When recording in a studio you want to deliver your best sound. These tips will make sure your are ready.
Guitar Center is the world’s largest musical instruments retailer. They sell a lot of tuners. Probably at least one for every guitar that goes out the door! Most musicians use them. So why are so many guitars still out of tune?
Well, even if they are brand new, guitars that come out of a guitar shop often aren’t set up properly. There are a number of reasons for this:
- Many factories (I won’t name names) don’t set their guitars up correctly in the first place.
- The shipping process is brutal on a guitar.
- By the time it makes its way into the final customer’s hands, a guitar has been played by a lot of people in the shop.
- And lastly, everyone is different.
I had a 1977 Stratocaster for years. It always sounded cool – except when I played a G chord. My bottom E string sounded sour. I thought it was the intonation of the guitar. So, I took it to a few guitar repair shops, who all gladly took my money, intonated it and gave me a brand new set of strings. But still, it sounded the same. Finally I met Kenny Rardin, who suggested I put heavier strings on the bottom 3. Why? “Because,” he said “you’re probably pushing too hard when you form the G chord and it’s making that string go out of tune.” Guess what, he was right! Now my guitars are in tune. Many guitar players have tuning problems that a tuner can’t solve. My advice is keep working on it until your guitar is in tune and stays in tune. Experiment with different size strings. Eliminate the buzz, by getting your action right. You can make your guitars sound good but it’s not as easy as it looks.
Tuning your drums is also important but it can be tricky. If you’re a drummer and you haven’t yet sat down with your drums to tune them properly (with a mindset of diligence and patience) well, you’re in for a fun day! I’m not going to go into specifics here. That’s what YouTube is for. But suffice to say, you need to get each drum to make one pleasant tone. It should resonate with no overtones or undertones. It isn’t easy to learn. However once you get it, the process is fairly quick and simple. Be willing to experiment with one drum until you get it right, starting over as many times as you need. Then move on to the next one. Keep in mind that snares and kicks are a little different than toms. With a little research and some patience you can get your kit sounding really nice.
Once your drums and guitars sound great in your space, you still have to consider that you’ll be transporting them to the recording studio at some point. This new environment can impact your instruments more than most people realize. The humidity, the temperature and even the size of the room all affect the sound of your kit. Drums in particular need to acclimate to the new environment for as long as possible. Ask if the studio owner will let you drop your gear off the night before the session. This way the drums can get used to the space before you do your final tuning. Just a few tweaks of the batter head should be enough to get them perfect. Well, unless you live in Minnesota, as I do, and the environment through which you transport your gear is colder than the surface of Mars! But hey, that’s another story!
Rock on! -Perry
