For a while I was trying to make my arpeggios sound more sweep. As in turned out it was nothing wrong with my techniques (apart from it needing more practice), but it had to do with my guitar/amp setting. People, including me here, never really experimented with their amp and guitar settings. There are a lot of fancy gadgets on the market, but you don’t need usually need them, as you can get a lot more than you think from your amp and your guitar. So I’ll present you a few concepts that I got from playing around with my stuff. As I am a Rock/Blues/Metal kind of a guy the first topic will be Overdrive/Distortion.
Getting Better Overdrive from your amp
People usually get overdrive but turning their overdrive knob through the roof. This is all nice and well but it’s not the only way to get the overdrive. The overdrive your guitar gives you is the product from two sources:
-Your overdrive on your pre-amp (the tonal setting knobs)
-Your master volume
Although at first overdrive was achieved the second way, people usually miss it today. But let’s dissect the sounds you’re getting further.
By amplifying overdrive on your pre-amp you get a fuzzier, not so clear sound. This can be fine if you’re playing alone but add another guitar/bass with the same setting and you’ll result in a lot of noise. By amplifying the master volume you get a distortion that has a really nice, more natural musical feel to it. The benefit of this overdrive is less buzzier sound, more sustain with same guitar responsiveness, and a more musical feel to your sound. Feedback can be a drawback since it’ll occur more in this way. But if you learn to control it, it can be a great addition to you musical arsenal (here great examples are Jimmie Hendrix and Satch).
So if you went to crossroads and traded the devil for an “amp from hell” it would be really sad if you couldn’t really work the amp with higher volume settings, as the sound is much richer and pleasant. It’s worth remembering that Jimmy Page recorded all his earlier stuff with a rather small Fender Supro. So if you can try to get distorted sound by turning the volume up, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Next is EQ settings…
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