5 Amp Designer Tips For Capturing That Guitar Tone in Your Head

hey friend chris van der viver here from wylogicprorules.com the website that helps you get the most you can out of apple's logic pro 10. today i want to share with you five tips to help you get the most you can out of logic's amp designer amp designer is an emulator that allows us to play our guitar through different guitar setups different amp heads different cabinets different microphones and even placement of microphones and i know for a fact that many of us rely on amp designer for our tones and our guitar sounds now the conversation revolving around guitar tones and emulators is a very passionate one and many folks have very strong opinions about what's good and what is not so good i'm not here to argue any of that these tips are applicable regardless of the tool that you like to use so first things first let's take a quick listen to a riff that i have here i have three guitar tracks two rhythm guitar tracks left and right and also an octave track down the center take a quick listen to this riff [Applause] [Music] cool this is the world that i grew up in punk rock hardcore very aggressive stuff maybe not your cup of tea totally fine number one on our list and how to get the most out of amp designer is first let's take a quick look at the library and the different presets that already come with logic when it comes to guitar tones i'm going to duplicate this track and let's take a quick look i have the broken upright track that i've adjusted to my taste but if we just take a quick look at the channel strip here and what plugins commonly appear on these channel strips just poking around i think you'll start to notice some trends now i like to poke through the library first to find a tone that matches what i'm after and then finesse from there it's a great starting point but after that it boils down to getting the tone the best you can with amp designer in terms of adjusting the eq the microphone the placement the cab etc but if you notice nine times out of ten the channel strips come with both pedal board and channel eq and though these pedals in this case are not even turned on they're there as good suggestions for the longest time i would try to get a really aggressive tone with a half stack emulation and i would never get the tone that i was after and then when i started to implement the different drive plug-ins and that's when i realized i can't just pick an amp and that's that i gotta finesse the tone more additionally the channel eq is very often employed and this is what takes it to the next level the channel eq helps us craft the tone even further so it sits better in the mix and though i'd like to say just pick you know guitar head guitar cab you're good to go really to get that extra inch that extra mile we need to finesse the tone a little more with pedalboard and eq so i want to demonstrate that right now i'm going to take a listen to this guitar track right here and we'll send it down the center so we can hear it i'm going to solo and you can notice the pedal board has the high drive treble boost and channel eq cool so let's take a listen i'm going to bypass and then reintroduce the high drive so we can hear the difference this makes to the amp tone check it out [Music] [Applause] [Music] do you hear that we can see that the high drive is being just shoved to the top that's fine but what happens is is that we're getting a slightly more aggressive tone more forward and even some low end girth being introduced as well it's really helping this tone shape a little further if you look at the amp you can see that the gain is already cranked to the top you'd think we have all the game we need and yet it pushes it just that little bit more so i recommend first starting out just adding a touch of drive whether it's the vintage drive the high drive take a look at some of these plug-ins just think about it not so much distortion just like a touch of amp drive but you can also introduce different tones with the fuzz pedals or with compression or eq this all helps in just further fine-tuning the tone and then the channel eq you can see that i'm rolling out a lot of the low end that i don't need i'm also scooping some of the lower mids because it felt muddy to me boosting the highs and even cutting some of the upper mids so let's hear this and bypassed i'll bring the drums and bass and i'm going to crank this guitar so we can really hear what's going on here so bring it up to there take a listen [Applause] [Music] such a difference the point is is that it's a balancing act it's not just a balancing act with the amp and with the cabinet and the microphone it's also more times than not introducing some pedals and some eq to further finesse now number two is to adjust the guitar level going into amp designer this comes from old interfaces that i've owned through the years specifically my motu apri which was a firewire interface all the inputs had high z inputs but they're a little different from some of the interfaces i've tried out lately all this to say not all high z inputs result in the same gain structure for guitar signals to really cement this let's take a look at these two guitar signals over here so this first one was from my presonus quantum and you just press the button you say hey this is hi-z and then you record guitar and that's the signal i got and this is my apogee ensemble and this is the front-facing jfet input and this is the level that that produces without boosting the signal at all so let's solo and hear the loudest moment here on the presonus quantum you can see negative 10.6 okay let's now check out this apogee jfet and i think it even gets louder down here negative 1.1 that's a big difference that's all to say that different levels can result in different tones with the amp so i'm saying is adjust the level of your guitar if you have a quieter signal so it's peaking around negative three to negative one now different levels can produce different tones which could be perfect for your song but i wanna demonstrate this right now with this guitar track so we'll send this down the center and i'm gonna employ a game plug-in right before the amp drive it down by like six decibels so we're gonna be hitting negative 12. you know let's bring it to negative five so we're kind of splitting the difference let's take a listen and i'll bypass this and reintroduce it [Applause] [Music] so [Music] do you hear how just the signal itself just being brought to a healthier level is driving the amp and the pedalboard a bit more it sounds more firm more aggressive more assertive now any guitar player is used to playing with the volume on their guitar to produce different tones all i'm really saying is that maybe your audio interface is playing a little safe with the hi-z input i can't speak for all interfaces just saying number three on our list is to double track your guitars very often i receive projects where the guitar player is recorded and then they copy and paste the same exact guitar performance and then say hey i got two guitars it doesn't quite work out that way so i just want to demonstrate that right now let me bring this back now let's take a listen to this guitar and i'll explain this in just a moment but it's the same exact performance and let's harpen it left and right so let's set this to the center hard pan left and right and let's take a listen right now to how this sounds [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the result is that it's summing to mono and that's because it's the exact same guitar performance you're not going to get two separate performances out of it now i've talked about ways to double track and i highly recommend record a second pass if you have a guitar that has many takes that you've recorded then just duplicate the track copy down that take folder and cobble together a new guitar pass from those existing takes so you know just pick a part maybe this and this and you know make a second guitar take don't just duplicate the same exact guitar performance and call it a day and i want to demonstrate this even a step further so let's copy and paste these guys down here let's copy and paste this guy and then bring this down so this is the exact same performance just in this other guitar stack and let's hear the difference between this and this in terms of stereo width okay check it out [Music] now we're getting some stereo with we're getting some separation because there's different tones going on so we've got some shifting around but some of the tone is collapsing into mono let's now take a listen down here where we have a completely separate performance on the right hand guitar take a listen it's completely separate now check it out [Music] that's the difference so we're getting a little bit of width but we're not getting all the way with i highly recommend record multiple guitars if you're going for that double track sound number four on our list is to try slightly different amp sounds and setups for each guitar track in your song now it's fine to duplicate a guitar stack and you know just record each part just to get it down but take it the extra step record more than one take if you're gonna double any sort of guitars and then play with the tones so i have the broken up brit here and i have my amp stack and i have most of everything dimed with a 57 and if we take a look down here we have an amp track here same amp but different tone different microphone and then i've even adjusted the channel eq for each to be slightly different from one another to fit better in the mix so mostly the same but not all the same and for the octave track i started out with the brown tone metal stack and then fine-tuned so totally different amp so we got different tones going on and to demonstrate the difference i actually have this entire performance but with the exact same amp sounds pedal board and channeling q for all the guitars so we can see pedal board is identical amp is identical so you can see everything's the same for the guitars and i also threw in a gain plug-in minus six so we're kind of emulating that slightly quieter guitar tone and i even for this right hand guitar these two guitars are identical in performance the left and right rhythm guitar tracks exactly the same the only difference is sample delay delaying by 30 milliseconds to create that haas effect you know so we're aiming for width but let's take a listen to the difference between this performance and all this identical patches identical performances for the rhythm guitars take a listen to the difference [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] and i also want to point out now about that haas effect let's take the game plug in here set it to mono and let's mute the bass the drums the octave the bass drums an octave track here and let's now compare how this sounds check it out [Music] i don't know if you can hear it but my guitar is in the first performance although they're not the tightest they're way tighter than the second performance the second performance with the sample delay pushing things back for that haas effect when collapsed to mono has this like weird flaming effect because it's the same performance just push back in time so nothing's tight about it that's why i recommend double tracking you get the width that you need but a tightness as well less in our list is to try multi-mic guitar setups this stack here is the same exact performance but in this case it's okay because what i went for was a multi-mic setup if you go to recording studio and you bring your amp most likely the studio is going to employ a couple different microphones placed in front of the amp and the idea is that you're catching a more full tone maybe one microphone is going after more aggression another one's looking for more fullness you're achieving different tonalities and colors to create a more holistic guitar sound so in this case i have my guitar track and i pick my amp and the microphone and the cabinet and then on this guitar track the same exact performance but with a different microphone pretty much in the same spot but the idea here is the same guitarist playing the same performance through the same amp but with multiple microphones in front of the amp to capture different colors so check it out if we set this to the center let's now take a listen to this guitar by itself and then we'll solo each microphone [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] both mics by themselves are kind of boring but together we get the fullness of microphone one and the aggression and assertiveness of microphone 2. [Applause] let's hear that next to this guitar track and let's actually remove that mono here we go [Music] our left guitar actually kind of sounds a little wimpy compared to the ray hand guitar because we have multiple mics on the right hand one so that's something to keep in mind so these five tips number one it's a balancing act start with the logic presets for clues on how to get the tone that you're after and then adjust not just the amp but pedal board and eq after the amp to further finesse the guitar tone that you're after number two is to adjust the guitar level going into amp designer and it all depends i say shoot from negative three to negative one db but you know just play with it maybe you want to back it off a bit to get a less aggressive and in your face tone maybe you want to push into the amp to get more aggression up to you number three is to double track your guitars for width and power i don't really recommend just copying and pasting and then using the haas effect but that's up to you number four is to try slightly different amp sounds and setups to create more width more space more distinct guitar tones and number five is to try multi mic guitar setups in this case i have a track stack and i have two guitar tracks one has one microphone in one spot the other has a different microphone in a different spot it's the same performance being summed to a track stack so i can further process it with eq if i feel it necessary so i hope this was helpful for you if it was as always i highly suggest subscribing to the youtube channel why logic pro rules or subscribing on the website itself ylogicprorules.com every week i'm posting new videos new emails and posts to help you get the most you can out of apple's logic pro 10. thanks so much

Channel: Why Logic Pro Rules

Views: 16,230

Rating: 4.9391303 out of 5

Keywords: logic pro x, logic pro, audio, audio production, apple, mixing, audio mixing, recording, audio recording, 5 Amp Designer Tips For Capturing That Guitar Tone in Your Head, amp designer, logic pro amp designer, logic amp designer, pedalboard, logic pedalboard, logic pro pedalboard, amp sims, amp emulators, why logic pro rules

Id: 9ZpBBXrV0Ok

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020