Rock Rhythm 02 - Getting The Sound

How's it going guys, and in this video we're gonna get started with getting the sound and the different sounds available to us for rock rhythm guitar. It is, after all, music that we listen to and music is of course so much about the guitar sound and the different types of rock guitar. So we can get to get into different genres and we're going to be looking at uh different things that we can do on the amplifier and different options that we have. Now I've been playing rock guitar for over 20 years now, and certainly over the 1st 10 years or so, I was very obsessed with guitar tone and trying to get just the one. Great guitar sound that I'd just turn on my amplifier and that would, that would be the sound that I want. And I did endless tweaking of EQ and gain and things like that, um, and getting lots of pedals and things in search of this tone. And in my experience, the best way to get the best tone is to buy the guitar and amplifier that gives you that tone, no matter what you do. So. So don't be over-paranoid about um EQ and tweaking those. And with game, don't be too over-paranoid about exactly where you put it. The trick is to try and ensure you have the guitar and amplifier that are giving you the sound naturally that you are wanting. And in my experience, as I say, this is what I recommend and I use these days. I highly recommend low. All valve amplifiers. 100%, and this is the best way to get the best sound in at home, and in band practises, and even at a gig. I'm when I say low wattage valve amplifiers, this can be anything from the 1 watt valve amplifier that I demoed in my electric guitar starter course, and that I'm using now, my Blackstar HD1. Or um even. A 3 or a 5 watt valve amplifier, which a 5 watt all valve amplifier will be good enough or or loud enough to gig with and to uh do band practises with. Because whenever you're gigging, or even if you're doing band practises, often you're going to put a microphone in front of the amplifier anyway. So that's the thing that's gonna be picking up the sound and 5 watts of all valve power is plenty. Now you likely have a solid state amplifier at the moment, so your solid state amplifier can be anything from 5 or 10 watts up to 100 watts, so you're thinking, why is 1 watt loud enough? But it's the difference between valve and solid state technology that uh means that the the wattage means a totally different thing. And 1 watt or 5 watts of valve power can be as loud as a 30 watt solid state amplifier. Uh but again. Different brands and and and different amplifiers, even different versions of the same amplifier can sound totally, totally different, so I don't want to sway you other than these are the things to be looking into when you're trying to get a good rock guitar sound. And in my opinion, we really need to create three key tones with um the equipment, with the guitar and and amp and pedal that we may have, but we'll be looking at different. Options, but no matter of the make of amplifier or what type of equipment that you have, you need to try and create 3 distinct guitar tones to be able to cover any eventuality of any rock style genre. There are many variations on these, but we need 3 core ones. And the first one is simply just a clean guitar tone. A clean guitar tone can be described as just your guitar but amplified, so the same sound as you would get if there was no added overdrive or effects, basically. That's our starting point, that's our base point. The second guitar tone can be described as a crunch sound or an overdrive sound. So these um aren't as heavy as their overdrive or fuzz counterparts, they sound more like this. Now this crunch is so important because often in rock we're not really going to use the clean sound unless it's for specific effect. But, but when we hear rock rhythm guitar, it is often a lot cleaner tone, it's a lot more on the overdrive and this crunch side of the spectrum than it is heavy distortion. The heavy distortion straight. Either way, you are heading into a almost a different genre of music, you're really going into metal and heavier genres. Um, but this crunch and this overdrive tone is just where the amplifier or the tones start to break up. And then of course we have this heavier sound which we'd class as heavy overdrive or distortion. Now straight away there you may think, oh, distortion is definitely my favourite, that's the kind of sound that I like. And that's, that can be typical. But when that sound is played within the rest of the band, so say it's recorded or when you're playing with other musicians, the rhythm guitar can get lost and um you can't often hear it among the other musicians. And if you do listen to just the rhythm guitar parts by bands such as AC DC and other bands from the seventies in particular. The rhythm guitar parts are a lot cleaner than you may be playing them at at the moment than than maybe the settings on your amplifier. So I really recommend sticking more towards that crunch side for most of the things that we're going for in this course and only going to the heavier, uh, more artificial sound of distortion, that more more saturated sound of distortion um for specific effect. Now how can we create these sounds no matter what. Equipment that you have at home. Well, we have, there are so many different options um for this depending on the gear that you have, from plugging straight into a computer and using GarageBand or guitar rig or anything like that, to many different amplifier and pedal um combinations and even multi-effects. But I'm gonna talk you through the most common 3 ways to get these 3 sounds, um, right now. And one of the most common ways to do this affordably. Is to have a one channel amplifier, which means your amplifier, you turn it on and that is the sound that you can get. You can adjust that sound, but you don't have another channel, you don't have a button that you can press which changes everything. And with that one channel amplifier, you're probably going to need some guitar pedals to give you more overdrive options. Now that's great cos guitar pedals are much more affordable than amplifiers. They can be cheap and you can therefore swap them often, but keep the same amplifier. Uh, a one channel amplifier is often a lot more affordable as well. Than 2 or 3 or more channel amplifiers. But that's one way of of doing it. So one channel amplifier, and then using different pedals, which you can activate at any point in your song to get a heavier or less heavier sound. The second option is by using a 2-channel amplifier, which means you have a button on the on the guitar amplifier, which can also be activated. Activated by a foot pedal, if you need to change between songs. And that would typically change between a clean sound and an overdriven sound. So we have this clean channel and a crunch sound. You can even get amplifiers that um have a slightly clean to overdrive. You you turn the gain up on the uh on the clean channel and it gets a little bit of bite to it. And then the heavier channel. is total distortion, saturation, kind of heavier stuff, and you can put them both where you want it. That gives you a lot of flexibility. However, even then you might need one or two overdrive or effects pedals to get the variety of tones that we that we require. And especially if you want um a lead boost to be able to hear any improvised solos that you have. Especially when you're playing along to the record, or you're practising with other musicians or you're in a band, you typically need that that lead boost which can be done by overdrive pedals, such as the Ibanez Tube screamer pedal, which is one of my favourite lead guitar boosts. And of course there are guitar amplifiers that have. Three or more channels, which can seemingly be the holy grail, if you have 44 channels on your amplifier, you can dial in every one of these tones that I've just described and have another one as a lead boost or or anything that you want. However, having more channels on an amplifier increases the cost greatly. And also, guitar amplifiers with 3 or 4 channels tend to be specifically for higher gain music. They're they're more metal and very heavy rock style amplifiers, which isn't for everyone, and uh and for the rock genres that we're focusing on in this course, it's typically 1 or 2 channels that are ample. But just be aware you may need to use some guitar pedals to get different sounds, especially. If it's within the same song, so a cleaner start and then an overdriven sound, for example, like happens in Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit. Very clean sound and a very overdriven sound in the chorus. So there's a summary of the many different options that we have to create a variety of different rock guitar sounds. Um, but you will inevitably find your favourite, and if you find a one channel amp that you just turn it on. And that is the sound that you're happy with. Then in many ways, that's the holy grail, that's that's exactly what we're all looking for. And um the only downside to that is it can be quite limiting when you go between different genres and it can be limiting as a learner as you're learning about how to play different genres and styles. Um but there we, there we are to get the sound. Let's get right on with some more rock guitar techniques and let's learn some riffs.