There is nothing quite like a good tone day, is there? You hit just the right notes and they bloom in just the right way. Everything is full, rich, and just plain gorgeous. It truly is one of the most inspiring feelings that I know of.
But sometimes, my friends, that sound is exactly what you DO NOT want.
That sounds insane. Why would you not want that every time? How could you not want to sound like SRV on the worlds most powerful musical steroids? Great tone is what this whole website is about! How could you say such things?! Get a rope! Hang him!
Oh, where you thinking a different Lynch Mob?
Well, before you light me on fire, ( please don’t, I’m wearing my favorite flannel ), let me tell you a little tale.
My band had recently wrapped up recording. All tracks were laid down, libations enjoyed, and jokes cracked. We were prepared to kick back, start on the mixing process. How wrong we were……how wrong we were.
I was in the control room listening to the “final” mix of a song I wrote. It was not right. It sounded flat, and lifeless. There was none of the gritty character I wanted, and the entire track was overly dark sounding. It just sounded empty.
The mix engineer (Hi Leon!) had already been spending loads of time perfecting the album, and had done the best he could with the tracks available. It just wasn’t there yet.
So I did what I always do when I’m involved in a mixing session. Add more guitars!
I grabbed his Telecaster, a Fulltone OCD, and EQ’ed a modded BC30. The result was a fairly heavily distorted, loud, VERY BRIGHT tone. We are talking borderline ice pick level of treble. Quite frankly, it didn’t sound very good.
But it sounded AWESOME in the mix. That horrible tinny, nasty track rounded out the song and brought it to life.
Another thing we did in recording (all this applies to live performances as well), is analyze the gear the others in the band were planning on using, and use something different. If one guy is playing a telecaster, then I might choose a P90 equipped guitar, or a 335. Anything to avoid stepping on his frequencies. If other guitars are not available, try switching to a different pickup position, or rolling your tone off slightly.
The key takeaway here is to listen to the rest of the frequencies in the song, and fit in that groove. Find the gap in tone, and wedge your sound in there. The guitar may sound awful on its own, but it will fit in the mix and make the overall track sound full and rich.
3 responses to “When is Bad Tone the Right Tone?”
I could not agree more with you on this one! Working on that song I had almost pulled all of my (quite nice looking) hair out trying to get the same feeling as the demo. Your insistence on adding a different guitar woke me up. A good mix needs good tracks that already fit together frequency wise from the start. Without that, there isn’t much that can be done to make it right.
So the take away from this I got is when in doubt, dial in a Lynch Mob tone and move call it a day!
Bad tone is an abomination and must be burned from the earth. It’s like a rampant disease in our digital age and must be removed!!
Although, tone really is quite dependent on context.. I find generally that the tones I like in practice are never what I use live.. They just lack that pop and sizzle that I have In the garage/man-cave.. I’m in the habit now of bumping my treble up 3-4 notches and my mids about1-2 notches from my practice settings. I just tend to like where it’s at. It helps me stand out in the mix, and often is that catalyst between the perfect “practice tone” to that perfect “live tone”.
At the end of the day I’m a pretty simple guy, I just want to sound Mike Ness on the guitar solo of Bad Luck all the time.. Is that too much to ask?! Sizzle, snarl, twang, and punch….with a little blood and sweat on the side 😉 That’ll get me there every time 🙂
Great post! I’ve found a similar problem in a live setting too. I get my sound just right at home only for the room and other instruments to block out my ever so precisely crafted tones. The tones I eventually settle on at the gigs sound terrible when I get back home or play solo. I noticed this especially when I was mainly playing on a vintage Princeton. The 10″ speaker sounded awesome by itself but as soon as I played with drums and bass so much was lost. I find that the frequencies produced from a 12″ speaker or multiple 12″ speakers really helps the guitar cut through the mix in a live setting. Its also great what you can do with mixing different types of guitars and tones in the studio- definitely something I need to explore more.