The Allure of the Rock Trio
If you’re a guitarist in a trio with bass and drums you have more freedom to use wild effects, play louder and take up a ton of space in the mix, because it can sound hollow if you don’t! The problems can arise when you add another instrument to the mix. Certain instruments will cause you little grief, for instance ad a trumpet or other brass or woodwind to the mix and there’s not much of a problem because they are usually either playing a solo when the singer is silent or they are playing short accents or stabs that don’t hang around for long enough to step on anyones toes. It’s when you add another instrument that is capable of playing chords that more care must be taken in the arrangement of the songs.
In many guitar based rock bands it’s the blending of the two guitar sounds to create an overall wall of guitars that is important and so the fact that the guitars mask each other a bit is ok especially with heavily overdriven or distorted guitars in songs that use power chords to chug through riffs. In a solo situation you will usually have one guitar playing chords and the other playing single notes. That’s all good because guitar solos in mixes are usually given more volume and a midrange boost to the eq so that for the duration of the guitar solo the lead guitar takes the place of the lead vocal as the focal point of the sound. When blending of two rhythm guitars is not desirable you can always pan one into the left speaker and the other into the right and because both are guitars a sort of balance is achieved. Just when all is well in the universe that is your band in walks the keyboard player, and to make things worse he or she wants to play one sound and use BOTH HANDS!
Just When Things Were Going So Well,....
So now what you have is a keyboard player wielding the instrument that can make the widest range of frequencies known to man! With their mighty left hand they mask the bass guitar and with that devastating right hand they create a cacophony of confused mess in the midrange. Unless of course you bury them in the mix. You could do that. Live sound engineers do it all the time. The other option is to find more effective ways to use the awesome power of your band for good! This is where the arrangement your songs comes into play.
All you need to do is to learn to listen to what your band mates are doing and contribute to the overall sound in ways that don’t detract from what the others are doing. In other words lead by example and at the same time take an opportunity to be selfish in terms of volume. Here are some examples.
Many times I have done live sound for open mic nights featuring mostly solo acoustic guitar and vocals. It always just seemed natural for me to adjust the sound so that the guitar could be good and loud and at the same time the vocals could be clearly heard. I guess I felt if there’s only one instrument and one voice the sound should be as full as possible. The way I achieved this was to reduce the midrange on the guitar so that I could crank it up and everyone could still hear the vocal. Seemed like a simple and easy way to get the sound I was looking for. What amazes me is the number of times I walk into an establishment featuring the same kind of performance and heard very strange sound design indeed. Sometimes the “sound guy” had cranked the midrange on the vocal to violently force it through the wall of guitar. This made the vocal extremely unpleasant to listen to, almost like a telephone thru a megaphone! Sometimes I’d hear the vocal loud and proud and almost no guitar, other times the guitar was good and loud but I was left wondering if somehow the microphone was broken or something. I could sometimes hear a vocal but don’t ask me what they were singing.
So if I knew the performer or the owner of the venue I would ask if I could fix the sound. All I would do is set the Vocal eq to flat, set the guitar eq to flat and then set the mid knob on the guitar to the 9 O’clock position and balance the volume between the two. Then I would use the eq fairly sparingly (most times) to make things sound more natural. That’s it! For this alone I earned a reputation as a kick ass live sound guy!
I guess the lesson to take away from this is: Guitarists, if you take some mid out of your guitar sound you can play louder, the overall mix will likely sound better and your band mates won’t hate you (as much). I am picking on guitar players because I am a guitar player and so I feel I can, hope this isn’t a problem! Another thing that you can do as a guitar player is play on a different place on the fretboard than the other guitar player. This makes for a more interesting blend of tones. If the other guitarist is strumming chords, why not pick some single notes out of the chords or play a melodic single note run. If they zig you zag, and now you’ve teamed up to crush zigging and zagging under foot it’s time to gang up on the keyboard player.
Don't Panic
I kid keyboard players, don’t take it personally. There are many creative things you can do to add to a killer arrangement. Keyboards have the widest array of sounds available after all. It’s your job to do what the songs require. Sometimes the most powerful contribution you can make can be the most subtle. Listen to the Police song “Every Breath You Take” the synth parts in that are a big part of what gives the song it’s power. “SYNTH PARTS” they don’t even HAVE a keyboard player! Seriously if you took out the string wash in the background the mood collapses and you are left with a very small sound stage. I could go on and on about this stuff but the basic idea is this, you have the power of greatest versatility in terms of sound, if you use it to complement the other musicians you become more than an add-on. The world is full of “also ran” keyboard players and that’s a shame, but you don’t have to be one of them because what you play is up to you! If you are going to play some left handed bass, get together with the bass player and play some things in unison, or play things that reinforce the bass line. If you find yourself in the midst of a wall of guitar why not try some things that compliment the vocals. If you sing you could even use your keyboard to drive a vocal harmony device or vocoder.
Musicians in a good band do things to compliment each other, it’s not a volume duel to the death. Since home recording is the method by which most bands record now it doesn’t hurt to learn more about these things.
Tags: Home Recording, music, arrangement, recording