The universal dream....oh yeah, and a little polyrhythmic challenge too!
Thanks for sharing. A few comments:
-If you're trying to "nail" his tone, I think you should dial the preamp gain a fair amount. It sounded like Limelight played with an 80's rock/metal patch.
cheers,
Steve
Steve,
When you said: "...you should dial the preamp gain a fair amount," are we to assume that you meant "...you should
dial-back the gain a fair amount" or maybe even "...you should try ro reduce the gain a fair amount." Based on the "80's rock/metal sound" comment, I assume you meant "less gain" NOT "more gain" needed?!?
Btw, fwiw, I totally agree with you
(if you mean there should be LESS PRE-GAIN!) IMO,
Alex's "Limelight" (studio/Moving Pictures LP recording) guitar-sound is VERY elusive in that he achieved a very thick, BUT NOT very distorted guitar-tone. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that his rhythm-tracks on this song were
(as nikki wisely pointed out elsewhere in these forums!) triple-tracked where two of the tracks were humbucker-equipped
(like a Les Paul and a 335) and then one single-coil track
(like his favorite "songwriting-Telecaster that he loves so much!) He would then blend that
Tele in on mixdown just enough to
bring out the note clarity/definition! Amp-wise, it sounds like perhaps a blend of mostly non-MV (HiWatts & Marshall plexis perhaps?) amps and/or MV-amps that were tracked "loud-as-hell" - lol!
cragginshred,
Kudos to you cragginshred for getting into a room with a couple of friends/bandmates and giving it your best shot! Your
Axe-FX II sounds really good, but perhaps a few tweaks (as outlined above) would get a little closer to Alex's tone (if that's what you seek to achieve.) Btw, not bad for only having played it three times with that drummer. The solo-section alone would take most cover bands MONTHS to master! The more you listen to the original, you can hone in on the specifics of counting. What makes this guitar-solo section tricky IMO, is the fact that
Alex and Geddy remain in 3/4 or 6/4 - depending on how you want to count it - FOR THE ENTIRE SOLO-SECTION -Whereas Neil starts out in triple-meter with Alex & Geddy, but he then switches to 4/4 - right when the guitar solo does that ascending/climbing picked-part. (Btw, I thought you played that part GREAT on guitar!) Anyways,
Neil's switch to 4/4 there, with Alex & Geddy remaining in 3/4, is what creates the 3:4 ("three-against-four") polyrythm! The band
Tool does this sort of thing quite frequently, but the most famous example of this type of polyrythm (although at a much different-tempo with a much different result) is probably
"Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin, where the
main-riff is in 3/4 while
John Bonham laid down that
hypnotic and heavy 4/4 backbeat-groove (creating said
3:4 polyryhthm.)
But yeah, tonally I think
guitarzzan's comment about trying "less pre-gain" is probably a really good idea. Maybe try to
turn the Master Volume on your amp-model up quite a bit, but turn down the pre-gain a LOT! Also, to me, the original sounds like they might've even applied an
opto-compressor to the original rhythm-guitar tracks to take the "edges" off a bit. Also,
don't forget Scott Peterson's golden-rule about tweaking the Speaker-Tab in the Amp section of your Axe-FX II.
Good luck, and thanks for sharing...It brought back fond memories!!!
Bill
