Paper Triangle

Alright,
I’m gonna make a quick post before school because yesterday was a nice experimental day for recording that I enjoyed immensely.
You know, people always say, “Record guitars for the left ear and the right ear.”  I always understood why you’d do that and how it’d be awesome… but I just felt with my equipment it’d be muddy all the time.  So I stuck with that notion and said, “Eff that, not gonna deal with something I know is gonna suck.”  In fact, once I did try just like, duplicating a track, a panning the one to the left ear and the other to the right, and I didn’t notice the difference.  However, that was a dumbass move on my part, because if you do that with vocals, you can’t tell either.  It’s the different recordings that create awesome layers- I should have known better.  Then after listening to New World by L’Arc-En-Ciel, I noticed that the guitars were in the left and right ear quite obviously- because they were the same rhythms, just, you could tell there were some discrepancies in them… yet it was fine!  Sounded marvelous!  With this in mind, I decided to try it out on the latest song I recorded.

Sure enough- it sounded bad ass.  It was a bit bassy, but with the “Bass reducer” option on iTunes, that problem is gone.  The bass doesn’t sound as intense, but it still sounds great… the overall package feels really great.  What I noticed though was that it only makes the biggest difference when doing palm-muted segments.  So I suppose I’ll do it that way only?

Okay, here’s a wrap-up of what I learned/did yesterday:
-When recording guitars, it’s best to record one track for the left ear, another track for the right ear.
-However, it’s best to only do this when you want to convey a sense of intensity and/or when you’re plam-muting.  Like, if I were to have an acoustic song and do this, it just really wouldn’t fit that well.  It’d feel so in your face and not nearly as pretty because things are a bit jumbled at times.  For acoustic songs, it’s all about articulation.  When recording one guitar for each other, articulation is not what you’re aiming for.  Intensity is what you’re main end is going to be.
-Don’t use tihs technique for lead guitars.  Unless of course you want that supreme intensity.

Final note: Only use this technique when you’re trying to be “in your face.”
From now on we will refer to recording one guitar for each ear as the “In your face” technique or the “Intensity Function”.