Twelve string guitar sounds can add an expensive sheen to any production, but not every musician or engineer has access to the right instrument. We show you three low cost ways to get the sound.
When it comes to production tricks to get more involving guitar sounds, using a twelve string guitar for acoustic or electric parts is hard to resist. Whether for padding out chord parts, or for thickening up leads and counter melodies, the lush, chorusing sound from twelve strings can restore the complexity that single parts lack. Here are three workarounds for those times when six strings need to do the work of twelve.
1 - Double Track
While it might sound obvious, recording two identical parts does much of what a twelve string instrument will do by replicating almost all of its attributes, bar the octave pairing of the lowest four courses. Assuming that the player can turn in the same performance twice, with usably accurate timing, the double track technique is an easy win that is completely free to do.
2 - Use An Audio Plugin
By duplicating the guitar track and pitch shifting it, the sound of the additional strings can be faked in the box. Using the original track and the plugin’s mix control will achieve the same thing. Where octave shifts are employed, the disadvantage of this approach is that all six strings are shifted up. Not only can this sound bogus in the musical sense, but also it can exacerbate any shifting artefacts unnecessarily. Muting strings while playing can get around this but things can become convoluted. To get around octave-related problems, smaller microtonal shifts can be used instead to recreate the twelve string chorusing effect alone.
3 - Use A Capo
Many guitarists will be familiar with the effect of playing different positions and inversions of chords to add interest, or to ‘get out of the way’ of other parts playing in the same register. Using a capo makes this easy for most guitarists with an ear or some musical knowledge. An example would be an open E/A/G/A progression being layered with an instrument capo’d at the 7th fret playing A/D/C/D chord shapes. A high capo position will produce chords in the same register as those produced by a twelve string instrument on the lower courses. In any key, using a capo’d part layered with the first part offers perhaps the most organic way to get the harmonic spread that twelve string instruments afford.
When Six Strings Are Better Than Twelve
Using a regular guitar to achieve the twelve string sound can bring chiming, rich harmonic goodness to lots of situations with great results. While the obvious advantage is avoiding the expense of buying or hiring an instrument that gets used less than other musical tools, the other bonus is tuning and ease of play. The wider neck of the instrument makes it trickier to play for some. Added to that, anyone who has tuned a twelve string will testify that doing it without a tuner isn’t for the faint hearted… When you look at all the factors involved, using a six doesn’t seem quite as bad after all.