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an acoustic number in the middle of your
set or you’re doing a drop-and-go gig like
a showcase or an open mic, your guitar is
going to be an afterthought. Even if you do
have the luxury of spending more than 30
seconds on your guitar sound, if you’re in
a small venue it’s unlikely the engineer will
have the right tools at their disposal. The
may have access to one reverb which will
be tuned to flatter your vocal - it’ll likely
be too bright and too long, and it’ll only
make your guitar sound even more artifi-
cial. The odds of them having a compressor
at hand is highly unlikely, and while they’ll
most definitely have an EQ, they’ll likely
be more concerned with combatting feed-
back than poslisting your tone. There’s also
the possibility that they’ll be a moron who
shouldn’t be allowed to carry a PA, let alone
operate one (we’ve all met at least one of
these).
- Understanding the tools at your
disposal:
So, you’ve decided to take charge of your
own sound. Good. You’re going to need
to have a basic grasp of EQ, compression
and applying reverb, but the key work here
is basic. The EQ will be used to tailor the
tone of your guitar by gently reducing (cut-
ting) frequencies you don’t want to reveal
the ones you do. Compression will nar-
row your guitar’s dynamic range by bring-
ing the volume of loud notes closer to the
volume of quieter ones. Reverb will add a
subtle sense of space and “air” around your
sound. There are a variety of units on the
market that will offer you these tools and
more, but I chose the excellent and pretty
affordable Tech 21 Acoustic Fly Rig for this
demonstration.Using EQ:The first principle of EQ we need to un-
derstand is “subtractive EQ”. By taking
away certain frequencies, we can hear the
ones that remain more clearly. If you cut
highs, it has the same effect as boosting the
lows, and vice versa, but with an important
added benefit: Boosting frequencies intro-
duces noise and quickly leads to feedback
problems - cutting doesn’t. So with that in
mind, it’s best to cut the frequencies you
don’t like rather than boosting the ones
you do. For most of us, this will mean a
*gentle* cut in the midrange somewhere
between 600hz and 2.5khz to take out
some of the “honk”. If you’re playing solo,
you may want to cut some highs to help
the low end fill out your sound, while also
making room for any singing that might be
going on. A little EQ goes a long way, and
too much can quickly sound artificial, so be
gentle. »THE QUIET ROOM CROSSPICKING & HYBRID PICKING WORKOUT