Stereo the WRONG Way  

I had mono once in high school. Couldnt get out of bed for a week. Turns out it was just a phase.

Thanks Joe for all your tutorials👌. I wouldn't be where I am today without your knowledge. Your Home Studio Mixing course opened my ears and way of thinking.🤩⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Greetings from Slovenia from Robert😊

Awesome video and super informative. Thanks Joe!

Great tutorial Joe. I’ve learned a lot of recording tips from RR.

Thanks so much for this. I’ve watched a handful of videos here and there talking about phase cancellation, and you’re the first person to explain it in a way I was able to fully comprehend. I’ve always known how to avoid it, but never understood what was actually happening in the audio.

What you can do is, if the track is long enough you can cut it in half and put one half in a new track and make it left and the other one right.

I get good results doing the mid-side MIC tec. Mid mic on one track the side mic in fig eight pattern on second track. Then i double the second track [mid mic] pan left and right then throw one track out of phase. I bring my volume up to where i want the guitar with my mid mic and then blend in the side tracks for width.

I did this trick back in 2015 when i was 15 y/o and we made a comedy/joking around Rap + other random genres album with my then friend. I had mono sound effects of audience clapping + talking i had recorded in a school event and vocals/voices there that had the phase flipped in the other channel so they would disappear if listening from a mono summing phone speaker. That was fun trick. "Where those effects went man?"

I DO THAT SINCE 10 YEARS AGO at least.

I record mono tracks to layers. I then duplicate track complete, select a different layer for each mono track then pan one left and the other right. Not as good as double tracking but works well if you've only recorded a single mono track.

Me again . I misspoke in the other thread (somewhere). What I actually do is dupe the original track TWO times, then pan the dupes hard L & R and flip the phase of one. Then, the original gets a slight delay and is panned center, or in whatever place in the field I want the instrument to emanate from. Further, the faders of the two hard-panned tracks are the same and considerably lower than the original. All three are linked and sent to a Group. I suppose this is what one might call a faux Middle-Side (I say faux because two mics, one cardiod and the other figure 8, weren't used). In mono, the two out of phase tracks cancel, but the original is intact. I'd be interested to know if this approach has some pitfalls to it.

Won't work for acoustics, but for re-amping electric guitar DI's, duplicate it, flip the polarity and then run that through the amp sim. Works better with a real amp, as it will react more to the polarity flip than a sim. Using a different cab will help make them feel wider too, but just double track stuff. It can be tedious, especially if you have to go in a tighten things up, but the end result will be better.

Hi Joe. Thanks for the video. Please can you do a video on how to get drive guitars doubled with the same parts to sound good in mono. I have tried so many things and my drive guitars always sound phasey in mono. 🙏

hey joe can you show us how to mix just an acoustic song with strings?

If you want width say on guitar, and you haven’t double tracked it, I have duplicated the track, and then cut paste the duplicated track, so that in Verse 1, the duplicated track is actually using Verse 2, etc etc. That way, for sections that you want to be wider, the 2 tracks do not play the same thing. Works well, like 2 takes, but it depends on your song structure.

Question on electric guitar, Can you copy a track, have different amp sims and effects, get each tone the way you like them, then bounce/print each as a new audio track, pan those and avoid phase cancellation? I can only use amp sims.

Thanks for this! It is very helpful! I am sure, I've done some bad tricks before😁. One question, it should be fine if you record it to a stereo mics, right. I've got two mics for stereo recording my violin, the only problem I can't use them, because I've got the constant problem with the buzzing at least in one of them😂, but if they were fine it would've been would it be the same effect to record in two mics on different tracks but the same take or the depth more comes from tiny differences in performances? Thanks! P.S. definitely if I record some simple orchestra parts , that's the way to do it, but if it is something very fast, virtuosic, that becomes quite tricky to play it twice, it can be difficult to match up in the mix...

Can you use this trick with bass guitar as well?

Do plugins like Wider, bx_solo or Ableton's Utility create this type of issue when trying to give width to a track? I've run into situations in which I use one of those cause I was too lazy to record another track and when it goes to mono, the guitar becomes way quieter.

Hiii Joe, thanks for the video, are there any other ways to obtain width other than doubling like with different mics in different rooms, if you're more than one person?

honestly I'd never do the fake double mistake evr again (used to do it when I started out), bescause there are easier ways like an ADT fx (I always test them if they're not phase cancelling). If I don't do a double...

Did you flip the phase on the R vs the L? When you mono, it'll disappear.

Hey Joe I have question for you....if I record a song by tracking each instrument In mono then render the entire edit to a "stereo" mp3 is it truly stereo or does the render just copy the mono track to produce a left and right track?

Ah yes, the Haas effect