Episode 83 - Matt Beckley (Guitars)
Show Notes
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 83
Feb 15, 2022
w/ Matt Beckley - Week 3
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Matt Beckley:
There’s a saying: The people who know “how” will always work for the people who know “why”.
So it’s important to know why you choose to use guitar in a situation than how you use it. So if we approach it from this perspective the “how” becomes easier to approach.
Working with hip hop and pop producers, so much of my work comes from the fact that I’m the only guy in my crew who knows how to play.
Guitar is a very expressive instrument that lends it a more vocal quality than many other instruments.
You need some perfection in your track and you need some organic feel. If your guitar is tight you want the drums to be loose, and if the drums are gridded you’ll want the guitar to be loose.
The irony is that among some of the best guitar players today, Dr. Luke might be the best guitar player on the planet. Many people have forgotten that he was the SNL guitar player at 22 years old. He is apeshit good at guitar and yet the performances that he and Andrew Watt add to their records sounds like a 15 year old with their tongue hanging out of their mouth.
They’re brilliant players but they are playing loose. This comes back to they “how” vs. the “why”. We’re trying to get the human aspect of it.
There are four types of guitar players. None are better or worse, but people need to appreciate the differences, or it’s going to be hard for them to record. All four of these require completely different things to be successful.
1. Live guitar playing
The sheer volume of it whoops your ass and produces excitement.
The challenge is getting the visceral excitement of it to translate to a record.
If you get your guitar sounding right in the room, once you put a mic on it it will never sound the same way coming through a set of speakers.
2. Instagram guitar playing
3. Playing in your bedroom
4. Playing guitar on records
Editor’s Note: Matt Beckley does not finish elaborating on the remaining three types of guitar players because the conversation now pivots to…
My Recording Setup
Beckley:
My setup depends on what role I am in. Recording a record or performing live?
I use an amp switching system to feed my signal to different amps. Those amps are then piped into an isolated recording booth with a few different cabinets that are mic’ed up with a few different mics.
That said, 9/10 times I’m recording through a Strymon Iridium, which is a little direct amp simulator box and using pedals.
This is because when you’re trying to EQ for a record you need to be listening through the speakers. It doesn’t matter how good it sounds in the room, because it needs to translate through the speakers and feel exciting there. That’s all the listener will hear.
Quite often you need to be doing things to the room sound that sound shitty, but will translate to the recording properly.
I think a lot of people go wrong by getting a kick-ass guitar sound in the room, and then tracking it without realizing that the feel of the room sound gave them the wrong impression of how it will translate upon playback.
Real amps still sound better than simulators, but if it takes you 3 hrs to get a 10/10 amazing guitar sound vs. instantly getting a 9/10 guitar sound, then the instant option will always be the superior choice to make because you risk losing the spark in the heat of a session. The pacing is more important.
In speaking with Geoff Emerick once, he described the advantage of recording to tape was that everyone had to be well-rehearsed and prepared before they came into the session and if they messed up, they had a long time to contemplate their mistake before punching-in again.
To contrast, the rapidity of digital recording can compromise a lot of the feel from the player because they are becoming hyper-focused on their performance in a negative way through the sheer repetition of doing it over and over again.
You tend to lose the soul of the performance in these situations.
Geoff concluded that tape sounds better because the process is different. So now, what I will do is lay down 1 or 2 takes, and have a quick 1-2 minute talk break with someone before trying again. I will get far better results this way than trying to do 100 takes all at once.
If you’re not recording guitars loud, you’re not getting the interaction with the feedback between the speaker and the guitar that will give you more sustain and a different feel.
I find that hollow body guitars record much easier now because it’s easier to get that interaction between the speakers and the guitar than it is with solid body guitars.
The Eric Johnson signature strat is the best strat that Fender makes.
The Taylor GS Mini is a 3/4 acoustic that is the best writing/recording acoustic that I know of.
Gibson ES-330 and the Epiphone Casino are both fully hollow and don’t have the feedback-stifling wood block of the ES-335’s.
Some of the new Epiphone Casinos are really nice and even better than the 330s today.
Acoustic Guitars and Mic’ing
Matt Rad:
I would recommend recording acoustics with a mic that doesn’t hype the upper-midrange, like how a lot of contemporary vocal mics do. Stick with something a little less bright and hyped. A Coles 4038 is a good choice because it’s so EQ-able.
Beckley:
Mikrotek Gefell M930 is a great choice because it sounds like an old-school Neumann U87.
It has zero noise and sounds just like whatever you put in front of it.
9 out of 10 times in a pop record, an acoustic guitar is really just a melodic shaker. You’re really using it for a rhythmic sense. You’re putting it in the same place as a tambourine and you don’t really need as much body as you think you do.
Where you place the mic has so much to do with the sound.
Figure 8 mics pick up a lot of musical ambience that’s pleasing.
A solo acoustic is going to need to be much fuller than an acoustic that has to fit into a track with other instruments.
Pedals
Beckley:
One reason I like the Strymon Iridium so much is because the processing is instant and there is no latency. When I can bypass any latency (in guitars or vocalists) everyone will perform better because it feels better.
It also takes guitar pedals better.
I always listen direct when recording because it sounds and feels better.
Tim Pierce - J-Rockett
I almost always use this with low gain and it makes everything else feel and sound better.
It was designed by a long-time session guitarist who really knows how to make records sound better.
It’s meant to be used as a distortion pedal, but I never use it that way.
Everyone should have a Klon Centaur clone (Klone).
I find that the Klon takes out a little bit of a low-end from the signal, which then makes it play better with a Big Muff or other large fuzzes. It will tighten them up a bit.
I’m often layering many different subtle overdrives in different combinations.
