Quote:

I don't agree. Anything other then a pure analogous reproduction of the voice or instrument is an effect. Doubling is an effect. It's not what makes or breaks a recording. Top end gear and top end people make stars. There are always exceptions. We can all name a few no talent stars.



OK, perhaps we are talking about two different things.

When I say doubling a track - I'm talking about two entirely different tracks - with different takes. The goal being trying to sing and/or play the identical thing on both tracks. Of course an exact waveform copy is nearly impossible. The differences are what thickens things up and makes the sound 'large', even if it's quiet. I have yet to hear an 'effect', which I refer to as something that alters a particular track, that sounds as nice as bonafide track doubling.

For example, I double tracked the acoustic guitar on this cover of Beck's "The Golden Age". I did not use chorus, I did not use delay or copying a track and time shifting it as some people call 'doubling'.

Here's the first two minutes of my cover: http://rockstarnot.rekkerd.org/songs/new...ute%20cover.mp3

And here is the Beck, high-dollar, real studio version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf_zt_dIm0A

The audio on that is not such great quality. It's an ace album and one that I find myself listening to again and again because of it's production values, the interesting lyrics, the tuneful melodies, the place that it takes me to. To be honest, I can't stand any of Beck's other albums, but this one is probably in my top 10 favorite albums of all time. I would love to mimic some of the sounds of the other songs on the album, but most of them have these Bacharach-like 60's string section bits that I simply haven't figured out how to do in my home studio.

I took on the outright mimicry of this song as a challenge - really to see for myself if what you say is true (which many other people; amateurs and pundits alike have said in the past) - or at least part of what you said in an earlier post - the part about quality - does it really take expensive gear/talent/studio, or does it depend more upon how well one knows the gear and tools they have at their disposal? I proved for myself that at least for this kind of music, which I really love, it does not take the expensive studio. Just careful listening, careful planning, a creative approach, and fairly deep commitment to quality and studying about how to get there from an engineering perspective - that is what it takes; plus a little bit of musical talent.

On the background vocals, I believe I triple-tracked my vocals. You can call it an effect, or you can call it mixing/arranging. I guess I don't really care about the terminology - call it an effect if you like. I don't see how that matters.

I think I came about as close as I could getting the vibe and sound of the original, all played, programmed, mixed, edited by my lonesome, in my basement, without an engineer, producer, high-paid help, multi-million dollar record collection, etc.

In fact I had some people claim I simply copied the first 2 minutes of the song when I submitted it to the monthly KVRaudio.com song contest (it was a cover month). But when they listened to mine vs. Beck's, they heard that I switched up the rhythm on the acoustic guitars, the keyboard parts are different, etc. My drums were 'hitchier' (hand played in on my midi keyboard and left alone for the most part'. I happened to win the contest that month out of about 50-60 entries in the contest.

-Scott

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