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Electric Guitar Player
For each element in this series, we’re going to talk about technical points in not only gear, but also playing style/technique. Electric guitar will focus more on the gear side of things. Some of this is intro-level stuff, but some is all-level stuff. If you feel like you’re reading something that is elementary to you, skip to the next topic and see if it’s of benefit to you.
Gear
A few notes first, and then we’ll get to the actual gear itself... Depending on your level of guitar experience, you may or may not have a good grasp on what it takes to get a great guitar sound in a live setting or in a recording setting. In this case, we’re focusing on live, but these tips can carry over to the studio. You got to have a good sounding guitar, a preamp, often an amp, cables, guitar playing skills, and knowledge of how all of these elements work together. Let’s look at each important element individually:
A few notes first, and then we’ll get to the actual gear itself... Depending on your level of guitar experience, you may or may not have a good grasp on what it takes to get a great guitar sound in a live setting or in a recording setting. In this case, we’re focusing on live, but these tips can carry over to the studio. You got to have a good sounding guitar, a preamp, often an amp, cables, guitar playing skills, and knowledge of how all of these elements work together. Let’s look at each important element individually:
Guitar – Of course! You need a guitar! What kind of guitar you choose depends on your budget and what you’re looking for in a guitar. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, consider these things in choosing the right guitar for you. A guitar is not unlike a friend. Consider the style of music you play. Are you Rock? Are you Country? Blues? Jazz? Just Worship Music? If you’re into Blues or Rock, you’ll probably want to consider the Fender Stratocaster (Strat) as your weapon of choice. If you’re Country, perhaps a Fender Telecaster. If you’re real heavy rock, perhaps a Paul Reed Smith (PRS). There are so many options to fit every budget. Consider what your favorite popular guitarist play and do some research to find out why they play that particular guitar. There’s no perfect right answer as to which guitar you choose. I personally play a Fender Double Fat Strat with a Floyd-Rose bridge and Tex-Mex pickups. I also have a Hohner St. Lynx with an active EMG pickup to really shred up on some heavy metal. The important thing that goes across the board for which guitar you choose is the concept of TONE! Tone is the most important thing in a guitar. Yes you can get guitar pedals that simulate certain tones. But NOTHING can beat a guitar that has a great tone! It can’t be simulated. The tone of your guitar is a result of a combination of the pickups used in the guitar, the wood, the heaviness of the wood, the construction of the guitar, the neck, the strings, and your playing style. Way too much to think about! Having a guitar that is perfect in all these areas and fits your budget is impossible for most of us. But, you can get a great sounding guitar with great tone that’s affordable. And you can always modify your guitar later with better pickups, strings, etc… Usually the beginner guitars that you get in a package with an amp, strap, picks, and strings probably won’t sound very good. If you can, budget yourself $300 or more for a good electric. If you’re really not sure what you’re looking for, you can never go wrong with a Fender Strat. Many of the greats use them in secular music and Christian music. Even the cheaper Strats have great tone. I believe I paid just over $500 for my Double Fat Strat and I love it! It has awesome tone and feels really good to play.
Guitar Pickups – Pickups are the little things with 6 silver circles each that reside in the body of the guitar under the strings. They are basically magnets. They “pickup” the vibration of each string, and transfer it to electrical energy in its coil that you can’t see. Not all pickups are equal! Cheaper ones are noisy, lack sustain, lack gain, and just all around sound not-so-good compared to higher-quality pickups. Ask someone in your local music store to show you some different ones. Some great ones are the Fender Texas Specials, Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates, Noiseless, EMG-81 active, and there are so many more. Look up each one online and see what type of tone they offer. Most are passive pickups which means they operate without any alternative power. Active pickups will usually have a compartment in the back of your guitar for a 9 volt battery. They require a power source to operate and will usually give you some mega gain on your sound. I put an EMG-81 (active) in my Hohner electric and it is definitely a rockin’ guitar! I’d recommend that pickup to anyone who is doing really heavy rock. Of course, my Strat with the Tex-Mex pickups (the Mexican-made version of the Texas Specials) is usually all I need. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I played the Hohner. So, check it out.
Guitar Strings – When you go to the store, unless you already have a go-to string, you’re probably overwhelmed with the buffet of guitar strings available. My advice: ask others what they like. You’re going to want to try some different gauges and brands. I like Dean Markley Blue Steel (regular, LTHB, or medium). I have played with those exclusively for years because they sound good, and last a really long time.
Guitar Picks – This could go more on the playing techniques side, but will also affect your tone. There are heavy picks, light picks, medium picks, made out of different materials and coatings… it’s hard to choose. Fortunately, they’re cheap enough to try a lot of different ones. I exclusively use Dunlop Tortex because they sound good, feel good, and have a great coating that grips incredibly well. I tend to use a heavier pick when playing electric (.80 or higher), and a lighter pick when playing acoustic (.50 ish). The heavier allows me to having more control over my pick-work on individual strings, while the lighter project a more brilliant sound when strumming my acoustic, as well as supporting faster strumming. This is purely preference on what you choose. No right or wrong here.
Guitar Cables – All the ever popular question: “All guitar cables are basically the same, right?” Not quite. More expensive guitar cables are usually constructed in a way that allows the signal to be transferred with less resistance and less signal loss. Monster Cable is probably the top-dog in high-quality cable. Do you need to fork out $30 or more for a 10ft Monster Cable for your guitar? No. A decent quality cable will do fine. Waves makes some great cables, Whirlwind, George L Cables… as long as you don’t get all your cables at the $1 bin at your local music shop, you should be fine. George L Cables are pretty cool. You can cut them to your desired length and pop on a new end with minimal effort. Monster Cable does have a great life-time warranty though (if they still have it): if you break a cable for any reason or it stops working, return it to any Monster Cable dealer and they just hand you a new one. Pretty awesome! As a side note, I’ve had more Monster Cables stop working than any cheap cables I’ve owned.
Guitar Preamp/Pedals – This is the most overlooked pieces of the puzzle. This section is for everyone, not just beginners. Have you ever plugged in an electric guitar straight into a direct box into the sound system and wondered by it sounds so dull, weak, and cruddy? That’s because you’re plugging in something that has no pre-amplification whatsoever (assuming you’re plugging into a standard passive direct box). You need some sort of preamp in between your guitar and the sound system. A preamp can be as simple as a single overdrive/preamp pedal, or as elaborate as a multi-fx floor pedal unit. We’ll get into detail on those things on a later blog entry. Plugging into your guitar amp is a way of amping your guitar signal, in which case you can use a preamp as well or just the amp if you’re mic’ing the amp or coming out of a direct output. One of my favorite preamp pedals is the Tech21 Sansamp GT2 and Tri.A.C. I LOVE these pedals! They are analog and they have some MAJOR overdrive! We can get into the differences between overdrive and distortion in a later post. While we’re on the subject of analog and digital… there are digital fx units and analog. Every pedal you buy these days is going to be digital when it comes to FX such as chorus, reverb, delay, etc... when it comes to overdrive/distortion, you’ll have to choose. Most multi-fx pedals (guitar fx units that have multiple selectable FX to choose and mix) will have digital overdrives and distortions. Some of the more expensive pedals will have good sounding digital overdrives and amp simulators, but analog overdrive pedals generally have a beautiful quality about them that just can’t be emulated. Most amateur players will not realize the difference until they play through both. Line 6’s POD series of FX units and Roland BOSS series of FX units is probably the best at emulating analog sounds and you can get a ton of effects and sounds in these pedals. But in all my experience with these super-all-inclusive pedal boards, they are great but can’t beat the sound of an analog overdrive. We can talk a lot more about this later, perhaps with some sound samples and such.
Gain Structure – Gain structure is possibly the most important part of giving the sound guy a good signal, and a great sound, and adding to the worship experience. Simply put, gain structure is the relationship of gain/volume settings across each piece of gear that your guitar is running through.
An example of bad gain structure: You’re playing the verse of a song in which you’re using a clean sound on your electric. You have your chorus pedal and reverb pedal engaged. The chorus comes up and you stomp on your overdrive pedal. All of a sudden, the volume of your guitar increases drastically – too much! Good gain structure is balancing all of your pedals so that no matter what pedal you press, the volume remains smooth and equal, so that all you hear is the added effect and not the volume of it. If you’re stomping on your overdrive pedal, perhaps it should make the guitar just a little louder, but there’s a balance you have to find. If your volume changes every time you stomp on a pedal, it’s a nightmare for the sound guy, embarrassing to you, and a distraction to the worship environment. Go through each pedal as you play (or patch if you’re using a multiFX unit) and engage each pedal and see how the volume changes. Adjust the volume/gain knobs accordingly so that it’s smooth as you engage and disengage stomp boxes.
An example of bad gain structure: You’re playing the verse of a song in which you’re using a clean sound on your electric. You have your chorus pedal and reverb pedal engaged. The chorus comes up and you stomp on your overdrive pedal. All of a sudden, the volume of your guitar increases drastically – too much! Good gain structure is balancing all of your pedals so that no matter what pedal you press, the volume remains smooth and equal, so that all you hear is the added effect and not the volume of it. If you’re stomping on your overdrive pedal, perhaps it should make the guitar just a little louder, but there’s a balance you have to find. If your volume changes every time you stomp on a pedal, it’s a nightmare for the sound guy, embarrassing to you, and a distraction to the worship environment. Go through each pedal as you play (or patch if you’re using a multiFX unit) and engage each pedal and see how the volume changes. Adjust the volume/gain knobs accordingly so that it’s smooth as you engage and disengage stomp boxes.
Direct or Amp – There’s always the question of “Do I send a direct signal from my guitar rig to the house, or do I run through the amp and have the sound guy mic the amp?” Sometimes, this may be up to the sound guy and not you. If you’re using a pedal board that has built-in amp simulation such as the POD X3 Live, then it may be beneficial to go direct to the house. You could even send one signal direct to the house, and send the other output to your amp just for your monitor. Usually putting a mic at the amp will result in a better electric guitar sound, but it does affect the mix and any volume adjustments you make on your amp will affect the signal going to the house. You may want to work with your sound guy on what would be best for each given situation.
Playing Style
There’s a certain style of guitar that people are accustomed to hearing in today’s worship songs, and that is DELAY!! It’s derived from the sound of The Edge (the guitarist of U2). Outside of a good drive/amp sound, your delay pedal will probably be your most important pedal. That’s not to say that you have to conform to this sound for every song. But if you’re playing popular worship songs in your church, you will undoubtedly play some Chris Tomlin, Charlie Hall, Matt Redman, Hillsong, etc… that all use a lot of the delay sound in their electric guitar parts. Mentally, this is how your congregation will know these songs so it’s important for you to be able to recreate it accurately. Your personal playing style may be hard rock, as is mine. But that may not be a good style for the worship setting (depending on the congregation). In most cases, you are probably going to have to change your playing style a bit to fit the unity of the band and the message you’re presenting for worshippers to meet with God. I have had to do this. My tendency is to kick in a heavy overdrive, some modulation, and a sweet delay and play a wailing solo. That’s not always edifying to the Body, so I’ve had to explore some of the sounds on my favorite worship artists and try to mimic their sounds and experiment with that playing style. It’s not always the most exciting thing to play, but it’s remarkably rewarding when it sounds just right and you know you’ve worshipped in humbleness and have added to the overall experience. Technically, make sure you are playing your strings accurately, powerfully, and most importantly… with heart!
That’ll be all for now for the worship guitarist. There’s plenty more we could discuss, but this is getting looooooong. Up next: acoustic guitar!
