Advice from a Guitarist: Cutting through in a heavy/rock band.

There's been a lot of talk about this topic, and I figured I'd start a thread about ways to really tighten up the sound of a heavy band, whether you play rock or metal or what have you.

I've been playing guitar for nearly a decade, so I'm mainly a guitar player, but I've started to gig with another band as a bass player and I'm getting into bass playing in a major way. One thing I noticed about this band was that we have a really seperated sound, but an extremely full one that doesn't leave any spectrum uncovered. I attribute a lot of this to the fact that I've played guitar in a band since I started playing, as well as the fact that I play with musicians who are willing to compromise so we all can be heard (we don't exactly compromise musically though, much to my dismay).

First of all, my rig is NOT a high powered rig at all. 80W SWR Working Man's 10 and a Schecter Rob DeLeo bass. I don't think this could be concidered to be a loud rig by any standard- but this amp definitely suits my needs (for now- which is small gigs and loud practices) and covers all of the frequencies a good bass should.

The first thing you need to concider is frequencies. This is way more important than volume, in my humble opinion. Even if you're playing in a HEAVY band, there are a few things that you need to know that the pro's who you all like know, the most important being: guitars are a midrange instrument.

Your rhythm guitarist will sound awesome in the mix if he puts this mids on his amp slightly more than half way- the treble around that if not slightly higher, and the bass about a quarter of the way up. His gain should stay at 6 or 7- JUST where it starts to saturate (and he should turn his guitar's volume down a tad to stay crisp). On a Mesa Boogie, the master volume shouldn't be anywhere higher than 2-2.5.
The guy from Creed, Godsmack, etc. do NOT turn higher than 4 or 5 even live- though they always say "Dual and Tripple Rectos CRANKED!" when asked how they get their tone. If they agree to turn up the mids and turn the gain and master to the saturation point, you'll want to increase your bass and high frequencies, and slightly scoop the bass.

That said- most guitarists are dumbasses when compared to bass players- and I can say that because I *am* a guitar player who was an idiot for the first 3-4 years of playing. If you're playing in a band and you're teenagers, and your guitarist has a big marshall or mesa, he may INSIST that to get "his" tone, he needs to dime everything except the mids. He may not compromise. I think he'll turn exceptionally loud too in order to compromise for the lack of his fundamental frequencies. If that is the case, it's up to the BASS PLAYER to compensate. Now you guys are going to hate this but you're going to need to really ease off on the BASS frequencies. While we all want to "feel" the low end of a bass guitar, and in my opinion, that is the most 'pleasing' low end, there is just going to be TOO MUCH. In other words, you are going to have to eq your instrument the same way I recommended the guitarist do in the first section.

 

The next thing that needs to be adressed is the drums. One band that I feel is very good (or at least used to be very good) at balancing frequencies in heavy material is Dream Theater.

Mike Portnoy has had some great drum sounds over the years. When he recorded Awake (my favorite sounding album of theirs), he took the front heads off of the bass drum, used a large size with mapex maple shells, and a very low tuned remo head. This is similar to how Danny Carey from tool records (no front head). The sound is EXTREMELY punchy with not a lot of extreme low end, but the APPEARANCE of extreme low end.

This is the basic concept that one must keep in mind when mixing a band- it is best if each instrument has the APPEARANCE of hugeness, but really only covers what they were designed to cover (ie. guitars using more mids than bass, but the listener will 'hear' a huge thick guitar sound if the band is mixed well). Similarly, a bass drum should more or less provide the 'attack' on the bass players notes. There should be sort of a punchy 'slap' sound- I often find that using the felt head of a batter is better than plastic, or the Lars Ulrich "duct tape a quarter on the bass drum" method. A hard felt beater will provide more warmth to the slap, which is what is needed to give the bass drum sound life.

The snare should be tuned relatively high. In the 80s, everyone went nuts over those HUGE marching snare sounds that were just rediculous. While someone may like a tubby, low tuned snare, it's just going to mess things up unless your band is eq'd around the drums (ELP, etc.) I find that it enters a weird midrange area that seems to muck things up with the other band members- it was a real problem on our early recording.

Can't do much with cymbals besides put some duct tape on the underside to tame a very washy ride.

Anyway, though I'm sure it's all been said before, I hope this helps, all.

 

When I was younger, 16 or so or whenever I was playing with my high school band, I was a real jerk off about turning down, etc. but at least I never tried to really scoop my mids (besides that first year playing a squier into a metalzone into a PA into a 2x10 floor monitor lol).

I was surprised recently as I heard a pretty technically good guitarist (read: yngwie wanna be who fell way short but made a good try) playing an SG gothic into a tripple recto with EVERYTHING dimed. I suggested a few things to him, and he sounded way better. His friend commented that he sounded better, his girlfriend commented that he sounded better, I commented that he sounded better, but sure enough, as soon as I left, he dimed it again. What an awful awful sound.

Probably the best tip any guitarist could ever get is to use the damn volume knob on the guitar. One of the surprisingly best tones I ever got was guitar -> Line6 original flextone on the british high gain w/ delay on, and I just fiddled with the volume knob. Anywhere from David Gilmore cleans and leads to metallica rhythm.