I should note we are a two guitar band so the other guitar player is doing thangs.

The two amp idea is mainly just for sections where, I, the rhythm guitar gets a little wooly with distortion/fuzz and having a clean-ish sound to mix in to make it not sound blown out. I am just double tracking the same power chords, but in the past I did so with an overdub (and I used a different guitar when overdubbing). But the ends of these means is just having a full guitar sound in those parts, I'm not overdubbing a different or distinct second part to stand out.

In this specific instance and question if we're talking about being efficient with your tracking time, it would be fastest to have both amps set up at once w/ a bit of isolation (a bit more important at EA where they tend not to close-mic cabinets). During mix, you'd bring that 2nd track in as needed to fill things out. Since it's the same take, it's not completely dissimilar to parallel compression. It would take a minute to set up obv but once you get going, kinda no-brainer. Honestly not having it "jump out" on those parts is probably the smart move given your stated objectives.

If you overdub, you wait till everything's tracked, go back and then re-record everything on those specific parts. So yeah I think tracking the two amps simultaneously makes the most sense. It might be a little tricky to manage during mix if you're going to tape but whatever, ain't nothing those pros can't deal with.

The only other concern I guess would be if you're doing a tape recording, you'll need to measure your track count and make sure you're not running up against a ceiling. Usually a rock band doesn't have this problem, even w/ two guitars.

Generally-speaking to the topic itself, you are clearly on the right track my only caveat being that if your music relies on some emotional resonance with the material, you could find yourself rehearsing the life out of the songs. It's a fine line.

One other general suggestion is that pre-production, communications, setting expectations are the biggest and best investment of time possible.

Another efficiency killer aside from the snort-laugh I did when I read about the singer and the lyrics (literally every band I have ever been in) is wanting to "try things out in the studio." Nothing wrong w/ that, it's just intentionally adding inefficiency to the process. Cool shit happens that way, but the FAFO approach is not always fruitful and can be very expensive. Those things also need to be discussed in pre-production.

Doing your own demo and having this stuff worked out ahead of time is incredibly important to efficiency. That being said, coming in and not having a chill vibe because you're stressed about time is almost NEVER conducive to quality output. Have goals, be prepared but also expect snags and roadblocks and be flexible when you need to pivot.

Two different takes with two different amps will give you a bigger sound every time.

If you go the two amps at once route, have you instead considered just using a single amp with something to give you some clean blend along side the big muff on the single amp? You’ll def get more clarity. The Boss LS-2 is useful for this.

I like to try to get parts in one shot, so I'd try to find a sound that works completely and go with that.

But often enough, I do not get the part I want out of a single track. A lot of times an ambient mic will take up the slack, but sometimes it's still not quite right.

In which case, I will overdub if I want a different feel from the playing.

Like if one part is chunky and the other part is strummy, or one part is root-5th-octave and the other part is thirds plus whatever extensions of the chords on top. That kind of stuff.

Most of the time, the playing of a guitar part with a clean sound is not that similar to the playing of the same guitar part with a dirty sound. Not the same attack, not the same picking technique, not the same sustain, not the same accents. In which case overdubbing it might be preferable if you want the best of both worlds or whatever.

But for me, if I would play a bit more or less the same way on another take--with variation only in the sound of it--I would not do another track. I would use two amps for sure.

If the amps sound different and are in stereo in the mix, it sounds better and more interesting to me than just layering stuff.

The wild card is how the guitar behaves with more than one amp in play. The whole system can change if you're in the room with both of them. Things feedback differently etc. etc. It's basically always more unruly, which can be good or bad depending on what you want out of the deal.

tommy wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2024 2:00 pm Two different takes with two different amps will give you a bigger sound every time.

If you go the two amps at once route, have you instead considered just using a single amp with something to give you some clean blend along side the big muff on the single amp? You’ll def get more clarity. The Boss LS-2 is useful for this.

Yeah, funny you mention this, as this was my game plan when we recorded last. For whatever reason or weird guitar sound chemistry it just didnt have the same quality I was looking for as having one fully fuzzed out track and separate more clear track mixed together.

I also really like a clean bass track panned all the way left and a really dirty bass track panned all the way right, I know a lot of people don't like that, but my brain really likes that.

Have you considered recording a clean take and then re-amping it? might give you more (insight into / control of) how they blend.

I would say if you know your parts, and/or they're not super technical an overdub tone journey can be fast, especially if you're sure of your goals. I'd say rhythm guitar overdubs are usually the least stressful step in the recording process. Maybe 10 minutes per song if people know their shit and know what they're after.

Put up the alternate rig and knock stuff out. Usually your weirder tone concept will tell you right away if and how it works and can revise your overdub list in real time.

The only time I’ve ever recorded in a semi-professional manner was 4 or 5 years ago when my three piece band recorded an EP.

We kind of did something like OP was considering and I chose to go w/ overdubs, though I always used two different amps live when the room was big enough - the songs had drums, bass, and a basic guitar part, then a guitar overdub that were building on the same guitar part (maybe played at a different part of the neck with slightly different voicing) with kind of fucked up guitar sounds. It’s wasn’t like a fuzzlord thing, just kind additional rock guitar sounds.

Anyways, the overdubs went pretty smoothly and were fine, but I regretted the samey “layered” sort of sound… while there was some tonal variety, the parts were basically the same with a very similar feel, and they were worked out in advance to be like that.

I just think some musical (not just textural) counter point to the main parts would have been nice. The one song where we did the traditional main rock sound + clean overdub was probably the most pointless one. It was an EGC through a Balls AC30 w/ Celestion Blues for most of the record, so it already had plenty going for it and didn’t need a plinky part poking out. It wasn’t like a big warm Big Muff thing at all.

Anyways, we had a PRF-adjacent wizard mix the album who spent a lot of time on it, and the album turned out as good as it could have at the time, but I would only record a bunch of samey guitar overdubs like that again if I had things explicitly mapped out, while still allowing things to unfold organically.

Otherwise, I could have spent more time dialing in the main guitar sound in the studio, added completely different parts as part of the arrangement and spent way more time on vocals… or we could have even recorded more songs. Not sure if this reads like I’m bitching and moaning, but I don’t think of this so much as a regret, but more of a lessons learned sort of thing. We still made a motherfucker guitar recording!