If you want to get a chunky, full-sounding guitar mix, there are a few tricks to get you there fast - and Skunk Anansie guitarist and ACM tutor Ace is here to show ’em to you.
In this video masterclass, filmed at London’s Metropolis studios, Ace covers techniques including chord approaches, choice of pickups and panning, all of which should get your guitars sounding massive.
In this video masterclass, filmed at London’s Metropolis studios, Ace covers techniques including chord approaches, choice of pickups and panning, all of which should get your guitars sounding massive.
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TechTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi, hello, welcome.
00:06 It is Ace here.
00:07 Again, we are in Metropolis Studios in London
00:11 and doing some kind of tricky tricks and techniques
00:15 for guitars that you might wanna pick up on.
00:18 Today, I'm gonna talk about tracking,
00:20 simple tracking really.
00:22 Basically about what I'm using is
00:24 I'm just gonna use one guitar and one amp, okay?
00:26 But to make a kind of a bit of a kind of concise full sound.
00:30 So first of all, I am going to track the guitar
00:33 with single coils.
00:34 So you can either do like a Les Paul and a Telecaster,
00:37 or you can just use one guitar
00:39 that you can change to pick up chords.
00:40 And I'm gonna use one amp
00:41 and not change the sound of the amp.
00:42 So if I switch my guitar into single coils now,
00:46 so they're not the humbuckers anymore.
00:48 (upbeat music)
00:50 I'll get a bit of a more toppy, sparkly,
00:54 thinner kind of sound,
00:55 similar to what I would get from a Telecaster, okay?
00:58 (upbeat music)
01:00 And what I'm gonna do is
01:03 I'm gonna track the chords with that.
01:05 So I'm talking like the open chords,
01:07 so the more jangly kind of stuff.
01:08 So I've got a nice, bright, jangly sound on top.
01:11 Then afterwards, what I'm gonna do
01:14 is I'm gonna track the same thing,
01:16 but I'm gonna go and use some like root and fifths.
01:19 So you know, these kind of chords.
01:20 (upbeat music)
01:23 So they're like reinforcement chords,
01:25 and I'm gonna play them on the humbucker sound.
01:27 So I've got a kind of a cross between a Telecaster
01:30 mixed with a humbucker.
01:31 And what I'll get there is I'll get all the mids,
01:34 I'll get the highs, I'll get the lows,
01:35 and it will sound like one big, huge guitar
01:38 rather than two different ones, okay?
01:40 So it's a tracking technique that I use a lot in the studio.
01:43 So let's put a track up.
01:46 I'll play along first of all with the single coil,
01:48 and that will be the chord sequences.
01:51 Then I'm gonna play along with the humbucker afterwards
01:54 and track against it with the root and fifths.
01:56 (upbeat music)
01:59 Okay, I'm gonna now track on top of that
02:07 and I'm going to use root and fifths now.
02:10 So just simple notes so that we can basically blend in,
02:15 not that of tune with it, but make it really solid.
02:18 I'm using humbuckers now, okay?
02:20 So I've switched into humbuckers, same amp, same setting.
02:23 (upbeat music)
02:25 Okay, so we've got rhythm tracks down now.
02:39 One is single coil on the right hand side maybe.
02:43 One is gonna be a humbucker played in root and fifths
02:46 on the left hand side.
02:47 So we should have a really massive sounding
02:50 one guitar type of sound.
02:52 We're gonna separate them a little bit
02:53 just so it gives a bit of a stereo effect
02:55 and we're gonna put a guitar down the middle now.
02:57 So we're gonna play a bit of a solo
02:58 to see how it sounds against our really full rhythms now.
03:01 Okay, so on the solo, I'm gonna stick on a few effects
03:04 to make it a bit more exciting.
03:07 So let's have a bit of delay I think.
03:09 Maybe a bit of envelope and a bit of drive.
03:13 Okay, so let's see how this works on the track.
03:19 (upbeat music)
03:22 (upbeat music)
03:25 So we can see now that yeah, it kind of works, doesn't it?
03:33 It sounds like a really fat rhythm.
03:35 It's got the tone of the top and the bottom in there.
03:38 It's weighty, nothing conflicts,
03:40 got reinforcement in the sound.
03:41 And then when we put a solo on the top of it,
03:43 it really compliments and it works
03:45 with a few effects on top of it.
03:46 So that is my secret of quick tracking for rock songs
03:50 to make it sound good.
03:51 (upbeat music)
03:54 (upbeat music)
03:57 [music]