Guitars that cut through the mix

crunchman

maltingsaudio said:

It’s not  the guitar that cuts through its its tone and the amount of space in the mix for it. For example identical acoustic guitars strumming an open g chord will sound similar, if however one of the strummers plays a DShape on the 6 fret which is g  then you will hear both guitars with the guitar being played at the 6th seeming louder.

True (apart from the issue with the wrong fret mentioned above), but there is more to it than that.

If you are in a dense mix e.g. with a keboard player and acoustic guitar, something like a Les Paul is a lot harder to get heard in the mix.  It has a lot more low mid range and is in the same space in the mix as the other instruments.  Something like a Strat, with more upper mids and less lower mids, will be heard in the mix without needing as much volume.  You will also be able to hear the other instruments more easily.

I love Les Pauls, but a Fender or a Gretsch are more practical for most applications.

axisus

Jalapeno

thebreeze said:

If you've got two guitarists (maybe more) who's meant to be "cutting through"?

Both - so don't play identical (barre) chords or it sounds like mush - use different inversions/string groups.

crunchman

Jalapeno said:

thebreeze said:

If you've got two guitarists (maybe more) who's meant to be "cutting through"?

Both - so don't play identical (barre) chords or it sounds like mush - use different inversions/string groups.

This

I've seen a band with 3 guitars playing in A.  SInger was playing acoustic with capo on second fret using G shapes.  One electric was playing conventional A, and the second one was playing E shapes with a capo on the 5th fret.

If you are playing with keyboards though, it's normally easier to get a Strat to sit in a mix than something fatter like a Les Paul.

EricTheWeary

The kind of sounds and styles of people like BB King and Albert Collins I always assumed were about trying to punch through the mix. Quite bright, high up the neck, probably started out with small amps but big bands. 
Then there's the Steve Cropper, Nile Rodgers thing of finding your place in the arrangement as much as the mix so you aren't competing with other instruments. So people were cutting through the mix before we knew how to make everything louder than everything else.  


Anyway, I think the 'pro tip' is to hear yourself in the mix as the audience hears you. Hearing your guitar louder than everything else is fine if you are Yngwie Malmsteen because the sound engineer will fix everything and your audience probably wants the guitar louder than everything else combined anyway. But your audience probably only hears the tip of the iceberg of your sound so almost invariably you need to be less dynamic, less mid heavy, a bit less busy. Horses for courses but playing like a guitarist and listening like a sound engineer.     



Edit: just in case the inverted commas aren’t enough by pro tip I mean a tip I’ve heard pros say. 

Cirrus

These conversations never make a lot of sense to me because people talk about something cutting through or being too shrill or whatever and... it just depends on the music you're making. Sometimes you WANT a guitar line to be "too shrill" by the standards of accepted guitar tone aesthetics or you want it to be a mush or whatever. Sometimes you want the guitar to take up a huge amount of sonic space and be this vast monolithic background upon which other parts of the arrangement sit, and sometimes it wants to be thin and sharp and stark like a single piece of barbed wire dragged through the family dog's hair. It's the contrasts and changes over the course of a song that give it its emotional quality.

thebreeze

Yes but what I'm getting from this conversation, which is really helpful, is that it's a nuanced and fluid thing depending on all sorts of factors.  Guitars just in themselves don't really cut through regardless - or if they do it might be really unwanted (or wanted as you say).  To say "this guitar cuts through the mix" is a bit meaningless.

steven70

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stickyfiddle

I always think ACDC is a great example of this. It wouldn't have worked as well if either of them had played a Les Paul, as it would have taken too much bandwidth in the mix. 

thebreeze

stickyfiddle said:

I always think ACDC is a great example of this. It wouldn't have worked as well if either of them had played a Les Paul, as it would have taken too much bandwidth in the mix. 

Do you think they deliberately chose those guitars for that reason then?

maltingsaudio

crunchman said:

maltingsaudio said:

It’s not  the guitar that cuts through its its tone and the amount of space in the mix for it. For example identical acoustic guitars strumming an open g chord will sound similar, if however one of the strummers plays a DShape on the 6 fret which is g  then you will hear both guitars with the guitar being played at the 6th seeming louder.

True (apart from the issue with the wrong fret mentioned above), but there is more to it than that.

If you are in a dense mix e.g. with a keboard player and acoustic guitar, something like a Les Paul is a lot harder to get heard in the mix.  It has a lot more low mid range and is in the same space in the mix as the other instruments.  Something like a Strat, with more upper mids and less lower mids, will be heard in the mix without needing as much volume.  You will also be able to hear the other instruments more easily.

I love Les Pauls, but a Fender or a Gretsch are more practical for most applications.

Yes apologies for the brain fart !  Just to add a practical point to this discussion, What you think is your ideal tone with all the effects etc that you set up on your own, rarely is perfect for a band situation when you add all the other instruments and voices as @crunchman says

stickyfiddle

thebreeze said:

stickyfiddle said:

I always think ACDC is a great example of this. It wouldn't have worked as well if either of them had played a Les Paul, as it would have taken too much bandwidth in the mix. 

Do you think they deliberately chose those guitars for that reason then?

No, I think those were the guitars they had when they started - I don't imagine they had a huge amount of choice in the late 60's in rural-ish Australia. Equally, they're both little dudes, so probably didn't mind having small lightweight guitars (save for Malcolm's stint with a White Falcon)

ESBlonde

Given all the problems folks have identifying common guitars in isolation, I'd agree that how you set the amp tone is the key and nothing to do with the guitar. 
More mids less distortion gets it out there.

PolarityMan

I'd say when you are supposed to be loud...be loud. And no one else be loud then. So if you're playing a lead you should be as loud as the lead vocal in the choruses and the other guitarist shouldnt be using his loud setting at the same time as yours.

Needs some discipline knowing when you are supposed to be "in focus" and when you're not. 

NelsonP

crunchman said:

Jalapeno said:

thebreeze said:

If you've got two guitarists (maybe more) who's meant to be "cutting through"?

Both - so don't play identical (barre) chords or it sounds like mush - use different inversions/string groups.

This

I've seen a band with 3 guitars playing in A.  SInger was playing acoustic with capo on second fret using G shapes.  One electric was playing conventional A, and the second one was playing E shapes with a capo on the 5th fret.

If you are playing with keyboards though, it's normally easier to get a Strat to sit in a mix than something fatter like a Les Paul.

Check out the Foo Fighters for this. With 3 guitars they deliberately arrange their songs so that they don't tread on each other toes. 3 guitars, usually all humbuckers into gainy amps, all playing different inversions of the same chords. Dave Grohl typically plays with a bit less gain whilst Shiflett and Smear have more. Smear seems to blend into the background, but if he stopped playing you would notice it immediately.

The isolated tracks in Dave Grohl's 'Play' are a pretty good way of looking at this.

If you have more than one guitarist then it makes sense to play different types of guitar, as these will give you more separation, compliment each other better and fill the sonic space more. It depends a bit on what style of music you are playing of course.

jeztone2

It’s context. When the other guitarist in my band used to play a Les Paul, if I played a set neck guitar, it used to cancel us both out and mush. Whereas now he’s playing an Ibanez RG, we don’t clash sonically. Back then I had to play a Tele. 

When I was in a one guitar/bass/drums/vocals classic rock act. I found my PRS’ seemed to work best and the Tele sounded a little thin. It’s really down to the context of the music and lineup. In the Classic rock band there was more space to breathe. 

Seziertisch

Off the top of my heard, Les Pauls have this great full midrange thing going which just fills out the sound a lot of times in the frequency range that guitars occupy in a lot of mixes. Sometimes it isn't what you need, but when you do it's great to have it. Though depending on what you are trying to get to sit where, any guitar can "cut through"

Otherwise, in terms of giving a recorded sound a sonic signature, speaker choice and mic positioning has a far greater impact on the end result than the guitar used. If you record everything through the same speaker(s) with the same mics in the same position, even if you use different guitars, the chances of having stuff occupying the same sonic real estate is pretty high, though a lot of times depending on how much is going on the mix this isn't an issue. If you have 2 guitars, drums, bass and vocals, it should be possible to get even similar sounding guitar tracks to stay out of each other's way. 

Also, in most band recordings the guitars are mid-range instruments, you don't need or want a load of low end or high end. In fact the whole appeal of the Tube Screamer is that it cuts lows and boosts mids. The only amp I have ever played that has high and low pass filters was a Benson, and it sounded amazing, present in all the right places. I also use a Pettyjohn Predrive that has high and low pass filters on it and it is so good at getting stuff to sit where you want it. 

Realistically, depending on what else is happening in the mix, that room shaking quality of your 4x12 is not necessarily going to translate onto a recording. Though it possibly has a low-mid thing going on which is what you really want. Isolated mixed guitar tracks from a lot of "heavy" music are sometimes not particularly heavy or weighty sounding, add in the bass and drums and then all of sudden they sound massive. Otherwise, I've seen mixers cut the lows to boost the perceived mids/highs and vice vearsa. 

And then there is the whole arrangement thing. A sparser arrangement is easier to cut through than a denser one, though a good arrangement will mean that the parts are less likely to be occupying the same sonic real estate as one another, or if they are it is for a good reason. 

Seziertisch

I think this is quite interesting in terms of the difference a different guitar can make in the context of a mix, albeit a fairly sparse one.

 I can only presume that the same amp settings were used for all recordings and that there was some sort of post production level matching, so that would mean that it isn’t just the guitars changing but also the gain staging on the amp. And obviously, using the same amp eq settings would mean that the sonic signature of some guitars would be more suited than others.

https://youtu.be/Ctpcwi1o210

stratman3142

PolarityMan said:

I'd say when you are supposed to be loud...be loud. And no one else be loud then. So if you're playing a lead you should be as loud as the lead vocal in the choruses and the other guitarist shouldnt be using his loud setting at the same time as yours.

Needs some discipline knowing when you are supposed to be "in focus" and when you're not. 

That's a good point. Volume when it calls for it.

thebreeze

Seziertisch said:

I think this is quite interesting in terms of the difference a different guitar can make in the context of a mix, albeit a fairly sparse one.

 I can only presume that the same amp settings were used for all recordings and that there was some sort of post production level matching, so that would mean that it isn’t just the guitars changing but also the gain staging on the amp. And obviously, using the same amp eq settings would mean that the sonic signature of some guitars would be more suited than others.

https://youtu.be/Ctpcwi1o210

That's a fascinating vid for various reasons - thanks for posting.  I did find it interesting for how they all sat in the mix but I also found it fascinating (and slightly awkward) for testing my biases and presumptions.  Just in general terms I found myself preferring the sounds of 1. The Music Man  2. The Rick and 3. The LP - none of them the guitars I would really have given much attention to.  I have a LP and generally don't play it.  The most interesting thing was that my least favourite was the Strat and I generally only play Strats and love them.  I guess this is were amps play a big part and also how the guitars are played?  Some will sound better through a Marshall, some will sound better through a BF, a tweed or whatever.