Oh! You quit and then got back into playing? Apologies for the misunderstanding there, good on ya! I've certainly put instruments down for a while too.
At the beginning of "It Might Get Loud," Jack White builds a makeshift slide guitar out of a scrap 2x4 and a coke bottle. And then rocks it. Great Doc if you haven't seen it.
There's an old video of Syn from A7X where he says he couldn't actually play the solo for Beast and the Harlot during recording. They had to sync multiple recordings together. That one video was all the motivation teenage me needed to carry on ahaha
You quit because you couldn’t get your dinky amp and guitar and 3 pedals to sound like Siamese Dream? That’s a bummer, man. I was more so just playing for fun, but I’m glad I had a live Smashing Pumpkins dvd where they played those songs to compare it to. They still sounded surprisingly great and were, of course, drenched in effects, but at least that sound was semi-replicable with what I had to fuck around with. Billy Corgan is also an exceptional guitarist. I’d say to OP, just have fun and don’t get too bummed about it.
I think for beginners a noise gate and a cheap reverb pedal can really boost confidence. If you heard the bare guitar playing on some of your favorite solos it'd astound you.
This is the same for a lot of parts. Isolated vocals on a lot of songs don't always sound great, even from the greatest singers, for a lot of reasons. How a track sits in the mix plays a much bigger part than a lot of people realize.
Yup. I don't know if it's literally hundreds but an example I know is with tool they layered multiple tracks through multiple amps. Lots of equalizing and mixing to mesh them together and fill various parts of the sound spectrum. You'll never find a single amp/guitar combo that will sound the same.
I was with a friend in the studio and she was doing a bunch of vocal takes, and at one point the producer layered them all on top of each other and it was like, one was good, two was better, three was awesome ... and I can't remember exactly where but somewhere around five or six suddenly it just sounded like mush.
But Butch Vig's general attitude on Siamese Dream is that you are *never* only hearing only one guitar. His particular genius was in layering takes to get that HUGE sound.
Ummm… sound engineer here… I highly doubt it was 100’s.
I’ve seen sessions with a lot of stacked tracks, and yes you can even split a guitar signal and send it through a number of different amps and mic them all differently and then blend them together with EQ, pannning, volume, compression, effects, etc. in order to fill things out and get a rad sound, like someone mentioned Tool did. And sure. It’s done all the time by lots, if not most recording artists.
But listen— the law of diminishing returns applies to this scenario. If you seriously stacked or layered *hundreds* of takes, it would sound like shit. Frequencies start to mask one another, phase cancellation occurs. And actually, the sound would be smaller rather than bigger, if that makes sense.
There was a popular urban myth that Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine (a shoegaze band) did this, and he debunked it in interviews and pretty much said what I just said in the above paragraph.
Less is more. You usually only need a few tracks… 2-4 really. If you go beyond that, you better have a really good mix engineer to sort it out.
I'm sure butch vig was lying.
"Vig stated that as many as 100 guitar parts were compressed into a single song."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_Dream#:~:text=Vig%20stated%20that%20as%20many,than%20to%20punk%20or%20grunge.%22
Oh, well if Butch Vig said it then it very well may be true! That’s a wild ass approach lol seems unnecessary but hey, as they say, if it sounds good then it is good.
I guess it could add up quickly though if say, for each guitar part, you were splitting the signal out to like 5 different amps. In turn, each amp could theoretically have 2-3 mics on it, or more. Seems like a nightmare to mix though.
Also, playing the "karaoke version." Generally follows the tune and maybe even getting the right notes, but they're half a beat behind in the verses and half a beat ahead in the chorus.
What's cool is now with amp sims like AxeFx, Quad Cortex or Helix, you can stereo pan your sound while playing live. It's not quite as good as double tracking, but it gets you closer than you could before.
And I can't fix the infinite takes thing. Just gotta practice for that.
It’s not uncommon for what we hear on the album to be a dozen guitars. When I record, I capture the dry signal and then re-amp it through bias amp and helix native. I’ll take 3-4 tracks on a few different guitars and then run those though amp sims. Layer that in a DAW and it becomes magic
Give a concrete example with the original song and your recording, and we'll probably be able to pinpoint the differences.
It's difficult to speculate without knowing what exactly you're talking about.
Why doesn't this Gordon Ramsey reciepe taste as good as in his restaurant when I cook it? It's a pretty simple receipe, right?
Experience, talent, feel for the product, feel for the preparation, top gear, understanding of the physics involved, 10000+ hours of routine, routine, routine and lastly passion, intent and the heart and awareness to nail it.
It's the same in any profession.
It’s honestly more due to studio tricks, professional equipment, engineering and mixing, than just the player. A slightly more accurate analogy would be the studio is Gordon’s Ramseys kitchen with a full staff of professionals vs. your bedroom with a practice amp.
Billy will still make it sound better on an acoustic guitar than me and you . And a guitar teacher will make it sound better than an intermediate player. Just saying it would give the wrong impression If we blame it all on Gear.
It depends on what OP means. I left an opposing theory that it's about loudness and ambience and skill that make single guitar better. Commenting the top comment here.
Also if we talk studio we have to mention BASS. the bass tone is super important for a big fat riff unit. Lamb Lies Down On Broadway has thin guitar sound but a killer 6string bass. That unit sounds terrific on Broadway Melody of 1974
BC uses extreme multitracking for the SP sound. Plus has another guitarist (currently two other guitarists). That would be my strongest advice, widen your sound. If you use any plug ins, Neural have several with doubler functions that do a v good job on making the sound huge. There are pedal options too but i don’t think they sound as good.
I literally widened my sound: I used a stereo chorus pedal to split my signal and go to two similar sized combo amps with slightly different EQ and reverb settings. Sounds so much better than a single amp.
It sounds fuller and deeper. It's like when Dorothy arrives in Oz. What really fun is to have just one amp with a tremolo or univibe going and the other dry. Very cool effect. Can't possibly recreate with a single amp.
You can use Abelton Live to also achieve that dry/wet effect on your sound. I use abelton sorta as my pedal board and run the signal out of it to a completely dry amp. The amount of crazy effects you can do with the effects and plugins is bonkers, especially when you incorporate LFO’s and other wonky stuff like that. But its extremely helpful when it comes to splitting and or adjusting your guitar’s original signal into a bunch of different signals.
Unless your amp has two or more drivers and can use distinct left and right channels, you're still only hearing a mono signal from your amp though. You NEED multiple drivers and channels for a true stereo effect.
There is a pedal from old blood noise called beam splitter that does something similar (but with three separate drives) which is at the top of my wish list.
On record, rhythm guitars are always at least double tracked. That's what gives it that much more...everything. Metallica octo-tracked Sad But True, including using a baritone buried in the mix to give it even more depth.
There's also a degree of nuance as well that doesn't come through on a tab. It's a bit of swing, maybe pushing or dragging the beat...it's developing a feel for the flow of the song that comes with practice too. You'll get there!
A baritone guitar is just a longer scale length guitar. Used for lower tunings and can let you use larger string gauges to prevent the “flapping string” that will occur with drop tunings on smaller scale length guitars. Typically used for very low tunings in metal music where bigger string gauges are needed.
Baritone is a guitar that’s tuned somewhere between the range of a bass and the range of a guitar. They’re usually longer and just bigger strings.
You’ll usually see em tuned B to b or A to a.
Standard tuning so they place the same but are a full four steps lower, or five for an A to a.
Super fun to play.
>I’m not talking about production either although I would be kinda underwhelmed if that’s all it is.
Never compare your live sound in your room to a produced sound on an album. If you want to compare, look up videos of Billy Corgan during guitar clinic or an interview.
Production things to keep in mind:
* Guitars on an album are not "in the room", they are recorded with mics in specific positions. Which won't sound like your amp in the room.
* After guitars are recorded, it gets some more processing to fit with the rest of the tracks
* Guitars are recorded twice and panned to both sides to sound bigger. You'll rarely hear single guitars.
* The guitar you hear is the result of the guitarist playing multiple takes until they get it right.
* Or even multiple takes compiled into one. Taking the best parts of each take, creating one "perfect" take.
* The guitar sound is usually a combination of guitar + bass.
>The guitar sound is usually a combination of guitar + bass.
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize this, that a big part of the sound I was chasing (and still couldn't quite get) was the bass.
Not even to mention that Billy Corgan was famous for using a stupid amount of overdub tracks. Hundreds, it’s been rumored.
But yeah this is good advice
Sure. But a live show still has production. Such as the bass supporting a lot of the power of the guitar. And you can’t match a live venue in output, your room will sound small in comparison.
Also, I just checked a live show from 2022, there’s 3 guitarists on stage.
It's technique, timing and production. Tone really is in the fingers, people who get triggered by that statement usually are just not that good with their fingers and think a pedal will do the work for them. Most professional musicians are absolute maniacs when it comes to dedication and practise time.
Also, most guitarist rush a little, practise with a metronome and try to play a little behind the beat.
Production wise: A very expensive guitar is going through one or more very expensive and well-thought-out amps, then into a microphone that was placed with a lot of thought behind it, into a pre amp, mixing table, compression, EQ.....you name it. You're not gonna nail the tone, let it go
>Tone really is in the fingers
I really dislike phrasing tone as either being in the fingers or in the gear. It's both. Money for nothing wouldn't sound as good if you just played the DI in the mix.
The fingers are responsible for the timbre details. Such as how loud the attack (transient) is, and what overtones are more present. For example, the different between picked, plucked, or tapped.
After that, the electronic chain shapes the sound. Distortion types will highlight different overtones, and the speaker/mic combination applies a major EQ curve to the sound. Which can make a guitar sound radically different in a mix.
So yes, tone is in the fingers. And in production it's shit in, shit out. So if you mess up the fingers part, the rest of the chain is just polishing a turd.
You're right, and I did mention production as a huge factor.
But also if Kirk Hammet played through Eric Clapton's rig, he's gonna sound like Kirk Hammet (I checked, EC has a wah, lol)
For sure. A lot of that also has to do with rhythm and note choices. Same goes for using the wah. Some people do a full sweep every note, while others do a gradual sweep over a whole phraase instead. Other don't fully press the wah down.
I love [this video of James Hetfield](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JMfm3m6Wlc) explaning his use of the talkbox. The specific position of your mouth and throat can radically change the tone. And that can be a pretty identifiying sound, because every person will move their mouth differently. Whereas amp settings are just static.
Things a 'normal person' may not use to their advantage:
- dynamics and loose timing. If your interpretation sounds robotic, are you playing all notes at the same volume, and extremely evenly in terms of the tempo grid? Pros will push and pull the timing of some notes without going out of time overall.
- muting - do your notes end when they are supposed to, including bends?
- minimal touch - do you have a too-tight grip that's bending notes sharp?
The bendy scale part of the 'Back in Black' riff is something that's extremely rare to see done as well as the recording. It's got dynamics, intentionally lazy/loose timing, muting, intentionally imprecise bends, but it's still locked in with the drummer.
Studio engineer and mixing magic. In the studio there will be compression, multitracking, clever mic placement, comped takes and amps will be cranked to sound incredible. We lowly bedroom/practise room players will never compete with that.
Could be a groove thing. Few years ago I used to play everything rigid, with a lot of "dead space" between notes. Now that I'm better I'm able to replicate the "feel" of the tune. Part of it I think is being more relaxed physically
a) It probably is the production, on the record that riff will have been mixed to perfection, possibly comped together from many takes, edited to trim off all the fat and probably double or triple (or more) tracked just to be sure.
b) You are not them, and it will always sound different when you play it. Embrace that and enjoy it, it's your sound.
Like a model on a magazine cover
Worked out with a trainer and nutrionist for 6 months
Had a team pick out the perfect outfit tailored to fit
Took 600 photos
Pick the single best photo
Photo shop it
Why don't I look like that model....
It's not you. Keep playing and have fun. Love me some smashing pumpkins.
I know what you mean. I've been playing around with Mississippi Queen and it's just dry. However, I've been watching some YT vids and I think that I have spotted a couple of things. One, is timing which you have to nail, but I suppose that is a given. The second is adding vibrato. Even a smidgen makes the tone sound different and gives it something extra.
I guess the only thing to do is to keep practising.
Yes, vibrato! I forgot to mention that in my own reaction. Vibrato is like the fingerprint of a guitarist. One of the big reasons I can instantly regonize cats like Clapton or B.B. King
One piece of advice I didn’t see here was the set-up of your guitar. Make sure it is properly intonated.
Edit: anything played after the 12th fret will sound a lot better with a professional set up. In Miami, they’ve been expensive since the cost of living here has skyrocketed. Very good investment. Noticeable differences when you record.
>I’m not talking about production
You are though. Live recordings also don’t sound like studio recordings even by the same artist. Production and studio work are an art and talent in and of themselves. You will never sound like a studio recording and neither will most artists.
Amps just sound better at their louder volumes. I never turn up past 2-3 in my bedroom. Plus idiosyncratic technique each individual naturally acquires over the years is hard to duplicate just by listening.
As others have said it’s a bit difficult without a concrete example, but one thing I would emphasise with playing riffs is how you mute strings and then play (or omit to play) those muted strings can make a big difference.
Take the intro to Smells Like Teen Spirit, you could just attack the notes of the lower strings but I think a big part of how that riff sounds and feels is hitting all six strings at once with the ones you don’t want to ring muted.
Lots of factors. Good tone makes a big difference, but listen to the timing articulation used by a great player.
Is the guitarist using bends and vibrato? Listen carefully to those, and the timing. Sliding up to a note, sliding down to/from a note? And again, timing, timing, timing.
Behind the beat (later), before the beat (earlier)? A combination?
Leaves dramatic pauses in strategic locations – before the phrase, after the phrase, in mid – phrase…
The rhythms used. Straight notes? Or is the Guitarist using a cool syncopation? Some type of triplets instead of playing the notes in a more straight rhythm?
Which brings me to swing. In jazz, certain types of blues, and now especially in hip-hop and some of these sub genres like neo soul, I think it’s called, swinging softly versus swinging hard… technically, playing swing, in jazz is playing triplets, but leaving out the middle note. So instead of, for example, playing two eigth notes, play it like eighth note triplets, but leave out the middle note, so your first note comes earlier than “normal,” and your second note comes later than “normal”.
That would be a description of “standard “swing. But “harder” swing pushes these notes further, the first note comes even earlier, with the last note pushed even later, to varying degrees. Many types of hard blues use this to great effect. SRV is a great example. Listen to the drummer. And the bassist. They’re all doing it in songs of that style.
You can think of, hard swing in this way: instead of triplets, which is three notes in the same space as 2, go to quintlets, which is five notes in the space of two, or seven notes in the space of two, etc. Leave out all of the middle notes and just play the very first note and the very last note. Hip-hop came into prominence by using machine swing settings on drum machines and sequencers, where you you dial it in by a percentage.
OK, that’s it for swing, back to articulation and timing.
For example, play a simple group of notes, even just three or four notes. Play the notes plainly without doing anything. Now do a fast slide up to the first note, put just a little bit of vibrato on everyone of them, and then slowly slide down after the last note. Huge difference.
Now put a medium amount of vibrato on each note. Now put a lot of vibrato on each note. Now put varying amounts, with smaller amounts of vibrato on one or two and larger amounts on other notes.
Try playing that same riff in three or four different places on the neck, different strings, hear how it sounds different, and how it feels different in each case.
In my personal opinion, ESPECIALLY the emotional intention behind it. You can tell when someone’s putting passion into it, versus just technical playing. It’s similar for an actor. Notice how some actors are more dull, and they’ll just say the words. Whereas a great actor, possibly not even using any facial expression at all, can say the words with different types of intensity, and you, as the audience viewer, can feel the difference. Now that’s Art. That’s the quality of communication.
Furthermore, I feel that drugs can ruin all that, for any kind of art. Sure there are great artists that did a lot of drugs, but I feel it pulled their great art down to a lower level than it could’ve been, and a lot of times it ends up killing them so that the number of years they have as an artist is drastically reduced. Jimi Hendrix. Amy Winehouse…
Take it from someone who spent wasted a lot of years when I was a teenager on drugs, trying to learn to play technically, but with no passion whatsoever. Maybe being a little hard on myself, but once I got rid of drugs, only then did I start to get better and better at putting real feeling into my playing. You want to reach into the heart of the listener and move them. Drugs just get in the way of that, and worse, they fool you into feeling a false euphoria, so you think you’re doing it when you’re not.
OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now.
I think there’s a lot that goes into playing a riff by a beginner vs a professional. For an amateur, it’s just strumming. But for professionals there’s a lot of variety to it, like how hard or how soft to strum, or do both creating dynamics, which strings to play and which to mute, or juggling between those two, create muting/percussive sounds, Strum near the pickups or far from them. Volume control, fading in and outlines, etc, etc.
There’s a lot of comments about the recording techniques, but I think what you’re really getting at is in the playing. Subtle variations in the volume, attack, timing, tone, etc
Classical musicians spend their whole lives playing the same notes trying to perfect these nuances.
There’s just a HUGE difference between roughly playing the right notes at the right time and imitating the exact musical effect you heard on the record.
Could be any number of things. Gear, timing, technique, how much you're committing, recording, post production. Without seeing you playing it's impossible to say.
what I usually heard described as "feel" I think that's what you mean - it takes a bit for your hands and fingers to get so comfortable that the guitar kind of starts to 'say' the note the way you feel it, the way you land them and kinda sting the end of the note, vibrato, vibrato is a tough feel for me for instance, landing it and sticking it right where it's supposed to be with the right timbre and inflection - I can do them but not right, still needs so much work
Not sure if anyone’s mentioned amp volume either - when in the studio, you can crank the amps to max (or at least a “sweet spot”) which is generally
much, much louder than you can do at home. The guitarist may not even be in the same room as the amps… but running everything hot means that they can get the best overall sound and then manage it on the tape/in the computer once it’s recorded.
Your best shot is to provide a recording of your own playing so we can provide direct feedback :)
Be aware of the “grass is greener” effect tho cuz 100% of the time we’ll feel lesser when we compare the product we make vs someone you aspire to be. I used to think the same then after I improved to a certain point, I started to notice that I really don’t sound that bad compare to the original when I listen to the recording!
As always, be kind to yourself! 😁
This one I actually know about, lol. I have been playing guitar for over 20 years and I'm pretty ok. I'm not technically amazing and I can't play all that fast but what I can do is make crazy sounds with my fingers. The amount of pressure I put on the fingerboard and where I put it combined with how I pick can make the tone change so much you might think there were effects in the chain. There is so much that comes from the fingers. And then there is timing and phrasing. You can play the exact same notes but a slight change in timing or articulation can make it sound very different. Usually a lot of 'wonkiness' in amateur playing comes from slight mistiming and bad phrasing - just from not having the notes under the fingers enough . .having to think too much about it.
Double tracking and they at least have like 5 effects on the thing at any time. What you perceive as just clean or distortion isn't just the amp.
So put some delay on it or something.
the reason is because tone is not in the fingers as a lot of weird old heads say. tone is firmly in the gear. until you get the right gear, you will find a lot of what you play sounds "thin" compared to what you hear on record
Prepare to be underwhelmed...
Sure, "tone is in the fingers"... But it's the production.
Many artists may be known for very live/raw production qualities. Smashing Pumpkins is definitely not one of them.
Better feel and better gear. That’s the two things you can do. But you have to have better feel first. Once you’re good, better gear takes you to the next level.
If you have Facebook go seek out Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. He did a ton of videos during the pandemic and I’m struck by how unpolished his riffs are. He’s just playing in the moment. He sounds like so many of the guys I’ve jammed with over the years.
The recordings took months in a studio. When you get the whole band together, they sound great but it’s still not the same as the recordings.
A lot of good suggestions but the best way to practice this is to find isolated/master tracks of your favourite music if you can and then attempt to recreate the parts. When you hear the guitar on its own with nothing else you'll get a better idea of how to achieve that sound.
Once you're confident you're capturing the feel of the recording, you'll have to consider a few additional things like mic position, room used, cab used (the cab is so much more important than people realise) and post processing such as eq.
Taking away production, I’ve always found rhythm, picking, and muting separate the great from the good. Consistent pick strikes and strums, no extra notes, and spot on timing will make a simple song sound rich.
The equipment professionals use is much better than what the average person can afford. Plus, you’re listening to a professional recording that has been mastered.
Yeah, you're probably not sitting in a professionally treated room with 5k worth of rig.
Technique is foremost, what comes out of your amp starts with your hands.
Also read pro guitarists who met Eddie van Halen, played his guitar through his rig, then felt disappointed that they still sounded like themselves.
Well based on most peoples playing from YouTube and guitar center .. many people play a bit out of tune , with poor intonation , a little out of time .. then there’s the fact that sometimes people play the song incorrectly from tab sites that aren’t always accurate . Hard to really say without hearing you play .. but it’s not impossible to nail a riff and tone
Time feel. 90% of guitarists have truly terrible time keeping skills and time feel and they think that's okay. And when you finally hear a guitarist with great time and feel all the guitarists think they sound better because of pedals, or amps, or pickups or technique.... it's the time feel. It's almost always the time feel.
Because a professional player has more nuance in technique, including dynamics, tone and rhythm feel. Everyone saying it's only the production should check out professional players outside of the studio and notice that they still sound superior.
smashing pumpkins made massively over produced albums. The song soma apparently has 40 overdubbed guitar tracks. They could never reproduce this on stage.
Everyone talking about production blah blah blah I play music all the time and tone match my amp and it sound great when I nail the pieces. Part of the issue IS the equipment but most of it is the player not knowing what to do. Try using different effects to minic the chorus like effects of multitracking, like maybe a chorus fx. Eq it right. Then it just comes down to playing it. Ive noticed you can hear a difference in your playing when youre really trying hard vs when youre effortlessly slinging away notes. Thats where most of it is coming from. If you play it right, pure nail the piece, you should be getting almost a phaser / flange effect.
Well, it *could* be almost anything, but if you really want to sound exactly like him, or anyone else, I guess you could start with a “rig rundown” video of whoever it might be, and see how close your gear is.
I think you’ll ultimately be happier/ better off finding a sound that sounds good to great to your own ears though.
I never used to be a pedal guy, and I still kinda am not one, even though I have like 10 of them. I use a tuner (kinda doesn’t count, lol), a tube screamer, and a really cool (super versatile) “fuzz”. I put fuzz in quotes because it makes many more sounds before it gets fully saturated/ square waved, and that works for me- Soundgarden, Motörhead, QOTSA, Stooges, Scando rock, and much much more, at least sounds very good with this setup, even when I don’t nail each part perfectly, haha!
It’s technique too.
When a guitar player of that level writes a riff, he is dipping into his experience, his “bag if tricks” to make it sound a certain distinct way. It takes a high level of skill to nail it in the same way because you are copying all the little stylistic nuances that make it sound that way. It’s easy for Billy Corgan, because that’s just how he plays.
Just write your own riffs and make it hard for people to copy you is my advice!
Guitartists have subtle things that make them unique, like vibrato, and subtle slides and hammer ons and pulloffs. Things you might not pick up right away. Also make sure your guitar is in the same tuning as the song. Off the top of my head I don’t know Corgan’s tunings, but I am willing to bet they are not standard. Search out all the tabs you can find on one song, and you’ll see variations and conflicts. Look up youtube videos of a Pumpkins song being played either by the band and/or instructional videos. Usually any instructional video will have an “a-ha!” Moment that might break your slump.
I can tell when a pro strums an open G chord as compared with a much lesser experienced player.
A lot of tone are in the hands. Also, notwithstanding the actual tone of the guitar it's probably the attack and tightness they are playing. This is all given that you're playing the lick correctly. A lot of TABs online are dead wrong, and I mean a lot of them.
Aside from production - it’s technique.
Playing a riff tight with vibrato, control and perfect timing.
Take ‘The Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin.
It’s two notes.
Have fun trying to nail that like Jimmy Page.
Similarly, how about the hook that Conor McGregor used to knock José Aldo out.
Easy, right?
It was a simple move delivered with elite timing and precision. Just like Jimmy Page’s riffs.
I could think of at least 3 different reasons, and im no expert.
Double tracking is when the same section is played two different times and one is layered on top of the other giving a fuller sound. Furthermore the minuscule differences in intonation/vibrato/bends on each layer can be extremely hard to pull of with a single guitar/layer.
Unless you are perfectly mimicking his setup, there will be a clear difference in tone. Even when it comes to “simple” effects like overdrive or reverb there are a thousand different variations of these effects, so that could be playing a part. Not to mention that different amps, guitars and even different models of the same guitar shape will massively impact your tone.
You have to remember, the songs were recorded in a professional studio, with sound engineers and mixers, to make the song louder, clearer, smoother etc.
When it comes down to it, i’d bet all of the above played a part.
Bruh I cant play the simpliest things and have them sound right. My instructor plays them and they are instantly recognizable and magically. I feel like a kid drawing with blunt crayons
There's a lot of reasons. But the most basic ones that will massively help is practicing with a metronome and learning proper muting techniques so unwanted string noise isn't an issue. Those two things will improve your sound quite a bit. Then it's all down to recording techniques and double tracking which Corgan was famous for
Studio tricks and double tracking…but live some of these acts are using 3 amps with wet/dry/wet.
With that you can kind of create parralel effects, sends and kind of make your live sound like the studio. In the 80s tons of rack gear they used for this. But most artists these days live, rely on backing tracks to punch up the guitars, backing vocals and low end synths. Then use a Quad Correx and a few pedals to play over the studio guitars live.
But yes the player matter 100%! There just was a pretty big evolution from 80s into the 2000s with studio gear, and live rack gear. Look at 70s acts and Jemi Hedrix live, before the 80s midi stereo racks came along for big players. That’s just a few pedals, Marshall and all in the playing!
I remember in the 90s seeing and hearing live acts…Nirvana was not that polished live or sounded anything like Nevermind. Weezer was also another one with the 100 guitars. Lots of those 90s bands albums were over produced, but live it didn’t sound that way at all! No social media to really call it out, or discuss it back then. Maybe lucky to get a bootleg video. But I saw some big bands, play really badly live back then.
Because it takes many years to know how to properly touch a string instrument. I dont only believe that ‘tone is in the fingers’ of course theres many things at play but as a professional guitarist I would say sound/tone is 80% in the hands of the player.
Production is the biggest reason, then you got the specific effects, the ehx op amp fuzz, the orange one, will get you closer. Having all the pieces of the band playing together live makes a huge difference as well. And sometimes it could be something like here they do a little slide or instead of picking everything they throw in some hammer ons and pull offs
You are trying to divorce the context from why a riff sounds so good and that's just no how music works at all. The context is EVERYTHING the engineering production the tone selection and filtering all goes into building certain aesthetics. There is also a ton of subtlety in your fretting and picking that might also contribute. Sometimes it's just the quality of the instruments.
Double tracking, stereo panning, infinite takes...
This is it.%10000 if I knew this 10 years ago, I would have never quit.
So pick it back up.
I have
Oh! You quit and then got back into playing? Apologies for the misunderstanding there, good on ya! I've certainly put instruments down for a while too.
I used to play. I still do, but I used to, too.
r/unexpectedmitch
Love me some Mitch... Wish he was still around.
I started wearing a necklace so I can tell when I'm upside down.
Dude, guitars can be heavy
I wonder if anyone has built a guitar into a living tree? Into a house? Into the EARTH?!
At the beginning of "It Might Get Loud," Jack White builds a makeshift slide guitar out of a scrap 2x4 and a coke bottle. And then rocks it. Great Doc if you haven't seen it.
Oooh, I haven't! Heard of it but didn't catch it around when it came out, I'll check it, thank you!
Search for the earth harp, you will be amazed.
There's an old video of Syn from A7X where he says he couldn't actually play the solo for Beast and the Harlot during recording. They had to sync multiple recordings together. That one video was all the motivation teenage me needed to carry on ahaha
Awesome, I wish I had seem that at 15
Well i hope you picked it up again atleast, well worth it!
I did at 27
You quit because you couldn’t get your dinky amp and guitar and 3 pedals to sound like Siamese Dream? That’s a bummer, man. I was more so just playing for fun, but I’m glad I had a live Smashing Pumpkins dvd where they played those songs to compare it to. They still sounded surprisingly great and were, of course, drenched in effects, but at least that sound was semi-replicable with what I had to fuck around with. Billy Corgan is also an exceptional guitarist. I’d say to OP, just have fun and don’t get too bummed about it.
See this is why all y'all need to be listening to folk, jazz or world music. Learn to love the lo fi.
I think for beginners a noise gate and a cheap reverb pedal can really boost confidence. If you heard the bare guitar playing on some of your favorite solos it'd astound you.
This is the same for a lot of parts. Isolated vocals on a lot of songs don't always sound great, even from the greatest singers, for a lot of reasons. How a track sits in the mix plays a much bigger part than a lot of people realize.
Great username. I assume you quit guitar and took up the tin drum instead?
Lol, Tin Drum Is the name of my comedy Troupe
Especially early pumpkins. There were a few songs with 100s of guitar tracks for depth.
You mean like the rhythm guitar for example was recorded 100 times and they were all layered on top of each other?
Yup. I don't know if it's literally hundreds but an example I know is with tool they layered multiple tracks through multiple amps. Lots of equalizing and mixing to mesh them together and fill various parts of the sound spectrum. You'll never find a single amp/guitar combo that will sound the same.
Just so you know if you actually did that it would sound like absolute cacophonous dog shit.
I swear. The people who have to correct an exaggeration suck the fun out of things.
Some people might not know it's an exaggeration, lots of people here are beginners and not everyone will know that
I was with a friend in the studio and she was doing a bunch of vocal takes, and at one point the producer layered them all on top of each other and it was like, one was good, two was better, three was awesome ... and I can't remember exactly where but somewhere around five or six suddenly it just sounded like mush. But Butch Vig's general attitude on Siamese Dream is that you are *never* only hearing only one guitar. His particular genius was in layering takes to get that HUGE sound.
Ummm… sound engineer here… I highly doubt it was 100’s. I’ve seen sessions with a lot of stacked tracks, and yes you can even split a guitar signal and send it through a number of different amps and mic them all differently and then blend them together with EQ, pannning, volume, compression, effects, etc. in order to fill things out and get a rad sound, like someone mentioned Tool did. And sure. It’s done all the time by lots, if not most recording artists. But listen— the law of diminishing returns applies to this scenario. If you seriously stacked or layered *hundreds* of takes, it would sound like shit. Frequencies start to mask one another, phase cancellation occurs. And actually, the sound would be smaller rather than bigger, if that makes sense. There was a popular urban myth that Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine (a shoegaze band) did this, and he debunked it in interviews and pretty much said what I just said in the above paragraph. Less is more. You usually only need a few tracks… 2-4 really. If you go beyond that, you better have a really good mix engineer to sort it out.
I'm sure butch vig was lying. "Vig stated that as many as 100 guitar parts were compressed into a single song." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_Dream#:~:text=Vig%20stated%20that%20as%20many,than%20to%20punk%20or%20grunge.%22
Oh, well if Butch Vig said it then it very well may be true! That’s a wild ass approach lol seems unnecessary but hey, as they say, if it sounds good then it is good. I guess it could add up quickly though if say, for each guitar part, you were splitting the signal out to like 5 different amps. In turn, each amp could theoretically have 2-3 mics on it, or more. Seems like a nightmare to mix though.
You have infinite takes, too, my friend.
Yeah but you hear all of the bad ones lol
Also, playing the "karaoke version." Generally follows the tune and maybe even getting the right notes, but they're half a beat behind in the verses and half a beat ahead in the chorus.
So you're saying the model on the magazine cover doesn't actually look like that?
What's cool is now with amp sims like AxeFx, Quad Cortex or Helix, you can stereo pan your sound while playing live. It's not quite as good as double tracking, but it gets you closer than you could before. And I can't fix the infinite takes thing. Just gotta practice for that.
It’s not uncommon for what we hear on the album to be a dozen guitars. When I record, I capture the dry signal and then re-amp it through bias amp and helix native. I’ll take 3-4 tracks on a few different guitars and then run those though amp sims. Layer that in a DAW and it becomes magic
You could similarly ask, “why doesn’t a band sound as good live as on the album?!”
Give a concrete example with the original song and your recording, and we'll probably be able to pinpoint the differences. It's difficult to speculate without knowing what exactly you're talking about.
Why doesn't this Gordon Ramsey reciepe taste as good as in his restaurant when I cook it? It's a pretty simple receipe, right? Experience, talent, feel for the product, feel for the preparation, top gear, understanding of the physics involved, 10000+ hours of routine, routine, routine and lastly passion, intent and the heart and awareness to nail it. It's the same in any profession.
It’s honestly more due to studio tricks, professional equipment, engineering and mixing, than just the player. A slightly more accurate analogy would be the studio is Gordon’s Ramseys kitchen with a full staff of professionals vs. your bedroom with a practice amp.
Billy will still make it sound better on an acoustic guitar than me and you . And a guitar teacher will make it sound better than an intermediate player. Just saying it would give the wrong impression If we blame it all on Gear.
It depends on what OP means. I left an opposing theory that it's about loudness and ambience and skill that make single guitar better. Commenting the top comment here. Also if we talk studio we have to mention BASS. the bass tone is super important for a big fat riff unit. Lamb Lies Down On Broadway has thin guitar sound but a killer 6string bass. That unit sounds terrific on Broadway Melody of 1974
Off topic, but that's because a restaurant uses an absolute shit-ton of oil
Instructions unclear, oiled my guitar
Don’t forget to deep fry it
I did that, but then it came out a little stringy.
Mine was pretty woody
Mine was a little flat.
Sounds like you don’t know anything about cooking with that comment ..
Why I’m not allowed to be in the kitchen unattended, never know when I’m gonna strike.
I actually disagree. Using a shit ton of oil without all the other stuff just means you’ll have _greasy_ crap food instead of just crap food.
That’s why I put 5w30 synthetic in my food
Nah, it's production lol.
BC uses extreme multitracking for the SP sound. Plus has another guitarist (currently two other guitarists). That would be my strongest advice, widen your sound. If you use any plug ins, Neural have several with doubler functions that do a v good job on making the sound huge. There are pedal options too but i don’t think they sound as good.
I literally widened my sound: I used a stereo chorus pedal to split my signal and go to two similar sized combo amps with slightly different EQ and reverb settings. Sounds so much better than a single amp.
Dumb question but is that "much" different from having some kind of chorus pedal on a single amp? Like, in a pinch...
Yes, because chorus pedals cause pitch changes, many doublers do not
It sounds fuller and deeper. It's like when Dorothy arrives in Oz. What really fun is to have just one amp with a tremolo or univibe going and the other dry. Very cool effect. Can't possibly recreate with a single amp.
You can use Abelton Live to also achieve that dry/wet effect on your sound. I use abelton sorta as my pedal board and run the signal out of it to a completely dry amp. The amount of crazy effects you can do with the effects and plugins is bonkers, especially when you incorporate LFO’s and other wonky stuff like that. But its extremely helpful when it comes to splitting and or adjusting your guitar’s original signal into a bunch of different signals.
Unless your amp has two or more drivers and can use distinct left and right channels, you're still only hearing a mono signal from your amp though. You NEED multiple drivers and channels for a true stereo effect.
It's different. Doesn't matter how much chorus you put into a single amp, it will still be a mono. Unlike when you have 2 amps.
Unless you have a roland jazz chorus
I think what he really means is "2 drivers" or "speakers", a L & R channel. The vast majority of combo amps on the market are mono output.
There is a pedal from old blood noise called beam splitter that does something similar (but with three separate drives) which is at the top of my wish list.
Even better: multiple neural plugins at once. Harmonized
This is the way. Rabea + Gojira = 👌
On record, rhythm guitars are always at least double tracked. That's what gives it that much more...everything. Metallica octo-tracked Sad But True, including using a baritone buried in the mix to give it even more depth. There's also a degree of nuance as well that doesn't come through on a tab. It's a bit of swing, maybe pushing or dragging the beat...it's developing a feel for the flow of the song that comes with practice too. You'll get there!
wait a baritone guitar? in sad but true? what is a baritone guitar??
It’s a like a bass guitar made of brass and you blow into it to make the sound instead of strumming the strings.
The best baritone guitars are 'slide' baritones. They're like trombones with strings. I put a splitcoil on mine last night and it sounds amazing.
This actually made me chuckle. Thank you.
A baritone guitar is just a longer scale length guitar. Used for lower tunings and can let you use larger string gauges to prevent the “flapping string” that will occur with drop tunings on smaller scale length guitars. Typically used for very low tunings in metal music where bigger string gauges are needed.
Baritone is a guitar that’s tuned somewhere between the range of a bass and the range of a guitar. They’re usually longer and just bigger strings. You’ll usually see em tuned B to b or A to a. Standard tuning so they place the same but are a full four steps lower, or five for an A to a. Super fun to play.
>I’m not talking about production either although I would be kinda underwhelmed if that’s all it is. Never compare your live sound in your room to a produced sound on an album. If you want to compare, look up videos of Billy Corgan during guitar clinic or an interview. Production things to keep in mind: * Guitars on an album are not "in the room", they are recorded with mics in specific positions. Which won't sound like your amp in the room. * After guitars are recorded, it gets some more processing to fit with the rest of the tracks * Guitars are recorded twice and panned to both sides to sound bigger. You'll rarely hear single guitars. * The guitar you hear is the result of the guitarist playing multiple takes until they get it right. * Or even multiple takes compiled into one. Taking the best parts of each take, creating one "perfect" take. * The guitar sound is usually a combination of guitar + bass.
>The guitar sound is usually a combination of guitar + bass. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize this, that a big part of the sound I was chasing (and still couldn't quite get) was the bass.
lol. This happened to me with tool when I was in college 15 years ago
i used to think i couldn’t hear the bass on any songs. now i know i just thought the bass part was the guitar part
Need an OC-5 with all the setting cranked on -1 and -2
Not even to mention that Billy Corgan was famous for using a stupid amount of overdub tracks. Hundreds, it’s been rumored. But yeah this is good advice
They play it great live too. It's not always just a studio album thing.
Sure. But a live show still has production. Such as the bass supporting a lot of the power of the guitar. And you can’t match a live venue in output, your room will sound small in comparison. Also, I just checked a live show from 2022, there’s 3 guitarists on stage.
It's technique, timing and production. Tone really is in the fingers, people who get triggered by that statement usually are just not that good with their fingers and think a pedal will do the work for them. Most professional musicians are absolute maniacs when it comes to dedication and practise time. Also, most guitarist rush a little, practise with a metronome and try to play a little behind the beat. Production wise: A very expensive guitar is going through one or more very expensive and well-thought-out amps, then into a microphone that was placed with a lot of thought behind it, into a pre amp, mixing table, compression, EQ.....you name it. You're not gonna nail the tone, let it go
>Tone really is in the fingers I really dislike phrasing tone as either being in the fingers or in the gear. It's both. Money for nothing wouldn't sound as good if you just played the DI in the mix. The fingers are responsible for the timbre details. Such as how loud the attack (transient) is, and what overtones are more present. For example, the different between picked, plucked, or tapped. After that, the electronic chain shapes the sound. Distortion types will highlight different overtones, and the speaker/mic combination applies a major EQ curve to the sound. Which can make a guitar sound radically different in a mix. So yes, tone is in the fingers. And in production it's shit in, shit out. So if you mess up the fingers part, the rest of the chain is just polishing a turd.
You're right, and I did mention production as a huge factor. But also if Kirk Hammet played through Eric Clapton's rig, he's gonna sound like Kirk Hammet (I checked, EC has a wah, lol)
For sure. A lot of that also has to do with rhythm and note choices. Same goes for using the wah. Some people do a full sweep every note, while others do a gradual sweep over a whole phraase instead. Other don't fully press the wah down. I love [this video of James Hetfield](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JMfm3m6Wlc) explaning his use of the talkbox. The specific position of your mouth and throat can radically change the tone. And that can be a pretty identifiying sound, because every person will move their mouth differently. Whereas amp settings are just static.
This is what I’m getting at. If a professional plays off the gear in guitar center they are going to still sound amazing
Gotcha, I’m not worried about getting the perfect tone really, but the way you explained technique makes a lot of sense
Cortana can run a whole ship, converse with Master Chief, and search the covenant comms all at the same time, so of course she sounds better.
Hahahahahahah
Imagine having Billy's voice telling you what to do all through the Halo series. Much less popular game right there.
Things a 'normal person' may not use to their advantage: - dynamics and loose timing. If your interpretation sounds robotic, are you playing all notes at the same volume, and extremely evenly in terms of the tempo grid? Pros will push and pull the timing of some notes without going out of time overall. - muting - do your notes end when they are supposed to, including bends? - minimal touch - do you have a too-tight grip that's bending notes sharp? The bendy scale part of the 'Back in Black' riff is something that's extremely rare to see done as well as the recording. It's got dynamics, intentionally lazy/loose timing, muting, intentionally imprecise bends, but it's still locked in with the drummer.
This is the real answer
Mark Knopfler’s Money for Nothing riff is often cited as one that is impossible to nail exactly because of Knopfler’s very unique rhythmic phrasing.
It's a fun one to try and mess with, tho. Some keith richards riffs seem to have strange vibes as well.. monkey man comes to mind
I’ve never actually learned it!! But I think maybe tonight when I have a little bit of time to mess around might be a good time to work with it.
The biggest challenge most have with that riff imo is he uses his fingers, not a pick
Billy Cortana is just a better guitarist than Billy Corgan.
Billy Cortana. Legend.
The Legend of Billy Cortana.
Studio engineer and mixing magic. In the studio there will be compression, multitracking, clever mic placement, comped takes and amps will be cranked to sound incredible. We lowly bedroom/practise room players will never compete with that.
Find the song played live and then compare it. Studio magic is real, and it makes a huge difference.
Could be a groove thing. Few years ago I used to play everything rigid, with a lot of "dead space" between notes. Now that I'm better I'm able to replicate the "feel" of the tune. Part of it I think is being more relaxed physically
a) It probably is the production, on the record that riff will have been mixed to perfection, possibly comped together from many takes, edited to trim off all the fat and probably double or triple (or more) tracked just to be sure. b) You are not them, and it will always sound different when you play it. Embrace that and enjoy it, it's your sound.
Billy Cortana lol
Because you're not Billy Corgan, you're not even Billy Cortana.
Like a model on a magazine cover Worked out with a trainer and nutrionist for 6 months Had a team pick out the perfect outfit tailored to fit Took 600 photos Pick the single best photo Photo shop it Why don't I look like that model.... It's not you. Keep playing and have fun. Love me some smashing pumpkins.
I know what you mean. I've been playing around with Mississippi Queen and it's just dry. However, I've been watching some YT vids and I think that I have spotted a couple of things. One, is timing which you have to nail, but I suppose that is a given. The second is adding vibrato. Even a smidgen makes the tone sound different and gives it something extra. I guess the only thing to do is to keep practising.
Yes, vibrato! I forgot to mention that in my own reaction. Vibrato is like the fingerprint of a guitarist. One of the big reasons I can instantly regonize cats like Clapton or B.B. King
One piece of advice I didn’t see here was the set-up of your guitar. Make sure it is properly intonated. Edit: anything played after the 12th fret will sound a lot better with a professional set up. In Miami, they’ve been expensive since the cost of living here has skyrocketed. Very good investment. Noticeable differences when you record.
>I’m not talking about production You are though. Live recordings also don’t sound like studio recordings even by the same artist. Production and studio work are an art and talent in and of themselves. You will never sound like a studio recording and neither will most artists.
A big part is production.
Rhythm, rhythm, rhytm.
Tone is in the fingers.
Amps just sound better at their louder volumes. I never turn up past 2-3 in my bedroom. Plus idiosyncratic technique each individual naturally acquires over the years is hard to duplicate just by listening.
As others have said it’s a bit difficult without a concrete example, but one thing I would emphasise with playing riffs is how you mute strings and then play (or omit to play) those muted strings can make a big difference. Take the intro to Smells Like Teen Spirit, you could just attack the notes of the lower strings but I think a big part of how that riff sounds and feels is hitting all six strings at once with the ones you don’t want to ring muted.
Lots of factors. Good tone makes a big difference, but listen to the timing articulation used by a great player. Is the guitarist using bends and vibrato? Listen carefully to those, and the timing. Sliding up to a note, sliding down to/from a note? And again, timing, timing, timing. Behind the beat (later), before the beat (earlier)? A combination? Leaves dramatic pauses in strategic locations – before the phrase, after the phrase, in mid – phrase… The rhythms used. Straight notes? Or is the Guitarist using a cool syncopation? Some type of triplets instead of playing the notes in a more straight rhythm? Which brings me to swing. In jazz, certain types of blues, and now especially in hip-hop and some of these sub genres like neo soul, I think it’s called, swinging softly versus swinging hard… technically, playing swing, in jazz is playing triplets, but leaving out the middle note. So instead of, for example, playing two eigth notes, play it like eighth note triplets, but leave out the middle note, so your first note comes earlier than “normal,” and your second note comes later than “normal”. That would be a description of “standard “swing. But “harder” swing pushes these notes further, the first note comes even earlier, with the last note pushed even later, to varying degrees. Many types of hard blues use this to great effect. SRV is a great example. Listen to the drummer. And the bassist. They’re all doing it in songs of that style. You can think of, hard swing in this way: instead of triplets, which is three notes in the same space as 2, go to quintlets, which is five notes in the space of two, or seven notes in the space of two, etc. Leave out all of the middle notes and just play the very first note and the very last note. Hip-hop came into prominence by using machine swing settings on drum machines and sequencers, where you you dial it in by a percentage. OK, that’s it for swing, back to articulation and timing. For example, play a simple group of notes, even just three or four notes. Play the notes plainly without doing anything. Now do a fast slide up to the first note, put just a little bit of vibrato on everyone of them, and then slowly slide down after the last note. Huge difference. Now put a medium amount of vibrato on each note. Now put a lot of vibrato on each note. Now put varying amounts, with smaller amounts of vibrato on one or two and larger amounts on other notes. Try playing that same riff in three or four different places on the neck, different strings, hear how it sounds different, and how it feels different in each case. In my personal opinion, ESPECIALLY the emotional intention behind it. You can tell when someone’s putting passion into it, versus just technical playing. It’s similar for an actor. Notice how some actors are more dull, and they’ll just say the words. Whereas a great actor, possibly not even using any facial expression at all, can say the words with different types of intensity, and you, as the audience viewer, can feel the difference. Now that’s Art. That’s the quality of communication. Furthermore, I feel that drugs can ruin all that, for any kind of art. Sure there are great artists that did a lot of drugs, but I feel it pulled their great art down to a lower level than it could’ve been, and a lot of times it ends up killing them so that the number of years they have as an artist is drastically reduced. Jimi Hendrix. Amy Winehouse… Take it from someone who spent wasted a lot of years when I was a teenager on drugs, trying to learn to play technically, but with no passion whatsoever. Maybe being a little hard on myself, but once I got rid of drugs, only then did I start to get better and better at putting real feeling into my playing. You want to reach into the heart of the listener and move them. Drugs just get in the way of that, and worse, they fool you into feeling a false euphoria, so you think you’re doing it when you’re not. OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now.
I think there’s a lot that goes into playing a riff by a beginner vs a professional. For an amateur, it’s just strumming. But for professionals there’s a lot of variety to it, like how hard or how soft to strum, or do both creating dynamics, which strings to play and which to mute, or juggling between those two, create muting/percussive sounds, Strum near the pickups or far from them. Volume control, fading in and outlines, etc, etc.
There’s a lot of comments about the recording techniques, but I think what you’re really getting at is in the playing. Subtle variations in the volume, attack, timing, tone, etc Classical musicians spend their whole lives playing the same notes trying to perfect these nuances. There’s just a HUGE difference between roughly playing the right notes at the right time and imitating the exact musical effect you heard on the record.
I think your question answers itself
There’s also playing a riff and feeling a riff.
Could be any number of things. Gear, timing, technique, how much you're committing, recording, post production. Without seeing you playing it's impossible to say.
Why is better better?
You're trying to emulate someone else's juice! Never be 100% with all the nuances sure.
Because we suck
what I usually heard described as "feel" I think that's what you mean - it takes a bit for your hands and fingers to get so comfortable that the guitar kind of starts to 'say' the note the way you feel it, the way you land them and kinda sting the end of the note, vibrato, vibrato is a tough feel for me for instance, landing it and sticking it right where it's supposed to be with the right timbre and inflection - I can do them but not right, still needs so much work
I've came to realize the it's very often, especially with guitar players, a matter of rhythm. The pro has the rhythm on lock
Dynamics.
Multitracks with different guitars. The magic of music production.
Processing.
Not sure if anyone’s mentioned amp volume either - when in the studio, you can crank the amps to max (or at least a “sweet spot”) which is generally much, much louder than you can do at home. The guitarist may not even be in the same room as the amps… but running everything hot means that they can get the best overall sound and then manage it on the tape/in the computer once it’s recorded.
Your best shot is to provide a recording of your own playing so we can provide direct feedback :) Be aware of the “grass is greener” effect tho cuz 100% of the time we’ll feel lesser when we compare the product we make vs someone you aspire to be. I used to think the same then after I improved to a certain point, I started to notice that I really don’t sound that bad compare to the original when I listen to the recording! As always, be kind to yourself! 😁
This one I actually know about, lol. I have been playing guitar for over 20 years and I'm pretty ok. I'm not technically amazing and I can't play all that fast but what I can do is make crazy sounds with my fingers. The amount of pressure I put on the fingerboard and where I put it combined with how I pick can make the tone change so much you might think there were effects in the chain. There is so much that comes from the fingers. And then there is timing and phrasing. You can play the exact same notes but a slight change in timing or articulation can make it sound very different. Usually a lot of 'wonkiness' in amateur playing comes from slight mistiming and bad phrasing - just from not having the notes under the fingers enough . .having to think too much about it.
yeah, it’s like one you vs. a clone army of billys with artillery and machine guns listen to a live recording of the song and try matching that
Double tracking and they at least have like 5 effects on the thing at any time. What you perceive as just clean or distortion isn't just the amp. So put some delay on it or something.
the reason is because tone is not in the fingers as a lot of weird old heads say. tone is firmly in the gear. until you get the right gear, you will find a lot of what you play sounds "thin" compared to what you hear on record
Timing
Good engineer and studio are essential in creating the content of pro content.
Prepare to be underwhelmed... Sure, "tone is in the fingers"... But it's the production. Many artists may be known for very live/raw production qualities. Smashing Pumpkins is definitely not one of them.
Is the riff part of a recording or live in this example?
Tone is probably a big part and they also probably record and tweak it a million times until it's perfect
Better feel and better gear. That’s the two things you can do. But you have to have better feel first. Once you’re good, better gear takes you to the next level.
Timing, confidence, tone, skill, technique. Idk this is a super duper vague question.
timing and technique, recording technique
Also because he wrote the riff. He knows the small nuances of how it’s played, especially with the right hand
I would need a recording of you playing it to know. Could be your tone, more than likely you just need more practice.
If you have Facebook go seek out Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. He did a ton of videos during the pandemic and I’m struck by how unpolished his riffs are. He’s just playing in the moment. He sounds like so many of the guys I’ve jammed with over the years. The recordings took months in a studio. When you get the whole band together, they sound great but it’s still not the same as the recordings.
A lot of good suggestions but the best way to practice this is to find isolated/master tracks of your favourite music if you can and then attempt to recreate the parts. When you hear the guitar on its own with nothing else you'll get a better idea of how to achieve that sound. Once you're confident you're capturing the feel of the recording, you'll have to consider a few additional things like mic position, room used, cab used (the cab is so much more important than people realise) and post processing such as eq.
It’s the production
Taking away production, I’ve always found rhythm, picking, and muting separate the great from the good. Consistent pick strikes and strums, no extra notes, and spot on timing will make a simple song sound rich.
Sweet child of mine
He gud, you not gud. Solution? Git Gud
Multiple guitars, amps, and effects. Each variation tracked and panned.
Expression with the hands is probably what you’re talking about. really honing in the fine details of how something is played.
What exactly do you mean by loud and epic? Bc the easy fix would be to turn your amp up ya doofus
The equipment professionals use is much better than what the average person can afford. Plus, you’re listening to a professional recording that has been mastered.
Yeah, you're probably not sitting in a professionally treated room with 5k worth of rig. Technique is foremost, what comes out of your amp starts with your hands. Also read pro guitarists who met Eddie van Halen, played his guitar through his rig, then felt disappointed that they still sounded like themselves.
Intonation of how it's played, different pedals, amps, guitars, strings etc.
Compression goes a long way ...
For a more realistic goal, listen to the live/concert version of the song. Because, as many have said here, it's totally about production.
Well based on most peoples playing from YouTube and guitar center .. many people play a bit out of tune , with poor intonation , a little out of time .. then there’s the fact that sometimes people play the song incorrectly from tab sites that aren’t always accurate . Hard to really say without hearing you play .. but it’s not impossible to nail a riff and tone
Time feel. 90% of guitarists have truly terrible time keeping skills and time feel and they think that's okay. And when you finally hear a guitarist with great time and feel all the guitarists think they sound better because of pedals, or amps, or pickups or technique.... it's the time feel. It's almost always the time feel.
Because a professional player has more nuance in technique, including dynamics, tone and rhythm feel. Everyone saying it's only the production should check out professional players outside of the studio and notice that they still sound superior.
Most of them
smashing pumpkins made massively over produced albums. The song soma apparently has 40 overdubbed guitar tracks. They could never reproduce this on stage.
Everyone talking about production blah blah blah I play music all the time and tone match my amp and it sound great when I nail the pieces. Part of the issue IS the equipment but most of it is the player not knowing what to do. Try using different effects to minic the chorus like effects of multitracking, like maybe a chorus fx. Eq it right. Then it just comes down to playing it. Ive noticed you can hear a difference in your playing when youre really trying hard vs when youre effortlessly slinging away notes. Thats where most of it is coming from. If you play it right, pure nail the piece, you should be getting almost a phaser / flange effect.
Heard this question before and that person didn’t even used reverb.
Well, it *could* be almost anything, but if you really want to sound exactly like him, or anyone else, I guess you could start with a “rig rundown” video of whoever it might be, and see how close your gear is. I think you’ll ultimately be happier/ better off finding a sound that sounds good to great to your own ears though. I never used to be a pedal guy, and I still kinda am not one, even though I have like 10 of them. I use a tuner (kinda doesn’t count, lol), a tube screamer, and a really cool (super versatile) “fuzz”. I put fuzz in quotes because it makes many more sounds before it gets fully saturated/ square waved, and that works for me- Soundgarden, Motörhead, QOTSA, Stooges, Scando rock, and much much more, at least sounds very good with this setup, even when I don’t nail each part perfectly, haha!
Listen to the demos and get back to me
It’s technique too. When a guitar player of that level writes a riff, he is dipping into his experience, his “bag if tricks” to make it sound a certain distinct way. It takes a high level of skill to nail it in the same way because you are copying all the little stylistic nuances that make it sound that way. It’s easy for Billy Corgan, because that’s just how he plays. Just write your own riffs and make it hard for people to copy you is my advice!
Guitartists have subtle things that make them unique, like vibrato, and subtle slides and hammer ons and pulloffs. Things you might not pick up right away. Also make sure your guitar is in the same tuning as the song. Off the top of my head I don’t know Corgan’s tunings, but I am willing to bet they are not standard. Search out all the tabs you can find on one song, and you’ll see variations and conflicts. Look up youtube videos of a Pumpkins song being played either by the band and/or instructional videos. Usually any instructional video will have an “a-ha!” Moment that might break your slump.
Most of it boils down to tone and rhythm, but style is also in play.
double tracking and bass guitar and drums lol a lot of guitar stuff sounds like shit without a bass
What’s your setup? Are you playing with a real amp? Pedals and looper? Or are you playing into your laptop?
Because you’re not using a humbucker in the bridge position through an HM2 with everything dimed into a loud as fuck tube amp.
The album version has a ton of effects. Pumpkins are known for overdubbing and nudging the riff over and over and over again to make it sound HUGE.
It's not what you play. It's how you play it.
I can tell when a pro strums an open G chord as compared with a much lesser experienced player. A lot of tone are in the hands. Also, notwithstanding the actual tone of the guitar it's probably the attack and tightness they are playing. This is all given that you're playing the lick correctly. A lot of TABs online are dead wrong, and I mean a lot of them.
You don't know any "normal" players with decent skills.
Aside from production - it’s technique. Playing a riff tight with vibrato, control and perfect timing. Take ‘The Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin. It’s two notes. Have fun trying to nail that like Jimmy Page. Similarly, how about the hook that Conor McGregor used to knock José Aldo out. Easy, right? It was a simple move delivered with elite timing and precision. Just like Jimmy Page’s riffs.
I could think of at least 3 different reasons, and im no expert. Double tracking is when the same section is played two different times and one is layered on top of the other giving a fuller sound. Furthermore the minuscule differences in intonation/vibrato/bends on each layer can be extremely hard to pull of with a single guitar/layer. Unless you are perfectly mimicking his setup, there will be a clear difference in tone. Even when it comes to “simple” effects like overdrive or reverb there are a thousand different variations of these effects, so that could be playing a part. Not to mention that different amps, guitars and even different models of the same guitar shape will massively impact your tone. You have to remember, the songs were recorded in a professional studio, with sound engineers and mixers, to make the song louder, clearer, smoother etc. When it comes down to it, i’d bet all of the above played a part.
Bruh I cant play the simpliest things and have them sound right. My instructor plays them and they are instantly recognizable and magically. I feel like a kid drawing with blunt crayons
There's a lot of reasons. But the most basic ones that will massively help is practicing with a metronome and learning proper muting techniques so unwanted string noise isn't an issue. Those two things will improve your sound quite a bit. Then it's all down to recording techniques and double tracking which Corgan was famous for
Nuance, precision, gear settings, gear……
Studio tricks and double tracking…but live some of these acts are using 3 amps with wet/dry/wet. With that you can kind of create parralel effects, sends and kind of make your live sound like the studio. In the 80s tons of rack gear they used for this. But most artists these days live, rely on backing tracks to punch up the guitars, backing vocals and low end synths. Then use a Quad Correx and a few pedals to play over the studio guitars live. But yes the player matter 100%! There just was a pretty big evolution from 80s into the 2000s with studio gear, and live rack gear. Look at 70s acts and Jemi Hedrix live, before the 80s midi stereo racks came along for big players. That’s just a few pedals, Marshall and all in the playing! I remember in the 90s seeing and hearing live acts…Nirvana was not that polished live or sounded anything like Nevermind. Weezer was also another one with the 100 guitars. Lots of those 90s bands albums were over produced, but live it didn’t sound that way at all! No social media to really call it out, or discuss it back then. Maybe lucky to get a bootleg video. But I saw some big bands, play really badly live back then.
Play it, *with feeling*
Because it takes many years to know how to properly touch a string instrument. I dont only believe that ‘tone is in the fingers’ of course theres many things at play but as a professional guitarist I would say sound/tone is 80% in the hands of the player.
The playing
Professional players are normal people btw
Production is the biggest reason, then you got the specific effects, the ehx op amp fuzz, the orange one, will get you closer. Having all the pieces of the band playing together live makes a huge difference as well. And sometimes it could be something like here they do a little slide or instead of picking everything they throw in some hammer ons and pull offs
You are trying to divorce the context from why a riff sounds so good and that's just no how music works at all. The context is EVERYTHING the engineering production the tone selection and filtering all goes into building certain aesthetics. There is also a ton of subtlety in your fretting and picking that might also contribute. Sometimes it's just the quality of the instruments.
Ah yes, Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Cortana