Ace's Masterclasses Guitar Tracking Tips | Music Radar
If you want to get a chunky, full-sounding guitar mix, there are a few tricks to get you there fast - and Skunk Anansie guitarist and ACM tutor Ace is here to show ’em to you.
In this video masterclass, filmed at London’s Metropolis studios, Ace covers techniques including chord approaches, choice of pickups and panning, all of which should get your guitars sounding massive.
In this video masterclass, filmed at London’s Metropolis studios, Ace covers techniques including chord approaches, choice of pickups and panning, all of which should get your guitars sounding massive.
Transcript
00:00 Hi, hello, welcome.
00:06 It is Ace here.
00:07 Again, we are in Metropolis Studios in London and doing some kind of tricky tricks and techniques
00:15 for guitars that you might want to pick up on.
00:17 Today I'm going to talk about tracking, simple tracking really.
00:22 Basically about what I'm using is I'm just going to use one guitar and one amp, okay,
00:26 but to make a kind of a bit of a kind of concise full sound.
00:29 So first of all, I am going to track the guitar with single coils.
00:34 So you can either do like a Les Paul and a Telecaster or you can just use one guitar
00:38 that you can change to pick up chords.
00:40 And I'm going to use one amp and not change the sound of the amp.
00:42 So if I switch my guitar into single coils now, so they're not the humbuckers anymore,
00:52 I get a bit of a more toppy, sparkly, thinner kind of sound, similar to what I would get
00:56 from a Telecaster, okay?
01:02 What I'm going to do is I'm going to track the chords with that.
01:05 So I'm talking like the open chords, so the more jangly kind of stuff.
01:08 So I've got a nice bright jangly sound on top.
01:12 Then afterwards, what I'm going to do is I'm going to track the same thing, but I'm going
01:16 to go and use some like root and fifths.
01:18 So you know, these kind of chords.
01:23 So they're like reinforcement chords and I'm going to play them on the humbucker sound.
01:27 So I've got a kind of a cross between a Telecaster mixed with a humbucker.
01:31 And what I'll get there is I'll get all the mids, I'll get the highs, I'll get the lows,
01:35 and it will sound like one big huge guitar rather than two different ones, okay?
01:40 So it's a tracking technique that I use a lot in the studio.
01:43 So let's put a track up.
01:45 I'll play along first of all with the single coil and that will be the chord sequences.
01:51 Then I'm going to play along with the humbucker afterwards and track against it with the root
01:55 and fifths.
02:00 Okay, I'm going to now track on top of that and I'm going to use root and fifths now.
02:10 So just simple notes so that we can basically blend in, not that of tune with it, but make
02:17 it really solid.
02:18 I'm using humbuckers now, okay?
02:20 So I've switched into humbuckers, same amp, same setting.
02:37 Okay so we've got rhythm tracks down now.
02:39 One is single coil on the right hand side maybe.
02:43 One is going to be a humbucker played in root and fifths on the left hand side.
02:47 So we should have a really massive sounding one guitar type of sound.
02:51 We're going to separate them a little bit just so it gives a bit of a stereo effect
02:55 and we're going to put a guitar down the middle now.
02:56 So we're going to play a bit of a solo to see how it sounds against our really full
03:00 rhythms now.
03:01 Okay, so on the solo I'm going to stick on a few effects to make it a bit more exciting.
03:07 So let's have a bit of delay I think.
03:10 Maybe a bit of envelope and a bit of drive.
03:15 Okay, so let's see how this works on the track.
03:30 So we can see now that yeah, it kind of works, doesn't it?
03:33 It sounds like a really fat rhythm.
03:35 It's got the tone of the top and the bottom in there.
03:37 It's weighty, nothing can flick.
03:39 It's got reinforcement in the sound and then when we put a solo on the top of it, it really
03:43 compliments and it works with a few effects on top of it.
03:46 So that is my secret of quick tracking for rock songs to make it sound good.
03:51 [Music]
03:56 you