Lessons

Lesson Info

Rhythm Guitar Tone and Gain Staging

When you're tracking what what's it like tio toe work with jamie with james's, other experiences you had and the thing I'm really love about jamie is like he said earlier he his goal is to make you sound like yourself you just better yeah, a lot of people are like their way or no way, which I I just I don't agree with that yeah with music or anything it's like everything is in a different interpretation to the individual and other artist, you know? So I I I like to fix the jamie does that and he really for me personally, I'm not one of those taking guys that know how to make things happen I just have a very good here and I know what I want some of this sound like and I don't even really have to explain and wished him and he makes it happen, you know, that that's what draws me and especially over the years we you know, just like the band, you know, you work with someone over and over and over, you all feed off each other and learn from each other and all improve and, you know, we can ki...

nd of all speak without speaking in regards to riding recording, you know, so yeah, it's just, you know, I mean, I come from that's awesome, um quick thing I just use these cheap cork tuners thirty books there one cent accurate I've used all the best tuners like these the peterson stroke to integrate ten and if I was doing like you know detailed intonation and set up and stuff I would use it more accurate tune or even but um quick note for those home of some people don't realize like a lot of your rack tuners and your pedal tuners air like five cent accurate um and that's usually great for live because he wanted to trace their tracks the note quickly which is not good enough for the studio so you really want to do something to at least one cent accurate in this these particular tuners are um uh yeah that's one thing I normally uh I I usually tune all the instruments for the record that I recorded a kind of o c d and o c d about detainee you know cause you don't hear professional record here stuff that's out of tune, you know, like horribly attune lists like a purposely aggressive part or something. Um, but I've noticed that different people tuned differently and especially views different tuners and things like that and you know, you have one guy who's like striking string like he's tuning like doing that you know, the strings going sharp and then the other guys to know it you know, obviously like the tuna will say both people are in tune but the guitars will be and actually different meaning so I think you know, you know, I try to basically I I most artists so let me too in the guitars and that way all of the guitars or consistent you know, I try to gauge how the players you know, play the lucas horrors like if a player plays hard, I take in consideration like this guy's going to be playing pretty hard somewhat when I tune I'm actually gonna pick hard so I'll get an accurate you know, representation on you know, across the board and same thing with base because like when you play finger style you play pick style and fix what do you have like? Well, go ahead and check the teaming on this thing tommy's and standard, which is one of he's won a few artists uh about debt within standard many, many years quick little note about strings tommy's got new strings on here um I don't actually you don't think they feel pretty you anyway, but it's going to say there's not you know, like I've heard some people you gotta have new streams have new heads do everything, whatever sometimes not you know, sometimes I think when we recorded we we actually didn't have any stranger you roll with the older streams you know because like I said, I mean, they you know, back in the day a lot of classic you know, they can't afford you know, there was no hey let's restoring every song like they do now, you know, it was like that you could tell the strings were dead and I was part of the sound and so you know it I know it doesn't sound bad to me for those records, you know, for that time I think it all really depends on the style torto technical stuff, you know, obviously the news media articulate articulation, yeah, but for some rock stuff, it sounds good to have in warmer tone smears there sometimes using some dead strings this ideal I've found on acoustics often prefer did strings for recording or whatever it just sounds warmer and more natural depends on how you if you're using to get acoustic by itself or blended the same thing with a guitar whatever. Meanwhile, cem, I'm not completely dead street overplaying cord because what the notes to come through but it's a time for this is a rock project, so maybe they haven't really bright fresh strings is an idea you can buy in the best idea you could buy tons of different strings also them you could buy, you know, nickel wound obviously is the standard, but you could get like a you know steals which really bright or you can get flat well streams which were really dole a lot of people just go buy whatever strings their favorite player uses and it might not be the best thing for their sound so the studio and engineer producer I stock strings in my studio different types of strings in case we need to try something else or try particularly different gauges a lot of people don't use an appropriate gauge in my opinion for their tuning you know they'll be used tens what your standard for you know ideal for standard but they'll be tuned like drop b or whatever you know yeah you know and with using tens and obviously you get this real it can work out your guitar set up and you play lightly and things like that but usually it's not going to sound is good if you you know as good as if you use the proper stream but anyway I'll get into this like said it's how you pick is important usually before each session like as an engineer producer it's good to learn about intonation a little bit to check the instant make sure is planning tune I've had so many kids take a guitar guitar center in a guy would be he'll say he's going to he set the intonation and it's actually worse than when they took it uh you know there's some legit guys out there they usually cost money and stuff but it's you know you want a guitar that's going to play in tune and easy easy checks or whatever it's chicken you know check the string open for it on the twelve for it should should be in tune there it should be in tune high on the neck or whatever multiple places on the neck always chick at least devlin that were your most of rhythm guitar is going to be in this area below the twelve for it and this thing's the intonation is greater. This is a parts missing kind of expected and just like with the drumhead thing I stretched the strings you know that I'm doing this deal I want to usually put fresh strings on like tune stretch tune stretched until it's just not going out of tune anymore obviously with locking traveler type guitars that's going to be a quicker process and but these have locks also so it kind of works do you find this spending more time? Um tooni and focusing on strings focusing on drum heads, getting the drum heads broken right and tuning the drums right ends up saving you time absolutely in the end. You okay? Yeah, I mean, it saves the day the artist it really helps the artist more so than anything because, like once we get in the groove and they're like tracking we don't have to be like man we got his attitude was retuned you've got to think about vocals if somebody is singing yeah you know like they cool down tickle extreme styles of stuff you know like some stuff is just you know with progressive metal and stuff like that is challenging tio to do whatever so it's like you know, cool back down here you're like warmed up and you have to take thirty minutes to like, you know, figure out the tuning issue just between the barrier when we've gone through all that you know we're saying it's tough when you're in the group we were talking about the other day you know, some engineers they take a lot of a lot of breaks and stuff and with jamie once we're feeling it we just you know you'll be tracking next you know, then six hours of company which means you know that's the way I like the rules like I'm there to try to take breaks when it's like ok, we're too good stop yeah, you look at his bathroom whatever if they're hot on the vocals were sounding good yeah, well I'm just gonna hold because you know, because there's adult diapers exactly that's a strategy that we couldn't promote it should make the banned in charging disposal you tommy purposely chose a pretty straightforward songs I mean I wanted to really shred for everybody e o he told me things you can't shred, I can't I'm a reform in it, but I can't do this, I can't straight, I can raise a lot of people don't know that tommy does a lot of guitar writing for bt bam right now as much, but I used to play for their would ban some of the members poll rolled another life yeah, prosecutors isn't in so well with the big yeah, like said, I'm basically tuning band tuning bin until this thing holds tune and once I'm satisfied like, you know, this is time consuming process, but we'll just move heading its attitude uh, well say like, you know, just like I know tommy plays pretty hard, but it's not like in saying so it's kind of doing like a medium and tommy knows I could spend an hour teaming guitar e and I have a aah! Got see over here I have a series of petals, okay, what I've got going on here, whatever, obviously, um I think is a safety it's important to track guitar two ricks uh, you know, some people don't do that, but I think it's a very wise thing, obviously you can see the direct signal for kwan ties ing it makes you khun, you know, use that to align the the qatar much better whatever because distorted signal obviously I'm sure you guys know you can't see the rhythm patterns but the clean direct signal you can see the pattern great but I'm going into this first and just for simplicity sake I'm using this multi effects pedal a lot of people use, you know because tommy's got some stuff with some modulation and fix of river bs things like that a lot of times people like to use a separate pedals and they could be great but I think this is a great multi affects pedal toe owner version of ah boston's multi effects pedal and it just got all the bosses stuff we'll turn ah turn this stuff all first normally any effects that we're not using normally I would just bypass them and not have him in the chain is obviously signal chain you want minimal distance, minimal cabling and stuff like that but we'll leave it all hooked up just for now for the demonstration purposes ah, but this thing is I love this particular pedal it's a keeley ah modified um turbo tube screamer the original regular turbo to scream for to me it's not useful, just noisy but this thing is really cool because you get you can get a lot of different game structures happening different types of other drops it's almost like they described it as a swiss army knife of overdrive pedals and you could get a lot of different type you get a tide edge a game even get a fat type saturated distortion and it's a really useful tool to put front and, uh just in case your amps, you know doesn't have the game structure that you want uh within the controls here will bypass this for the moment so everything's bypassed here, let me turn to standby often we'll see what we have got single outside here I have tommy's risen tracks in here. Get rid of those. Thank you that's what? It is like a weird phase because I can hear the outsider. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like say we've already kind of set up the pre empt I'm using the fbi's like I said for the story you know that's using my go to first preempt you try out, but we've got both this and it's fifty seven's going into the fbi's I've got it run to the pro tools I'm actually bussing those together and pro tools. I have this a guitar one and support in too. So I got two inputs and I don't really know which one is is what which whatever but we'll be able to tell the one in the center is going to have more high end and more low in less mids the one in the the off axis mike is going to have more mid range less high ends so like that we'll be able to hear for the blend so weaken what's cool and here in within pro tools we can control our blend of the two mikes oftentimes I'll just you know, sometimes I just roll with just one of the mikes but sometimes I'll blend a little bit of the off axis every once in a while and have a really thin tone happening that are kind of digging for whatever reason like all I would just blend it all the way but we have complete control how I have it bust in here and I'm just bringing it in here is my direct signal for our first rhythm track and here's our amps signal we tell me you just play as I'm going to make sure I got it I got a good got a good direct signal coming in it's clean got a good and single coming in this place and it's still clean it's not clipping museum monitors uh good point for me tommy yeah one of the big things with a guitar tonelli said I think the most of tone comes from the player's hands and the pickups a lot of people underestimate how much big of deal the pickups are you know if you want a clean jangly toned and chances are using a single coil with they you know, with the fender strat er telecaster is going to be the best choice if you want, like, a rock sound. This has got great rockets, does not you obviously designed for, like, rock type sound, you know? And if you want a medal sound, get a metal guitar with somatic amg actives or something like that is designed for you or some passes that are designed for more aggressive tones and the, you know, that's usually key, whatever it's, like a lot of people think it's all the anthem, the anxious like, I mean, I'm thinking like twenty five percent of the tone, you know, to me, we like said the first track, so we're going to do with tommy's rhythm times, and I like that we had his original tracks let me refresh my memory as to what it sounded like, like in the new sound, maybe better way could go for a fresh take on uh, but I think we may have done, I may have had a more less mid range is saying because you have the lead over top of that and for contrast, ing layering, which we'll get into nick's segment. For contrast ing layering, I had a mid scoop sound for the rhythm I'm had mohr mids a different type of tone for the lead so that there was space and that's important to the mix you have everything to find space and have contrast so it's going to scoop out that means going point tommy, wait yeah it's a slight difference but I mean it's a little good with it yeah, with like said I'm using this is the settings are all way down it's got what's called the bake modern the keeley uh, which is awesome I think it gives it a little extra bite on the top in and some clarity, which really helps in the mix, especially in your layering up like you want in this, you know, being able to do this like you can actually control the level the volume that you're hitting the pre op section with as opposed to changing on the guitar which affixed to pick up sound but you can actually change the level and kind of taylor for the park and I like to be kind of liquid with my game structure for the part like if we have a part is like big cords like he has some stuff that just articulate notes you might need a little extra gain or drive and you all that you know you could do that by not even changing the tone we're just changing how much you turn up the level of this particular pedal