ocnor
Lord Of The Thighs
Well there's your problem. Page's tone is nothing like that. You need to record thin weak tracks multiple times with different guitars and mix them together until it sounds thick and full.
Well there's your problem. Page's tone is nothing like that. You need to record thin weak tracks multiple times with different guitars and mix them together until it sounds thick and full.
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
One of the reasons Page got such interesting tones is that he recorded the guitar many times over. He really layered them. I think he was one of the first to really do that. I read that "Ten years gone" has 14 guitars layered. Whereas his live sound was pretty weedy by comparison.
By the way, I like your tone on 'The rover'. Together with bass, drums, certain keyboards and vocals, you may find it sounds better than you think at the moment.
M
mattd
New member
That's interesting! I'd never heard that before.
So, can I assume that once I get a track recorded at -18dB I could do a normalize on the track just to louden it up. Or do I then just repeat the same problem overloading the output converters with my over-loud playback?
M
mattd
New member
Thanks, man. A few other posts have suggested the weak, thin tone layered many times as a useful way to get different sound as well.
kcearl
I see deaf people
remember to turn your distortion gain down around 20-30% if you are going to layer tracks...
darrin_h2000
Banned
Ive studied up a bit and have been lucky enough to see a documentary or two about the sessions at Hedley grange...where the 4th record was made.
First of all the amp used was a 8 watt tube with a jensen speaker that broke up really well...there was a shure 545 miced off axis and a u47 distance miced...live corridor with rock walls about 48' long.
Of course a less known fact is he used a tele...not a les paul...and the 12 string on stairway and other tracks was an ovation pacemaker...and it was played by John Paul Jones.
Farview
Well-known member
There is no reason to have you tracks that loud ever and yes, you would overload playback. The other thing that will happen is you will have a hard time keeping the mix from clipping. All those signals add up, if all of them are really close to zero it doesn't take much to push the mix over.
If you are having a hard time hearing the tracks, turn your monitors up. Listening volume should never be confused with recording level OR mixing level. If the level of what you are tracking can't be heard over the rest of the stuff you have recorded, that other stuff is too loud.
Z
Zeppe
New member
No, this is a bad idea. Record the tracks at a reasonable level. A little lower than normal but not so low you would have to normalize the track to hear it. Summing the tracks together will get you to a good level. Summing normalized tracks together will repeat the same problem but with added noise.
nate_dennis
Well-known member
My computer at work has a firewall, so I can't go to his site . . . . but check out Massive Mastering. He has a great article on this concept of tracking quieter. Maybe someone else would be willing to post a link to it, but if not, just google Massive Mastering and his site has the article. It's really great.
+1 to all the talk about guitar tone. Layer your guitar tracks, pan them, try different guitars, different mic distance. Experiment. If your tracking to the computer you have unlimited tracks for trying shit out.
+1 to all the talk about guitar tone. Layer your guitar tracks, pan them, try different guitars, different mic distance. Experiment. If your tracking to the computer you have unlimited tracks for trying shit out.
Farview
Well-known member
Ninja_Drummer
New member
I kinda loled when I saw this post, I don't think it'll be really possible to get close to how Led Zepplin's recordings sounded without the exact room, equipment, technique used.
M
mattd
New member
I just took a look at this -- it's great stuff. Maybe it's what I've been doing wrong all the time -- recording everything to peak at -2 or -1. I'm eager to try the approach of peaking at -18.
Thanks to nate_dennis for posting the information!
Thanks to Farview for posting the link!
Rust E-Z
New member
JP also talked about how he used several mics at different distances to got his tone.
legionserial
New member
+100000000
You need to ask yourself "do I really expect to be able to sound like jimmy page". Are you articulated enough to reproduce every naunce of his playing?
All the gear in world will not substitute fingers.
Same deal with all the other instruments.
Are you good enough to sound like Led Zeppelin? That might sound like a harsh question, and I'm not casting any assumptions on your ability, but if just anyone could sound like Zep, either Zep wouldn't be what they are, or there'd be a lot more successful rock musicians out there.
M
mattd
New member
What I'm going for is control over sound so that I feel like I know what I'm doing. So, I'm not trying to sound like Jimmy Page or Zeppelin in particular. I'm trying to see if I can get tone out of the guitar and record it and manage it so that I can have three or four guitars on a song and hear them each fairly clearly. Zeppelin did this a lot, so they seem like a good guide.
My problem has always been having any space or breathing room between the guitars. The Eagles managed to get 4 guitars on songs and you could clearly pick out each note that was played on all of them. It's that type of thing I'm working towards -- I'm still at the point where I'm having trouble recording two different guitar parts and being able to hear clear distinction between them without resorting to panning hard left and hard right. It's that kind of thing I'm looking for help with.
Putting Led Zeppelin the in the thread title seems to have drawn people in, though.
Supercreep
Lizard People
Use different guitars, different amps, different mics, and different post-processing. All of these can be used to place sounds in their own sonic space and maintain intelligibility.
B
Bguzaldo
New member
Just like everyone else here I'm a huge fan of great tones (especially page) but you have to think, when page got his tone he wasn't going for anything other than what he liked. He wasn't trying to imitate anything else and I really believe that's where great tone comes from. I tend to think you get the best sounds when you're being relatively uninfluenced and just focus on what you think sounds good. Just mess around, EXPERIMENT and listen, you'll eventually find something you like and maybe years from now someones gonna get on these forums and ask how to get the "Mattd tone" and hopefully there will be a hippy like me telling him to "just be himself". :
Hope this helps a little, If not there's plenty of other good advice here,
-Barrett
Hope this helps a little, If not there's plenty of other good advice here,
-Barrett