How To Set Your Overdrive & Distortion Pedals [In A Band]

[Music] hey everyone welcome to that pelta show dan here mick here doug here hello [Music] uh stop stop stop it nick i've had an epiphany okay okay what i want to do today uh is show you guys basically how to set up your average driving distortion because i hear this all the time and it drives me crazy and you no longer have to imagine you've got a bass player and a drummer no indeed we've got a drummer and a guitar player masquerading as a bass player which we'll which we'll do for today right yeah yeah fantastic yes so thank you so much dougie legend all right um and it's really important to get the drums and bass with this so that you can hear this in context what i wanted to do is show you um a really great way to approach using your gain so i started that off using the rat and that sound that i had then right so this is just the guitar [Music] it's it's okay it's massive but if i try and do anything uh not massive yeah right so just play a i'm just going to play some stuff over that breakdown e okay so just just go into that [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so out of interest what were you hearing there i just didn't enjoy slapping the babies okay very good very good for me no dynamic there's no dynamic at all everything's one level i can't hear the pick on the edge of the string yes and i am playing i am trying to do like approach it dynamically so you can see at the right on the rack i've got the gain cranked yeah right and i i hear this all the time i can't hear the guitar anymore all i'm hearing is the rat and i could plug anything into that and it would sound just like that and there's this misconception that for me to have that really big you know that big wall of noise that i had at the going into that riff yeah that i've got to have the game cranked okay right what i'm going to do we're going to play the same riff and then we're going to go and go back into that sort of breakdown section but i'm going to turn the gain down to a point where i can hear the guitar okay so and the way i do that uh the way that i've worked out how to do it if i play and open all the open strings and you get all the harmonics going into a distortion pedal just sound like noise and you hear all this fizz and i'll turn the distortion down until that fizz basically goes away okay right so check this out [Music] because i've turned the distortion down i've got to adjust the level a little bit the level up a bit yeah just a little bit so i'm just turning the reverb [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] as opposed to [Music] the other really important thing is have a listen to what happens to the top end yeah yeah you can turn the game down i noticed your top string there not least because it's ever so slightly out of tune daniel but i really noticed it really really noticed how much it was ringing top end right so your top ends come back right because it's again exactly that so okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i've halved the gain all right so let's do that riff again and then go back into that e breakdown section and we'll bring it right back okay so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] nice so what is really interesting is you you think by turning the distortion down you think you can you're going to lose all that fatness and massiveness when you go into the riff but you don't because you've got dynamic so when i lean into the riff it's actually louder it was louder and what i was hearing was i could hear your telling again right i could hear that it was red yeah i'm really used to hearing the guitar week in week out and i know what it sounds like and there was some chewiness and mid-range chewiness that came back i think you played on the neck pickup for a second there yeah and i could hear that which was completely gone with all the extra mush yeah and the clarity of the notes certainly your inflection so anything you do with the side of the pick or the way in which you strike the string i could hear yeah even though i'm concentrating on slapping the bass it was but it's it's one of those things that that i think when we all when we buy our first distortion pedal right and you know we've we've learned to play some chords with a clean guitar sound we still have some distortion and it's this massive it's a it's a really big change right it's like having an extra channel on your amplifier and one of the things that we sort of instinctively do is crank that gain up for a couple of reasons one it's really fun but two it actually makes it if you're learning to do legato and that sort of stuff it makes it really easy to play well easier because it evens everything out yeah right so if i was to do turn the distortion all the way back up again yep all right i'm going to play a a legato thing right uh the gatto is not my forte um but you'll you get an idea what i'm talking about so it evens out all the notes and it doesn't sound great because it's not played well but i thought alan holdsworth had come in for a minute there yeah right may he rest in peace so what happens now i can also hear the acoustic freeing away i hear the snare drum but what happens now if i turn that gain back down to where we were right so cool thank goodness for that right the ocean's gone and if i do something similar yeah right [Music] [Applause] that sounded like more like paul gilbert right because you could hear the edge of the map you can hear the end of the note yeah because everything isn't just so even though the loads again it feels really fun to play but one thing about uh turning the game down because you can hear the edge of the note it actually makes you a better guitar player yeah right because you'll hear yourself when you hear the mistakes and you'll correct yourself yeah you've got to check that you you really do but when you have loads of gain on there i mean it's funny you can you can you know get away with fatigue murder um but yeah um one of the things i i mean i just hear it so often where there's a sound that i'm sure loads of people have heard it's like well you you can't define who the guitar player is or what they're using it's just it's just game and again again it actually it always happens to me when you know we dish out all this advice every week on tps and trying to help you you know sound better and enjoy playing your guitar more and actually i'm as guilty of it as anyone else i'll turn up to a gig and i'll be a bit like nervous right that i've got enough game for the sustain i'll turn my next game pedal off right on and all the sound goes away sure and it's exactly that it's just too it's too much it's too much so and that's one of the things so a lot of people uh who go from that you know they'll have all the gain on and they'll be rehearsing at home and they get to the gig or you know get with the band and they'll stick on that distortion pedal that at home had loads of you know it sounded big and fat as soon as it gets in the mix of the band it all goes because i mean we found that today as we're setting up to jam it's like when everyone gets a bit excited everything lifts you know and when you have so much gain on you simply you simply put a ceiling on your dynamics you can dig in as much as you like but it's not going anywhere um so have a listen to some you know really amazing rock players um you know eddie van halen and uh slash and you know and have listened to actually how much gain they use [Music] the guys who are really dynamic and i mean someone actually texted the other night they said they went and saw slash playing live and said his sound was almost clean you know i mean you know slash clean yeah yeah but there's so much dynamic in what he does and if you put on a whole load of game with that all that would go away um should we try and repeat it with the riot yeah so we've done we've heard the rat so that's you know rats very famous distortion pedal riot perhaps should we say has a slightly more modern sound to it yeah yeah yeah uh see if the same process works sure all right distortion all the way up on the right [Music] if anything more so awful right so yes it's it is it's it anything that i want to any sort of reflection i want to use it just i can't because everything's sort of so squashed so i'll give you exactly the same thing okay i'm going to turn the turn the gain down [Music] go again [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's a very much similar experience but what i find really interesting even though the second time i that my sound was was quieter because i had somewhere to go i could dig in and it would just lift yeah i don't think you're you might be watching this thinking well he's just putting that on but there's so much more feedback and i don't mean uh harmonic feedback i mean feedback of harmonics yeah and music coming through the rig there that it's making you play better it's making you engage more yeah with less gain because you're feeling it more it's it's chalk and day now the other thing i just want to really quickly touch on saying before about how the tone control changed and i think a lot of people have a lot of confusion about where to set the tone control right um and there's a couple of things that we can do that i i think are really interesting if i if i play uh just with a clean sound we have a listen to the top end right [Music] now if i turn the tone control to match that top end um what's really interesting is that the tone will be in a different position depending on the level of the not just the gain but the overall level of the distortion so what i'm going to do i'm going to turn the distortion down quite low yeah i'm going to turn the treble up until that treble frequency the the the the level of that treble frequency matches the the treble frequency and my clean sound okay okay so check this out so i'll turn the treble up and the level down [Music] those treble frequencies sort of roughly a similar volume yeah it's almost impossible though isn't it because they're getting they're getting uh distorted they are they are but but check this out right so um right just go through the roof once for me three four [Music] i need a minute sorry three and [Music] okay what i'm going to do now is going to turn the tone right down and i'm going to turn the level up until i can hear the same frequencies okay at the same level i know where this is going right so check this out so turn turn right down [Music] okay same thing three [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] so i can get a big fat sound and by normally you look at that the way the time control there is set and you go no way that's never going to work instead of thinking about trying to make your distortion sound sound the same as your clean sound but more distorted if you think about just where the treble frequencies sit and whether you want a thinner sound or whether you want a big fat sound a really great way to make them work with the clean sound is just okay if you want a big fat sound turn the tr turn the tone down but then turn the level up until you can hear those treble frequencies yeah yeah match the same frequencies of the guitar that is the point where all your band mates turn to you and go uh i don't think so mate because you've got so much more bottom end and and it's louder and perceptibly like perceivably louder sure so then you you know you find that's space in the middle you know but it's a really great way to to work out where you want to set your tone control it it's a you know there's quite a range it's not a one position that's going to suit everything it depends on how fat you want to be you mean you might want that really piercing shrill thing yeah and in that case just turn it up until the levels are similar yeah because what happens then if you've got dynamic in your uh your overdrive sound you can go from so what i'm going to do now i just want you to play that e riff i'm going to go from clean and then i'm going to turn the pedal on all right and and have a listen to what happens so so yeah this is [Music] do [Music] that's really cool just do that one more time okay i've turned this torsion down a bit i've turned the tone up a little bit um but this is you know setting at the amount of girth that i want the sound to have yep um and then you can do you can do this sort of stuff with it which i think is really cool so let's just do that section [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] uh [Music] so instead of having a distortion pedal it becomes like on distortion i can actually just make it more of a a dynamic change using the volume control you know between the clean sound and then sort of let it build nice it's a really great way to think about the way that uh where the tone control sits what i want you to do now is i want you to do well we'll whip through both pedals again okay i want you to change guitar yep and set set do exactly what you've just done okay on a humbucker guitar okay there's a couple here if you want to play any of these or your les paul's out there is the gold top there the gold top's there so because it's a really important point right everyone when we think in terms of gain stages yeah everyone thinks of this and then this looks good on your right this is thank you very much this is this is the first gain stage yeah what's coming out of red is going to be vastly different than what's coming out of here um but even if it's not vastly different it only has to be a small change to make a big difference here right you know so there's no hard and fast rule you've got to use your ears and then find that point where you still have dynamic so yeah so let's go back to the rat then actually let's see this clean first [Music] far out man this is the best less ball i've ever heard me too [Music] okay so do the same thing with the rat okay so let's start with distortion all the way up [Music] and it's not that that's not a cool sound it definitely has its moments but if i couldn't use that all night you know what i mean so [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] there were thereabouts [Music] hey [Music] yes [Music] come here [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so if we have a look at where the rat is set compared to what it was with the tally yeah right it's really different but i'm still able to get you know dynamic it's a dinosaur a very different story with those with humbuckers anyway um but i still had somewhere to go you know right okay [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] just do the just let's do the eating [Music] bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Music] dynamics dynamics dynamics dynamics dynamics and in each case the gain on those pedals is down yeah and i don't think we were lacking in overdrive no you've never heard the clean sound of the amps it's not like the amps are over driving significantly and of course if your amps are over driving which is a whole other part of this debate easily less gain from the pedal getting that ride is even more important yeah you know um but yeah just take 10 minutes to sit down and you know if you're at a a point of this journey where you want to get some more dynamics in your playing and get more expressive turn the game down just turn the game down and just experiment with those you know those different levels experiment where the tone control goes it reminds me of the early days of memes on facebook and instagram where it was like the gain is not a volume control kyle gull oh carl yeah what did you do i turned the game all the way up the game's not a volume control carl so good so there you go there you go very interesting dougie thank you thank you doug thanks for having me guys nice to have you bashing the tubs there um it's good to hear our drum kit sounding so nice uh really pleased with that it's amazing amazing good thank you so much for watching really appreciate it please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed also a massive thank you to anyone that's gone to thatpppedalshowstore.com and grabbed t-shirts got some new shirts in stock you see dougie uh is modeling it uh lovely also massive thank you to our preferred retailers in the uk and europe is anderson's music of guildford in surrey and our friends in australia would be pedal empire of brisbane queensland uh and also there are some links in the description below there are indeed if you go to those links and buy stuff down and i get kicked back off that in the usa and it helps us greatly fund this show indeed make sure dougie doesn't have to work for nothing you know those kind of things indeed also massive thank you to our patrons on patreon thank you so much guys we really appreciate your support fantastic have a great day and we'll see you soon okay see ya bye [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 84,140

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Id: dfPOt7V9YR0

Length: 33min 15sec (1995 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 05 2021