Techniques of double tracking with samples, please.

[Barbed Wire Kiss]

Hi

I trying to build up a pad sound using a sample, and trying to use double tracking as part of it.

I'm using Audition, and lost in all the choices I can make: Do I use Stretch or Pitch Bend to pitch my second copy down? And by how much? Should I delay the second copy by a few milliseconds, and then by how much? And is panning them hard left and right too much?

I'm not looking for definite answers, of course, just some general advise on techiques to get me in the right direction.

Garry

[C00kie]

Stretch works different than pitch bend, but both will fatten up the sound. Pitch bend of between 0.05 and 0.1 semitones (5 to 10 cents) will sound very simular to a chorus effect. Stretching would not be my favourite route, but it might work for you.

You could delay it by 10ms (also might work well with the same part, not pitched or stretched!) or with a slow pad up to 50ms. Just try some things and see how it turns out. No harm done with playing around, enjoy!

[Barbed Wire Kiss]

Thanks for the reply

Yeah, my first instint was to go with pitch bend, but it then occurred to me that this would lengthen the sample throwing the timing out. Not that it's entirely a bad thing, as it saves me from delaying the double, but if I let the samples loop too long they will go seriously out of phase. Hmm, I not sure how long too long is, so I'll have too, well, play around with that.

[C00kie]

If you have a short sound that you have in a seamless loop, then any kind of modulation (chorus, pitch, stretch, etc) makes it unusable to loop.

Normally you stick a short looped wav in a sampler. There it is looped smoothly, and fattened up with chorus etc. Or you need to create a long wav file (over 2 secs long) because then seemless looping is not so much an issue anymore.

NB: phasing is not nescessarily a bad thing... As long as its moving it will sound interesting! Flangers & phasers are based on this principle.

[Barbed Wire Kiss]

The looping is not a problem, as it's just under 5 secs long.

I don't want it to go too much out of phase as it's a speech sample that I've processed in a few different ways, and I want to be able to make out (well just) what's being said.