Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

[Lewguitar]

Very interesting.

I was brought in to add some soulful R&B guitar (think Rainy Night In Georgia...) to some gospel flavored tracks a local keyboardist had recorded.

There was already some guitar on the tracks recorded by a local hot shot and some nice sax work by another local player.

The engineer told me that the guitarist was the loudest guitarist he'd ever worked with.

I brought my Strat with the Surfers and my modded Fender Princeton Reverb that Bruce turned into my favorite amp. It's like a combination of a vintage Vox, vintage Marshall and a vintage blackface Fender with reverb.

I didn't use any effects - just a Geurge L cord between my Strat and the amp.

Dialed in a cleanish tone and didn't turn the amp up past 3 or 4.

I recut the rythym and lead guitar parts and replaced most of the sax parts. Took a couple of hours or less.

Yesterday the engineer brought in the CD and I've been listening to it.

It's very interesting because they did leave some of the sax on it and did leave a couple of fills that the other guitarist recorded.

He played very loud in the studio and his tone is thin, squeezed and buzzy!

I played quietly and even my soloing tone is fat and full with a nice bloom to it and real nice sustain - and it jumps out of the mix.

I'm not bragging here, but it is interesting that my clean tone sounds louder and fuller and better than this other guy's tone.

He's a real good player - but his tone didn't work at all and sounds small, even though he played loudly when he recorded it.

 

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

Very cool story Lew! I love sitting back listening to my work, Im sure you are the same way, and it even better when it works out well.

It's funny...I go back and listen to older recordings of mine and as times goes on I use less and less distortion and sound better and better plus it's a lot easier to really cut through a mix if the tone is slightly cleaner and less compressed...those really saturated/compressed tones take a lot more work to actually cut through a mix.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

Very cool story Lew! I love sitting back listening to my work, Im sure you are the same way, and it even better when it works out well.

It's funny...I go back and listen to older recordings of mine and as times goes on I use less and less distortion and sound better and better plus it's a lot easier to really cut through a mix if the tone is slightly cleaner and less compressed...those really saturated/compressed tones take a lot more work to actually cut through a mix.

There's a place for those super saturated tones and many guys can pull them off and sound huge.

But for me, I get a bigger tone playing clean.

So did Wes Montgomery. Not that I'm anywhere near that good..never will be either!

Lew

 

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

There's a place for those super saturated tones and many guys can pull them off and sound huge.
But for me, I get a bigger tone playing clean.
So did Wes Montgomery. Not that I'm anywhere near that good..never will be either!
Lew

Thats right!

there is a time and a place for everything but for me the time and place for super nasty tones is in the past or when Im playing alone just for a kick once and a while!

 

[Top Jimmy]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

This thread is no good without clips!

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

This thread is no good without clips!

If I liked the tunes a little better or if they were my own tunes I'd post some clips. But I didn't and they're not!

 

[Kosh Naranek]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

I'm glad your parts fit the song and the tone you got made it a nicer listening experience. It's always satisfying to listen back to a part you recorded and hear it really add to the song.

It is tricky, recording guitar tracks. For distorted parts, we've all read how good tube amps really open up and sound thicker when you really crank them, but you never know. You never know if the other guys used a pedal either. I've heard guitarists playing through great gear, but they insisted on using a fizzy sounding distortion box between the guitar and amp and that really thinned out their tone.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

I'm glad your parts fit the song and the tone you got made it a nicer listening experience. It's always satisfying to listen back to a part you recorded and hear it really add to the song.

Thanks! It wasn't my parts or playing that was better. The other guy is a real good player. But he played so loud and with so much overdrive that it made his parts sound small - like they were being squeezed through a small opening or something. Lew

 

[ES350]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

But he played so loud and with so much overdrive that it made his parts sound small - like they were being squeezed through a small opening or something. Lew

Congrats Lew---it's fun to hear it back and you like the tone and the mix (that hasn't always been the case with sideman stuff I've done when it finally gets out). Yeah, that's exactly what he was doing; squeezing bandwidth and dynamics through a high and low pass filter, so he could sound like a sax, an instrument they already had tracked. When you play clean, it has character; you can hear the articulation, the pick, the strings, the wood, the amp and it makes you play with other resources beside sustain...like imagination and nuance.

 

[lastwinj]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

sounds like the engineer could use some more schooling? just a thought.

 

[jerryjg]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

sounds like the engineer could use some more schooling? just a thought.

or perhaps maybe the engineer was just doing his job to the best of his ability. Maybe the other player doesnt take the great pains ( sure it can be fun also) to research the right gear and such for optimal tone.
We all are quick to point out how little the persuit of great tone really means on a basis of a live gig with a drunk crowd, yet not alot spoken about the benefits of all that money, time and trouble spent on the right gear for the best tone except to say ot only matters to a handfull of other tone freaks.
Well, be that as it may, if you take a look at the people succesful at the top of the heierarchy, youll see that most of them are also deeply concerned with geting the best tone possible. Sure, in the case of many , it may be a just matter of throwing money at expensive vintage gear and rolling with it..
But yet we know here that with the best pickups for the right application and maybe less than the best equipment, we can enter the sacred ground of high tone and experience the euphoria known to a select and dedicated few.
It doesnt take scads of money..just a willingness to do what is not easy- put in some time and effort into reading up here , and sacrifice enough personal finacial recources and be willing to take some losses through that often times troubled road of trail and error, and i think is what really is a common factor in bringing alot of us togeher is an often tacit and unspoken realization that .."yeah, some the bros got some serious tone and skills going on here."

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

hmmm, either the other player was one of those 'naked without my gain' types or he just wasn't a good listener. Listening to the piece you're playing on and deciding what playing and tone is appropriate is critical when recording for other artists. From there, the quality of your tone selection and your sense of time are the next most important factors.

Recording doesn't lie: If you can't groove and your tone sounds like processed cheese there will be a permanent record of these facts. Though a skilled pro tools engineer may be able to help with the former issue...

 

[J Moose]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

It's funny...I go back and listen to older recordings of mine and as times goes on I use less and less distortion and sound better and better plus it's a lot easier to really cut through a mix if the tone is slightly cleaner and less compressed...those really saturated/compressed tones take a lot more work to actually cut through a mix.

It's so true though... Even for the super industrial metal cats, the less gain and the more mids there are the bigger it'll sound when recorded. Piling on more gain doesn't make anything bigger, it turns into a wall of white noise.

Volume while recording is a whole other thing...

I wasn't there, but I'd wager a buck that Jimi's amps were RAGING loud at the Fillmore when Machine Gun was captured and it sounds huge!

Unless you were there you never know... maybe the engineer dropped the ball. Stuck the mic in a bad spot on the speaker, used some crappy micamp or any host of other things.

Is the guys tone normally cheese-whiz, or just on this recording?

Put a lowly 57 on an amp and run it through a Smackie mixer, and then swap it for something like an old Telefunken or API without changing anything else and the difference is night & day.

It'll knock you over.

Bigger then any pickup swap you could imagine.

Now, move the mic about a half-inch in any given direction...

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

It's so true though... Even for the super industrial metal cats, the less gain and the more mids there are the bigger it'll sound when recorded. Piling on more gain doesn't make anything bigger, it turns into a wall of white noise.

Volume while recording is a whole other thing...

I wasn't there, but I'd wager a buck that Jimi's amps were RAGING loud at the Fillmore when Machine Gun was captured and it sounds huge!

Unless you were there you never know... maybe the engineer dropped the ball. Stuck the mic in a bad spot on the speaker, used some crappy micamp or any host of other things.

Is the guys tone normally cheese-whiz, or just on this recording?

Put a lowly 57 on an amp and run it through a Smackie mixer, and then swap it for something like an old Telefunken or API without changing anything else and the difference is night & day.

It'll knock you over.

Bigger then any pickup swap you could imagine.

Now, move the mic about a half-inch in any given direction...

That is so true. In fact, I nudged the mike myself! The engineer had it pointing more towards the center of the speaker and after listening to it in the headphones I nudged it to about Four O Clock - if the speaker was the face of a clock. Sounded richer.

Folks spend so much money on guitars, pickups, bridges, amps and speakers trying to get the tones of their heroes. When it's really the player, the microphone, the mixing board, the room, etc.

Jimmy Page is a master at microphone placement and miking the room as well as the guitar amp. He makes his Tele sound like a Les Paul!

 

[Yngwiestein]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

So you going to post some sound clips Lew?

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

So you going to post some sound clips Lew?

Not from this session. But I'm going into the studio next week for five days straight. I'm going to do my first CD of just my own tunes and a few covers that I've played for years. I'm hoping to record about 25 tunes.

It'll be a lot of solo acoustic guitar and hand drums (Djembe, Tabla, etc.) but at the end of the week, if we have time, I'm going to bring in a bass player, drummer and the new vocalist I've begun working with and rock out on some blues, gospel and rock.

Hoping to get enough for two CD's.

I really like what I've heard so far from this new vocalist my brother Casey recommended, Sandra. She's young, which is fresh feeling. And she sounds a bit like Chaka Khan or a very young Aretha. But more modern.

And if I'm happy with the results, I'll post some of those clips for sure!

 

[Yngwiestein]

Re: Just got a CD of a studio session I did a month or so ago...

Not from this session. But I'm going into the studio next week for five days straight. I'm going to do my first CD of just my own tunes and a few covers that I've played for years. I'm hoping to record about 25 tunes.

It'll be a lot of solo acoustic guitar and hand drums (Djembe, Tabla, etc.) but at the end of the week, if we have time, I'm going to bring in a bass player, drummer and the new vocalist I've begun working with and rock out on some blues, gospel and rock.

Hoping to get enough for two CD's.

I really like what I've heard so far from this new vocalist my brother Casey recommended, Sandra. She's young, which is fresh feeling. And she sounds a bit like Chaka Khan or a very young Aretha. But more modern.

And if I'm happy with the results, I'll post some of those clips for sure!

Cool dealio Lew brotha! Looking forward to hearing some.