FFFR tweaking at home vs in a band and live: The do's

Tremonti

Tremonti

Fractal Fanatic
Not talking volume, as that is a given. You can't tweak at home on a whisper and then expect a cranked version to be awesome as you heard and dialed in at house. But what things do you normally find you need to adjust to make things sit right in a band, versus what just sounds good at your house?

We've all dialed things up at house and then think rehearsal is going to be the best ever and it sounds like a wet blanket covered things on the drive to practice. I try and dial things in a house a little more biting than sounds great on own because of this. But would love to know go to parameters to simply adjust things for this. Thanks!
 
One thing I do is to take a backing track with only bass, drums, and vocals and import it into reaper. I then record the guitar along with it and then tweak to get it to sit right in the mix. Not perfect, but gets me close.
 
I use tones that I know work with the band as a reference. Generally I try to stick to established tones and only edit fx etc. at home

For me it’s not just volume but the band room sounds way different than my home room which makes it really hard
 
bdrepko said:
One thing I do is to take a backing track with only bass, drums, and vocals and import it into reaper. I then record the guitar along with it and then tweak to get it to sit right in the mix. Not perfect, but gets me close.
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Tahoebrian5 said:
I use tones that I know work with the band as a reference. Generally I try to stick to established tones and only edit fx etc. at home

For me it’s not just volume but the band room sounds way different than my home room which makes it really hard
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These are good tips, but looking for goto parameters and EQ settings to dial in. And/or advanced parameters. Thanks!
 
There is the narrow 2db cut at 250Hz that seems to be common. Most people place this between the amp and cab. I did mine on the input eq in the amp block.
 
The conundrum I face with this is twofold:

1. I hate my Altos at volume with the Axe. Used to love them; not anymore. I need another CLR.
2. I dial in stuff at blistering volume at home through the CLR (talk about
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). When I get to practice and play at normal volumes; it sounds not as good again
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Louder is always better. Until you have to play quieter. Unfortunately. No eq tips for you other than standard low and high cut practices.
 
You could try taking a tone that you know sounds good at the band room, then apply eq until it sounds good to you at home at a certain volume. You could them create the inverse eq block and save it in your block library.
 
I had asked about something similar a year or to back for the Ax8. My idea was to implement a 'live' block you could add in the chain that would have the common settings users would tweak all in one place instead of scrolling through lots of menus and blocks. Maybe a Wish idea?
 
might be cool if they could implement a "smart/dynamic" filter that auto-compensates for the FME and psychoacoustic phenomena that exists between bedroom and stage volumes that you could then dial in however much percentage you like. Then we wouldn't have to worry too much about it. Just dial in and jam away.
 
Make sure you low cut and hi-cut properly. Therefore, when you boost the output volume to get to stage volume you're not getting excessive low end or high end content. I like 80-100hz Locut and somewhere around 7.5k-8K hi-cut. Depends on the Cab IR

A couple things I do:
1) I usually have a minus one track and play along to it at stage volume
2) Use a Pink noise generator and pump that at stage volume and then play against it to hear if there are any weird frequencies or if the tone gets too buried, which can be common if you're going for a warm/fat sound.
3) I try to also A/B against isolated guitar tracks. You kind of want that nasally, brash almost annoying upper-midrangey tone so that it sits perfectly in a mix against loud bass and drums. I call it "the skronk". Pete Thorn has that tone kind of nailed in most of his records.
4) Lastly, ALWAYS dial your tone in with your ears, not your eyes. Some of my amp settings can look kind of crazy, but sound good in a live band context.

EG. My main rhythm sound using a plexi marshall has the mid knob at 10, bass set low and treble and presence pretty high. I smooth it out for warm leads (think Eric Johnson) with a tube screamer with the gain all the way off and the level at 10, tone around 2. If you looked at it, it would look silly, but sounds great.
 
For live? Simple rule for me vs "what sounds good at home" = Less bass, less gain, more mids and enough treble.
The other thing people don't talk about enough is reverb. I use some at home but none live. Its just too unpredictable in effect IME.
I still use delay as an effect but its not an all the time thing like reverb often is.
 
I gave up on adapting tones already.

This is why I use the AXE as an amp when playing with my band. I’ll explain.

When I play home, through headphones, I make complicated tones with lots of effects and end up creating new presets that I would use for recording eventually.

When I play live, or go to band practice, I go to my “Live” presets, which consist only of an amp block and a cab block. Then I dial BMT on the amp block and I’m done.

IIRC I have around 4 “Live” presets, one with a plexi+v30, a 2204+v30, a recto+cali, and a double verb+matching cab, which would be the “amps” I’d take to practice. All cab blocks have a hi-cut around 7-8k.
I put effects later on in necessary.

The logics is, when you go practice, you dial your amp (or any of the practice room’s amps) right there at band volume, and once it sounds good, you put pedals only if it’s strictly necessary.

Works for me.
 
FPFL said:
For live? Simple rule for me vs "what sounds good at home" = Less bass, less gain, more mids and enough treble.
The other thing people don't talk about enough is reverb. I use some at home but none live. Its just too unpredictable in effect IME.
I still use delay as an effect but its not an all the time thing like reverb often is.
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This is exactly what I do. The two biggest ones are to increase mids and kill the reverb (unless I'm specifically going for a big ambient wash tone).

Note that I am not a metal player and hate scooped mid tones.
 
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