The '80s Studio Clean Formula Explained | James Tyler Studio Elite HD

[Music] what is up guys I hope you're having a fantastic day thank you so much for clicking on the video and welcome to [Music] I don't think it's gonna be called that don't worry so what do people mean when they refer to an 80s Studio clean what does it seem like everybody loves them so much and how can you get them with your setup these are those super compressed super chimey 80s clean tones with a bunch of wide wet effects on them used by people like Prince Michael Landau Dan Huff Steve Stevens I think we love them so much because we remember them if you've been growing up anytime since the 80s they haven't gone away and it's just baked into our musical DNA they're also very guitarist I would say there's tons of high-end there's tons of punch it's those things that we always want and we don't always get so it's very self-indulgent and fun to play on these cones I'm going to show you the principles of how you can do this utilizing plugins today but also talk about the real world setups that are used and different ways you can do it with whatever gear that you have right but first I have some bad news I've done something that I've been dreading for 30 years I plugged in my real mic yeah but you guys are worth it to the video [Music] five steps to how you get this 80s Studio clean the first one is Ditch the cabinet this is gonna sound crazy if you've never done this before but what is a guitar cabinet it is a massive filter there's almost no high-end information in the guitar signals that we all know and love but all that air all that clickiness the chiminess that is what gives these Queens the sound picture uh Piezo picture of synth that has all that up there that is what our ears are gravitating to when we hear that and what makes it sound so different from a normal guitar tone [Applause] foreign [Music] number two let's talk about different rigs that you can achieve this with and different ways it was done historically you take a rack preamp just don't send it to a cabinet don't send it to a power amp record that then you have that awesome direct sound you can also do this with a real amp as long as your amp is properly loaded down that's what speakers do they keep your amp from exploding be very careful you take the line out and record that back in the day uh reactive loads didn't exist yet we'll get to that in a second you could use a resistive load which doesn't really feel right but it doesn't respond like a real cabinet would but that's kind of the point these are direct feeling these are Punchy and that would keep the amp from blowing up and then you can record they would also um plug in to an ISO cabinet in a different room or underneath the stage just not mic it up then the amp is performing safely but you can get that cool line out direct sound another big one back then was the rock band that is the Boston Tom Schultz developed little solid state unit a little box for the rack that's Def Leppard that is flesh for Fantasy it just it has that chime it has that direct feel these are also frequently referred to as desk tones because you would plug a guitar just directly in the recording desk go through whatever strip is there API need whatever crank up the volume get it loud enough do a little bit of EQ this comes from the funk world this is the Nile Rogers thing in fact you can hear this on let's dance with Nile Rogers and uh Stevie Ray Vaughan this is Prince a lot of Prince tones are like this so if you just have your audio interface you could even just plug straight into that and apply whatever Channel strips you have and you're Off to the Races talking about what you could use right now just about anything we're really lucky we have a lot of options now so if you're a modeling guy I have done this with with fractal with Helix if you're a plug-in guy that's what I'm going to show you today I'm using a nimbrini Ada mp1 plug-in but I've done this with neurals like all the standard stuff that you might already have you can do this with real amplify tires um rev has reactive load built in for direct XLR out recording I have a D20 off camera as well I use that all the time so you can take the two notes out of that record it don't apply an IR and Boom direct tone there's tons of external options for that too literally everywhere like sir oxbox two notes Red Seven Saint Rock like a lot of them and of course just play this with your normal amp rig too if you don't want to get set up to record or anything plenty of these guys like Michael and I will play songs to utilize these tones live today just on a little combo amp stereo image is an important part of these tones they'll often still use two amps but like anything else what's most important is just loving the Music Learning the songs playing the parts properly and all the gear we use is just kind of the sauce that we flavor it with [Music] foreign we're going to talk about what you're looking for out of your guitar when doing these sorts of tones now today I'm using my Tyler Studio Elite HD which has individual series parallel switching for each pickup as well as the Demeter active mid boost preamp what do those do the preamp if you've ever played like a music man with Active Electronics or most PSO guitars they always have a buffered output emgs as well it does this really wild thing to the tone we know what a buffer does it drives better it maintains high end but in the context of recording a guitar it's almost like in mono it feels like your guitar sucked back a little bit and you have a little Reverb and it's a little wider the series parallel is about making your guitar very thin and weak because if you drive this type of tone too hard you'll get tons of crazy Distortion that sounds really gnarly because there's no cabinet on it so it's about having a a weaker thinner guitar sound that you're then compressing to go through the amp and the rest of the effects and you get that big queer tone to play this on whatever guitar you have and back in the day people were tracking with plenty of guitars that didn't have this preamp that didn't have serious parallel options but I would recommend turning your volume knob down a little bit using a notch position if it's available to you because you really want a weaker and thinner guitar signal being sent into these kind of tones right now I'm going to play you some examples I'm going to turn the active preamp on and off I'm going to switch to pickups from parallel to series and combinations thereof you're going to see how everything doesn't sound quite right until you get to the final formula [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] four compression do's and don'ts and gain staging so you are generally going to want to have a pretty strongly compressed signal on the input that's so it's sending a consistent signal into this amp where any Peaks will give really gnarly out of control distortion and you want to compress it afterwards so you can see how the guitar has a weaker signal you're boosting it up with compression to cleanly go through this amp that's very delicate it doesn't want anything weird to happen to it because all that high end will get out of control and then you can press it afterwards to keep it in place I will also say about whatever level Master Distortion you have available on the amp or the Plugin or the model you're using leave a little bit of grit in you'll be surprised how even the cleanest of these clean tones like prints they just they have a little bit of distortion on them they're not bone clean and it's like distorting a base you're not really going to hear it in the mix but all this extra harmonics will help you cut through [Music] for the signal path I want to keep things as simple as possible today and use a limited amount of plugins to demonstrate this to you we're going into the numberini Ada mp1 plug-in this is because I like to compress these phones on the input and the output in solid state mode on the Ada the second gain knob that would normally be for the tube stage is compression so I don't have to run another compressor in front with a pedal you could use anything from the super squashy dynacom to more modern Optical sounding pedals exact tone has a good one walrus has a good one with a plug-in if you happen to have the real rack gear people would often use dbx's in front sometimes even distressors in front I normally see that used more in the back though and then we're going out of that with the cabinet turned off into two pieces of rack gear fake rack gear it's from the suede virtual mix rack first because again I like to compress on the output as well la2a tube Optical super smooth chop off even more DB than you normally would then go into a super simple API EQ nothing fancy here then this is bust out two different effects that I'm blending in in parallel so these are not Series going through each other these are all 100 wet mixed back in Valhalla vintage verb for lexicon voice Hall Reverb bow Howard delay for some old school digital delay um ping pong voices soundtoys microshift which is the best ebbantide pitch detune plugin out there and that's sort of the Baseline but for the wettest tones I'm also going to turn on overlap's gem module which has SPX 90 like really cool stuff but on the dimension setting because it can be important to stack multiple kinds of modulation for this sound now let's dive into playing examples I'm going to play some iconic songs that utilize tones like this in various different pickup positions that I'll put on screen and then we're gonna go into a full mix of Billy Idol flesh for Fantasy I'm gonna play Steve's clean parts and I'm going to turn on and off individual elements of the signal path so you can hear what they're all contributing within a song context [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's a change [Music] I'm experienced [Music] there's a change [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so when will you go I'm experienced [Music] so thank you so much for watching as I said before I'm just here to have fun talk tones and start a relationship with you guys I want this to represent a really positive space you know down in the comments where we can talk about our love of guitar and different gear and ask questions the positive response to the last video I uploaded that's the thing that YouTubers do they point up into the corner blew me away because I just want to make that video to share with my friends and talk about tones and then next thing you know a couple thousand people saw it and we're asking questions and dming me on Instagram looking for tips so I might actually try to keep this going let me know Down Below in the comments if there's anything you would like to see for me in the future just anything we could talk about any fun tones any fun guitar discussions so have a fantastic day catchphrase [Music]

Channel: Kyle Karich

Views: 36,584

Keywords: 80s, guitar, michael landau, dann huff, prince, purple rain, steve stevens, billy idol, flesh for fantasy, Nembrini, James Tyler, ADA MP1, Superstrat, studio clean, guitar tone, Rush, Queensryche

Id: St8AJiFyWm4

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023