If you play live, you've likely experienced getting buried in the mix and having trouble hearing your guitar onstage. Sometimes it's just due to a sound person that doesn't push your fader up enough on the mix or monitor desk. But I often find guitarists making common errors that contribute to getting lost in the mix. Amps and amp settings, speakers (the speakers themselves and how they are positioned onstage), and pedal settings can all be a factor. This month, I'm going to offer some suggestions on how to make sure your tone is heard loud and proud by both you and the audience!
Amps and Cabs
There is definitely a trend towards smaller, lower-power amps these days. While some guitarists (I'm one of them) still use 100-watt heads and big 4x12 cabinets, many don't want to deal with the size and weight. The reality is that using a powerful amp and a 4x12 closed-back cabinet doesn't guarantee you'll cut through the mix. For starters, 4x12 cabs are very beamy and directional. If you are right in front of them, you'll hear them loud and clear. Move a couple of feet to either side, and the sound is not nearly as loud. They can also be hard to hear onstage because they're generally pointed right at your legs, not your ears.
The directionality of cabinets can create additional problems when they're pointed at the soundman. Because 4x12s can be so piercingly bright and beamy, the person running sound may not want to put you in the PA if he perceives your volume to be too loud onstage.
If the person running sound perceives you as too loud onstage, he's not going to want to put you in the PA.
The tip here is to angle your cabinet away from the mixing desk area, at least a little bit. Keeping that beam of guitar sound away from the person mixing will almost always result in more of your guitar in the PA. And for your benefit onstage, try angling the cabinet up a little by placing something under the front edge of it so it's angled more towards your ears. It's really amazing how much a little positioning and angling of a 4x12 will help.
Just because you're using a head doesn't necessarily mean you have to pair it with a closed-back cabinet. Many 2x12 cabs have an open back, or a convertible back that allows for open- or closed-back operation. Open-back cabs (and combo amps with open backs) can help disperse the sound around the stage, and are often easier to hear onstage than closed-back cabs. This is because they are emitting sound out of the front and the back. They also tend to have less bass and more mids than closed-back cabs, which is usually a good thing from an EQ perspective.
If you're having issues cutting through, you should also consider the type of speakers you are using. The efficiency rating and the overall tonality of your speakers will greatly affect your tone and stage volume. For example: The woody, warm character and 96 dB efficiency rating of a Celestion G12M Heritage will seem much less loud and penetrating than the Celestion Vintage 30, which has a characteristic upper-mid cut and 100 dB efficiency rating.
The Importance of EQ
It's really all about EQ, and I mean the EQ of your rig as a whole. A guitar rig that has lots of bass and highs (but scooped mids) will tend to get lost in the mix when other instruments such as bass, keyboards, and drums are factored in. In my opinion, the classic Vox AC30 amp (with its open-back cab and two Celestion Blue speakers) can cut through a band mix like nothing else. Its classic "blizzard of nails" tone is all about penetrating mids, and that's exactly what helps your guitar stay out of the range of the bass guitar. When the bassist kicks in and the drummer starts bashing cymbals, a 30-watt AC30 can actually seem louder and be heard better than many rigs with a 100-watt amp and 4x12 closed-back cab.
Pedals
Compressors, overdrives, distortions, and fuzzes: They all compress and squish your signal. I often notice guitarists getting quieter when switching on one of these effects, so I always recommend setting the output controls for a subtle to moderate boost effect. When you hit an overdrive, fuzz, or distortion pedal, it's usually because you're going to rock harder, right? You're probably playing the chorus of a song, or possibly a solo or lead break. The drummer is going to lay into it, as will the bassist and possibly the singer. So if your overall volume drops when you hit the pedal, you're dead in the water.
Also, be sure to get a nice boost out of your pedals. David Gilmour uses an EQ pedal specific to each fuzz or distortion pedal he has in order to fine-tune the overall tone when that pedal is engaged. Fuzz pedals really benefit from this approach since they can color the tone in ways that might cause your guitar to get buried in the mix. An EQ like the Boss GE-7 is great for this purpose.
Finally, a treble or mid booster such as the Suhr Koko Boost—or a wah pedal stuck halfway engaged in the style of Michael Schenker—can make a lead guitar part jump out of the mix like nothing else!
Carefully considering each component in your rig and simple fixes like angling your speaker cabinets onstage can make a difference in how your guitar is heard by you and the audience. See you soon for another round of "Tone Tips!"
[Updated 10/29/21]
- Tone Tips: All About Monitoring - Premier Guitar ›
- Tone Tips: The Lowdown on Load Boxes, Attenuators, and Reamps ... ›
- Tone Tips: Thicken It Up! - Premier Guitar ›
- Tone Tips: Dialing in Your Gear for Great Sound - Premier Guitar ›
- The Recording Guitarist: Is It a Sin to Scoop Your Mids? - Premier Guitar ›
- The Quest for Perfect Guitar Tone ›
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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