Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by øøøøøøø » Sun Sep 11, 2022 11:11 am

stevejamsecono wrote:
Sun Sep 11, 2022 6:11 am
I'm pretty into this take, tbh.

I also think it depends who you're asking. Live I think tone matters more to the musician because if you feel off it's going to affect how you perform. The odds are certainly stacked against being able to pull this off successfully based on various factors, but I think that's why most people fuss over their live rigs so much. Despite living a largely Amp Du Jour life here in Brooklyn I have to say that the nights where I had more control/got to use my own stuff, I tended to be happier and play more confidently.

In the studio, I think that's more of an audience question. You nailed it when you say how much guitar tone gets mangled in order to work within the context of a mix. At that point it's such an illusion with doubletracking and eqing and stuff that it often only bears a passing resemblance to what you play in front of people with, and I think that's by design.
The things I'd maybe resist w/r/t this line of thought are:
seenoevil II wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:12 pm
When you track, it's gotta work in the mix. So, it gets hipassed, maybe reamped. Maybe the fender tone doesn't have enough mid content so you grab a p90 guitar in the studio. You have to chop, squish, nudge, blast, a instrument's tone until it works.
What's being described here is valid, but it's only one possible course out of an infinite number of possible courses (and a comparatively-recent one). Most of the engineers who made our favorite historic records would scoff at the idea of doing these things. Those engineers typically weren't "mangling" so much as they were capturing.

The better the musical sensibilities of the players/arrangers (which could be band members making up their own parts!), the less contortion is required in capture.

If reamping is being discussed (and I've done it!) it usually means a failure has occurred somewhere--either of vision (we misunderstood what we were going for), or of capture (we didn't get what we wanted).

If drastic EQ moves are being made, the part probably wasn't conceived with enough context (e.g. low chord voicings fighting with a Rhodes or whatever).

To the extent that these issues surface more when recording, it's often that it's the first time anyone really paid attention to anything but their own part.
There are some who unify and perfect a tone across all scenarios. They're called jazz musicians and they play $10k guitars through $400 solid state practice amps. So, don't do what they do. They're nuts.
Most of the people I encounter out here really doing it love a good tube amp and cool old guitar as much as anyone. Yes, there are "archtop enthusiasts" (who love the guitars themselves more than they love playing them), but most of the people actually selling concert tickets don't approach things this way, IME.
Rock music doesn't exist. It's like a Lightsaber dual. You swing a plastic rod, but the audience sees a plasma blade. The volumes involved mean that there's no real way to "hear" rock music. You feel it when it's live. It's a full body experience. To record it though, you isolate elements and do serious alchemy to combine them into something that never really happened tonally.
You only have to perform alchemy if the live show energy, the volume, the big subs, the lights, and the "full body experience" were masking and toting the water for parts and ensemble playing that weren't really right.

A great live band can go into any studio and make great-sounding takes right away.

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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by panoramic » Wed Sep 14, 2022 5:01 am

Telliot wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:48 pm
To me recording is and always will be king. Live shows are in the moment, but recordings are eternal.
Exactly. I've spent a good amount of time before each studio session setting my amps and pedals up how I want them to sound. I had photos of each item to refer to and then the 2nd time around i taped some stuff in place so I wouldn't need to deal. The tone knob on my mustang was one constant flux point so i just taped it, the treble and bass knobs on my main amp etc.
I only used 3 or 4 pedals on recordings so keeping that consistent was not hard to do.
I used to be cool, now I just complain about prices.

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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by MechaBulletBill » Wed Sep 14, 2022 6:56 am

just try to sound "good" wherever you are and whatever you have to work with

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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by jorri » Sun Sep 18, 2022 7:10 am

Tone matters more on a recording, but live has other factors.
there is a certain sonic reliability, clarity, volume/weight, ability to cut through and be generalised tone that works- also a tone thing, perhaps, but a different type of tone thing.

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