Last night, I recorded a short little Bach choral thing on guitars (over 100 of my friends/colleagues sang it together today!). It sort of reminded of why I love music and guitars so much. Harmony!
[audio:ChoralVerse.mp3]
I could probably spend all day pointing out the passages and moments of harmonic bliss that made me want to be a guitar player, but, suffice it to say that those moments of two-or-more simultaneous guitars bolstering a melody are what I live for.
You'll quickly discover that recording guitars and stacking them is as big an artform as shredding or doing mind-numbing cadenzas at light speed. Its hard stuff to get it to sound right. Here are a few scenarios.
Classical Arrangements
One thing that really sucks about trying to do arrangements of harmonically rich classical tunes with electric guitars is the lack of voice separation and clarity when you use a distorted electric guitar. The blending of voices with guitars when you have 3 or 4 simultaneously sounds absolutely badass (just check out the immense harmonies in Passion & Warfare, Steve Vai's crowning guitar achievement). They do NOT, however, have the same sound as a string quartet, or a choir. With those instruments you can hear the subtle interplay between various voices.
Required listening for this sort of style must include all of Paul Gilbert's dalliances with guitar arrangements on his solo album. The Gilberto Concerto and Whole Lotta Sonata are particularly impressive.
Anyway, what I have learned about getting a good sound goes something like this...
- Use the tube-iest tone you can find
- Keep the gain low. A good blendable tone actually sounds like ass by itself
- Don't use any modulation or ambience effects. The summing of tracks with all that stuff will also sound ass-like
- Keep the ornamentation to a minimum. You don't want to have 4-5 guitars all doing their own non-harmonious and inconsistent vibrato, slides, or whatever.
- Don't lose sight of the overall tune. Even if you are just laying track after track, remember to be your own conductor and to keep the flow of the tracks musical.
Here is an example from one of the songs on my eventual solo album. Its a classical-like intro that demonstrates the tones and techniques for blending several guitar tracks nicely into something that allows the simple counterpoint to shine through.
[audio:bootyjonesintro.mp3]
Rock/Metal Harmony Guitars
This is a little more complicated, in my opinion. There are so many variations in sound that you can get.
For a Maiden/Priest type of guitar sound, you don't need perfection. As a matter of fact, inconsistencies in ornamentation and tone between the voices gives it that organic sound which we all know and love. Also, its rather simple, in that, the harmonies are almost always diatonic thirds or some diatonic fixed interval. Play the melody, then record a melody a third up in the same scale. Easy as sin!
Vai-like harmonies (and Satriani on occasion) are of a different sort. You need a moderate amount of gain, no modulation, and you want all of the voices to be consistent (so that they form a nice wall of sound, with no gaps or audible breaks/impurities). Also, they are barely ever as simple as just a constant diatonic interval. Here are some examples of different harmonizations.
Vai: Liberty (1:12 into it). The melody is harmonized like a chord-melody. The harmonies underneath are actually spelling out the progression. When the VII chord comes in at 1:18, the harmonies just nail it. There is no simple formula for that, except for composing it using some of the strictness of 4-part writing but the looseness of Rock-and-Roll and just giving it vibe/attitude when required.
Vai: I Would Love To (2:36). This run is just harmonized in diatonic 4ths. The whole idea behind avoiding parallel 5ths in traditional part-writing is that they effectively sound as if a voice has disappeared. When you only have singers, a sudden parallel fifth just leaves a weird gap. Parallel 4ths do not have that problem (try recording examples for yourself to hear the difference). When Vai does these fatass runs, he sort of just knows to use parallel 4ths to achieve that unholy badass sound. I mean, that run is the SHIT!
In the same song, at around 3 minutes, he rides out that melody to the end. You'll notice really subtle harmony layers underneath it. This is a mix of chord-melody and parallel pentatonic harmonies. When doing your own melodies, imagine doing pure pentantonic harmonies. Then, when laying that over a chord progression, move only a few notes that really accentuate the chords into place. Most of those harmony notes are just passing tones anyway. They don't need to all accent the chords! This leads to...
Joe Satriani: Lords of Karma (3:40)
He plays this beautiful melody for a while, then brings in that harmony line. I can't describe what effect that harmony line had on me when I heard it as a 10 year old. It just messed me up in the coolest way.
A fun exercise for really understanding pentatonic harmonies is to just take some melody line, and harmonies it the same way that you do with diatonic thirds, except always move along the pentatonic scale instead of the full 7-note diatonic scale.
I'll most likely do a thorough breakdown of all things guitar-related from the upcoming Mindwarp Chamber album. Its not terribly dense, as, Scott's vocals really need space to shine through and I'm perfectly happy to not try and innovate every few seconds. Most of the solos are full of insane little harmonies and melody experiments.
