Guitar Gear

I just read a great article on Guitar Jam Daily by Carl Verheyen (this dude has a really smooth style!) about the art of layering guitar parts in a song. Essentially, the article covers using a variety of guitars, and approaches when recording a song. For instance, using clean to slightly distorted guitars for rhythm and then distorted guitars for leads. As Carl says,

…I believe the state of the art in guitar playing has more to do with layering and orchestrating and less to do with shredding and the blatant displaying one’s chops.

You may not have a huge collection of guitars at your fingertips, but you can orchestrate the tones and colors of the ones you do have. Getting these elements “on tape” and into a musical tapestry can be a very creative process…

That passage really spoke to me because as a working stiff with limited time and resources, I have to rely on the gear I have, and use them in combination to create the songs I record. From my own perspective and technical abilities on the guitar, I don’t really consider myself a good improv guy, so I try to make up for that by layering different guitars or rhythmic approaches to the guitars I use in my songs. If you listen to the individual guitars, the parts aren’t all that complex or sophisticated, but the result of “stitching” those parts together creates a really interesting tapestry of sound – at least to me. 🙂

From the songwriting standpoint, it’s the components of the song that make the song, not the individual pieces. I highly suggest reading that article. The cool thing is that if you’re in a band, you can also take that approach. Not everyone has to be playing distorted. Myself, I like to be presented with musical complexity and sophistication. To me, the sound is so much richer