Vintage Rock #5: Warm & fat tones

Welcome to the Vintage Rock #5 lesson!

This one was inspired by 70's rock bands, like Led Zeppelin, The Doors and Free. It is correct to notice that these bands were rather Les Paul + humbucker based. I decided to go for a vintage tone based on Telecaster single-coil-loaded guitar, which was also popular at this period. Mentioning bands above has it's purpose in exposing where do the playing itself took it's inspiration, rather than tone.

Vintage rock was a kind of distortion "childhood". Gain amount was relatively low (comparing to modern options) and generate mainly by highly cranked tube amps. It had huge affect on how players where made to play, to make them sound the way we all know. These were some tricks like using double stops in solos, which made guitar sound more distorted than on single notes. Very heavy picking was necesary to make it all sound like "I mean it". This is what I expect You to learn from this lesson. Enjoy it!

Gear used (in order of connection chain placement):

1. Fender American Performer Telecaster
2. Presonus Inspire 1394 firewire audio interface (input gain 40%)
3. Poulin HyBrit - vst plug-in:
- Input 50%
- Mode PLS
- Gain 100%
- Channel blend 0%(fully on NORM side)
- Contour, Low, Mid, High, Amp, Output - all 50% (12'o clock)
4. Nadir impulse loader (default settings)
5. Impulse - Ownhammer OH 412 FMAN M25B 57-00

To simplify things let's just call it a Marshall Plexi(1959 super lead) amp, being plugged into NORMAL input with flat eq and connected to 4x12 greenback loaded cabinet, recorded through sm57. You can get similar tones using different stuff than I did. Stay open for experiments.

Tuning - Dropped D

Backing track progression :

4/4
Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm | G5 F5 | C5 Db5 |
Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm | G5 F5 | C5 B5 |
Bb | Bb | C5 | C5 | Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm |
Bb | Bb | C5 | C5 | Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm ||


Tempo: Main song tempo is 140 bpm. There are also backing tracks available at 60, 80, 100, 120 and 140 bpm.

Time signature: 4/4

Scales used in this lesson:




D-minor scale






Keep in mind that blues-rock playing is slightly "twisted" key-wise. Very often major and minor scales mix the way they don't anywhere else then here. In this case the quarter-step bend ornamnets can cause things to sound slightly major at some point.