5 Guitar Tones Every Pro Uses

one two three 4 and then I turn on that dotted a [Music] delay so do that without it that's all you're doing so today we're going to do something a little bit different this is my friend philli Conrad Phil is a bass player if you've been following my channel for any period of time you know Phil you know Phil's Channel if you don't check his channel Linked In the description box down below you just got your first electric guitar yeah right yeah little Dan Electro okay so we were sitting around earlier today you had a few questions on where to start basically yeah like specifically about tone because there's so many options and it's hard to know what I actually need it's like if you have a tool box a tool kit you have like a hammer and a tape measure and a screw driver and a couple things yes that you were going to use all the time but if you just walk into the hardware store and there's a thousand tools you don't know which ones you actually need which ones are good and what they all do that's kind of how I feel with guitar right now so you're in the phase of you need to build your toolbox you a hammer a speed square a tape measure you know just a few Staples and then from there once you have a firm grasp of that you know the difference between like a framing hammer and a ball pin hammer for example and you know when to use which but you need to start with the [Music] fundamental so I think we start with the clean tone okay clean tones are a really good place to start from and jump off into a lot of different sounds there's a fundamental thing with good clean sounds though which is that they're not actually that clean you might think for a clean sound like oh just set the amp up clean and plug straight in and this is basically what you [Music] get it's fine but it's not really anything to write home about it's a little boring sterile M anemic all I'm going to do is turn the amp up and I'm still going to have a clean sound but you're going to have more character and more [Music] richness it's almost like it sounds more like a Telecaster into a fender style amp now because I'm I'm just getting more information the tubes are starting to saturate a little bit starting to get a little bit of distortion and a little bit of compression because we're making those tubes reach their limit of amplification and this will work with a tube amp or with a modeler or with a modeling pedal or Plugin the same concept still applies you're pushing that amplifier starting to get to its limit and there you're getting basically the full spectrum of the sound if I really dig in here the amp's not really distorting if I push it up harder if I go up here now we're getting into actual breakup the amp is starting to to distort we're not there we're just we're just on the clean side of that [Music] line that's what I would consider a good clean sound a little dirt a little just a just not I wouldn't even say dirt just a little bit of warmth some saturation it's like the fuzz on a peach yeah just giving you that harmonic information that isn't there with a really sterile clean sound it's just giving you [Music] more the next tool that you should have in your toolbox is the edge of breakup sound this is where I live edge of breakup means if I play lightly the amp is going to be in that clean territory that we just talked about so clean with just a little bit of saturation and compression but as I play harder the amp is going to start to bre break up and give me some Distortion so I'm going to start by just kind of softly [Music] strumming so it's clean there's a little bit of saturation but then if I [Applause] go it's not just louder there's actually more Distortion coming from the amplifier so you have Dynamics in your hands not just with volume but intensity exactly yeah and I'm also getting more compression too the harder I dig in it's giving me a little bit more sustain on my [Music] Note so is there a easy way to find that sweet spot on the amp yeah I just turn the volume up until it's until it's a little too much and then I back it off 10 % so for this example like just going to back it off a little bit and now I've got my now I've got three sounds available with my guitar and one pedal okay so let's say I have a Boost pedal on my board just a simple boost not a fancy overdrive not a fuzz just a boost sound one is my light clean Sound by picking lightly sound two is my breakup sound sound three is my Boost which is going to give me my saturation and okay so it's like you need to set your amp first to find that sweet spot yep and then you integrate this for just a little extra beef when you eat [Applause] it okay so next is a good lead sound so I think this is where a lot of guitar players want to start electric guitar players they want to start with like the Searing lead solo sound and start transcribing their favorite solos and there's a couple of ways to go about getting that the first way we're going to do it is with our clean sound and with a pedal most of the Distortion and the actual like sustained and saturation and overdrive is coming from the pedal here not the amplifier and it's cool because the different pedals have different characters they break up in a different way and it's going to give you slightly different flavors of a lead [Music] sound okay so to me right off the bat I'm hearing a couple of things one I'm getting that sustain like my notes hanging on for a long time which is cool but it's sounding kind of dark and muffled sometimes that's cool sometimes you want something that's a little smoother a little darker but I want some more articulation so I'm just going to bring up the high [Music] end or I can go the opposite way and I can absolutely dime it and just let the pedal do all the [Music] work so it sounds like it's a song by song thing yeah okay and it's again it's a choice like it's a feel thing so if I'm using less Distortion getting less sustain it's going to change how I play I might uh play a little bit more staccato playing fast F lick or something whereas a sound like this I want it to kind of give me this long searing lead sound and it's not just for lead sounds if I was playing chords with this sound it's going to change what note choices I'm making in terms of the chords so for example I'm going to play much more simply I'm not going to play complex chords with intervals like thirs for example I'm going to play mostly power chords so instead of playing something like a a g I'm GNA go hear the difference mhm with that third in there even up here it's just too much going on because that Distortion is not playing well with the intervals it's making it muddy but with an interval like a perfect fifth or like with an a chord for example like I'm not going to play the entire chord with that C sharp in there I'm GNA go just that Mak sense yeah yeah that's fun the trick here uh especially when you're recording is knowing when you have too much Distortion yeah that's what I was going to ask how do you know with more Distortion you get more compression you don't always want a ton of compression because that can get you buried in the mix so that sound is great on its own but if you listen back to it and you're kind of buried or it sounds muddy just bring the Distortion down now try it in the room it sounds less distorted and it might sound like there's 's not enough gain but in the context of a mix with maybe another guitar and a bass and drums that might be more [Music] appropriate okay so let's talk about like delay and Reverb dialing those things in well I don't necessarily know for sometimes you hear guitar players that are just like too washy or too it's like there's no there's no Clarity or articulation where they hide behind their Reverb and their delay yeah okay so let's start with with that how to have like a nice ambient or textural sound without it being muddy or masking the guitar okay so with Reverb there's especially with longer reverbs there's a control called pre- delay pre- delay is crucial for not getting muddy so for example I'm going to turn the amp Reverb all the way off and we'll just go to one of the pedal reverbs here so this is a Reverb sound I have pulled up that's like a long Washi kind of thing so it sounds like this now did you hear that after I hit the note there's a split second before the Reverb comes in listen that is pre- delay so what the predelay is doing is it's basically telling the Reverb to hold off for a specific period of time before it comes in it's allowing my clean guitar sound to come through first unmodulated before the Reverb comes in underneath it if I do a picking [Music] part still hear my guitar you can still hear the picking part and the reverbs just kind of sitting underneath it providing this like bed now with delay it's a little bit different there's different types of delay starting with slapback slapback is one of my favorite things to do uh because depending on how you play it can actually sound less like a delay and more like a Reverb so if I'm doing like a [Music] so in that context it almost sounds more like a room uh or I can do more of like [Music] a like that quick kind of slapback thing yeah it's funny I don't really notice it until you take it off another common delay thing would be like a dotted eighth sound so this is like your classic you know you two Edge kind of thing and basically all I'm going to do is set my quarter note so 1 2 3 four and then I turn on that dotted a [Music] delay so do that without it that's all you're doing [Music] interesting about interesting thing about this sound is how much sustain I'm giving the note affects how the overall thing sounds so if I play with really tight P muting it sounds really percussive versus if I let the note sustain more but the the key thing to think about when you're using something that's a Time based effect like Reverb or delay is you need to play to the effect so for example like what I was just doing with the dotted eth I was muting my notes a little bit more to give me more of that percussive dotted e sound or with the slapback I'm not going to play super big Lush thick chords all the time because it's going to get muddy or with the big Washi Reverb I'm going to play higher up on the the neck and make simpler note [Music] choices and I'm going to let that Reverb kind of do the work so you you need to get comfortable with the idea of playing to the effect which often times means simplifying what you're [Music] playing okay so last is modulation so modulation being anything that is changing the pitch or the amplitude of your note so the most basic form of modulation would be like a tremolo which this amp has and so it's using the amp circuit to control the volume or the amplitude of what I'm playing and this is super cool just a great way to add texture to a simple part is one of my favorite things because a lot of times it's the simplest and easiest way to make something sound right especially like a rhythm guitar part right like if you just want to play a simple two chord progression but you want it to have some character or some feel like give [Music] it so are you setting the rate to the tempo or no so I mean sometimes if you wanted it to be super dialed in you could do that with certain pedals or with like a plug-in triolo but to me trimo came from early Fender amps Gibson amps you know things like that from the 50s and so on and so back then there was no way of dialing into a specific Tempo so for that kind of thing I'll get it close but I actually like the fact that the tremolo is kind of and moving in and out of time with the Rhythm yeah I think I like that too that kind of rhythmic rub that happens yeah and then basically once you've got that then it's just a matter of controlling your depth like if you want something super fast and shoppy like a that's kind of cool sometimes but often times you know I'll just do something a little more subtle [Music] like the other forms would be like pitch modulation so things like chorus flange um so like this is a flange kind of sound here [Music] so and I love this for chords because essentially it's a playing it's playing with the phase of your sound and moving it back and forth but it's a great way to add a lot of texture and dimension to again a simple you know chord progression or part yeah like that just sounds so cool pH is another great thing phaser is the same same kind of thing or something like a univ for [Music] example with all of these modulation effects how do you choose like how do you know they could all work to do the song Personal Taste and sometimes context so for example like I know if we're playing with good trouble and we're going for some kind of like 70s Outlaw country kind of vibe mhm my immediate go-to is going to be a phaser and a slapback delay so for [Music] example and I would choose that cuz there's a lot of like historical context for that kind of sound a lot of times I'll just go for something that's giving me like some subtle pitch modulation like this [Music] and then you can stack that with like a big Reverb and now we're getting into that territory where it's like this sound might Inspire some kind of part or something asz I'm playing to this [Music] sound yeah right whereas all I'm doing is [Music] they're just different colors so it just comes down to a lot of listening and then just making choices and committing to stuff because like how do you know what to choose it's just what do you want to hear and what do you like there's no rules there's no right or wrong way to do this um but it's just knowing what you're going for and knowing how to get there so those are five basic starting points for sound thanks to Phil for coming over being a part of today's video I'll have his channel Linked In the description box down below where hopefully you'll be able to see some of these Concepts put to use we also have a video course if you're interested in this kind of stuff uh called the amp course which you can find for a special discount in the description box down below we take a lot of these Concepts and go even more in depth in that course with both amps and with modelers as well so you can check that out be sure to subscribe while you're down there and thanks for watching my name is Rhett that's philli we'll catch you guys on the next one

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 128,289

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Id: Wl0YmKC3ZEY

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023