Reggae Guitar

[aisling]

I guess this thread can now RIP

[ethios4]

Well, shit, original reggae wasn't played through a freaking computer anyway! wtf? Not like they had some kind of plugin to get the real sound...shouldn't be hard to look at what was being done and emulate.

[mdb]

Honeslty, you probably dont want to hear this.. But.. Guitar is one of those things that just doesnt really sound "right" plugged into a soundcard and masked by an emulation plugin. ESPECIALLY reggae guitar. Thats a hard one. A reggae guitar, is more of a percussive instrument in the music which a lot of guitar players overlook int the big picture. So you need a percussive sounding tone. "Rock" oriented emulation plugins arent going to yield the kind of results your probably hoping to get. You would seriously get a better sound plugging into a real amp in less time and effort and yield much more desirable results.

But... My best advice is to you if you cant go that route is find something close in a plugin, and then start EQing(seperate plugin) it from there to give it that clicky, prescussive effect.

[blakbeltjonez]

OK Guys..this is me here..I will forgive you because I guess you might not have known, but I am Rock Steady/Reggae music.
Also thanks for replying, but I guessed you misunderstood. I want some kind of virtual Amp (didnt find it in Guitar Rig)that can emulate that sharp cutting strum and not instructions on how to play a Reggae Rythm, because I am that rythm. I walk, breathe and think in Reggae.

whatever Lyn Taitt, Hux Brown, Ernest Ranglin and guys like that used - Lyn Taitt played on tons of Treasure Isle records with some weird hollow body guitar (you can see him in "The Harder They Come" portions that were shot in Dynamic Studios), and of course for rocksteady, Treasure Isle and Studio One studios recorded many of the classics. Eric Frater definitely played a Rickenbacker at Studio One, i would guess that the amps at either TI or Studio One would have been little Vox amps, or Fender, or whatever combo amp was around

part of the sound would have also been the way things were recorded. Studio One was a 2 track studio well into the 70's, and Treasure Isle was too up until it went 4 track about 1972, so guitars would have been printed a bit trebly to leave sonic room for whatever else was on the track. usually it was drums and bass on one track, everything else on another and dub down to another deck, while the singer and additional stuff was added live.

for Studio One, having the slap echo is also important - Coxsone Dodd brought back a Sound Dimension tape echo from the U.K., and that subsequently became the name of the backing band that played on a majority of the hits from '67 - 72. you can really hear it in Larry Marshall's "Nanny Goat".....i have no doubt you know that tune, Evon. i would think that any decent tape echo plug would get you close, plus a little bit of distortion to give the guitar some hair.

in most of those old recordings, you hear a lot of the room it was recorded in as well since they all played at the same time. even a little amp with a crap mic will do wonders, experiment with mic distance. to be honest, i am not too terribly enthused about amp simulations..... they don't sound right for any guitar IMHO.

if you like the mid-70's rockers style guitar, like The Revolutionaries ("MPLA", etc.), use an envelope follower and set the filter to open and close fairly quickly, or a wah pedal left at the mid-wayish position for a thin-sounding rhythm that cuts.

that's kinda off the top of my head, there's really not much info out there about who used what. there's not many pictures or footage of the inside of places like Studio One, Randy's, Channel One, Dynamic, etc. and even less of Treasure Isle. it sure would be great if more interviewers would talk more specifically about the technical aspects with the older players before they all pass away.

[slirak]

Check out the demo of Amplitube Fender. Great spring reverbs and much better for clean or moderately distorted sounds than Guitar Rig IMHO. You probably won't find a preset that does what you want, but if you mess around a bit (and don't miss the Ambience parameter to get that roomy sound and do try different mics!) I think you can get somewhere.

You'll probably wanna use a separate vintage style tape echo plug though, check out the GSI Watkat, TAL-Dub and KingDubby (Mac only) for a few free ones.

If you wanna go further you'll need to emulate the entire recording chain I suppose, so you might wanna try some vintage EQ plugs, a tape simulator (go heavy on the flutter) and perhaps even a vinyl simulator to that. Add some extra distortion and cut away the high freq's to simulate the effect of pingpong recording. And go mono!

[blakbeltjonez]

nice one on the Copicat tape echo plug-in..... that would have been a piece of gear specific to the time period, for sure.


the sound of Studio One:

[oblique strategies]

Lyn Taitt, Hux Brown, Ernest Ranglin

Gods o' reggae guitar. Blip!

that's kinda off the top of my head, there's really not much info out there about who used what. there's not many pictures or footage of the inside of places like Studio One, Randy's, Channel One, Dynamic, etc. and even less of Treasure Isle. it sure would be great if more interviewers would talk more specifically about the technical aspects with the older players before they all pass away.

So very true. There is a sorry lack of documentation. I keep hoping that someone will turn up a massive amount of photos & info so that we can finally learn more about how these sounds were made. Plus I really want to see these fabulous musicians at work.

Photo credited as: Sly & Robbie at Studio One



Earth & Stone at Channel One

[alex.the.forge]

Also strumming technique is 50% of the effect.....

+1 - I'd say even more

not that I'm any great Reggae expert, but certainly the trademark Bob Marley sound is more about how it's strummed - totally damped like you're so stoned you can't be arsed to press the strings all the way down

and yeah like Ethios said, just look at the type of gear they used... should easily get there with a Strat + Guitar Rig (even the Ableton guitar effect racks could be worse) so long as you strum it right

and yeah like the others have said, those old tape echo type effects were a big part of a lot of it

also a wah pedal is probably worth trying

[Spazi]

Ik multimedia Fender. Nice easy sounding plugin with loads of stuff to use.
It's the best amp simulator I have heard. Not perfect but good.
I think you should be able to dial in a reggae sound with this.
Probably the fender twin reverb.

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/fender/features/

[bigsalad]

..I want some kind of virtual Amp (didnt find it in Guitar Rig)that can emulate that sharp cutting strum

In addition to the tools already suggested try using:

1) extreme compression to squash the waveform and squeeze the sound down tight, and

2) carefully adjusted gating to remove the quiet part of the signal, effectively chopping the stream into sonic pieces.

(BTW, don't think you want to emulate the strum, but shape it - emulation would mean not actually playing guitar but some other instrument.)

[leedsquietman]

Check out the demo of Amplitube Fender. Great spring reverbs and much better for clean or moderately distorted sounds than Guitar Rig IMHO. You probably won't find a preset that does what you want, but if you mess around a bit (and don't miss the Ambience parameter to get that roomy sound and do try different mics!) I think you can get somewhere.

The BEST sounds from Guitar Rig are the quieter clean or just lightly overdriven sounds, the heavily distorted ones don't hold up in the mix and require a lot of work to stop turning to mush. I think both products (IK and NI) are good but they just emulate different gear, I really like GR and definately for off the wall heavily modulated sounds it is cool, but nothing will ever sound as good as micing up a real amp. The new GR4 has some good features with the control room and the new WHite amp which sounds especially good on cleaner/lightly driven sounds, although it has a presence about it which is probably not suited - like other posters said, a lot of the early reggae stuff used cheap end gear like H/H and WEM amps with Watkins Copicat echo, rather than expensive tube amps and the super expensive Roland Space Echo units.

Hardware stuff like Vox Tonelab SE and even better Fractal Axe (although you're getting up into 1.5-2k US$ territory here) are better than plugins. http://www.fractalaudio.com/experience.html

[aisling]

The irony is that once we get so technologically empirical with all this...it is no longer reggea I always thought reggae had an in the moment "feel" aspect to it. Almost a metaphysical connection to the "moment"....if you want to get all Jah about it.....

I can't imagine bob, or scratch, or any of the greats, being so technological about the production. These guys were pretty simple people, add the drugs and booze on top....

[blakbeltjonez]

The irony is that once we get so technologically empirical with all this...it is no longer reggea I always thought reggae had an in the moment "feel" aspect to it. Almost a metaphysical connection to the "moment"....if you want to get all Jah about it.....

I can't imagine bob, or scratch, or any of the greats, being so technological about the production. These guys were pretty simple people, add the drugs and booze on top....

that's true to a point - while most of the players and singers might not have been all that interested in what was behind the glass, the studio owners and engineers most certainly were. in most studios, the gear was good although minimal. Dynamic Studios had a custom built MCI console and tape machines (which were later sold to Tubby's - Treasure Isle got one of the 4 track decks). Harry J's had a Helios console, Channel One had an API console, and Federal had a Neve console....

90+ percent of it is really the musicians and the interaction of their playing. songs were usually cut very quickly, normally in one or two takes (Studio One and Treasure Isle in-house productions didn't have that kind of pressure, and certainly Lee Perry's Black Ark didn't) because time was money, and renting studio time was expensive. the expectations for musicians were quite high, if you couldn't run a new tune down in 5 minutes or so odds are you wouldn't work much. producer Bunny Lee wouldn't even bother with a playback to see if things were okay.... the reel was changed, and onto the next tune.

and while much has been made about the spirituality, etc. of it all, for most it was a way to eke out a living - if you could nail down someone to get paid. up until the early 70's, there were only a handful of studios - sessions ran around the clock, and you would be lucky if you could get in if you weren't an A-team or B-team session player, singer or producer.

if you listen to a lot of rocksteady and reggae, it's pretty easy to tell where a song was done.... each studio had it's own distinctive sound and the competition was intense. Randy's Studio was the favorite of both Marley and Lee Perry (from about 1969 - 1972), so much so that when the Chins changed the console to be able to compete with the other multitrack studios, Perry became enraged and set about building his Black Ark studio in his back yard.

[Sage]

in most of those old recordings, you hear a lot of the room it was recorded in as well since they all played at the same time. even a little amp with a crap mic will do wonders, experiment with mic distance. to be honest, i am not too terribly enthused about amp simulations..... they don't sound right for any guitar IMHO.

I sort of agree here, but things can be done to get closer. The main issue I have is just how noisy emulations are compared to using a real amp, even hardware stuff like PODs, so high gain stuff often becomes useless.

But add a bit of compression prior to the emulation and some room reverb afterwards, a loud amp will always have some reverb on it even if the mic is rammed against the grill, everything gets a bit more convincing.

[aisling]

The irony is that once we get so technologically empirical with all this...it is no longer reggea I always thought reggae had an in the moment "feel" aspect to it. Almost a metaphysical connection to the "moment"....if you want to get all Jah about it.....

I can't imagine bob, or scratch, or any of the greats, being so technological about the production. These guys were pretty simple people, add the drugs and booze on top....

that's true to a point - while most of the players and singers might not have been all that interested in what was behind the glass, the studio owners and engineers most certainly were. in most studios, the gear was good although minimal. Dynamic Studios had a custom built MCI console and tape machines (which were later sold to Tubby's - Treasure Isle got one of the 4 track decks). Harry J's had a Helios console, Channel One had an API console, and Federal had a Neve console....

90+ percent of it is really the musicians and the interaction of their playing. songs were usually cut very quickly, normally in one or two takes (Studio One and Treasure Isle in-house productions didn't have that kind of pressure, and certainly Lee Perry's Black Ark didn't) because time was money, and renting studio time was expensive. the expectations for musicians were quite high, if you couldn't run a new tune down in 5 minutes or so odds are you wouldn't work much. producer Bunny Lee wouldn't even bother with a playback to see if things were okay.... the reel was changed, and onto the next tune.

and while much has been made about the spirituality, etc. of it all, for most it was a way to eke out a living - if you could nail down someone to get paid. up until the early 70's, there were only a handful of studios - sessions ran around the clock, and you would be lucky if you could get in if you weren't an A-team or B-team session player, singer or producer.

if you listen to a lot of rocksteady and reggae, it's pretty easy to tell where a song was done.... each studio had it's own distinctive sound and the competition was intense. Randy's Studio was the favorite of both Marley and Lee Perry (from about 1969 - 1972), so much so that when the Chins changed the console to be able to compete with the other multitrack studios, Perry became enraged and set about building his Black Ark studio in his back yard.

You made some very good points, thanks for the feedback.