exactly what you’re doing, then when you get the all-in-one FX bundle, or the 10+ guitar tracks, you’ll have a better understanding? Because from what I understand, they record the “wall of guitars” because that’s the sound they want. And I love it, but can’t make it happen for my personal recordings. Thanks.
I think no matter how many guitar parts you end up with, they all have be there for a reason. If you took one away, you have to notice it. Otherwise it’s pointless.
ACDC and Van Halen still sounds bigger than guitar track in some metal band nowadays.
How would you guys swing this?
http://youtu.be/Gu6fkjjAKog
Doubling the guitar (maybe using different guitars and different amps), or just one performance splitt into different amps?
I’m talking about the main riff .
The best example I could give is the band Boston, absolutely insane. Some earlier stuff like the second album were a bit more minimalistic, but for the most part, you want a wall of sound? Scholz is a master of double tracking and using phasing and comb filtering, tape saturation to get a sound that only he can get.
Boston – Don’t Look Back: http://youtu.be/3VPLOVJ0u94
I couldn’t agree more with this concept… But here’s one I always struggle with. Let’s say I’m working on a Foo Fighters type tracks with two guitar parts: one rhythm guitar part chunking away at power chords (homophonic) and the other a lead guitar part playing melodic lines or “riffs” (monophonic), but not a guitar solo. I’ll double the rhythm part and pan one hard left the other hard right. But now what to do with the melodic guitar… If I leave it center, it competes with the lead vocal… If I double it, it doesn’t sound singular and tight enough, plus where would I pan a doubled lead part so it doesn’t get lost in the already hard panned rhythm part? I was referencing some Foo Fighters tracks with A-B Listening to isolate the mid and the sides of the image and I swear I hear both parts hard panned and simultaneously in the center of the mix. Any suggestions on two guitar doubling and/or panning position? (I should mention I’m becoming a fan of LCR Mixing as well… But if I just record the two guitar parts once and pan one hard left and the other hard right, it doesn’t feel as “BIG” as it needs to be in the rhythm part.) AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
I recently watched a series of YouTube videos called “Wrecking Crew” showing various Nashville, West Coast, Motown, etc, studio musicians. Highly recommend these and you will see the “less is more mentality” that comes with great songwriting craftsmanship. They do understand the minimalist very well I’d say and have the hits to back it up. Hard to believe all those great songs and the session musicians who created them were paid peanuts!
I definitely agree with this. You can get “huge guitar tone” from one track. 3 piece bands do it all the time at their live shows. I do think that doubling the rhythm part identically and hard panning can help, not necessarily in creating a “bigger” sound, but just getting the guitars out of the center to make way for the snare and vocals.
Look no further than the Back In Black album from AC-DC. Timeless, classic, huge and even the overdriven stuff doesnt have as much overdrive as most people think. #minimalist
Even on my heaviest recordings I doubt I have more than 4-5 guitars happening at any one point.
My personal secret weapon on my harder rock / metal styled songs is to either add a 12 string or six string acoustic down the centre to sweeten up the soundscape. Two rhythm tracks, i.e. one Riffing or holding big sustained chords, the other playing maybe an arpeggiated pattern, so I have already build up a huge wall of rhythm sounds, leaving the Bass to fill out the bottom end.
Solos, I am the opposite of most hard rock guitarists, and use a lower gain setting, still a fair bit of bite, but not as much saturation as most use, because I find that over compresses the sound, and removes a lot of the clarity.
The newest song I recorded has three guitar tracks (plus Bass) in total, and sounds huge. I have the same Acoustic (mic’d) both playing sustained chords down the centre, and the punchier percussive rhythm down one side, and a nylon string replicating a very similar percussive rhythm down the other side. Less is more, if you use the dynamics and know how to fill out the soundscape with minimal tones. This song has a very Latin feel to it, so rather than going nuts with the guitars, I have a drum kit panned as usual, plus Congas on the left side and Bongos on the right. Bass down the centre, along with Lead vocal, and a lower harmony slightly right of that and an upper harmony slightly left. That is the entire song layout. Three guitars, bass, drums, gongs, bongos, lead vocal and two harmony tracks. It does not need anything else, and it sounds massive, commercial even though it is nothing like a typical commercial radio hit.
This helps a lot! I look ahead to more similar postings like this one. Thanks for sharing this.
thanks for sharing this tips