EQ Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 33)

Wilson pondering myriad tonal options. Marshall 4x12s miked up at RedRoom for Porcupine Tree’s Nil Recurring sessions. helped us achieve the kinds of classicrock guitar sounds Steven and I grew up with,” Wesley says. “We didn’t even need to use the preamp’s onboard EQ—in fact, it was switched off— because we dialed in tones by routing the SM57 and the 421 to separate tracks. Then, if Steven wanted a brighter, more rippin’ sound, we would bring up more of the SM57. If he wanted the sound to be darker, we’d bring in more of the 421.” Once conventional recording wrapped, Wilson digitally manipulated his guitar tracks in Apple Logic Pro 7. “‘Cheating the Polygraph’ [from Nil Recurring] is a good example of how you can get even more creative by editing guitar tracks,” he says. “I took a guitar chord with a long sustain, copied it, reversed it, pasted the copy to the front of the original chord, and executed a crossfade. The backwards track morphing into the ‘normal’ guitar chord created this mmmorrwoow sound—it was almost like a sine-wave tone from a vintage synthesizer. It sounded particularly nice with the sweet, warbling Leslie, and I used the part to start the song.” Rob Reed, the driving force behind Magenta, also deployed an outside-the-box mentality during the recording of 2008’s Metamorphosis [Laser’s Edge]—a four-song, 54-minute concept album documenting the violent unraveling of a serial killer’s damaged psyche. “I had 100 tracks to work with,” says Reed, who recorded the bulk of the record at his Porth, South Wales, home studio. “I’d record a couple of chords into Logic, and then loop them, which would lead to constructing some basic chord structures. Due to the album’s subject matter, I wanted it to have more aggressive guitar sounds than our previous keyboard-based records, so I’d search for the most discordant chords, all the while building up layers of guitar tracks. Initially, I was layering the tracks using some filthy, over-thetop heavy metal models from a Line 6 Podxt. Those models sounded great in isolation, but I found the tones lacked mids, and they sounded a bit ‘mooshy’ when other guitar textures were layered on top of them. I kept wondering why I couldn’t get good signal separation. That’s when I decided to mic a real amp, and I never looked back.” For the miked guitar tones, Reed plugged a Fender Telecaster into a 100-watt Marshall JCM900 4100 and Marshall 4x12 cabinet, and positioned a Shure SM57 three inches from the center of one of the speaker cones. The Marshall delivered the midrange punch Reed desired, and, ultimately, he felt the amp models and miked amp tones complemented each other very well. “I love that big, chorused guitar sound,” says Reed. “So I doubletracked many of the guitar parts, and I used an Eventide Eclipse to add some chorus and delay. I also brought in a Universal Audio 6176 preamp to add valve warmth and Urei 1176LN-like compression to the tracks. In the end, the signal chain created this vibrant wall of guitar sounds.” www.eqmag.com JANUARY 2009 EQ 33 http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - January 2009

EQ Magazine - January 2009 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Bob Dylan The Killers Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Microsoft Windows Vista Apple Mac OS X "Lite" Software Roundup "Lite" Software Gadgets & Goodies Sounds Room With a Vu

EQ Magazine - January 2009

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