High-gain chord clarity?

[[UEAK]Clowd]

Do you guys do anything special to get more clarity in sections with suspended chords and things like that?

Like say you have some part that's a typical run of the mill metalcore breakdown, which goes into a chorus with suspended chords and the like. Does anyone change tones or back off the gain a bit just for those parts, or something else I'm not thinking of? I find those chords easily get lost in the mess of gain.

discuss.

 

[ahjteam]

I was taught by my guitar teacher (plays in a metalband himself) that when you are playing with a detuned hi-gain sound and you want to maintain clarity, you shouldn't play more than three strings at time. For "real chords" a little bit less gain and a bit different EQ-settings.

 

[Splat88]

I get a lot more success with passive pickups when it comes to distorted 6 string chords. Each note comes through better with my passives than with my EMG 81. The amp tone is probably the most critical factor though and after that I usually just adjust the volume knob on my guitar to clean up the chords.

 

[ze kink]

I don't use too much gain, it helps a lot. Also, I've always felt that EMG's seem to get mushy easier than most passives (like the Lundgren M7 in my custom, which is probably the clearest pickup I've ever had).

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

keeping the gain as low as possible helps for me too. an other option, if it's a chorus where the open chords are, is add 2 tracks that are really low gain and mix them in really soft at 100%L and 100%R perhaps even with a little stereo widening to make the chorus open up and add some clarity to the chords

 

[dan weapon]

try splitting the chord between guitarists - so they each get 3 notes each, with a common note or two between them.

Not necessarily the answer to this question, but something worth trying.

 

[Kazrog]

I actually love the sound of big chords through tons of distortion. But the 5150 is really one of the only amps that can pull this off.

 

[Emdprodukt]

my rev is good at it, too.

 

[deanbailey]

The rev and 5150 can do it, so can the JVM P) But I also do what Dan said and sometimes cut the chords up and divide it between the two guitarists. A tad unorthodox but it actually sounds really good

 

[Flat Fifth Fury]

The last band based project that I was in the other guitarist and I used a lot of big chords, (F13, Bmin9add11), and especially chords with tight intervals, (A5b6, Dadd4) with fairly high gain so note clarity and articulation was critical as to not make it a big mushy gronk. Having a good pre-gain mid boost and not an excessive amount of preamp gain with a tight power section seemed to be the ticket.

 

[Keiffer]

assuming the player can cord in tune and a properly setup gtr, the issue boils down to the AMP's IMD (InterModulation distortion) Amps with very low IMD will sound very clear even at very high gain levels. of course the speaker plays a roll in this, but the amp's IMD is the main issue.

IMO your gtr teacher does not fully understand this issue

 

[KillFrenzy]

So IMD is the name of that thing I tried so hard but could never successfully define/explain? :Smug:

 

[Fox Mulder]

Really, depends on how much headroom your pickups offer.
Might sound funny, but I tend to like Dimarzio Dactivators when it comes to headroom. They are a little noisy, though.
And last but never least, as it has been mentioned many-a-times above, tone selection.

 

[Kazrog]

Splitting the chords up between the guitarists is actually old school, Angus and Malcom style. And it sounds great!

John Petrucci in his Rock Discipline video talks about how it's also important to split chords up across the band, really thinking of things in terms of orchestration. This is also very useful. But there are times when I really want to hear a big, dissonant tone cluster through lots of distortion. Dean DeLeo of STP did a lot of this to great effect on the STP albums.

 

[JBroll]

Less gain, a TS to get rid of low-end flub (I usually turn the tone knob high for that stuff), and the right voicings.

If I had to pick just one of those to make things sound right, I'd actually pay closest attention to the voicings - playing a bunch of notes that are too close to each other leaves a murky mess, so when I'm playing anything more complicated than a 1-5-9 or a 1-5-11 I go out of my way to spread the notes across the board *very* carefully. Also, don't be afraid to drop the root (the bassist is there for a reason, and it's not just to drink all of the cheap beer) and split the chord among two guitarists.

Jeff

 

[Kazrog]

Wide voicings are nice and will sound more beautiful, but sometimes nothing sounds more evil than a bunch of close-stacked cluster tones down low on a 7 string or baritone. It's all a question of what effect you're going for.

 

[JBroll]

No doubt about that, but since he's going for clarity in this part wide voicings might work better. I use both, the amount of planning I can do to go through a simple riff is just bonkers sometimes...

Jeff

 

[aramism]

i think it comes down to pickups, amp tone, and how you pick.


with my guitars that have dimarzio steves special and evolution they are clear as daylight, others i have played.... not

 

[Behind]

I use to get this with low gain amp setups, but this could become into a rock & roll tone very easily

With heavier distortion, a tubescreamer could be the answer since it brings up more clarity to the whole thing in general.

Since I don't have a tubescreamer, the only chances I've had to achieve this is a guitar with EMG's and another guitar with low gain pups.

With EMG I bring the gain knob down in the amp and with the low gain pups it has to go up if I don't want that it sounds too rock&roll

The best tip for this is experimentation, it's all about tweaking your guitar, your amp settings and, of course, the gear you put in between

 

[Erkan]

Interesting, I hadn't read about it before but this confirms what I discovered a few days ago. After I put my EMG81 in and replaced that fucking passive pup (sorry for seeming pissed off but I really hated/hate the stock pickup), I noticed something very different. The sound was obviously much more "Wooaah dude, this was totally worth the money!", but when I hit like the 3 lightest strings and then started chugging on the heaviest, I couldn't hear the chug at all until the lighter strings had fade off. Guess this has to do with the compression that goes on inside the EMG81. It doesn't bother me though, since I would never record a freakin' chord AND a chug riff coming from one and the same guitar/performance, I would just record them separately... duh.

As for the rest of the discussion, that IMD-term seemed very interesting. I need to read a bit on that...

A quick googling on "inter modular distortion" brings a whole bunch of stuff but I would like to read about guitar amps specifically.. if anyone has a good resource to read, link it please! Otherwise, I'll just go through whatever I find.... later.