LPM - Artificial guitar strum

2/7/2016

Hey folks! In this edition of Let's Play Music I go over a very simple trick to add some extra life to an acoustic guitar performance and some wideness to your mix. I used this technique recently while mixing a track for Deadbolt and I really like the result so I wanted to share it with you. As you will see in the video, it's really easy to pull off and can be done with any stereo delay plugin. Take a look!

In short, here are the steps:

Pan your acoustic guitars (hard) left/right.
- If you have only one performance it's best to pan it at the center position (C).
Group your guitars into a stereo bus. This will save you processing power since you will load only one delay until. It will also come in handy if you want to add other effects to your guitars, like compression, EQ, etc. (Btw, dynamic effects and EQ should be added before the delay in the plugin chain)
- Alternatively, you can add a Send FX track with the delay plugin and send your guitars there.
Add a stereo delay effect to the guitar bus (or send). Make sure your plugin can sync to your DAW.
Pan the two delays hard left/right
Set the sync of the delays to something that makes sense as an upstroke strum. Dotted 1/8th and 16th usually works but it depends on the rhythm of each piece.
Filter out some low frequencies from your delay. Upstroke usually has attenuated low end because the pick starts from the hi strings and might not even touch the lower ones.
You're done!

Hope you found this one useful! See you in the next one ;)

Chris

4 Comments

Phillip

16/7/2016 06:54:30 am

Hey Chris,
Awesome tutorial! I loved your work in Deadbolt and it's awesome to see your process for bringing so much depth and detail into the tracks.

I'm an aspiring video game music composer in high school and although I'm using Logic, your explanations go beyond Cubase and I really appreciate that.

Thanks!
-Phillip

Chris

20/7/2016 03:44:35 pm

Thanks P,

Very glad you mention this. I really want to make these tutorials as universal as possible. Obviously, there might come a time where I use a specific effect or synth, but I still want it to be more about the thought behind it than the actual tool, which is merely a mean to an end :)

Take care,
C

xRTGx

4/1/2017 07:03:14 pm

Very interesting! Would you say there is an advantage to creating the guitar track like this, as opposed to playing the guitar with the upstrokes in the original recording? Or is this more a case where you think "it would sound much cooler if it was played like this", after the recording session is already finished, and you just want to "plus" the track?

5/1/2017 12:08:57 pm

Glad you enjoyed it! If you want a guitar performance with the upstroke (for which I guess "strum" is the proper term, but I brain-farted during the recording!) I'd say go for the real thing. This video is more about being creative with "found" material :)

The reality is we didn't actually plan for this part at all. Christos, my guitar player, recorded it by himself as "miscellaneous parts" (he provided tons and tons of such material for each track, most of which ended up in the album). The guitar spawned that entire part of the piece :)

This is something I do a lot when composing and I find it tickles my creativity a lot. That is, taking material from all over and re-purposing it or manipulating it in some way to create something slightly different or even entirely new.

Chris

LPM - Artificial guitar strum

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