Originally Posted By: 2bSolo

My engineer is older and he has a lot of experience in recording soul music in the South. We are using two horns, trumpet and tenor sax. The other night, he wanted the players to double the parts (stacking as he calls it). I was fine with that but it had an annoying chorus effect and I said something about it. Turns out he was doing it sound on sound so I am glad I did. He stopped doing it, but he said the horns would not come out well if I didn't double them. Also, he said all the Stax sessions used doubled horns.

So today I listened to some Sam and Dave, then some Otis Redding. The horns don't sound chorused to me at all. Reverbed, but not chorused.


2b


Your "engineer" isn't as knowledgeable as he claims to be if he's doing sound on sound and having problems with comb filter phasing (chorus effect)........ or, more likely, and or in addition to that...... he's just plain lazy. BTW: a good engineer doesn't have to double parts to make them sound good. But he does have to know what he's doing. You can decide for yourself which is the case in this instance.

Well.... technically he's correct. Horns sound good in horn sections..... BUT.... getting a doubled or stacked horn section to sound good, as you pointed out is not easy. It's better to record just one horn on a melody. Now if you notice, 9 in the example Dock of the Bay) there are places where the two horns are playing harmony melody parts. That's totally different and easy to record. It's when the 2 or more horns are playing the same exact melody that problems occur. It's called comb filtering. You have two very close notes and you have all sorts of things going on with the out of phase waves. Addition, subtraction, beat frequencies, all of that adds up to give you the phased sound you describe.

Go with ONE solidly recorded track for each. ONLY use the same instrument on parts that are harmony with no unison notes. ALWAYS record the instruments in their own unique tracks for each take. That makes it easy to change levels, edit notes out, etc,,,, in the final mix.

The way I work with stacked tracks is as follows.
1. Each take has it's own track
2. Each take is recorded in such a way as to ensure ALL notes start and end at the same time. Phrasing is super critical. No loose ends. Also.... using Melodyne to correct pitch drift is a really, really good idea as well. Nothing says "tight" like tuned parts.
3. If unison is used..... one track is the lead. The other tracks are panned fairly hard off center one way and the other. (3 tracks) One center, one hard left, one hard right. Both the hard panned tracks are also volume enveloped to be barely audible. In other words, down at the -10 to -14 dB below the dB level of the lead or main track. Doing this lets you have the fill you want..... but low enough that comb filtering is not very evident.
4. that time consuming effort is applied to each and every track that is stacked or doubled.'


None of this is hard and fast "rules" for recording, just guidelines. You can stack doubled tracks all day long with minimal problems but you have to know what you're doing and be working with well recorded tracks.

Good luck

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.