EQ Magazine - October 2008 - (Page 31)

I knew we needed to jump on things in order to make the twomonth deadline for delivery of the album, and what helped me do that without worrying too much about my tone was a combination of three things: my signature Les Pauls, a Diezel amp, and a Boss GT-6. I’m very familiar with the way the guitars sound—I’ve been using the same pots in every guitar I’ve had for the last 20 years—and the Diezel delivers a nice, smooth, and predictable tone. I use the GT-6 for effects such as chorusing, and I’ve spent a lot of years programming that little thing. How did you mic your amps? Because we were cutting live, my amp was in a big closet off Studio A at the Sausalito Record Plant. Jonathan’s piano was isolated in a side room, and the drums and bass were set up in another room. I used some Royer ribbon microphones positioned close to the speaker cabinet, as well as further back in the closet. I was really happy with the way those mics sounded. When I’d come back in the control room after a take, the playback sounded almost identical to the guitar tone I was hearing live in the room. That was a nice shock. It’s usually, “Wow—that’s not what my guitar is supposed to sound like!” As you are a very melodic player who also shreds, did you need to change up the gear or the mic positions to capture different levels of tonal articulation? No. I didn’t change the amp heads, the speaker cabinets, the mics and mic positions, or anything. Once I got a good sound, I stuck with that setup. If I wanted a cleaner sound for a rhythm part, I just turned down, or I brought in a Telecaster once in a while. We only had two months to record 26 songs [Ed. Note: The band recorded more songs than were released on Revelation], so I needed a simple setup that would work for everything. If we had another month or two, I would have experimented a bit more— perhaps using three different amp heads with three different cabinets. How do you always manage to uncork such “sing-able” solos? I really pay attention to melody, because a lot of guitar players don’t. It’s definitely a challenge to play something really melodic in a short amount of time—something that carries over from a vocal line and catches the attention of not just casual listeners, but other guitar players, as well. I always like having a good beginning and a good ending. The middle part is on the fly, because I like a solo to wander a bit. But that’s just my style. After all of these years, I still can’t tell you what scale I’m playing. My style is a mishmash of everything I like. I throw it all in and make some Cajun soup. www.eqmag.com OCTOBER 2008 EQ 31 http://fullcompass.com http://fullcompass.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - October 2008

EQ Magazine - October 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Smashing Pumpkins Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Steinberg Cubase 4 Studio Meets Stage Gear for the Studio and Stage Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - October 2008

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