Less is More?

6stringscott

6stringscott

Inspired
One pattern I've seen in my noodling and patch creation is that the most basic sound is often the best. I'm not sure if this is a general truism or just my lack of sophistication in using effects.

Sometimes within a session I will add parallel cabs and amp blocks just because I can, and within the moment I think it sounds better. Then almost as a de rigeur, I make it more in-your-face with multi-comp, sweeten it with a chorus about 7% or so, and after a while it just sort of mushes out. But I somehow don't notice it when I'm doing it.

But then the next time I make a patch starting from a blank slate, and compare my previous day's favorite with just an amp and a cab and there's a realness and rawness/punchiness to the simple new patch that often makes it sound better than what I came up with after all the noodling.

I'm learning to find a balance between simplicity and little tweaks that actually make a patch better, instead of dogmatically adding on certain things every time I make a patch.

How do others approach the issue of adding on more stuff just because there is spare CPU? How to resist the temptation?
 
I think the "raw" factor is appreciated by some of us (myself included!) while others much prefer a more processed sound. I've often developed fairly "wet" presets that I enjoy but generally revert back to the more direct tones.

That said, all my presets have compressor, chorus, delay and reverb... But all done very lightly as "flavor enhancers".

And lately since going to IEMs I have been refining that further by adding ducking to my delay as well as altering the hi/ low filtering in the delay, chorus and reverb to narrow the effected frequency range.
 
Same here, I always run some comp, dly, and verb whatever I'm doing. Otherwise, my efforts to match great tones by ear have led me to simpler rigs. For example, I can get a flawless Hotel California solo sound from the Dirty Shirley amp without using a drive block. Heavily layered sounds can entertain at home but often get lost in the mix when you add a full band.
 
More things in the chain is just more things that can go wrong imo. My most complex patches are the bass ones which are parallel clean and dirty and my spacier cleans which are comp>amp>chorus>delay>cab
 
If you jam at home or are the only guitar player in a band, delay, reverb and other effects are wonderful. It fills up space and smooth's things like a piano's sustain pedal. But the more people playing and the more complex a song this can really clutter things up - so I believe sometimes less is more and sometimes more is more!!??
 
Used this theory in many things. Throw every bell and whistle you can to get it out of your system. Start subtracting until it collapses. Put that piece back. Works with website design, works with plug-in mixing and mastering chains, works with gear.
 
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