Pop Music Production Tips: How To Layer Guitars For A Huge Sound

Great sounding guitar parts don’t just happen all on their own. There’s a lot of musical techniques that you can use to ensure that the parts all work together and sound their best, particularly when it comes to arranging pop music, which is trickier than many people realise. In this short video from the course Guitar Production 101: Pop Arranging Explored, Gregg Fine tackles the layering of distorted guitars, and how you can best use this technique to get a great sound. 

Guitar Production 101: Pop Arranging Explored

Going beyond simple double tracking, here, Gregg gets into the realm of triple and quadruple stacking, and even beyond. Modern DAWs are easily powerful enough to cope with this, so it's a technique that is available to almost anyone regardless of what software you are using. 

Crucially when it comes to pop, layering guitars isn't necessarily about creating more noise or volume like it might be in rock or metal, but rather creating a richer soundstage. To this end, Gregg shows how you can creatively duplicate and pan guitars around the stereo field to get that depth without overpowering the other elements in the track. Check out the rest of this course for an expert guide to arranging guitars for pop music!