Brief Summary
For fuller acoustic guitars try this triple tracking tip with all three guitars playing the same chords but in different ways.
Going Deeper
Tracking acoustic guitar? Here’s a tip to turn your boring ‘cowboy chords’ into something with width, depth and richness. All without a plugin in sight.
One of the instruments I record the most is the acoustic guitar. The addition of a little reverb, maybe even a tasteful amount of modulation can add a dash of luxury to the sound, but can only do so much before it starts to obscure the immediacy of the guitar. Width can be introduced using stereo miking techniques, though widening a mono acoustic guitar with faux stereo effects is difficult to do without compromising the mono compatibility of the guitar track.
Double Tracking
Double-tracking is the magic bullet for introducing richness. Despite the best efforts of some really impressive doubling effects from the likes of Synchro Arts, a well played double track will always sound better than an effect.
If you want the natural smoothing of a double track but would prefer something more interesting than duplicating the first guitar part, try this. An all natural triple layer acoustic guitar which is easy and effective.
First Pass - Standard Tuning
The first pass is the guitar part, played as you would if it were the only pass. In the example below I’m keeping the examples short by just playing a single chord.
I’m not dusting off a pre-war Martin. The guitar is a pretty ordinary Hohner from the 90s in standard tuning. It’s miked about 8 inches off the 12 fret with a Neumann TLM103 into a BAE 1073. A little limiting is used so I can level match the examples. The chord is an open G.
Second Pass - Capo on 5th, Drop D
Exactly the the same guitar, mic, preamp and limiting. Capo on the 5th fret in Drop D. It just happens to be in an alternate tuning. This technique works perfectly in standard. The chord is a D, which, due to the capo, sounds as an inversion of G. Same notes, different order. This technique is great for spreading the notes out across inversions, Disguising those open chord voicings we’ve all heard a million times before.
Third Pass - Nashville Stringing
The third pass uses a Taylor Baby, a travel guitar I bought years ago as something which would fit in a cupboard in my camper van. I no longer have the van but the guitar sees use strung ‘nashville style’. This involves stringing the guitar with the top set from a 12 string set of strings. The first four courses of strings on a 12 string add an additional octave up string with the standard pitch string and the top 2 courses are in unison. Used on their own the upper set of strings gives a ‘re-entrant” tuning, meaning that some of the lower strings are higher than the strings in a ‘higher’ position on the instrument. 5 string banjos and ukuleles also have re-entrant ‘bottom’ strings.
The guitar is very punchy which means it works well in this application but you could use any guitar strung in this way. The important part is the strings. The same mic, preamp and limiting were used.
All Three Together
If you listen to each of the individual examples they are fine, nothing more. However when all three are used, panned left, centre and right the effect is more than the sum of its parts. What do you think?
This tip is quick, effective and just works. Double tracking is good but I think this is better. How do you track acoustic guitars?