Butch Walker is a very rare animal in the musical world; a multi-instrumentalist with his own expansive discography of solo albums and a production plus co-writing resume that includes some of the biggest pop stars in the world right now and a host of rock names. He's unique, and he knows a lot of about getting results with musicians – especially when tracking guitars.
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TechTranscript
00:00 Yeah, so I suppose the first obvious question is, what's your go-to most simple setup for
00:15 being able to mic a guitar cab?
00:18 Well, first of all, there's really no rules in recording guitars, whatever sounds good.
00:25 Sometimes, I'll start with a 57 or even like an Audix i5 I use on guitars, which is basically
00:36 a 57, and then sometimes add in a setup I've really enjoyed using for a long time, which
00:42 is either that and a ribbon or like a Royer or whatever, or a ribbon and a large diaphragm
00:51 condenser or even just a cheap mic like a Rode NT2 that kind of does similar to what
00:59 an 87 or something would do, like a U87 or something.
01:04 But they handle a lot of SPL, which is good.
01:07 And so that's if I'm doing big guitars or whatever, but even if I'm just recording like
01:12 a Princeton or anything like that, I'm not that picky about it.
01:17 A 57 does the job or a ribbon mic.
01:22 But lately, I've been really getting into using the Aux by Universal Audio, which is
01:28 funny, I'm standing here underneath their signs, so it's not a shameless plug.
01:35 It's actually just been my go-to guitar sound for all of my amp heads, all of my amplifiers.
01:45 It's a load box, obviously, first and foremost, but then it's also a cabinet simulator, basically,
01:50 so you can plug any of your combo amps or heads or anything into it, select whatever
01:56 speakers, mics, room sounds, there's UAFX in it.
02:01 It's pretty incredible and it's hard to convince anyone that it's not an amp.
02:06 People think it's an amp.
02:07 They're just like, "Okay, if they don't ask, I don't tell."
02:11 But I have a lot of control with it and I've got to say, the last year, I've used it probably
02:16 85% of the time in the studio as opposed to even turning on a mic on a cabinet.
02:22 But I do have two 2x12 cabinets in an ISO box that Todd, who engineers for me, he built
02:30 it.
02:31 And basically, we put a 2x12 cabinet that's got V30s in it and then a 2x12 cabinet that
02:36 has Silverbell AC30 speakers from the '60s.
02:42 They're 1967, actually.
02:44 And I've got both of those mic'd up in there and then we can just patch our amps accordingly
02:51 or I'll go through the aux either way.
02:53 And then coming out of that, usually, as far as the preamps, like the mic pre's that I
02:58 use going into the front end, I'm a really big fan of the Chandler stuff and the Chandler
03:06 TG-2 is probably one of my favorite not-so-secret weapons for recording guitars.
03:13 They have an ohm selector, you can run DI straight into the front and they sound amazing
03:20 or out through the back and there's a preamp gain and a master trim so you can really get
03:26 the distortion, you can really get the harmonic distortion you want.
03:30 And I find those great for rock guitars.
03:32 They just have a mid-range, two of them, that sound amazing.
03:34 Plus my board, I have a 1972 Quad 8, which is an old console that was famously at Village
03:43 Recorder in Santa Monica, about a mile from where it was first installed is where it is
03:48 now at my studio back in the '70s and it was the board on the back of Countdown to Ecstasy
03:54 by Steely Dan.
03:55 That was the one in their room that they used to record that record and countless others.
04:01 And so that one sounds incredible, the preamps in that sound amazing on guitars as well.
04:07 So I usually do that.
04:08 I don't compress the guitars hardly at all going in.
04:11 As a matter of fact, I don't think I use any compressors going in to tape, so to speak.
04:19 But after the fact, one thing I'll do is, I'm probably answering a lot of your questions
04:23 for you.
04:24 I'm just trying to give you an easy job.
04:29 But after the guitars get recorded into whatever DAW, which you know, say it's Pro Tools or
04:34 whatever, I have a couple of things I like to put on them afterwards, plug-in wise.
04:40 And I use the Neve 1073 channel strip that UA makes and that usually is always first
04:47 in the chain on the plug-in insert.
04:51 And I'll do that so I can crank up the preamp gain on it even more and even get more harmonic
04:55 distortion that I want and then trim the fader back and then also the EQ and then I'll use
05:01 the high pass to roll it off at 80 if I need to, to get rid of any rumble or anything like
05:06 that, clear up the mud, all those catchphrases that we use.
05:13 And the magic knob on that is the mid-range, like 1-2kHz is my favorite area on a Neve
05:20 for guitars, just to accentuate it even more.
05:23 And I'll goose that up even more and sometimes add the 10kHz fixed at the top just to brighten
05:28 it up if I need to.
05:30 But those to me are just the sound of rock and roll guitars, you know, the old Neve channel
05:35 strips.
05:36 And so I use the plug-in version, it sounds great.
05:38 Are you using that in unison mode as well or are you putting that on within?
05:42 No it's in line mode after everything, like after I've recorded the guitars in and everything,
05:47 I don't use it on the channel going in so to speak.
05:51 But everything does go through what UA has, this thing called the virtual console that
05:56 I use for my front end, because I'm on all UA converters.
06:00 And I don't necessarily use them in unison mode, but I'll use them because I'm using
06:04 real mic pre's on the front end, so I'll just use that.
06:08 I'll put one on their channel strip in there sometimes as a line level to use the EQ and
06:14 the preamp for that.
06:15 You can still have flavor in there.
06:16 Yeah.
06:17 On the 1073 emulation, you can still, in line mode, you can still run through the transformer
06:23 can't you?
06:24 Yeah, yeah, it distorts nice.
06:26 Yeah, it's great and I love harmonic distortion in analog gear, so they've emulated it pretty
06:31 well with that stuff.
06:33 So it's a combination of front end, real analog stuff, gaining it up and using it, and then
06:37 also doing more of it after the guitars are recorded.
06:40 Cool.
06:41 So earlier on when you were talking about micing, obviously this is going to be presented
06:46 to people who may or may not have UAD gear, but your simplest kind of go-to thing is to
06:52 get a 57 or equivalent dynamic mic and place it in front of the cab, nice and simple.
06:59 How would you kind of recommend to people who want to start doing that?
07:03 Where to put the microphone?
07:04 Where to place it?
07:05 Where's your go-to starting point on it?
07:07 My go-to starting point is usually just right off the cone, right off the center diaphragm.
07:15 I'll sometimes just go right where the outline is on the diaphragm, I'll go right for the
07:21 outline of it, so it's like equidistant between the center of the diaphragm and the edge of
07:25 the cone.
07:28 That's usually a good starting point.
07:30 Sometimes it's a little too harsh if you're right in the middle.
07:33 But I mean, just like anything, you can EQ the guitar just by moving the mic around,
07:39 so a lot of people swear by that.
07:40 Like Eric Valentine is a friend of mine who's mixed records for me, and he's an incredible
07:44 psycho wizard unicorn in a studio, and he's got robots with mics on them that move around
07:51 and stuff.
07:52 It's insane.
07:53 He'll move them even six feet back from the cabinet to get more room or whatever.
07:58 I'll do that too if we want to.
08:03 One of the things about using the aux is you can make the mics off-center inside the software
08:12 or direct on.
08:13 You can high-pass, low-pass them.
08:15 You can add in a room mic, stereo, ribbon, whatever.
08:18 You can choose the microphones, Beyer M160s, R121 Royers, pretty much everything.
08:28 Being that we have everything in a pretty small room, the ISO booth, the ISO box for
08:33 the guitar cabinets, there's not a lot of room for movement, so we set it and forget
08:36 it in there usually.
08:38 But I can usually EQ stuff.
08:40 Once you get it placed in the right spot, there's a lot you can do with it after.
08:43 You also talked about using a ribbon, a mixture of a ribbon and a large diaphragm.
08:50 Do you set those in a kind of loom-line thing?
08:57 I'm not real technical with it.
08:59 I know that even in the aux, I use the same similar setup.
09:05 I use an R121 Royer or an M160 mic emulation, and I use a U87 as my whatever, but as the
09:14 high-low mic, and then the mid-range is coming from the ribbons.
09:19 Usually we just put them side-by-side.
09:23 Sometimes I'll do the off-axis just to get it a mellower tone.
09:26 But on the ISO box we have where we have the cabinets, we have the same thing.
09:33 We literally have the large diaphragm condenser and the small dynamic side-by-side so that
09:42 they're phased, coherent, and those are right next to each other so the correlation is good.
09:49 You just mentioned phasing, and that's kind of like a thing that a lot of people run into
09:54 and it's tricky to understand and that kind of thing.
09:55 Do you have any tips for people who are wanting to try and experiment with different mic placements?
09:56 You were saying there's no right or wrong.
10:03 There's no right or wrong, and some people like to use out-of-phase sounds on that, but
10:07 you can usually flip guitars like that later if you record the mics on different tracks
10:11 and have that committed inside the whatever recording medium you're working on.
10:17 I don't usually mess with that that much, but it can be done easily.
10:21 But for checking phase it's pretty simple.
10:24 It's just you get the mics as close to the same distance if you want.
10:28 You might be wanting to use a close mic and a far mic, but you still want to check your
10:32 phase and that's literally just flipping the phase button when you're listening.
10:36 I just always try to get it to where when you flip the phase that the sound almost goes
10:40 away.
10:41 That's when it's as close as in phase as you can get it when you pop it back in.
10:45 But if you pop it out of phase and the sound just shrinks to almost nothing, then I'm not
10:52 a technical wizard, but I just know that's when I usually get the fattest guitar sound
10:57 out of a multi-mic setup.
11:00 So having access to UA stuff, I'm guessing you spoke about using the aux.
11:07 Do you use a lot of emulated stuff from the UA plugin world for guitar stuff?
11:14 I do.
11:15 I do all the time.
11:16 I mean, I find myself more and more relying more on that than I do external hardware because
11:22 this day and age everybody's moving way too fast and wanting too many changes and recalls
11:25 and everything.
11:26 And it's like, I don't know, you don't have time to patch in an analog, like a tape
11:30 echo and get the sound back.
11:33 It's just a fucking nightmare.
11:36 So I love the emulations, especially the UA ones.
11:41 UA and Soundtoys are my go-to for all of their...
11:45 I use Soundtoys, I use Echo Boy and their Echo Plex, and I use their Decapitator for
11:50 more grit and dirt on the guitars a lot.
11:53 But then the UA stuff, I use their Tape Echo, the Space Echo is great.
12:00 Obviously their verbs are all amazing, so yeah, if I want to get a really big, awesome
12:05 plate verb on there, I'll throw an EMT 250 on there or something like that.
12:11 Or a 140.
12:13 But it's pretty...
12:15 There's no rules, you know?
12:16 I just like to make it...
12:17 I like to make it sound good and I like to make it easy where if I need to pull it back
12:21 up I don't have to fight to get it back to where it was the first time.
12:24 Cool.
12:25 And for people that may not have done too much of this stuff before, earlier on you were
12:29 talking about using high-pass filters on guitars, that's a fairly common practice.
12:34 Yes.
12:35 Do you mind just talking through that a little bit and then you can presumably do that on
12:40 a separate track to carve out space for the other instruments?
12:43 Yeah, I do that a lot.
12:45 And quite honestly, with guitars I have a history of doing bigger rock guitar sounds
12:52 on a lot of records and that's something that you don't have to dump a whole lot out because
12:56 they need to...
12:58 They're the meat of the music and the mix.
12:59 So needless to say, I'd say if I'm high-passing it's usually 80 to 100, 100 or 80 and below.
13:09 I take it out immediately.
13:12 The top can be anywhere from I'll leave it in all the way up to 10k or sometimes I'll
13:16 take it all the way down to 5k to roll it off from the high end if I need it to not
13:22 get in the way of sharper instruments like keyboards or vocals or whatever.
13:26 But that's pretty much my...
13:29 That's my window for guitars.
13:33 Or if I'm going for an effect, obviously I'll shrink it way in and have like a...
13:38 If you're looking for that AM radio effect or whatever, then that's just rolling everything
13:41 off until the middle.
13:43 But yeah, it's kind of all across the board.
13:47 Usually without fail we'll dump everything from 100 or 80 down just because I don't want
13:52 any weird low rumble that might get in the mix that you can't hear but you can feel it
13:57 and it doesn't feel right when you're listening to a track back when there's some muckyness
14:03 that you can't get rid of and you don't know where it's coming from.
14:06 That's cool.
14:08 When you're doing big stacks of the same part and building stuff, do you do a lot of that?
14:19 People get bummed at me a lot of times because I'm not a big fan of stacking.
14:24 I did it back in the day years ago in the 90s it was a big thing to double and quadruple
14:29 your guitar parts.
14:31 I think it's all...
14:32 People go through phases of how they do it over the years of being recording guitarists
14:35 or producers where it's like, "Oh, I like the four guitars doing the same thing really
14:40 loud, stereo panned."
14:44 Even doing the New Green Day record I had to...
14:48 Even with Billy he was used to stacking, quadrupling even guitars sometimes.
14:53 That's cool but I would notice even in the mix some guys, the mixers would get the tracks
14:58 and then they would take two of them and only use that.
15:01 It's like, "Hey, if they're placed right, EQed right, set right in the mix, they can
15:07 sound just as big if not bigger."
15:10 I don't like losing the articulation and the dynamics of a lot of guitar parts that come
15:14 from one big guitar sound.
15:19 Sometimes I will double it even no matter what.
15:22 I'll do a double sometimes if I want the line to be big and prominent and it stand out,
15:27 especially if it's a melodic line.
15:31 As far as for heavier rock stuff, I almost always double and pan it, old school.
15:37 But quadrupling, it's a rarity that I do that unless the artist is convincing me to do it
15:43 for them because they're used to it.
15:46 I tend to like...
15:47 I know this sounds cliche but I just love the way a Stones record sounds where you have
15:54 Ron on one side and Keith on the other playing two different parts working off each other
15:58 and that creates a big sound of its own because there's a syncopation and a push and a pull
16:03 happening and you're leaving a lot more room for other sounds to poke out of the mix from
16:09 other instruments if you do that.
16:11 It's hard to make a drum sound be huge and present with big walls of guitars.
16:16 It can be done.
16:18 It's not my forte but I know people can do it.
16:20 People often say it's the differences in those parts that create the hugeness rather than
16:27 having loads of identical...
16:30 And it sounds amazing stacking multiple of the same part.
16:34 It always does.
16:35 It sounds cool to me but I just don't find it always works.
16:40 When you do just a straight double, do you tend to adjust tone settings on either side
16:48 or do you keep it back on?
16:51 It used to be it was like okay new amp, new guitar, everything.
16:56 Different cabinet, whatever for the doubles.
17:01 Maybe I've gotten lazy over the years and if I do it I double it and if it sounds right
17:05 then it sounds right.
17:07 Sometimes you can tell if it's like canceling itself out and making itself too small we'll
17:10 throw a different guitar on or a different amp head but usually we change different amps
17:16 just for different parts.
17:18 But for doubles and stuff I usually stick to almost the same formula as the first track.
17:23 If we can just talk a little bit about acoustic guitars, your approach to matching up acoustic
17:29 and how you feel about doing that.
17:32 Constant learning experience for me and constant frustration as well because I'll listen to
17:39 other people's records and go "Fuck that's a great acoustic sound.
17:41 How did you get that?"
17:43 And then "Oh it's a 57 on a $100 guitar."
17:49 But then you have other people with stereo room mics and stereo 67s, $40,000 worth of
17:59 microphones on one acoustic guitar.
18:02 There's no rules again but one thing I try to always go for which I think a lot of people
18:07 probably have already said is great guitar, great player, depends on picking versus finger
18:16 picking.
18:17 A pick can ruin everything in an acoustic guitar and actually make it really muddy if
18:21 it's the wrong attack and even the wrong pick I've found.
18:25 Some people will just play too close over the hole or too far back.
18:29 It's a drastic tonal change on an acoustic no matter how you hold it, swivel it, play
18:36 it, pick it, strum it.
18:42 One thing I do is, like I said, I think a lot of people will say the same thing, you
18:46 don't put the mic right over the sound hole.
18:49 Cardinal sin.
18:50 It's just like all woof and air and you gotta filter it out and there's proximity effect,
18:55 everything.
18:56 So a lot of times the neck and the heel, where the neck heel is on the guitar which is usually
19:01 right around the 12th fret on an acoustic, I'll usually have one about anywhere from,
19:09 it can be anywhere from 3 inches to a foot and a half back depending on the sound I'm
19:14 looking for.
19:15 And usually I use a, one of my favorite mics I have that I use for acoustics these days
19:21 is my, it's a mic by a Russian company called Soyuz which I love and they make this small
19:28 diaphragm condenser mic that I've yet to find a better acoustic sound with personally
19:34 and I love it.
19:35 And it's called the 011 and the 013, they also have that as well.
19:41 But those are just amazing.
19:43 It's sort of like a KM84 or a 250, not a 251 but a, shit, sorry, doesn't matter.
19:53 It's a small mic, a pencil mic.
19:56 And I'll use that or sometimes I'll use my Chandler Red 47 which is like a basically
20:01 a U47 with a built in TG Red mic pre and that's a great acoustic mic.
20:08 And I'll put that like I said, right there where the heel meets the, where the neck heel
20:13 is and I can pretty much get a pretty good full bodied sound dialed in right then and
20:18 there with that.
20:19 Rarely do I add a second mic ever.
20:22 Sometimes I'll use a second mic as a room mic if I want to make it just sound like for
20:25 some reason it's distant, you know, or in a room.
20:29 I'll do that.
20:30 But usually I find I can do it with one mic and be okay.
20:36 And then as far as doubling it, same thing.
20:38 There's no rules there.
20:39 Sometimes it sounds incredible using the same guitar.
20:42 Just go ahead and record it on another track, double it and pan it.
20:47 Almost always I pan them because otherwise one guitar up the middle playing the same
20:51 part just sounds like a guitar with no, without good definition and articulation.
20:59 And I'll also pan them right, far left and right and use a different guitar sometimes
21:05 on the right or a different whatever.
21:08 It just depends, you know.
21:09 My favorite thing to do is not to double it with the same thing but to double it with
21:12 a different guitar acoustically that's like in a different tuning or a capoed or even
21:18 a Nashville tuning all high string guitar and do a counterpart to it.
21:23 And even then you don't have to pan those far right and left either.
21:26 You can kind of get those closer to the middle and they end up doing this choral beautiful
21:31 thing that you're like, wow, what is that instrument, you know?
21:34 So that's fun too.
21:36 Do you kind of process acoustics a little more on the way in or do you leave them?
21:42 I'm a big fan of processing everything on the way in except for usually effects.
21:46 I usually don't print if I don't have to.
21:49 I will print like amplifier reverb or like if there's a delay effect that needs to be
21:53 printed but for the most part on acoustics and electrics it's mostly EQ and compression
21:58 I print going in.
22:00 And I do EQ and compress the acoustic guitars going in.
22:05 I don't go overboard with it because I'm going to add maybe more later of EQ and compression.
22:12 But yeah, usually just to get the mud out and if I need some more sparkle on the top
22:17 or some mid-range or whatever, we'll get surgical with it every now and again.
22:21 But for the most part, just having a good mic, good guitar, good hands, and a good mic
22:30 pre.
22:31 And then the rest is just making sure that's the right choice for that song.
22:36 Compression is something else that people sometimes struggle to get the head around
22:43 particularly when a guitar player is choosing a studio compressor and there's like five
22:46 times as many controls and all that stuff in comparison to a pedal.
22:50 So do you have a go-to kind of compressor for acoustic guitars from the UA suite that
22:56 you use?
22:57 Yeah, actually from the UA ones I love using the LA-2.
23:00 And I use the LA-2 and I'll use the brown one or the gray one.
23:05 They both sound great.
23:07 But I usually have that already set up in my template with either a Helios 69 or a Neve
23:15 1073 channel strip for EQ and preamp gain.
23:21 And then I'll use a LA-2 on the acoustics almost always.
23:25 I just like the slow release of that for acoustics and it doesn't seem to make it go too crazy
23:32 pumping and I don't necessarily want that effect on acoustic guitars a lot.
23:38 But those are usually my go-to.
23:39 So on the way in you're just using that to just kind of control the peaks a little bit?
23:45 Yeah, yeah.
23:46 And if I need to just make it sound a little bigger, you know, like if I want it sometimes
23:49 will give it a little bit more body and roundness and be a little more robust is probably the
23:54 right word.
23:55 Would you be able to very simply explain just quickly how people can use compression on
24:03 an acoustic guitar to affect things like picking attack versus they might want it to not have
24:09 too much sustain or maybe even boost the sustain of their guitar?
24:14 I mean going in I suppose if you're treating it while you're doing the song that's probably
24:18 the best way to do that and see how the player is, if it's not me playing it, if it's somebody
24:23 else see how they're responding to how it's sounding and how they're playing when they're
24:27 doing it.
24:28 I try to look for that too, especially if they're like a ham-handed heavy pick, heavy
24:33 strummer or if they're really delicate, you know, that's going to change the landscape
24:37 going in as far as what the blueprint is going in.
24:40 Do you have a kind of favorite guitar tone that you've recorded, one that you've created,
24:47 like if there's one that you, stands out as being kind of like a proudest tone?
24:52 Wow.
24:53 I don't know.
24:54 I mean, I'm trying to think.
24:55 I mean I love, I'm trying to think of what I would think.
25:14 There's a record I did for a band years ago that actually kind of flies under the radar
25:19 now but it was one of the first records I ever got to do on a major label and somehow
25:26 convinced them to let me produce it.
25:29 It was for a hard rock band called Injected and they were out of Atlanta, which is where
25:33 I'm from.
25:34 And so that record still to this day when I put it on the guitar sounds for hard rock
25:40 are monstrous.
25:41 And I would get calls from people asking about what I did to do the guitars on that record.
25:48 Same thing.
25:49 I mean, I remember Reinhold Bogner was like freaking out over the guitar sounds I used
25:53 and I was like, "That's your amp I'm using for one."
25:56 So I used a Bogner on that record and he was tripping on that because they loved that record
26:02 and they loved the guitar sounds.
26:03 And again, the two guys that were in that band were great players, great hands.
26:11 And same thing, great guitar into a great amp.
26:16 That was, I believe, the same setup.
26:17 It was a Royer 121 with a Rode NT2, maybe going through a Neve channel strip or a TG.
26:26 But yeah, same thing.
26:28 And still to this day, I love listening to the guitars on that record.
26:32 They're so giant.
26:33 It's really fun.
26:34 Yeah.
26:35 Do you have any kind of unorthodox recording techniques that you use on guitars or guitar
26:36 amps or anything?
26:37 Is there any kind of...
26:38 I'm so boring.
26:47 I wish I could say like, "Oh yeah, we swing mics from the rafters and record it."
26:51 Well, fuck all that.
26:52 I don't do any of that shit.
26:53 But I love interesting sounds and I think I find myself more of a tweaker afterwards.
27:00 After getting a good performance, which to me is the most important thing, I can't spend
27:07 two hours messing with sounds when the players are ready to be creative and people are inspired
27:13 to do the song.
27:15 It's gluttonous and it's counterproductive because it just makes everybody, by the end
27:26 of it, they're just like, "Okay, I don't really care about doing the song now.
27:29 I don't care about playing music.
27:31 I'm burned out because we spent seven hours on a kick drum sound."
27:35 Or like, I tend to have everything already set up in my studio where it's already mic'd
27:39 up and we change out things accordingly.
27:41 So we can change an amp out, we can change a cabinet out.
27:43 But for the most part, if you come in, plug in, start from there.
27:47 If they're like, "No, that's not it," then we build from there.
27:51 But I find it works quicker that way.
27:52 And then afterwards, I like to get in the room, as my friend says, get in the pain cave
27:58 and just sit there and just dissect the song and go crazy and start adding, if I want to
28:04 add cool shit or crazy effects or panning or stuff and automate things like that.
28:08 I do a lot of that after the song is recorded.
28:11 That's where you can get some of the excitement and the production.
28:15 But for the most part, I'm pretty bare bones and old-fashioned when it comes to the front
28:18 end of recording.
28:19 For people who are recording at home and maybe in less than ideal acoustic environments,
28:20 do you have any sort of quick tips on how they can control that within their room?
28:21 Or would you suggest leaning towards something like Deox or Modeling?
28:36 I would absolutely say Modeling or the Aux for sure, hands down.
28:40 If you have an amp that you love and if you're really into your amplifiers and that means
28:43 a lot to you, Aux hands down.
28:47 As far as modelers, they're so good now.
28:51 I've used a Line 6 Helix on records left and right, and nobody has ever said, "Is that
28:58 not a real amp?"
28:59 Not once.
29:00 No one's ever been like, "Dude, that sounds cool," or "That part's great," or whatever.
29:05 There's no rules.
29:06 I found it's a treasure trove for players this day and age.
29:10 Coming up, it wasn't so much.
29:11 It was hard.
29:12 When all we had was Rockman.
29:16 That was the only way we could avoid loud guitar amps mic'd up was plugging in a practice
29:21 headphone amp that sounded like Instant Danger Zone.
29:26 It was awesome, but now it's just like you can get almost any guitar sound and believable.
29:34 It's wonderful.
29:35 I love that part of technology.
29:37 I'm still romantic at heart and I still love plugging my amps in, but I've also married
29:42 that with modern technology, things like the Aux.
29:47 I would say that's a hands down for someone in their bedroom wanting to get great sounds.
29:52 Helix, Kemper, Aux with your own amp.
29:56 Yeah, go for it.
29:58 No one's ever going to turn their nose up at those guitar sounds that those things make.
30:02 How much importance would you put into the actual instrument and the amp?
30:07 I think that's often overlooked by players.
30:09 It's like my intonation's out or whatever.
30:12 It's a four people record.
30:14 I think it just depends on the song.
30:17 It depends on the band or the artist.
30:18 It depends on the approach to whatever you're doing.
30:21 Sometimes picking up the first guitar in the room and it's a little out of tune and plays
30:25 like shit and whatever, but it sounds really cool and all of a sudden this person plays
30:30 it and the way they play it actually works in the track.
30:34 I'm doing my hips like Keith Richards because that's who I'm thinking of.
30:38 I don't envision that guy tuning much or intonating, but he's got a guy doing it for him.
30:45 Still, those records sounded great when the guitars were a little out and they were imperfect
30:51 and they might have been laying on their back on a couch playing it or something where it's
30:56 definitely going to pull out of tune a little bit.
31:00 I don't think that stuff matters as much to me.
31:02 It only matters when it gets to the point where it's making it impossible to sound good
31:07 when making a recording.
31:08 It's like, "Okay, I can't do this guitar anymore.
31:12 This thing is like, everything else that I'm playing along to sounds out of tune because
31:16 of this guitar.
31:17 It's the guilty culprit.
31:18 Then we'll treat it.
31:20 We'll fix it.
31:21 We'll send it away."
31:22 Or Todd will go in the other room and work his magic on it.
31:27 I don't have time for it and I don't care for it.
31:29 I'm like, "I just want to pick up a guitar and record it.
31:33 I'll tune it real quick, sometimes just by ear, and just start hitting record.
31:37 If it sounds wrong, okay, tune it for real."
31:40 But there's no rules and I just don't think that stuff, like I said, that stuff just gets
31:45 in the way of the time, the valuable time window you have of recording someone or yourself
31:52 where there's artistic juices flowing.
31:57 Performance is key.
31:59 Yeah, totally.
32:01 and it takes care of itself.