Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

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CivoLee
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Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by CivoLee » Sun Jan 16, 2022 9:54 pm

I'd say it matters more on a recording, because the music is isolated, while live you/the audience are too wrapped up in the show for it to matter as much...if anything, I'd say all the average live music fan cares about is if your tone is excessively shrill.


What do you guys think?

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

Post by s_mcsleazy » Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:36 am

my experience is guitar tone live is basically "just get it in the ball park because it will change" where as in the studio, you got to take an almost scientific level of precision.

personally, i think perfection lies in imperfections. i think many modern recordings are at this point where things aren't going to get any more perfect, they're just going to get more anal and alienating, which is fair if that's what you're into...... just turns me off at this point. i mean the upside is it's never been easier for people to get a good guitar tone, the downside is it's kinda became a bit of an arms race.

the best example i can give is something that happened to me during lockdown. i was giving a friend of a friend who worked for the NHS a lift and i had in/casino/out - at the drive in playing in the cd player. the dude wasn't enjoying it and the first thing he went to was "well it sounds so raw, like it was the guide tracks without any treatment" i explained it was recorded live in 1998 and i liked it because it felt real, i can hear cedric straining to hit some of those notes and i can hear the mistakes, which sounds more human to me and gives me an easier time connecting with it. he stuck on something he liked and it was one of those generic djent bands with a single noun name and i couldn't connect to it at all. it was technically impressive but at the same time, part of me knew they wouldn't sound half as good live and that recording was probably spliced together from 10 or so others.

my point is, i think some people focus too much on the details and not enough on the bigger picture when it comes to "guitar tone"
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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by Pepe Silvia » Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:40 am

Live, I don't think it matters that much, or at least not to most of the audience. As more and more bands use AxeFX, I lose my desire to see live music. Everything is piped through the PA, it sounds like they are playing back the album. The amps on stage are what really give me that sensation of live music.

Pre-AxeFX, when bands were experimenting with PODs for live shows, I was not bothered by the live tone, but then when I heard the live album, i was offended by the bad tone.

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

Post by s_mcsleazy » Mon Jan 17, 2022 6:34 am

Pepe Silvia wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:40 am
Live, I don't think it matters that much, or at least not to most of the audience. As more and more bands use AxeFX, I lose my desire to see live music. Everything is piped through the PA, it sounds like they are playing back the album. The amps on stage are what really give me that sensation of live music.

Pre-AxeFX, when bands were experimenting with PODs for live shows, I was not bothered by the live tone, but then when I heard the live album, i was offended by the bad tone.
yeah. i've been to a few gigs where this has been the case and something's missing every time. i was actually talking with my cousin about this since last few gigs he's played have been with his kemper and it said it doesn't feel the same but sounds more consistent. which kinda puts me off the idea of it because i like the feel. i like the big amps going hard. it feels like i can get into it more. granted, when it comes to carrying gear, i'll take the kemper over this fucker.
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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by sal paradise » Mon Jan 17, 2022 6:45 am

The only difference for live sound is monitoring. Most places with decent monitors want your stage sound as quiet as possible, so often made little difference whether I was using an amp or direct to board. Obvs in venues without stage monitors, no amp was the worst experience of my life.

It’s all so subjective. None of it makes that much difference in the grand scheme of things. No one has won “guitar tone of the year” for their album. Don’t get me wrong, I can still get overexcited about a reverb-soaked, vintage sounding breakup that you can just about hear below the vocals, keys & drums on a song. It ends like those people who spend 3 years tweaking riffs that sit underneath vocals- no one is really going to notice.
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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by Unicorn Warrior » Mon Jan 17, 2022 9:08 pm

In my experience, I’ve had more opportunities playing live than I actually have recording. With that said, I always am trying to copy my live sound rather than to make something new with my recording sound. That may change in the coming months, however. I’ve got several new pieces of gear and effects that I likely won’t take on the road, but will have plenty of time experimenting with in our home studio.

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

Post by Telliot » 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.
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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by seenoevil II » Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:12 pm

Hot take. Live.

Here's what I mean. 80% of the gear and tonal choices a guitarist makes is for an in person context. Practicing, jamming and live. I'll use suspected pedo Pete Townshend as my example. He'd get a SG special or an LP deluxe and some Hiwatt amps and jam out on them. But when recording time came, out came a gretsch and a brownface bandmaster (IIRC).

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.

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.

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.

So, yes. The tone matters more in recording, but that's because you're changing it, sometimes drastically, from what you normally would do or even like. Didn't the stones record a lot with Champs?

Really, maybe my point is that they are completely separate things in a lot of cases.

But here comes people to take apart my argument with counter examples.

Like I said, hot take.
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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by Jaguar018 » Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:11 am

For me this depends ENTIRELY on the band (and/or what drugs you are on while listening).

Some bands are great live and suck recorded (not that I am much of a fan, but the Grateful Dead are the poster child for this). Some bands are great in the studio and not very interesting live.

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

Post by øøøøøøø » Sat Jan 22, 2022 8:51 am

I’m trying to do broadly the same thing always (even if I’m alone and nobody will ever hear it): fully show up every time.

Sometimes transcendence happens, but it tends to be on the music’s terms (not mine).

I’ve never found a benefit (or need) to assign a hierarchy of importance/effort to recording vs. live performance.

The closest thing I can say is that I tend to bring more stuff to a session than to a show… more disparate guitars and amps.

That’s partly due to practicality, but mostly due to different mindset of each situation. In a performance I’d find all the switching disruptive.

In my current touring situation I could probably arrange to play a different freshly-tuned guitar on every song if I wanted… but I still prefer to play one for the whole set.

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

Post by marqueemoon » Sat Jan 22, 2022 11:26 am

I don’t think one is more important than the other, but different things are important in each situation.

Live I value consistency. I stay on one guitar and avoid effects that wash things out. I love my volume pedal. When playing live it tends to be small places, so we largely have to mix ourselves.

Recording I like to experiment and find sounds that work for the songs. The challenges there are making it work as a whole and getting the rest of the idea across (where parts come in and out, levels, panning, effects, etc…) Mixing can make the difference between it being cool ear candy for the listener that enhances the song and a patchwork mess.

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

Post by noisepunk » Sat Jan 22, 2022 11:48 pm

yeah, i don't know. neither is "pure"–which is what this seems to be trying to reach at–at least not in the context of most rock/pop music. either is completely capable of being satisfying and interesting to both the audience and player(s) though; i've seen plenty of gigs where a specific guitar sound was still able to shine through in the midst of everything and made the performance that much more enjoyable for it, and the same with recordings even in spite of (and because of) all the sculpting that happens in mixing.

for me personally, the answer is somewhere between øøøøøøø/Brad and s_mcsleazy/Sean's responses: show up fully in whatever situation, but also don't overthink it to pieces. a stage actor and a screen actor both have different pressures: the former has to be bigger than might be natural (usually), the latter has to be mindful of minute subtly (also usually). those pressures don't change that the ultimate goal is to present emotion as believably as possible; you start there and then adjust to what either situation demands.

(...annnd the last time i posted a response in this section of the forum i used an acting metaphor...don't know why that's where my brain keeps going...)

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

Post by skeletonpower » Mon Aug 22, 2022 3:14 pm

It depends on the live volume. My aging ears can't distinguish anything but anguish if the volume is too loud.

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

Post by blacktiger » Fri Sep 09, 2022 3:32 pm

The answer is different depending whether there is an implied “to the guitarist” in the question. If not, neither matters much to most of the audience, outside of a few fellow guitar geeks. Live, most people seem to focus on “energy” much more than sound. In a recording, they might care more on a subconscious level, but your average Joe (or Johanna) isn’t saying “holy shit, is that a ‘64 Jazzmaster into a blackface Fender Deluxe I’m hearing?” At most, they’re saying “cool guitar.”
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Re: Does guitar tone matter more on a recording or live?

Post by stevejamsecono » Sun Sep 11, 2022 6:11 am

seenoevil II wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:12 pm
Hot take. Live.

Here's what I mean. 80% of the gear and tonal choices a guitarist makes is for an in person context. Practicing, jamming and live. I'll use suspected pedo Pete Townshend as my example. He'd get a SG special or an LP deluxe and some Hiwatt amps and jam out on them. But when recording time came, out came a gretsch and a brownface bandmaster (IIRC).

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.

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.

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.

So, yes. The tone matters more in recording, but that's because you're changing it, sometimes drastically, from what you normally would do or even like. Didn't the stones record a lot with Champs?

Really, maybe my point is that they are completely separate things in a lot of cases.

But here comes people to take apart my argument with counter examples.

Like I said, hot take.
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.
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