Rhythm guitar, rhythm guitar !!

A good bass player is a must for a trio (musically) to be effective.

I gigged for years as part of a trio (mediocre female singer, great funk bass player, myself and a great jazz/rock drummer) and needed to rethink my parts quite often. What the bass player brought to the table was an ability to dance around what I was doing while locking in with the drummer. He also had a bass tone to die for and used 6 string basses.

Playing fill licks while on rhythm duties is also a huge part of it. For instance, adding in a tasty flourish or two in the second verses of songs, letting the bass player take a solo, giving the drums room to breathe and not taking a solo every song... all of these things help. Using a different sound for some musical breaks helps break up the monotony of certain songs, and using an interesting sound on a new rhythmic idea in the place of a solo helps maintain interest too.

Just my 2 cents.
 
I'll take the opposing fraction here and say go for a second guitarist, if you can not find a keyboarder.
But don't take the first or best player you can find. Instead, find someone inexperienced that can "grow" with your band and adds to the chemistry.
... or someone that can also contribute in other ways. Often, you'll find great rhythm guitar players that can also double as backup vocals.


Just an advice, as your favorite solution seems to be to find a keyboard player:
Make sure your ads are right! More than often, what you actually look for is a piano player, not a keyboard player. The term "keyboard" more than often only sounds appealing to experienced professional stage players. What you want, however, is an amateur, that can do the basic rhythm stuff with some piano here and there and doesn't get bored not playing fancy dream-theater-esque synth leads every 30 seconds.
Unfortunately, most people playing classical piano are not attracted by the term "keyboard". Classical piano players often think lowly of keyboards, kind of like toys. It's highly recommended to ship around this issue by using the 'piano' term.

Put up your ads where you can expect to find amateur piano players: colleges/universities, music schools, music sheet websites

What you want is someone, that has never been on stage before, someone, that only plays piano in his bedroom (and don't worry; you'll be amazed at how good those players can be!) and convince that person that a keyboard is not just a cheap toy, but a totally different instrument with different purposes.

We (started out as a 4 piece band) also had this issue in the past. And once we changed our ads from music-store-ads-towards-keyboard-players to college/university-ads-towards-classical-piano-players, we had lots of people interested. Just make sure you'll give them heads-up on what to expect, that this is a band context and not a classical orchestra, which means piano is mostly rhythm and backup, not lead.

If you're an all male band, this is also your best chance to get a female in your ensemble - especially if she can manage backup vocals. It will add a lot of new flavour to your sound! There's a lot of piano playing women out there that just don't think that they could be on stage. Make sure to not scare them away by looking "too professional". Convince them that they have the skills (and they will have; believe me! We had some girls interested that could play Bach blindfolded without any trouble) to perform live. From my experience, piano players (especially women) seem to under-estimate themselves (compared to guitarists, where very so often the opposite is true).


The only downside to this is that you, as a band, will most likely need to invest in a stage-piano/keyboard, as only few classical piano players have a stage-proof keyboards/sp.

However, you can get good instruments for under 600$ used.
 
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Cover'd said:
Beyond the looper and the chance that the section preceding the lead break is the same progression and short enough, there's little you can do with your sound as a substitute to replace another instrument

Adding some dazzle with bass & drums can help, so spin it back on those guys :)
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Exactly - check out how Ginger and Jack would beef up their playing whenever Clapton took a solo with Cream. Theres a lot to be learned about dynamics in the trio format by watching these guys

Rook said:
It might seem a bit counter intuitive at first, but try taking a bit of the bottom end out of the rhythm guitar sound. Make up the extra fatness in the bass (eq, compression, maybe a touch of distortion). If the bottom end drops out when you stop playing rhythm, the bottom end is relying on you. Let it rely on the bass player, then build your sound to kind of sit on top of it.

Sincerely,
A sometimes bass player.
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I agree totally.


All that said, depending on your material, individual skills and ambition for your band it might make good sense adding a second guitarist or someone on keys. I've learnt a lot from playing with other guitarists in bands, regardless if he or I was the lead guitarist or we shared lead and rhythm duties.
 
Dont know what kind of music you play, but using a set of bass pedals tied to a synth can add to your space. Worked well for Rush, Genesis, etc. The bass player has to have a lot of coordination to pull it off though.
 
Moog Tarus foot pedels\triggering samples, will fit well in the mix & U want have to battle another guitar..........
 
For me there are two basic aspects to it.

First the band energy. In a power trio, sometimes the song seems to come off the rails when the guitar player switches to a solo from a driving rhythm. The song suddenly sounds smaller. You can re-arrange the songs a little bit to bring the energy down at the start of the solo so the solo section appears to build and get bigger vs. suddenly sounding smaller. Also try adding some judicious chord work / double stops into the solo itself vs. playing all single note lines. (Taken to the extreme and you get the Chuck Berry all double stop solos :))

Another band energy technique is to play the first 4-8 bars of the solo hellaciously loud and with authority. Sort of jump start the solo section and get the energy way up. Turn up maybe 6db hotter than you normally would and ride the lightening... as they say.

The second aspect is filling in gaps in the music. This can be from many sources. The bass player plays busier. But often times that can mess up the groove and doesn't work. Try getting the drummer to play sloppy hats or let a ride cymbal over ring to fill up space.

You can use the shimmer effect of the Axe Multidelay during the solos to give background pad sound to fill up space.
 
With a looper like the Boomerang III, you can loop 4 separate loops - so you could 'record' your verse, chorus and bridge as you play them, and then, when solo time comes, you could play one of those loops, or even go from verse into bridge or verse into chorus - it's easy, once you get the coordination down. A capable looper like that offers SO MANY possibilities that the Axe's looper does not, and this is one of them. I did one song where halfway through the song, I'd already recorded all of the rhythm parts during the song, and just used my feet to trigger different loops so I could add accents and min-solos for the 2nd half of the song.
JohnBee said:
That's some of the whining I hear sometimes from my band. I'm the only guitar in the band and I do leads and rhythm. But lately they want a rhythm guitar player to fatten up the sound especially on solos. I personally like one guitar, one bass, one drummer and a singer and I feel it's fine when we are all properly micd up playing out. I guess since we won't be adding a second bass or drummer I don't want another guitar.

I'm looking for any advice from one guitar guys or girls in bands on how to fatten the sound more especially during solos in the higher registers. Or how to fatten the sound in general. Some one guitar bands just don't seem to have a problem while others have that bottom drop out problem. I have noticed it helps with a good busy bass player or a singer who likes to sing during solos.
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All this being said, a lot of pro bands have a core trio of band members that they record with, but hire second guitarist when they go on tour. Just off the top of my head: Nirvana, U2, Green Day, R.E.M., Therapy?, and I'm sure many others have all toured with "phantom guitarists" to fill out their power trio sound. Even folks with arbitrary amounts of money to throw at loopers, amps, and sound engineers seem to frequently choose another human with a guitar.
 
coldstar said:
All this being said, a lot of pro bands have a core trio of band members that they record with, but hire second guitarist when they go on tour. Just off the top of my head: Nirvana, U2, Green Day, R.E.M., Therapy?, and I'm sure many others have all toured with "phantom guitarists" to fill out their power trio sound. Even folks with arbitrary amounts of money to throw at loopers, amps, and sound engineers seem to frequently choose another human with a guitar.
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Yep

The monitor engineer plays rhythm guitar for ZZ Top
 
I've been in both single and two guitarist bands, there are pros and cons either way.

Making a band sound good overall is as much about eliminating the bad noises as creating the good noises.

In terms of sound\mix: Yes it's nice to have rhythm guitar underneath your solo sometimes, but on the other hand during the rest of a song it can get too noisy and cluttered with two guitars hacking away at the same rhythm part underneath the vocals. Especially if both tend to play 'busy', with extra bends and fills. Also, one guy hitting the odd clam it's not great, but if two guys eff up a lot it can get ugly. Both guitarists need to play cleanly with tight timing and know when to lay back and allow the other guitar to stand out more. It works great only with good players who seek to play complimentary and not selfishly.

It's important to boost solos above the rhythm guitar, something you don't always need when there is no rhythm guitar, but as soon as you add that 2nd guitar your solos will get drowned out, so you need a lead boost. At the same time.. be wary of overall volume wars starting between guitarists. What I go for in a live mix, levels-wise, is vocals clearly up front, solos boosted right up to vocal level, and rhythm guitars back a bit by comparison.

Cover bands: there are millions of songs to choose from, so if you have two guitars try to pick songs that have two distinct guitar parts, and vice-versa for one guitar.
 
+1 for the idea of adding keys - if you can find someone. Zwiebelchen, those are some interesting ideas on how to find a 'piano' player.

I also play keys, but not nearly as well as as I play guitar. One of my former two-guitar bands was actually 1 + 2\3 guitars.. I put down the guitar and played keys for the remaining 1\3 of the time. I have to say, despite my not-amazing keys skills those songs often sounded the best overall.
 
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