Butch Walker's Essential Tips for Recording Guitars
Butch Walker is a very rare animal in the musical world; a multi-instrumentalist with his own expansive discography of solo albums and a production plus co-writing resume that includes some of the biggest pop stars in the world right now and a host of rock names. He's unique, and he knows a lot of about getting results with musicians – especially when tracking guitars.
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00:00 Yeah, so I suppose the first obvious question is, what's your go-to, most simple setup for
00:15 being able to mic a guitar cab?
00:18 Well, first of all, there's really no rules in recording guitars, whatever sounds good.
00:25 Sometimes I'll start with a '57 or even like an Audix i5 I use on guitars, which is basically
00:36 a '57, and then sometimes add in a setup I've really enjoyed using for a long time, which
00:42 is either that and a ribbon or like a Royer or whatever, or a ribbon and a large diaphragm
00:51 condenser or even just a cheap mic like a Rode NT2 that kind of does similar to what
00:59 an '87 or something would do, like a U87 or something.
01:04 But they handle a lot of SPL, which is good.
01:08 And so that's if I'm doing big guitars or whatever, but even if I'm just recording like
01:12 a Princeton or anything like that, I'm not that picky about it.
01:17 A '57 does the job, or a ribbon mic.
01:22 But lately I've been really getting into using the Aux by Universal Audio, which is funny,
01:29 I'm standing here underneath their signs, so it's not a shameless plug, it's actually
01:36 just been my go-to guitar sound for all of my amp heads, all of my amplifiers.
01:45 It's a load box, obviously, first and foremost, but then it's also a cabinet simulator, basically,
01:50 so you can plug any of your combo amps or heads or anything into it, select whatever
01:56 speakers, mics, room sounds, there's UAFX in it.
02:01 It's pretty incredible and it's hard to convince anyone that it's not an amp.
02:06 People think it's an amp, they're just like, "Okay, if they don't ask, I don't tell."
02:11 But I have a lot of control with it, and I gotta say, the last year I've used it probably
02:17 85% of the time in the studio, as opposed to even turning on a mic on a cabinet.
02:22 But I do have two 2x12 cabinets in an ISO box that Todd, who engineers for me, he built
02:30 it, and basically we put a 2x12 cabinet that's got V30s in it, and then a 2x12 cabinet that
02:37 has Silverbell AC30 speakers from the '60s, they're 1967, actually.
02:45 I've got both of those mic'd up in there, and then we can just patch our amps accordingly,
02:51 or I'll go through the aux either way.
02:53 And then coming out of that, usually as far as the preamps, like the mic pre's that I
02:59 use going into the front end, I'm a really big fan of the Chandler stuff, and the Chandler
03:06 TG-2 is probably one of my favorite not-so-secret weapons for recording guitars.
03:13 They have an ohm selector, you can run DI straight into the front and they sound amazing,
03:21 or out through the back, and there's a preamp gain and a master trim, so you can really
03:29 get the harmonic distortion you want.
03:31 And I find those great for rock guitars, they just have a mid-range, two of them, that sound
03:34 amazing.
03:35 I have a 1972 Quad 8, which is an old console that was famously at Village Recorder in Santa
03:44 Monica, about a mile from where it was first installed, is where it is now at my studio,
03:50 back in the '70s, and it was the board on the back of Countdown to Ecstasy by Steely
03:55 Dan, that was the one in their room that they used to record that record and countless others.
04:01 And so that one sounds incredible, the preamps in that sound amazing on guitars as well.
04:07 So I usually do that, I don't compress the guitars hardly at all going in, as a matter
04:12 of fact I don't think I use any compressors going in to tape, so to speak.
04:19 But after the fact, one thing I'll do is, I'm probably answering a lot of your questions
04:24 for you, just trying to give you an easy job.
04:29 But after the guitars get recorded into whatever DAW, which, you know, say it's Pro Tools or
04:34 whatever, I have a couple of things I like to put on them afterwards, plug-in wise, and
04:40 I use the Neve 1073 channel strip that UA makes, and that usually is always first in
04:48 the chain on the plug-in insert.
04:51 And I'll do that so I can crank up the preamp gain on it even more, and even get more harmonic
04:56 distortion that I want, and then trim the fader back, and then also the EQ, and then
05:01 I'll use the high pass to roll it off at 80 if I need to, to get rid of any rumble or
05:06 anything like that, clear up the mud, all those catchphrases that we use.
05:13 And the magic knob on that is the mid-range, like at 1-2kHz is my favorite area on a Neve
05:21 for guitars, just to accentuate it even more, I'll goose that up even more, and sometimes
05:25 add the 10k fixed at the top, just to brighten it up if I need to.
05:31 But those to me are just the sound of rock and roll guitars, you know, the old Neve channel
05:35 strips.
05:36 And so I use the plug-in version, it sounds great.
05:38 Are you using that in unison mode as well, or are you putting that on within...
05:43 No, it's in line mode after everything, like after I've recorded the guitars in and everything,
05:48 I don't use it on the channel going in, so to speak.
05:51 But everything does go through what UA has, this thing called the virtual console that
05:56 I use for my front end, because I'm on all UA converters, and I don't necessarily use
06:02 them in unison mode, but I'll use them because I'm using real mic pre's on the front end,
06:06 so I'll just use that, I'll put one on their channel strip in there sometimes as a line
06:10 level to use the EQ and the preamp for that.
06:15 It's all that flavor, isn't it?
06:16 Yeah.
06:17 On the 1073 emulation, you can still, in line mode, you can still run through the transformer,
06:23 can't you?
06:24 Yeah, yeah, it distorts nice, yeah, it's great, and I love harmonic distortion in analog gear,
06:30 so they've emulated it pretty well with that stuff.
06:33 So it's a combination of front end, real analog stuff, gaining it up and using it, and then
06:38 also doing more of it after the guitars are recorded.
06:40 Cool, man.
06:41 So earlier on when you were talking about micing, obviously this is going to be presented
06:46 to people who may or may not have UAD gear, but your simplest go-to thing is to get a
06:53 57 or equivalent dynamic mic and place it in front of the cab, nice and simple.
06:59 How would you recommend to people who want to start doing that?
07:03 Where to put the microphone?
07:04 Where to place it, where's your go-to starting point on it?
07:08 My go-to starting point is usually just right off the cone, right off the center diaphragm.
07:15 I'll sometimes just go right where the outline is on the diaphragm, I'll go right for the
07:21 outline of it, so it's like equidistant between the center of the diaphragm and the edge of
07:26 the cone.
07:28 That's usually a good starting point, sometimes it's a little too harsh if you're right in
07:31 the middle, but I mean, just like anything, you can EQ the guitar just by moving the mic
07:38 around, and a lot of people swear by that, like Eric Valentine is a friend of mine who's
07:42 mixed records for me and he's an incredible psycho wizard unicorn in the studio, and he's
07:48 got robots with mics on them that move around and stuff, it's insane, and he'll move them
07:53 even like six feet back from the cabinet to get more room or whatever, and I'll do that
07:59 too if we want to, but one of the things about using the aux is you can make the mics off
08:09 center inside the software, or direct on, you can high pass, low pass them, you can
08:15 add in a room mic, stereo, ribbon, whatever, you can choose the microphones, Beyer M160s,
08:22 R121 Royers, pretty much everything.
08:27 And being that we have everything in a pretty small room, the ISO booth, the ISO box for
08:33 the guitar cabinets, there's not a lot of room for movement, so we set it and forget
08:37 it in there usually.
08:38 But I can usually cue stuff, once you get it placed in the right spot, there's a lot
08:42 you can do with it after.
08:43 You also talked about using a ribbon, a mixture of a ribbon and a large diaphragm, do you
08:52 set those in a kind of loom line thing, or how do you have them?
08:57 I'm not real technical with it, I mean I know that even in the aux I use the same similar
09:03 setup, I use an R121 Royer or an M160 mic emulation, and I use a U87 as my whatever,
09:14 as the high low mic, and then the mid range is coming from the ribbons.
09:19 And usually we just put them side by side, and sometimes I'll do the off axis just to
09:24 get it a mellower tone, but on the ISO box we have where we have the cabinets, we have
09:32 the same thing, we literally have the large diaphragm condenser and the small dynamic
09:41 side by side so that they're phased, you know, coherent, and those are right next to each
09:47 other so that the correlation is good.
09:49 You just mentioned phasing, and that's kind of like a thing that a lot of people run into
09:54 and it's tricky to understand and that kind of thing, so do you have any tips for people
09:58 who are wanting to try and experiment with different mic placements when you were saying
10:02 there's no right or wrong?
10:03 There's no right or wrong, and some people like to use out of phase sounds on that, but
10:07 you can usually flip guitars like that later if you record the mics on different tracks
10:11 and have that committed inside the, you know, whatever recording medium you're working on.
10:17 I don't usually mess with that that much, but it can be done easily.
10:22 But you know, for checking phase it's pretty simple, it's just you get the mics as close
10:26 to the same distance if you want.
10:28 I mean you might be wanting to use a close mic and a far mic, but you still want to check
10:32 your phase and that's literally just flipping the phase button when you're listening.
10:36 I just always try to get it to where when you flip the phase that the sound almost goes
10:40 away, that's when it's as close as in phase as you can get it when you pop it back in,
10:45 you know?
10:46 But if you pop it out of phase and the sound just shrinks to almost nothing, then, you
10:51 know, I'm not a technical wizard, but I just know that that's when I usually get the most
10:55 - the fattest guitar sound out of a multi-mic setup.
10:59 Cool, man.
11:00 Yeah.
11:01 So having access to UA stuff, I'm guessing you spoke about using the aux.
11:08 Do you use a lot of kind of emulated stuff within, like, from the UA plug-in sort of
11:13 world for guitar stuff?
11:15 I do.
11:16 I do all the time.
11:17 I mean, I find myself more and more relying more on that than I do external hardware because
11:22 these days everybody's moving way too fast and wanting too many changes and recalls and
11:26 everything and it's like, "Oh, you don't have time to patch in an analog, like a tape
11:30 echo plexor and get the sound back."
11:34 It's just a fucking nightmare.
11:36 So I love the emulations, like, especially the UA ones.
11:41 UA and Soundtoys are like my go-to for all of their, like - I use, like, Soundtoys, I
11:46 use Echo Boy and their Echo Plex and I use their Decapitator for more grit and dirt on
11:52 the guitars a lot.
11:53 But then the UA stuff I use their Tape Echo, their Space Echo is great.
12:00 Obviously their verbs are all amazing, so yeah, if I want to get, like, a really big
12:05 awesome plate, you know, verb on there, I'll throw an EMT, you know, 250 on there or something
12:09 like that or a 140.
12:13 But it's pretty - there's no rules, you know.
12:16 I just like to make it - I like to make it sound good and I like to make it easy where
12:20 if I need to pull it back up I don't have to fight to get it back to where it was the
12:23 first time.
12:24 Cool.
12:25 And for people that may not have done too much of this stuff before, earlier on you
12:26 were talking about kind of using high-pass filters on guitars, that's a fairly common
12:27 practice.
12:28 Yes.
12:29 Do you mind just kind of, like, talking through that a little bit and then, you know, you
12:30 can simply do that on every track to carve out space for the other instruments?
12:43 Yeah, I do that a lot.
12:45 And quite honestly, with guitars I have a history of doing, you know, bigger, you know,
12:52 rock guitar sounds on a lot of records and that's something that you don't have to dump
12:56 a whole lot out because they need to - they're the meat of the music and the mix.
13:00 So needless to say, I'd say, you know, if I'm high-passing it's like usually 80 to 100,
13:07 you know, 100 or 80 and below.
13:10 I take it out immediately.
13:12 The top can be anywhere from I'll leave it in all the way up to 10k or sometimes I'll
13:16 take it all the way down to 5k to roll it off from the high end if I need it to, like,
13:22 you know, not get in the way of sharper instruments like keyboards or vocals or whatever.
13:27 But that's pretty much my - that's my window, you know, for guitars.
13:33 You know, or if I'm going for an effect, you know, obviously I'll shrink it way in and
13:37 have like a, you know, if you're looking for that AM radio effect or whatever, then that's
13:41 just rolling everything off until the middle.
13:44 But yeah, I just - it's kind of all across the board.
13:47 Usually without fail we'll dump everything from 100 or 80 down just because I don't want
13:52 any weird low rumble that might get in the mix that you can't hear but you can feel it
13:57 and it doesn't feel right when you're listening to a track back when there's some mucky, you
14:02 know, that you can't get rid of and you don't know where it's coming from.
14:06 That's cool.
14:07 And when you're sort of doing kind of big stacks of the same part and building stuff,
14:13 do you do a lot of that and if so, do you have a -
14:18 People get bummed at me a lot of times because I'm not a big fan of, like, stacking.
14:24 I did it back in the day years ago, in the 90s it was a big thing, you know, to like
14:28 double and quadruple your guitar parts and I think it's all - people go through phases
14:32 of how they do it over the years of being recording guitarists or producers where it's
14:36 like, you know, like the four guitars doing the same thing really loud, you know, stereo
14:43 panned and, you know, even like doing the New Green Day record, you know, I had to like,
14:48 you know, even with Billy he was used to like stacking, like quadrupling even like guitars
14:52 sometimes and that's cool but I would notice like even in the mix some guys, they get the
14:57 mix - the mixers would get the tracks and then they would take two of them and only
15:00 use that.
15:01 And it's like, hey, if it's - if they're placed right, EQ'd right, set right in the
15:07 mix, they can sound just as big if not bigger, you know.
15:10 I don't like losing the articulation and the dynamics of a lot of guitar parts that come
15:14 from one big guitar sound and sometimes I will double it even no matter what, I'll do
15:23 a double sometimes if I want the line to be big and prominent and it stand out, especially
15:28 if it's a melodic line and as far as for like heavier rock stuff, I almost always double
15:35 and pan it old school.
15:38 But quadrupling, it's a rarity that I do that unless the artist is convincing me to do it
15:43 for them because they're used to it.
15:45 So but I tend to like, you know, and this - I know this sounds cliche but like I just
15:51 love the way like a Stones record sounds where you have Ron on one side and Keith on the
15:56 other playing two different parts working off each other and that creates a big sound
16:00 of its own because there's a syncopation and a push and a pull happening and you're leaving
16:06 a lot more room for other sounds to poke out of the mix from other instruments if you do
16:10 that.
16:11 It's hard to make a drum sound be huge and present with big walls of guitars and it's
16:17 - I mean it can be done, it's not my forte but I know people can do it but.
16:21 People often say it's like it's the differences in those parts that create the hugeness rather
16:27 than having loads of identical.
16:29 Yeah and there's - I mean it sounds amazing like stacking multiple of the same part, it
16:34 always does.
16:36 Sounds cool to me but I just don't find it always works, you know.
16:40 When you do just a straight double, do you tend to kind of adjust tone settings on either
16:48 side or do you keep it back?
16:50 It used to be - it was like okay new amp, new guitar, everything.
16:57 Different cabinet, whatever for the doubles.
17:01 Maybe I've gotten lazy over the years and if I do it I double it and if it sounds right
17:05 then it sounds right.
17:07 Sometimes you can tell if it's like canceling itself out and making itself too small we'll
17:10 throw a different guitar on or a different amp head but usually we change different amps
17:16 just for different parts but for doubles and stuff I usually stick to almost the same formula
17:22 as the first track.
17:23 And if we just talk a little bit about acoustic guitars, your approach to kind of matching
17:29 up acoustic and how you feel about doing that.
17:32 Constant learning experience for me and constant like frustration as well because I'll listen
17:39 to other people's records and go fuck that's a great acoustic sound, how'd you get that
17:43 you know and then oh it's a 57 on a $100 guitar.
17:47 I'm like okay well you know but then you have other people with like you know stereo room
17:53 mics and stereo you know 67s, you know $40,000 worth of microphones on one acoustic guitar.
18:02 There's no rules again but one thing I try to always go for which I think a lot of people
18:07 probably have already said is great guitar, great player, depends on picking versus finger
18:16 picking.
18:17 A pick can ruin everything in an acoustic guitar and actually make it really muddy if
18:21 it's the wrong attack and even the wrong pick I've found that some people will just or they
18:27 play too close over the hole or too far back.
18:29 It's like it's a drastic tonal change on an acoustic no matter how you hold it, swivel
18:36 it, play it, pick it, strum it.
18:40 And one thing I do is like I said I think a lot of people will say the same thing.
18:47 You don't put the mic right over the sound hole, cardinal sin, I mean it's just like
18:50 all woof and air and you gotta filter it out and there's proximity effect everything.
18:56 So a lot of times the neck and the heel where the neck you know heel is on the guitar which
19:01 is usually right around the 12th fret on an acoustic I'll usually have one about anywhere
19:07 from it can be anywhere from 3 inches to a foot and a half back depending on the sound
19:14 I'm looking for.
19:16 And usually I use a one of my favorite mics I have that I use for acoustics these days
19:22 is my it's a mic by a Russian company called Soyuz which I love and they make this small
19:28 diaphragm condenser mic that I've yet to find a better acoustic sound with personally
19:34 and I love it and it's called the 011 and the 013 they also have that as well.
19:41 But those are just amazing it's sort of like a KM84 or a 250 not a 251 but a shit sorry
19:52 doesn't matter.
19:53 It's a small mic, a pencil mic and I'll use that or sometimes I'll use my Chandler
19:59 Red 47 which is like a basically a U47 with a built in TG Red mic pre and that's a great
20:06 acoustic mic and I'll put that like I said right there where the heel meets the where
20:12 the neck heel is and I can pretty much get a pretty good full bodied sound dialed in
20:18 right then and there with that.
20:19 Rarely do I add a second mic ever.
20:22 Sometimes I'll use a second mic as a room mic if I want to make it just sound like for
20:26 some reason it's distant you know or in a room I'll do that.
20:30 But usually I find I can do it with one mic and be okay and then as far as doubling it
20:37 same thing there's no rules there sometimes it sounds incredible using the same guitar
20:42 just go ahead and record it on another track double it and pan it.
20:48 Almost always I pan them because otherwise one guitar up the middle playing the same
20:51 part just sounds like a guitar without good definition and articulation.
21:00 And I'll also pan them right far left and right and use a different guitar sometimes
21:05 on the right or a different whatever.
21:08 It just depends you know.
21:09 My favorite thing to do is not to double it with the same thing but to double it with
21:13 a different guitar acoustically that's like in a different tuning or a capoed or even
21:18 a Nashville tuning all high string guitar and do a counterpart to it.
21:24 And even then you don't have to pan those far right and left either you can kind of
21:27 get those closer to the middle and they end up doing this choral beautiful thing that
21:32 you're like wow what is that instrument you know.
21:35 So that's fun too.
21:36 Do you kind of process acoustics a little more on the way in?
21:42 I'm a big fan of processing everything on the way in except for usually effects.
21:47 I usually don't print if I don't have to.
21:49 I will print like amplifier reverb or like if there's a delay effect that needs to be
21:53 printed but for the most part on acoustics and electrics it's mostly EQ and compression
21:59 I print going in.
22:00 And I do EQ and compress the acoustic guitars going in.
22:05 I don't go overboard with it because I'm going to add maybe more later of EQ and compression.
22:12 And yeah usually just to like get the mud out and if I need some more sparkle on the
22:17 top or some mid-range or whatever we'll get surgical with it every now and again but for
22:21 the most part you know just having a good mic, good guitar, good hands and a good mic
22:30 pre and then the rest is just making sure that's the right choice for that song you
22:36 know.
22:37 Compression is something else that people sometimes struggle to get their heads around
22:42 particularly when you know like guitar players choosing a studio compressor and it's like
22:46 five times as many controls and all that stuff in comparison to a pedal.
22:51 So do you have a go-to kind of compressor for acoustic guitars from the UA suite that
22:56 you use?
22:57 Yeah, actually from the UA ones I love using the LA-2.
23:01 I use the LA-2 and I'll use the brown one or the grey one.
23:05 They both sound great.
23:07 But I usually have that already set up in my template you know with either a Helios
23:13 69 or a Neve 1073 channel strip for EQ and preamp gain and then I'll use a LA-2 on the
23:24 acoustics almost always.
23:25 I just like the slow release of that for acoustics and it doesn't seem to make it go too crazy
23:32 pumping and I don't necessarily want that effect on acoustic guitars a lot.
23:38 But those are usually my go-to.
23:39 So on the way in you're just using that to just kind of control the peaks a little bit?
23:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah and if I need to just make it sound a little bigger you know like if
23:48 I want it sometimes will give it a little bit more body and roundness and be a little
23:52 more robust is probably the right word.
23:55 Would you be able to very simply explain just quickly like kind of how people can use compression
24:03 on an acoustic guitar to affect things sort of like picking attack versus you know they
24:08 might want it to not have too much sustain or maybe even boost the sustain of their guitar
24:13 with that EQ?
24:14 I mean going in I suppose if you're treating it while you're doing the song that's probably
24:18 the best way to do that and see how the player is, if it's not me playing it, if it's somebody
24:23 else see how they're responding to how it's sounding and how they're playing when they're
24:27 doing it.
24:28 I try to look for that too especially if they're like a ham-handed heavy pick heavy strummer
24:34 or if they're really delicate you know that's going to change the landscape going in as
24:38 far as what the what the blueprint is going in.
24:40 Do you have a kind of a favorite guitar tone that you've recorded?
24:46 One that you've created like if there's one that you stands out as being kind of like
24:51 a proudest tone?
24:52 Wow.
24:53 I don't know.
24:54 Yeah I mean trying to think I mean I love trying to think of what I would think.
25:14 There's a record I did for a band years ago that actually kind of flies under the radar
25:19 now but it was one of the first records I ever got to do on a like major label and you
25:25 know and somehow convinced them to let me produce it and it was for a hard rock band
25:30 called Injected and they were out of Atlanta which is where I'm from and so that record
25:36 still to this day when I put it on the guitar sounds are for hard rock are monstrous and
25:41 I would get calls like from people asking about what I did to do the guitars on that
25:47 record.
25:48 And it was the same thing like I mean I remember Reinhold Bogner was like freaking out over
25:52 the guitar sounds I use and I was like that's your amp I'm using for one.
25:56 So I used a Bogner on that on that record and he was tripping on that because they loved
26:01 that record and they love the guitar sounds and again the two guys that were in that band
26:08 were great players great hands and same thing great guitar into a great amp that was I believe
26:16 the same set up it was a Royer 121 with a Rode NT2 maybe going through a Neve channel
26:24 strip or a TG but yeah same thing and still to this day I love listening to the guitars
26:32 on that record they're so giant it's really fun.
26:35 Yeah.
26:36 Do you have any kind of unorthodox recording techniques you use on guitars or guitar amps
26:42 or anything is it like is there any kind of you know.
26:46 I'm so boring I wish I could say like oh yeah we swing mics from the rafters and like you
26:51 know record it well fuck all that I don't do any of that shit but like I love I love
26:56 interesting sounds and I think I find myself more of a tweaker afterwards after getting
27:01 a good performance which to me is the most important thing I can't spend two hours messing
27:09 with sounds when the players are like ready to be creative and like people are inspired
27:14 to do the song.
27:15 It's gluttonous and not it's never it's counterproductive because it's just makes everybody by the
27:26 end of it they're just like okay I don't really care about doing the song now I don't care
27:30 about playing music I'm burned out because we spent seven hours on a kick drum sound
27:35 or like I tend to have everything already set up in my studio where it's already mic'd
27:39 up and we change out things accordingly so we can change an amp out we can change a cabinet
27:43 out but for the most part if you come in plug in start from there if they're like no that's
27:48 not it then we build from there but I find it works quicker that way and then afterwards
27:53 I like to get in the room as my friend says get in the pain cave and just sit there and
27:59 like just dissect the song and go crazy and start adding if I want to add cool shit or
28:05 crazy effects or panning or stuff and automate things like that I do a lot of that after
28:09 the song is recorded and that's where you can get some of the excitement in the production
28:14 you know but for the most part I'm pretty bare bones and old fashioned when it comes
28:17 to the front end of recording.
28:19 For people who are recording at home and maybe in less than ideal acoustic environments do
28:27 you have any sort of quick tips on how they can control that within their room or would
28:33 you suggest leaning towards something like deox or modeling?
28:36 I would absolutely say modeling or yeah the aux for sure hands down if you have an amp
28:40 that you love and if you're really into your amplifiers and that means a lot to you aux
28:45 hands down.
28:46 As far as modelers they're so good now I've used a line 6 helix on records left and right
28:55 and nobody has ever said is that not a real amp not once no one's ever been like they've
29:01 just been like dude that sounds cool or that parts great or whatever there's no rules.
29:06 So, I found it's a treasure trove for players this day and age coming up it wasn't so much
29:12 it was hard you know when all we had was a rock man you know and that was the only way
29:16 we could avoid like you know loud guitar amps mic'd up was like plugging in a practice headphone
29:22 amp that sounded like instant danger zone you know and it was awesome but like now it's
29:29 just like you can get almost any guitar sound and believable and it's wonderful I love that
29:35 part of technology.
29:37 I'm still romantic at heart and I still love plugging my amps in but I've also you know
29:42 married that with modern technology like things like the aux you know.
29:47 I would say that's a hands down for someone in their bedroom wanting to get great sounds
29:53 helix Kemper aux with your own amp yeah go for it no one's ever going to turn their nose
29:59 up at those guitar sounds that those things make.
30:02 And how much importance would you put into like the actual instrument and the amp and
30:07 kind of I think that's often overlooked by players that it's like my intonation is out
30:11 or whatever you know before people record.
30:14 I think it just depends on the it depends on the song it depends on the band or the
30:18 artist it depends on the approach to whatever you're doing I mean sometimes picking up the
30:22 first guitar in the room and it's a little out of tune and plays like shit and whatever
30:26 but it sounds really cool and it's and all of a sudden this person plays it and the way
30:30 they play it actually works in the track in a you know I'm doing my hips like Keith Richards
30:36 because that's who I'm thinking of is like it's like I don't envision that guy tuning
30:41 much or like intonating but he's got a guy doing it for him but still those records sounded
30:47 great when they were the guitars were a little out and they were imperfect and you know they
30:52 might have been laying on their back on a couch playing it or something where it's not
30:56 like where it's definitely going to like you know pull out of tune a little bit but I don't
31:00 think that stuff matters as much to me it only matters when it gets to the point where
31:04 it's like making it impossible to sound good when making a recording and it's like okay
31:10 I can't do this guitar anymore this thing is like everything else that I'm playing along
31:14 to sounds out of tune because of this guitar it's the guilty culprit then we'll treat it
31:20 we'll fix it we'll send it away or Todd will go in the other room and work his magic on
31:26 it but I don't have time for it and I don't care for it I'm like I just want to pick up
31:30 a guitar and record it you know I'll tune it real quick sometimes just by ear and just
31:36 start hitting record if it sounds wrong okay tune it for real but there's no rules and
31:42 I just don't think that that stuff like I said that stuff just gets in the way of the
31:46 time the valuable time window you have of recording someone or yourself where that where
31:53 there's artistic juices flowing.
31:57 And performance is key.
31:59 Yeah totally.
32:00 And it takes care of itself.
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