My first home recording set up was an Akai ¼ inch 2 track and a Harmon Kardon cassette deck, no EQ, the only effects I had were a few effects pedals. I would program one of my primitive drum machines or use a factory preset non-programmable rhythm machine while I was recording that I would usually add my bass or rhythm guitar. And after a suitable take I would ping pong the tracks back and forth from the 2 track to the cassette, adding effects on the fly.

My next home recording rig was a Teac 3340 4 track with a Biamp 6 channel board with internal spring reverb and a stereo 10 band graphic equalizer. Boy that was the real deal.

I did learn a lot about recording guitars and basses from my home recoding experience and also from listening to my favorite records too. So here is my top ten tips on recording guitars and basses.

BTW please send me some of your first home recording Frankenstein laboratory creations, I would love to hear them.

#1: Use chord fragments instead of whole chords

Like a good B-3 player who uses two or three fingers, your chords and their voicings should be well thought out and economical. Try not to use roots or fifths unless the fifth is an altered fifth like a flat 5 or augmented 5th. Analyze the melody notes and try not to crowd them with notes that proximate in the same octave i.e. if your melody note is a root middle C and you want to use the 9th in the chord use one either an octave higher or lower..

The whole idea here is to give room for the other instruments or just to open up the music and let the notes you leave out be implied as opposed to being heard, it’s an interesting concept check it out!

#2: Utilize ghost tracks when recording bass guitar

This is a very useful technique when you want to change the texture of your bass track, without changing the integrity of the original. First you will need to clone the track, once you have done that clone it a second time. Now you should have three tracks, eq the first clone track very bassy and cut all the highs. Now do the opposite to the second clone track, eq it high and cut the lows. Now instead of changing the original track you can just add the clones to your taste.

A few pointers on this technique, first I think you should electronically clone the tracks and not shadow them by recording another bass track (that is an entire different idea). Now when eq-ing your clones try to do it while playing it alongside your original track, that will give you a better picture of where to go with the eq.

#3: Have a guitar strung up to Nashville tuning.

Nashville tuning for those not familiar with it is a six string guitar tuned with standard first three strings and the next three tuned up an octave. It’s like a twelve string without the low strings, pretty cool idea. They call it Nashville tuning because that’s where it started in the studios in Nashville. You can’t play lead with it, or accompany with it alone, but where it comes into play is adding it to a track where you want to add a highlight to your track. A twelve string will sound a bit muddy in comparison. Try some alternative voicings, and work it in and out of the mix.

Prepare yourself to adjust the truss rod as this tuning puts almost no tension on the neck.

#4: Use stereo delays to fatten up rhythm guitar parts.

This is a method I have used for years, I especially like using the stereo delays on funky or single note rhythm parts. I will usually use a delay of 75ms to 150ms, panned hard left or right. The dry guitar panned one way the wet guitar panned the other way. This effect also works well on ½ note and ¼ note parts, like reggae-type feels.

You can also open up the delays for melody parts. What I like to do is set my time delays immediately when I record. I do this by counting the beats per minute and setting the delays accordingly. So if yourBPM’s are 105 I would set my delays at 210ms, 420ms and 840ms and use and combine them to taste.

One suggestion is to get a feel for it when you bring up your tracks, but I really start to get creative when it comes to the mix. Make it sound big, and don’t be afraid to get buck wild!

#5: Bass players use those flatwounds dammit!!!

Yes Mr. Bassman start recording with flatwounds and hear the magic. Don’t forget that drums record better when they are muffled (ask Ringo) and don’t decay, well boys sorry to tell you that unless you are playing Stanley Clarke style fusion your bass should not be sustaining all over the place. All it does is make the track feel real loose. Studio bass legend Joe Osborne recorded hundreds of sessions in the 60’s with the same set of “dead” strings for over four years! And when he did change them, he had to fish the dead ones out of the trash.

All your favorite James Jameson / Jerry Jemmot records of the 60’s were also recorded with flatwounds. Just try it!

#6: Always record a direct sound on a separate track

Whether you are recording through a POD or miking up your favorite amp, having the track recorded along side direct will always be a plus. You may never use it or just bleed it in, but you will feel better just knowing its there. The other plus is you can always “reamp” it by feeding the dry track through any device or by using a device such as a Reamp which allows you to run a recorded track back through an amp after the fact.

That’s the first part of this column – and remember, that you do not need a 24 track studio to create great music, you need go concise ideas and tons of overdubs and other filler. Reminder, Sgt Pepper recorded on a four track, Blizzard of Oz, 8 track, Uncle Meat a 3 track, all the early Motown hits two 2 tracks in sync, Dark Side of the Moon, 8 track – ..see a pattern developing?…..Part 2 next month.

Peace,

Joey Leone

P.S. Mike Robinson and I have been working on some custom designs – the first is the Joey Leone Signature Model – for the past 18 months. We are getting close to the release date and will have some information available in the next newsletter. In the meantime, drop me an EMAIL and I can fill you in on some preliminary information. Here are some sneak peaks at the prototype.

Joey Leone Signature Guitar Prototype from Eastwood Guitars

Joey Leone Signature Guitar Prototype from Eastwood Guitars

A Baker’s Dozen Tips: Recording Guitars & Basses (Part 1) from MyRareGuitars.com

Frank Zappa

One of the greatest musicians of the 20th century was also a damn good guitar player, he stands alone as a composer, instrumentalist and satirist beyond compare. His name was Frank Zappa. Frank is still IMHO the most underrated musician in the rock and roll era.

Frank was a master at the use of wahwah (check out his early wah solo on Orange County Lumber Truck from the album Weasels Ripped My Flesh), one of his techniques was using the wah as an EQ boost. His feel for the wah was so good he could feel the notch in the pedals throw that would give him (for most part) that growling round sound that Frank was known for during the 70’s. Try it yourself plug in your SG (or any humbucking solidbody guitar) and get your favorite distortion sound. Now go to the neck pickup crank it up but do not roll off the treble as you would if you were trying to cop the Clapton ‘Woman tone’, leave it up full and roll off the highs using the wah. This will give the wah a full spectrum signal for it to work with.

Another Zappa secret was his uncanny ability to combine exotic scales with the pentatonic blues scale. If you watch any videos of Frank playing you will notice he is not in the “normal guitar boxes”. Viva la Frank!!!

Speaking of Frank Zappa, it is well documented that growing up two of his favorite guitarists were Guitar Slim and Johnny Guitar Watson. Frank in a Guitar Player magazine interview said that his favorite guitar solo of all time was Guitar Slims Story of my life. This solo has a tone and approach that is very Zappaesque.

Guitar Slim

One of the secrets of Guitar Slims sound was the fact that he preferred to plug his guitar into a PA amp as opposed to a guitar amp. This was probably a Bogen or Premier. What Slim liked about these amps I am sure was the loudness (I have seen p.a. amps from the early 40’s using 2 6L6’s way before Fender used these tubes for his amps) their high end, and most important their reaction to the signal of his guitar (Slim was reported to be using a Strat and a 52 Les Paul) which gave out more signal than the microphones of that era. End result? Distortion mmmm yummy yummy!!!

Jimmy Page with his Fender Telecaster

How come I don’t sound like Jimmy Page when I play the intro to Heartbreaker when I use my Les Paul? Is it because I don’t own a 59 Burst? What can I do to make my Les Paul sound like Jimmy’s? Well first of all you would have to transform it into a Telecaster. That’s right a Telecaster. Now let me explain how this happened.

A young Jimmy Page was the protégé of British studio legend Big Jim Sullivan. Jim was a member of an elite group of cats who like their American counterparts the “Wrecking Crew” played on most of the hit records of the 60’s recorded in England. The fact is that 95% of the records we grew up listening to in the 60’s were made by the same two dozen or so musicians. The truth is no producer (the music industries version of a movies director) would put his reputation on the line using some prettyboys who were signed because of the haircuts or their trousers. (Rutles 101). This fact by itself is what separates the Beatles, the Stones from everyone else, they were the first truly self contained band.

Now back to Sully, Page and the Tele. Sullivan could be seen weekly in the UK and US as a featured player on the Tom Jones Show. Sullivan was known for his swarthy good looks and his White Telecaster. Being a studio player Jim knew the merits of the Tele, how it cut through the mix and was a safe bet at sessions as far as its versatility. (A side note; there was a guitarist across the pond making ground breaking records with his Telecaster, his name was Joe Messina one of the house guitarists of Motown’s Funk brothers).

When Jimmy took his formidable talent and studio experience to the studio to produce the first Led Zeppelin record Jimmy had an early 60’s rosewood board white Tele in tow just like Big Jims.

Jimmy had already toured with the Yardbirds using the Tele as well as the first go round with Zeppelin in the UK (check out Zep on the DVD Supershow). But Page felt that the Tele was not fat enough sounding for a power trio setup, Jimmy soon switched to the Les Paul for good.

Jimi Hendrix in Studio

Jimi’s tone using the Fuzz boxes of the 60’s. We all know how thin sounding the fuzz boxes of the 60’s were. Whether it’s a Big Muff, an Octavia,or a Tonebender, they were all pretty thin sounding. Jimi Hendrix used all of these at one time or another, yet his tone was mostly pretty fat and round sounding (unless he was looking for a special effect) This leads us to Jimi’s secret tone maneuver.

It’s a really simple one. We all know now that Jimi used Marshall’s most of his career and we also know that Jimi made use of the channel jumper cable (as seen in many of Jimi’s live video’s) Jimi’s trick was to boost the bass sounding channel to even out the thin sound of the fuzz box. This gave Jimi the desired fat tone he was accustomed to when he came up using Fenders and Ampegs. The other benefit was that when Jimi would simply turn down his volume for his rhythm sound it was still quite big sounding. Rarely in the videos I have seen (many) did Jimi ever step on a fuzztone for a lead, when you have seen him go to a pedal for a lead it was to a wah for the tone boost.

Surf guys outboard reverb unit trick. Boy did the surf records of the early to mid 60’s blow my mind. Imagine guitar records with no singing, simple melodies that almost everyone could cop, and tons of self important guitar slinger attitude. I ran into a surf guitar legend years ago and I asked him how he ran his reverb, because I could see that he had something funky going on there as I saw that his guitar was plugged directly into the amp.

He smiled and told me that he and some of the other cats of that era were using a primitive effects loop so to speak. Here’s how they did it.

He ran the guitar into input one of his Showman and then ran a cable from input two to the input of his Fender reverb unit and ran the output of the reverb to the input of channel two (or normal channel). This way he could not only tailor the sound of the unit with the onboard controls he could also utilize the second channels volume and tone controls.

One benefit he did not realize too, was that the guitar running direct into the first channel did not have its dry input signal colored by the reverb unit! This setup is also called the poor mans effects loop.

Adrian Belew - The Twang Bar King

What the hell is all that duct tape doing on the stage? Did you ever notice that when you have a single coil guitar plugged in that the amount of noise changes as you turn or move around? Yeah me too! Did you also ever notice that there were certain spots on the stage that you could get really good feedback if you turned a certain way? Yeah me too!

Over the years I have heard stories about how Hendrix would spend over an hour at his sound check finding those hot spots on the stage. Legend has it that Twang Bar King Adrian Belew took it to a new level by incorporating this feedback and sustain into his tunes as part of the melody and arrangement. This made it necessary to make these markings on the stage part of his setup. No room for spontaneity for Mr. Belew, he needed what he needed when he needed it.

So here’s the trick after the band sound checks bring out the tape and find your hot spots, even if you don’t utilize feedback you will still benefit from knowing where on the stage your guitar will be most responsive.

Joey Leone with his amps

That’s it for now my friends so, “keep those cards and letters coming in.”

Secrets of the Great Guitar Players from MyRareGuitars.com