14/07/09 01:35 Filed in:
Music Arrangement
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 of 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
Tags: Rock, trio, music arrangemnt