Making a tone that the band likes.

[3tuxedo]

ive been thinking about this a lot, the last band i recorded was pretty harsh in the way they wanted there guitars to sound (they have every right to be, its their music.) and id say im not past the beginner stage of podfarm yet, how do you guys get the sound the band wants, and also the sound you want, so it fits with the mix?

 

[JeffEstrada]

It's about knowing the sound of each amp and mic. I feel like the mic can make an amp sound completely different. So really test out all the different combinations. Also remember that if your gonna be playing around with the different cab's, each one will have to be EQ'ed differently, basically just have to choose an eq setting and stick with it for that specific cab.

There's really no set way to get a good tone, it's just all about practice. As long as you know the program, it'll be really simple to find the right tone for the band.

 

[ahjteam]

If it's a real amp, I just let the players tweak the amp first the way they want so that it's 90% there, so that it's outputting "their sound". Then I mic up the amp, possibly make minor tweaks to that tone to try if it makes it better or worse in context, and if it's worse, we will just go back to the settings they had. Simple as that. Usually they either totally know or totally don't know what they want from the tone. If they don't know what they want or they think what they want but don't fucking know how to dial it in, either I'll just dial in the tone, or if they or I notice the tone they dialed in it sucks afterwards, I'll just re-amp it when they are not there. Always remember to record the DI track from the guitar. I forgot to use the DI when I tracked the first album I recorded, the mixing engineer didn't like it, but at least we tracked a good guitar tone, so it wasn't that big of a problem.

What I did with the last session I did was this (band had 3 guitars, 1 drummer and 1 bass player on muso side):

- Day 1: demo vox and one guitar scratch guide track for the drummer, other drum related stuff
- Day 2-3: drum tracking
- Day 4: demo bass, then one take demo guitars with ampsims of all guitarists playing at the same time. Same tone, same settings.
- Day 4-6: guitar tracking
- Day 7: bass tracking
- Day 7-9: vocal tracking
- Day 10-14: mixing

I did the demo guitars, demo vocals and demo bass so that we would have the "full context", so that we would not try to overcompensate the low end from the guitar amp for example.