Recording - August 2021 - 29

The Continuing Adventures of
Wolf and Elvis
About how many guitars are there per
track?
Elvis: I just had 'Distance' open the other day and on that song,
we had two acoustic tracks, a clean rhythm track, then there's the
lead track... I would say on that song, we had seven to eight guitar
layers, but they're not all playing at one time. I don't think it's
more than four usually, maybe six parts when the solo comes in.
It's not as many as some songs I get sent to mix or by some of
the people that I work with. And we were limited to the amount
of tracks we could do going to tape, so we were always asking,
" Do we need this part? " The way Wolfgang plays, it fills
up pretty easily with just a few tracks. So, a lot of the tracks
we're ghosting for thickness, then adding another part.
Photos by Patrick Bertinelli
It's cool because I don't think most
people think of the 335 as a heavy
rock guitar.
Wolf: I love that when the 'Don't Back Down' video came
out, there was a handful of people in my Instagram comments
going, " You're using the wrong guitars. " I'm like,
" Listen to it though! "
Elvis: You talked about how it sounds almost harmonized.
One of my favorite tricks that I do a lot is, once we get the
main rhythm sound printed, to add a fuzz-based layer. One of
my go-to boxes is the Foxx Tone Machine, just playing power
chords and fifths. I like to keep it on its octave setting because
it creates a unique effect that reacts differently to every player.
So even though you can make a wall of sound with it, it
sounds like the wall of the person playing it, and if you kind of
just blend that in a little bit underneath the main sound, it sums
in nicely and adds a great layered width. And I don't care
what anyone says, but it also helps when you track guitars to
tape-the wow and flutter, the way the machine is tracking
on different days, and the saturation-it just has a different
sound and adds this depth.
26 RECORDING August 2021
How many tracks of tape are you
tracking to?
Elvis: Twenty-four. SMPTE and click take up two. So, we had
22, and then often we had a stereo mix printed from a slave
reel, so often we would have 20 tracks to work with.
Did you do a lot of sub-mixing?
Elvis: I always submix my kick and snare together to one track
each. I never print them separately. I started my career exclusively
on tape for over twelve years with four tracks, eight tracks, sixteen
tracks. For me, it's like, commit! I think that's the biggest problem
with stuff today-people don't commit, and you really should.
Tell me about the acoustic layers. I like
how they add extra texture even in the
heavy tracks, like an old Zeppelin record.
Do you have a favorite acoustic?
Wolf: I pretty much use this Takamine that I also wrote
everything on. We restrung a bunch of different acoustic guitars
to try, but they always ended up sounding way too bright, and
the dull strings of the Takamine that I had been using to write on
during the entire Van Halen tour ended up sounding incredible.
Elvis: And you are correct. We did layers of acoustics on
songs where it's almost hidden, but done purposely just to add
that little bit of attack, and sort of a, " What is that? "
Recording - August 2021

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