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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

ZZ Top "La Grange" Isolated Guitars

Today we gave a great study in how to use electric guitars in a song. It's Billy F Gibbon's isolated guitar parts in ZZ Top's break-through hit "La Grange" from their Tres Hombres album in 1973. Here are some things to listen for:

1. The intro clean guitar has a nice short delayed reverb on it.

2. The verse distorted guitar is doubled and spread out left and right. It also has a different reverb.

3. The solo (which is one of my all-time favorites and was played on a 55 Strat through a Marshall Super Lead 100) is a completely different sound, which keeps the song interesting as new elements and sounds are introduced.

4. When the clean intro guitar is introduced again after the solo at 2:15, it's dry except for what sounds like some recorded room ambiance.

5. Listen to the amp noise in between the phrases during the outro solo at 2:33. Not that anyone ever heard it in the track though.


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Are these guitar tracks from the original recordings, or are they from the 'remastered' tracks? It sounds like a lot of reverb for the original tracks....

Thanks for all you do with the blog Bobby!!!

GregJ

Anonymous said...

doesn't sound like Billy to me

Bobby Owsinski said...

These are probably from the Rock Band video game, but I don't know source for sure.

Ben said...

These are definitely not the original 1973 tracks from the vinyl. I happen to have my ripped-from-vinyl copy right here and (a) there is *nowhere* *near* that much reverb on the original recording, and (b) the guitar solos are completely different. (I prefer the original solos, personally.)

Rand Bliss said...

I agree, it doesn't sound like the original recording at all and it doesn't even sound like the 'original' Reverend Bill G. either.

Makes sense if it was re-done for a video game...

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