Butch Walker's Essential Tips for Recording Guitars
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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00:00Yeah, so I suppose the first obvious question is, what's your sort of go-to, most simple
00:14setup for being able to mic a guitar cab?
00:18Well, first of all, there's really no rules in recording guitars, whatever sounds good.
00:25And sometimes, I'll start with a 57 or even like an Audix i5 I use on guitars, which is
00:36basically a 57, and then sometimes add in a, you know, I've got a setup I've really
00:41enjoyed using for a long time, which is either that and a ribbon or like a Royer or whatever,
00:46or a ribbon and like a large diaphragm condenser, like even just a cheap mic like a Rode NT2
00:56that kind of does similar to what an 87 or something would do, like a U87 or something.
01:03But they handle a lot of SPL, which is good.
01:07And so that's if I'm doing like big guitars or whatever, but even if I'm just recording
01:11like a Princeton or anything like that, I'm not that picky about it.
01:17You know, a 57 does the job, or a ribbon mic.
01:22But lately, I've been really getting into using the Aux by Universal Audio, which is,
01:28you know, funny, I'm standing here underneath their signs, so it's not a shameless plug.
01:35It's actually just been my go-to guitar sound for all of my amp heads, all of my amplifiers.
01:43You know, it's a load box, obviously, first and foremost, but then it's also a cabinet
01:48simulator basically, so you can plug any of your combo amps or heads or anything into it,
01:54select whatever speakers, mics, room sounds, there's UAFX in it.
02:01It's pretty incredible, and it's hard to convince anyone that it's not an amp.
02:06People think it's an amp.
02:07They're just like, okay, if they don't ask, I don't tell.
02:11But I have a lot of control with it, and I gotta say, the last year, I've used it probably
02:1785% of the time in the studio as opposed to even turning on a mic on a cabinet.
02:22I have two 2x12 cabinets in an ISO box that Todd, who engineers for me, he built it, and
02:30basically, we put a 2x12 cabinet that's got V30s in it and then a 2x12 cabinet that has
02:37Silverbell AC30 speakers from the 60s.
02:41They're 1967, actually, and I've got both of those mic'd up in there, and then we can
02:47just patch our amps accordingly, or I'll go through the aux either way.
02:52And then coming out of that, usually, as far as the preamps, like the mic pre's that I
02:58use going into the front end, I'm a really big fan of the Chandler stuff, and the Chandler
03:06TG-2 is probably one of my favorite not-so-secret weapons for recording guitars.
03:12They have an ohm selector, you can run DI straight into the front and they sound amazing,
03:20or out through the back, and there's a preamp gain and a master trim, so you can really
03:26get the harmonic distortion you want, and I find those great for rock guitars.
03:32They just have a mid-range, two of them, that sound amazing.
03:34Plus my board, I have a 1972 Quad 8, which is an old console that was famously at Village
03:42Recorder in Santa Monica, about a mile from where it was first installed, is where it
03:48is now at my studio, back in the 70s, and it was the board on the back of Countdown
03:53to Ecstasy by Steely Dan, that was the one in their room that they used to record that
03:58record and countless others.
04:01So that one sounds incredible, the preamps in that sound amazing on guitars as well.
04:07So I usually do that, I don't compress the guitars hardly at all going in, as a matter
04:11of fact, I don't think I use any compressors going in to tape, so to speak.
04:18But after the fact, one thing I'll do is, I'm probably answering a lot of your questions
04:23for you, just trying to give you an easy job.
04:26Yeah, no, it's fine, I'll come back to some stuff.
04:28But after the guitars get recorded into whatever DAW, which, you know, let's say it's Pro Tools
04:33or whatever, I have a couple of things I like to put on them afterwards, plug-in wise, and
04:40I use the Neve 1073 channel strip that UA makes, and that usually is always first in
04:47the chain on the plug-in insert.
04:50And I'll do that so I can crank up the preamp gain on it even more, and even get more harmonic
04:55distortion that I want, and then trim the fader back, and then also the EQ, and then
05:00I'll use the high-pass to roll it off at 80 if I need to, to get rid of any rumble or
05:06anything like that, clear up the mud, all those catchphrases that we use.
05:12And the magic knob on that is the mid-range, like at 1-2kHz is my favorite area on a Neve
05:20for guitars, just to accentuate it even more, I'll goose that up even more, and sometimes
05:24add the 10k fixed at the top, just to brighten it up if I need to.
05:29But those to me just are the sound of rock and roll guitars, you know, the old Neve channel
05:34strips.
05:35And so I use the plug-in version, it sounds great.
05:38Are you using that in unison mode as well, or are you putting that on within...
05:42No, it's in line mode after everything, like after I've recorded the guitars in and everything,
05:47I don't use it on the channel going in, so to speak.
05:51But everything does go through what UA has, this thing called a virtual console that I
05:56use for my front end, because I'm on all UA converters, and I don't necessarily use them
06:01in unison mode, but I'll use them because I'm using real mic pre's on the front end,
06:06so I'll just use that, I'll put one on their channel strip in there sometimes as a line
06:10level to use the EQ and the preamp for that.
06:16Yeah, but I usually...
06:24Yeah, yeah, it distorts nice.
06:26Yeah, it's great, and I love harmonic distortion in analog gear, so they've emulated it pretty
06:31well with that stuff.
06:32So it's a combination of front end, real analog stuff, gaining it up and using it, and then
06:37also doing more of it after the guitars are recorded.
06:41So earlier on when you were talking about micing, obviously this is going to be presented
06:45to people who may or may not have UAD gear, but your simplest kind of go-to thing is to
06:52get a 57 or equivalent dynamic mic and place it in front of the cab, nice and simple.
06:58How would you recommend to people who want to start doing that?
07:02Where to put the microphone?
07:04Where to place it, where's your go-to starting point?
07:07My go-to starting point is usually just right off the cone, right off the center diaphragm.
07:14I'll sometimes just go right where the outline is on the diaphragm.
07:19I'll go right for the outline of it, so it's equidistant between the center of the diaphragm
07:24and the edge of the cone.
07:27That's usually a good starting point.
07:29Sometimes it's a little too harsh if you're right in the middle.
07:33Just like anything, you can EQ the guitar just by moving the mic around.
07:38A lot of people swear by that.
07:40Eric Valentine is a friend of mine who's mixed records for me, and he's an incredible
07:44psycho wizard unicorn in the studio.
07:47He's got robots with mics on them that move around and stuff.
07:51It's insane.
07:52He'll move them even six feet back from the cabinet to get more room or whatever.
07:58I'll do that too if we want to.
08:02One of the things about using the aux is you can make the mics off-center inside the software
08:11or direct on.
08:13You can high-pass, low-pass them.
08:14You can add in a room mic, stereo, ribbon, whatever.
08:18You can choose the microphones, Beyer M160s, R121 Royers, pretty much everything.
08:25Being that we have everything in a pretty small room, the ISO box for the guitar cabinets,
08:33there's not a lot of room for movement, so we set it and forget it in there usually.
08:37But I can usually EQ stuff.
08:39Once you get it placed in the right spot, there's a lot you can do with it after.
08:43You also talked about using a mixture of a ribbon and a large diaphragm.
08:50Do you set those in a loom line thing?
08:54How do you have them?
08:56I'm not real technical with it.
08:58I know that even in the aux, I use the same similar setup.
09:03I use an R121 Royer or an M160 mic emulation, and I use a U87 as the high-low mic,
09:15and then the mid-range is coming from the ribbons.
09:18Usually, we just put them side by side.
09:21Sometimes, I'll do the off-axis just to get it a mellower tone.
09:26But on the ISO box where we have the cabinets, we have the same thing.
09:32We literally have the large diaphragm condenser and the small dynamic side by side
09:41so that they're phase coherent, and those are right next to each other
09:46so the correlation is good.
09:49You just mentioned phasing, and that's a thing that a lot of people run into,
09:53and it's tricky to understand and that kind of thing.
09:56Do you have any tips for people who are wanting to try and experiment
09:59with different mic placements?
10:01You were saying there's no right or wrong.
10:03There's no right or wrong, and some people like to use out-of-phase sounds on that,
10:06but you can usually flip guitars like that later if you record the mics on different tracks
10:11and have that committed inside whatever recording medium you're working on.
10:16I don't usually mess with that that much, but it can be done easily.
10:21But for checking phase, it's pretty simple.
10:24You get the mics as close to the same distance if you want.
10:27You might be wanting to use a close mic and a far mic,
10:30but you still want to check your phase,
10:32and that's literally just flipping the phase button when you're listening.
10:35I just always try to get it to where when you flip the phase
10:38that the sound almost goes away.
10:41That's when it's as close as in-phase as you can get it when you pop it back in.
10:45But if you pop it out of phase and the sound just shrinks to almost nothing,
10:50then I'm not a technical wizard,
10:52but I just know that that's when I usually get the fattest guitar sound out of a multi-mic setup.
11:00So having access to UA stuff, I'm guessing you spoke about using the aux.
11:08Do you use a lot of emulated stuff from the UA plug-in world for guitar stuff?
11:14I do. I do all the time.
11:17I find myself more and more relying more on that than I do external hardware
11:20because this day and age everybody's moving way too fast
11:23and wanting too many changes and recalls and everything.
11:26It's like, oh, you don't have time to patch in an analog, like a tape echoplex,
11:31and get the sound back.
11:33It's just a fucking nightmare.
11:36So I love the emulations, especially the UA ones.
11:41UA and Soundtoys are my go-to for all of their—
11:44I use Soundtoys, I use Echo Boy and their echoplex,
11:48and I use their decapitator for more grit and dirt on the guitars a lot.
11:53But then the UA stuff, I use their tape echo, their space echo is great.
11:59Obviously their verbs are all amazing,
12:01so yeah, if I want to get a really big, awesome plate verb on there,
12:06I'll throw an EMT 250 on there or something like that, or a 140.
12:12But it's pretty—there's no rules.
12:16I just like to make it sound good, and I like to make it easy
12:19where if I need to pull it back up, I don't have to fight to get it back
12:22to where it was the first time.
12:24Cool, and for people that may not have done too much of this stuff before,
12:28earlier on you were talking about using high-pass filters on guitars.
12:32That's a fairly common practice.
12:34Do you mind just talking through that a little bit,
12:37and you presumably do that on every track,
12:40to carve out space for the other instruments?
12:42Yeah, I do that a lot.
12:44And quite honestly, with guitars, I have a history of doing
12:49bigger rock guitar sounds on a lot of records,
12:53and that's something that you don't have to dump a whole lot out
12:56because they're the meat of the music and the mix.
12:59So needless to say, I'd say if I'm high-passing,
13:03it's usually 80 to 100, 100 or 80 and below.
13:09I take it out immediately.
13:11The top can be anywhere from—I'll leave it in all the way up to 10k,
13:15or sometimes I'll take it all the way down to 5k
13:18to roll it off from the high end
13:20if I need it to not get in the way of sharper instruments
13:24like keyboards or vocals or whatever.
13:26But that's pretty much my window for guitars.
13:32Or if I'm going for an effect, obviously I'll shrink it way in
13:36and if you're looking for that AM radio effect or whatever,
13:40then that's just rolling everything off until the middle.
13:43But yeah, it's kind of all across the board.
13:46Usually, without fail, we'll dump everything from 100 or 80 down
13:50just because I don't want any weird low rumble
13:53that might get in the mix that you can't hear but you can feel it,
13:56and it doesn't feel right when you're listening to a track
13:59back when there's some muckyness that you can't get rid of
14:03and you don't know where it's coming from.
14:05That's cool.
14:07And when you were doing big stacks of the same part
14:13and building stuff, did you do a lot of that?
14:16And if so, do you have a...
14:18People get bummed at me a lot of times
14:20because I'm not a big fan of stacking.
14:23I did it back in the day years ago.
14:25In the 90s, it was a big thing
14:27to double and quadruple your guitar parts.
14:30I think people go through phases of how they do it
14:33over the years of being recording guitarists or producers
14:36like the four guitars doing the same thing really loud,
14:40stereo panned.
14:43Even doing the New Green Day record,
14:45I had to...
14:47Even with Billy, he was used to stacking,
14:50quadrupling even guitars sometimes.
14:53That's cool, but I would notice even in the mix,
14:55some guys, the mixers would get the tracks
14:58and they would take two of them and only use that.
15:01It's like, hey, if they're placed right, EQed right,
15:05set right in the mix,
15:07they can sound just as big, if not bigger.
15:09I don't like losing the articulation and the dynamics
15:12of a lot of guitar parts that come from one big guitar sound.
15:17And sometimes I will double it,
15:20even no matter what, I'll do a double sometimes
15:23if I want the line to be big and prominent and stand out,
15:27especially if it's a melodic line.
15:30And as far as for heavier rock stuff,
15:33I almost always double and pan it, old school.
15:37But quadrupling, it's a rarity that I do that
15:40unless the artist is convincing me to do it for them
15:43because they're used to it.
15:45But I tend to like...
15:48And I know this sounds cliche,
15:50but I just love the way a Stones record sounds
15:53where you have Ron on one side and Keith on the other
15:56playing two different parts working off each other,
15:58and that creates a big sound of its own
16:00because there's a syncopation and a push and a pull happening
16:04and you're leaving a lot more room for other sounds
16:07to poke out of the mix from other instruments if you do that.
16:11It's hard to make a drum sound be huge and present
16:14with big walls of guitars.
16:16I mean, it can be done. It's not my forte.
16:19But I know people can do it.
16:21People often say it's the differences in those parts
16:24that create the hugeness
16:26rather than having loads of identical sounds.
16:29It sounds amazing, stacking multiple of the same part.
16:33It always does.
16:35It sounds cool to me,
16:37but I just don't find it always works.
16:40When you do just a straight double,
16:43do you tend to adjust tone settings on either side
16:47or do you keep it going?
16:49It used to be it was like,
16:52OK, new amp, new guitar, everything.
16:55Different cabinet, whatever.
16:58For the doubles, maybe I've gotten lazy over the years
17:02and if I do it, I double it,
17:04and if it sounds right, then it sounds right.
17:07Sometimes you can tell if it's cancelling itself out
17:10and making itself too small,
17:12we'll throw a different guitar on or a different amp head.
17:15But usually we change different amps just for different parts.
17:18But for doubles and stuff,
17:20I usually stick to almost the same formula as the first track.
17:24If we just talk a little bit about acoustic guitars,
17:27your approach to micing up acoustic,
17:29how do you feel about doing that?
17:31Constant learning experience for me
17:34and constant frustration as well
17:37because I'll listen to other people's records
17:39and go, fuck, that's a great acoustic sound.
17:41How did you get that?
17:43And they're like, oh, it's a 57 on a $100 guitar.
17:46I'm like, OK, well...
17:48But then you have other people with stereo room mics
17:53and stereo 67s, $40,000 worth of microphones
17:58on one acoustic guitar.
18:00There's no rules again.
18:02But one thing I try to always go for,
18:05which I think a lot of people probably have already said,
18:08is great guitar, great player.
18:12Depends on picking versus finger picking.
18:16A pick can ruin everything in an acoustic guitar
18:19and actually make it really muddy
18:21with the wrong attack and even the wrong pick, I've found.
18:24Some people will just play too close over the hole
18:27or too far back.
18:29It's a drastic tonal change on an acoustic
18:33no matter how you hold it, swivel it, play it,
18:36pick it, strum it.
18:39And one thing I do is, like I said,
18:43I think a lot of people will say the same thing,
18:46you don't put the mic right over the sound hole.
18:48Cardinal sin.
18:50It's all woof and air and you've got to filter it out
18:53and there's proximity effect, everything.
18:56So a lot of times the neck and the heel,
18:58where the neck heel is on the guitar,
19:01which is usually right around the 12th fret on an acoustic,
19:04I'll usually have one about anywhere from,
19:09it can be anywhere from 3 inches to a foot and a half back,
19:13depending on the sound I'm looking for.
19:15And usually I use a,
19:18one of my favorite mics I have that I use
19:20for acoustics these days is my,
19:22it's a mic by a Russian company called Soyuz,
19:25which I love.
19:26And they make this small diaphragm condenser mic
19:29that I've yet to find a better acoustic sound with,
19:32personally, and I love it.
19:34And it's called the O11 and the O13.
19:38They also have that as well.
19:40But those are just amazing.
19:43It's sort of like a KM84
19:47or a 250, not a 251, but a,
19:50shit, sorry, doesn't matter.
19:53It's a small mic, pencil mic.
19:55And I'll use that, or sometimes I'll use my Chandler Red 47,
19:59which is like a, basically a U47 with a built-in TG Red mic pre,
20:04and that's a great acoustic mic.
20:07And I'll put that, like I said,
20:09right there where the heel meets the,
20:11where the neck heel is.
20:13And I can pretty much get a pretty good full-bodied sound
20:16dialed in right then and there with that.
20:18Rarely do I add a second mic ever.
20:20Sometimes I'll use a second mic as a room mic
20:23if I want to make it just sound like, for some reason,
20:26it's distant, you know, or in a room, I'll do that.
20:29But usually I find I can do it with one mic and be okay.
20:35And then as far as doubling it, same thing.
20:37There's no rules there.
20:39Sometimes it sounds incredible using the same guitar.
20:41Just go ahead and record it on another track,
20:43double it, and pan it.
20:46Almost always I pan them,
20:48because otherwise one guitar up the middle playing the same part
20:51just sounds like a guitar with no,
20:53without good definition and articulation.
20:58And I'll also pan them right, far left and right,
21:01and use a different guitar sometimes on the right,
21:04or a different whatever.
21:06It just depends, you know.
21:08My favorite thing to do is not to double it with the same thing,
21:11but to double it with a different guitar acoustically
21:14that's like in a different tuning, or a capoed,
21:17or even a Nashville tuning, all high string guitar,
21:20and do a counterpart to it.
21:23And even then, you don't have to pan those far right and left either.
21:26You can kind of get those closer to the middle,
21:28and they end up doing this choral, beautiful thing
21:31that you're like, wow, what is that instrument, you know?
21:34So that's fun too.
21:36Do you kind of process acoustics a little more on the way,
21:40or do you just leave them?
21:42I'm a big fan of processing everything on the way in,
21:44except for usually effects.
21:46I usually don't print if I don't have to.
21:48I will print like amplifier, reverb,
21:51or like if there's a delay effect that needs to be printed,
21:53but for the most part on acoustics and electrics,
21:56it's mostly EQ and compression I print going in.
21:59And I do EQ and compress the acoustic guitars going in.
22:04I don't go overboard with it,
22:06because I'm going to add maybe more later of EQ and compression.
22:12But yeah, usually just to like get the mud out,
22:15and if I need some more sparkle on the top,
22:17or some mid-range or whatever,
22:19we'll get surgical with it every now and again.
22:21But for the most part, you know,
22:24just having a good mic, good guitar, good hands,
22:29and a good mic pre.
22:31And then the rest is just making sure
22:34that's the right choice for that song, you know?
22:37Compression is something else that people sometimes struggle with
22:39when they're trying to get their heads around,
22:41particularly when a guitar player is choosing a studio compressor,
22:45and there's like five times as many controls,
22:47and a lot of stuff in comparison to a pedal.
22:50So do you have a go-to kind of compressor
22:52for acoustic guitars from the UA suite that you use?
22:56Yeah, actually from the UA ones, I love the LA-2.
23:01And I use the LA-2, and I'll use the brown one or the gray one.
23:04They both sound great.
23:06But I usually have that already set up in my template,
23:09you know, with either a Helios 69
23:14or a Neve 1073 channel strip for EQ and preamp gain.
23:21And then I'll use a LA-2 on the acoustics almost always.
23:25I just like the slow release of that for acoustics,
23:29and it doesn't seem to make it go too crazy pumping,
23:32and I don't necessarily want that effect on acoustic guitars a lot.
23:37But those are usually my go-to.
23:39So on the way in, you're just using that to control the peaks a little bit?
23:44Yeah, and if I need to just make it sound a little bigger,
23:48sometimes we'll give it a little bit more body and roundness,
23:51and be a little more robust is probably the right word.
23:54Would you be able to very simply explain, just quickly,
23:59kind of how people can use compression on an acoustic guitar
24:03to affect things sort of like picking attack
24:06versus they might want it to not have too much sustain
24:09or maybe even boost the sustain of their guitar?
24:13I mean, going in, I suppose if you're treating it while you're doing the song,
24:17that's probably the best way to do that
24:19and see how the player is, if it's not me playing it,
24:22if it's somebody else, see how they're responding to how it's sounding
24:25and how they're playing when they're doing it.
24:27I try to look for that, too,
24:29especially if they're like a ham-handed heavy pick, heavy strummer,
24:33or if they're really delicate.
24:35That's going to change the landscape going in
24:37as far as what the blueprint is going in.
24:42Do you have a kind of favorite guitar tone that you've recorded,
24:46one that you've created,
24:47like if there's one that stands out as being kind of like a proudest tone?
24:52Wow.
24:58I don't know.
25:00Yeah.
25:02I mean, I'm trying to think.
25:06I mean, I love trying to think of what I would think.
25:13There's a record I did for a band years ago
25:15that actually kind of flies under the radar now,
25:19but it was one of the first records I ever got to do on a major label
25:25and somehow convinced them to let me produce it.
25:28It was for a hard rock band called Injected,
25:31and they were out of Atlanta, which is where I'm from.
25:33And so that record still to this day,
25:36when I put it on, the guitar sounds for hard rock are monstrous.
25:41And I would get calls from people asking about what I did
25:45to do the guitars on that record.
25:47Same thing.
25:48I mean, I remember Reinhold Bogner was like freaking out
25:51over the guitar sounds I used, and I was like,
25:53that's your amp I'm using, for one.
25:55So I used a Bogner on that record, and he was tripping on that
25:59because they loved that record and they loved the guitar sounds.
26:03And again, the two guys that were in that band were great players,
26:08great hands.
26:10And same thing, great guitar into a great amp.
26:15That was, I believe, the same setup.
26:17It was a Royer 121 with a Rode NT2,
26:21maybe going through a Neve channel strip or a TG.
26:26But yeah, same thing.
26:28And still to this day, I love listening to the guitars on that record.
26:32They're so giant.
26:34It's really fun.
26:35Yeah.
26:37Do you have any kind of unorthodox recording techniques
26:40that you use on guitars or guitar amps or anything?
26:45I'm so boring.
26:46I wish I could say like, oh, yeah, we swing mics from the rafters
26:49and record it.
26:51I'm like, fuck all that.
26:52I don't do any of that shit.
26:53But I love interesting sounds,
26:56and I think I find myself more of a tweaker afterwards.
26:59After getting a good performance, which to me is the most important thing,
27:03I can't spend two hours messing with sounds
27:09when the players are ready to be creative
27:11and people are inspired to do the song.
27:14It's gluttonous and it's counterproductive
27:23because it just makes everybody, by the end of it,
27:26they're just like, okay, I don't really care about doing the song now.
27:29I don't care about playing music.
27:31I'm burned out because we spent seven hours on a kick drum sound.
27:34Or I tend to have everything already set up in my studio
27:37where it's already mic'd up and we change out things accordingly
27:40so we can change an amp out, we can change a cabinet out.
27:43But for the most part, if you come in, plug in, start from there.
27:47If they're like, no, that's not it, then we build from there.
27:50But I find it works quicker that way.
27:52And then afterwards I like to get in the room, as my friend says,
27:56get in the pain cave and just sit there and just dissect the song
28:01and go crazy and start adding, if I want to add cool shit
28:04or crazy effects or panning or stuff and automate things like that.
28:07I do a lot of that after the song is recorded,
28:10and that's where you can get some of the excitement in the production.
28:14But for the most part, I'm pretty bare bones and old-fashioned
28:16when it comes to the front end of recording.
28:19That's cool.
28:20For people who are recording at home and maybe in less than ideal
28:24acoustic environments, do you have any sort of quick tips
28:28on how they can control that within their room?
28:32Or would you suggest leaning towards something like Deox or OneLabel?
28:35I would absolutely say modeling.
28:37Yeah, the aux, for sure, hands down.
28:39If you have an amp that you love and if you're really into your amplifiers
28:42and that means a lot to you, aux, hands down.
28:46As far as modelers, they're so good now.
28:50I've used a Line 6 Helix on records left and right,
28:55and nobody has ever said, is that not a real amp?
28:59Not once. No one's ever been like, they've just been like,
29:01dude, that sounds cool, or that part's great, or whatever.
29:04There's no rules.
29:06I found it's a treasure trove for players this day and age.
29:09Coming up, it wasn't so much.
29:11It was hard when all we had was Rockman.
29:15That was the only way we could avoid loud guitar amps mic'd up
29:19was plugging in a practice headphone amp
29:22that sounded like Instant Danger Zone.
29:25It was awesome, but now it's just like you can get
29:30almost any guitar sound and believable.
29:33It's wonderful. I love that part of technology.
29:36I'm still romantic at heart and I still love plugging my amps in,
29:39but I've also married that with modern technology,
29:43things like the aux.
29:46I would say that's a hands down for someone in their bedroom
29:50wanting to get great sounds.
29:52Helix, Kemper, aux, with your own amp.
29:55Yeah, go for it.
29:57No one's ever going to turn their nose up at those guitar sounds
30:00that those things make.
30:02How much importance would you put into the actual instrument and the amp?
30:07I think that's often overlooked by players.
30:09It's like my intonation's out or whatever.
30:12It's what people record.
30:14I think it just depends on the song.
30:16It depends on the band or the artist.
30:18It depends on the approach to whatever you're doing.
30:21Sometimes picking up the first guitar in the room
30:23and it's a little out of tune and plays like shit and whatever,
30:26but it sounds really cool and all of a sudden this person plays it
30:29and the way they play it actually works in the track.
30:33I'm doing my hips like Keith Richards because that's who I'm thinking of.
30:37It's like I don't envision that guy tuning much or intonating,
30:42but he's got a guy doing it for him,
30:44but still those records sounded great when the guitars were a little out
30:49and they were imperfect and they might have been laying on their back
30:53on a couch playing it or something
30:55where it's definitely going to pull out of tune a little bit.
30:58But I don't think that stuff matters as much to me.
31:01It only matters when it gets to the point where it's making it impossible
31:05to sound good when making a recording.
31:08It's like, okay, I can't do this guitar anymore.
31:11This thing is like everything else that I'm playing along to
31:14sounds out of tune because of this guitar.
31:16It's the guilty culprit.
31:18Then we'll treat it. We'll fix it.
31:20We'll send it away.
31:22Or Todd will go in the other room and work his magic on it.
31:26But I don't have time for it and I don't care for it.
31:29I just want to pick up a guitar and record it.
31:32I'll tune it real quick, sometimes just by ear,
31:35and just start hitting record.
31:37If it sounds wrong, okay, tune it for real.
31:40But there's no rules.
31:42I just don't think that stuff, like I said,
31:44that stuff just gets in the way of the time,
31:47the valuable time window you have of recording someone or yourself
31:52where there's artistic juices flowing.
31:57Performance is key.
31:59Yeah, totally.
32:01And it takes care of itself.