Filling out a three piece??

DrJazzTap

I've started playing with my old drummer and bassist after a 10 year gap. We used to be a big eight piece funk/hip hop band.
Now we are kind of gearing towards more atmospheric ambient mogwai rocky stuff...well trying to. I'm trying to get my head around making as big a sound as possible. I don't want to start lugging around a 4x12 or anything. I was after suggestions really. With the funk stuff it was very minimal playing. I'm keen to explore more counterpoint-slash chord voicings. I'm gonna try to figure out some police stuff and look into larger chord voicings and open string voicings as well. 
In terms of gear atm a strat/fuzz/delay and reverb with a 1x12 or 2x12 combo. From what I've read I need to look into reverbs and delays etc. 

djspecialist

My benchmark for a huge-sounding 3-piece:



Playing so hard your specs mist up would seem to be the secret.

EricTheWeary

Might be worth looking at wet dry set ups. Not that I’ve ever done it but in theory it should give you a bigger spread of sound without turning everything to mush. But looking at needing two ( or three! ) amps although still no need to take out a 4x12. At least two TPS videos on it...

https://youtu.be/6moy_pAW3jU



I haven’t watched that since it came out three years ago but presumably it says something useful. 

ESBlonde

Space is pretty big and it's mainly space, that's the clue. You can use arpeggios and time/modulation fx to make a big sound. Regular wailing solos need to be reigned in.
Have some songs where the bass is busy and you hold it all down, other songs where the bass is all root notes and you get adventurous. Maximise the use of vocal harmonies and other grunts etc. As this increases the number of instruments to orchestrate the piece.
There is nothing wrong with blasting through a rock piece like Ace of spades too, but it is hard to find enough great 3 piece numbers to carry a night.

Funkfingers

DrJazzTap said:

I'm keen to explore more counterpoint-slash chord voicings. I'm gonna try to figure out some police stuff and look into larger chord voicings and open string voicings as well. 
In terms of gear atm a strat/fuzz/delay and reverb with a 1x12 or 2x12 combo. From what I've read I need to look into reverbs and delays etc. 

Check out Trey Anastasio (Phish, Oysterhead), Larry "Ler" LaLonde (Primus) or even recent Richard Thompson in trio format with Taras Prodaniuk and Michael Jerome. Might even be worth digging out the old John Martyn stuff with Danny Thompson on upright bass.

EricTheWeary

ESBlonde said:

Space is pretty big and it's mainly space, that's the clue. You can use arpeggios and time/modulation fx to make a big sound. Regular wailing solos need to be reigned in.
Have some songs where the bass is busy and you hold it all down, other songs where the bass is all root notes and you get adventurous. Maximise the use of vocal harmonies and other grunts etc. As this increases the number of instruments to orchestrate the piece.
There is nothing wrong with blasting through a rock piece like Ace of spades too, but it is hard to find enough great 3 piece numbers to carry a night.

A few years ago I saw a blues band who were playing in the bar where we were on holiday. One of the things they did was to have some really quiet/ acoustic songs in the set then the full electric songs sounded huge in comparison. 
When I saw Motorhead, by way of comparison and as they've been mentioned, they didn't really work with dynamics as much so songs that are great in isolation became part of ninety minutes of chug chug chug. That's fine if you are Lemmy and people love you but otherwise hard to get away with.

LastMantra

Tony Iommi.

bluechargeboy

Not sure how this translates to "atmospheric", but what the hell...in my experience it's less about gear and more about:

- All three musicians are equal-weighted; there is no lead instrument and rhythm section (to an extent)

- Stay out of each other's frequency range; if the bass player needs to play high, don't you be playing in the same range of notes

- Play more lead/rhythm combination stuff rather than straight lead (Hendrix would be the cliche example)

Early Muse made a lot of racket, and the bass and drums were a large part of that. Also think Bonham/JPJ in Led Zeppelin.

Or go full Devin Townsend with delays on top of delays!

Mark1960

Go for as many double stops as possible in your lead work. That's what I was taught to help fill the sound in a trio.

Fretwired

A looper, a volume pedal and an amp with an fx loop. Put your volume pedal and delays, reverbs and chorus in the fx loop and everything else in the front. You can then use the looper to create some atmospheric drones you can play over .. add distortion and you'll get a big sound. A stereo rig could be awesome.

stratman3142

Over past years I've mainly played in bands that at least included a keyboard player and usually had a brass section. In those bands, for clean rhythm, I was often on the Strat bridge//middle or neck//middle pickups (positions 2 and 4). The rhythm sound seemed to find its own slot with the other instruments. Also, in those band I just had one amp behind me.

My current band is the first time where I've been the only guitarist with just bass, drums and vocals. Now, with my HSS Strat, I just go between either the bridge humbucker or neck pickup. In fact I've started to use my dual humbucker PRS more, just using the neck or bridge pickups. 

Although, I sometimes use a fairly pure clean rhythm sound (for example for busy scratchy funk parts), my 'clean' sound is usually a bit crunchy, which I get from my Helix LT using the Teemah! on a low gain setting. I just use the Fx in my Helix LT and put it through two clean amps. My main amp (an HRD IV) is behind me and my other amp (a Blues Cube Artist) is on the other side of the stage. My chorus sound is in stereo, but most stuff is still mono.

For lead I'll often use more delay or slap back than I used to, unless I'm playing lots of notes. I'll also sometimes switch on a compressor (my Helix LT Kinky Comp) to fatten up the sound or give more sustain if I feel it's needed.

Whereas previously I was often just on the top 4 strings (chinking away) these days I often play bigger chords. But there are no hard and fast rules. I judge what feels right based on what's going on around me.
 
One thing that is noticeable is how dramatic it is if I very briefly stop playing. In the old bigger bands I used to be able to (metaphorically) scratch my nose, but now there's suddenly a big hole in the sound.

DrJazzTap

Fretwired said:

A looper, a volume pedal and an amp with an fx loop. Put your volume pedal and delays, reverbs and chorus in the fx loop and everything else in the front. You can then use the looper to create some atmospheric drones you can play over .. add distortion and you'll get a big sound. A stereo rig could be awesome.

Oh I like that idea, it'll give me something to fiddle around with at weekend. 
If I could get two small valve amps (cough cough origin 20s) with some cabs that might be the trick. I just don't want to take loads of stuff 

ESBlonde

Just a mention of U2 for open spacial guitar, I know he uses midi and multiple digital FX these days, but it wasn't always the case. Live at Red Rock was long before all that!

WiresDreamDisasters

For Mogwai type stuff, it's loads of pedals into a Fender Twin type amp. You will definitely want to start stacking delays. Also the bassist needs to have his tone super sorted, otherwise it'll just be crap.

Another thing that guitarists often overlook... play less notes and let the effects do the work for you. 

PolarityMan

We played as a three piece last night due to illness and I actually quite enjoyed it...could actually walk around on stage and stuff and could hear far more of the nuances of my playing. 

Danny1969

It kind of depends on what style of music it is. For originals it was never a problem as all the songs were wrote for one guitar and I generally used drone open notes or partial chords to make a solo rather than naked single note lead lines.

If I'm covering a 2 guitar part like Sex on fire I will generally play a single part that's made from the most prominent parts of the 2 parts kind of welded into one if that makes sense. Intelligent delays can help here if the drummer is consistent tempo wise. 

SPDX's 

If the drummers confident then you can trigger loads of non specific pads of sound from the drums. Imagine your doing Hard to Handle and it comes to the solo .... the drummer hits a pad that contains a static B Hammond organ chord, you solo over the top, sounds big and pretty effortless. I ended up taking this to the max and putting an SPD on the floor and would than record static chords into different pads so I could trigger them while soling over the top. So for the solo in Purple Rain I would hit the first pad for a Bb string chord, then pad 2 for the Gm, then pad 3 for the F and pad 4 for the Eb chord ..... so easy but so effective !!

Wazmeister

One amp clean, one wet-ish... 

Try a HX Stomp into the wet amp for your surround sound kinda feel.

And listen to The Jam - masters of the 3 piece band.

prowla

You could add a string ensemble...