Guns n' Roses "Sweet Child Of Mine" Isolated Lead Guitar Track

Continuing with our isolated guitar themed Fridays, here's the lead guitar tracks from Guns n' Roses breakout hit "Sweet Child Of Mine." Here are some things to listen for:

1. Slash's distorted guitar intro line, as well as the interlude and solo, has a nice big medium length stereo reverb on it with not a lot of predelay.

2. In the verse, Slash's rhythm part goes from clean and dry to chorused. The sounds are considerably smaller than the intro/chorus/interlude/solo distorted part.

3. The second chorus at 3:10 is beefed up by distorted rhythm parts that are doubled and panned left and right, where they both play a different fill when it returns to the I chord.

4. The first part of the guitar solo sounds like it was written as it's very lyrical, while the second half Slash just burns on the wah.

5. Great guitar sound and performance!

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What Not To Do Onstage

This is so funny and so painful at the same time. It's a video of John Otway from the BBC's The Old Grey Whistle Test back in 1977 where he goes to jump on an amp, but doesn't quite get the jump right, and ends up crushing his testicles.

Otway was an artist who was short on talent, but he had a vibe, which is sometimes enough to get you noticed. This led to the appearance on one of the major music shows for its time.

The interesting thing is the mishap actually managed to land him a record deal with Polydor, who gave him an amazing $380,000 advance (worth $1.4 million in today's dollars). It also shot the song up to #27 on the UK charts, which would never happen for Otway again.

So to all you frontmen out there, learn the lesson of the video. Don't jump on small combo amps!

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"Help Me Rhonda" Vocal Session

Here's an outtake from the vocal session for The Beach Boy's "Help Me Rhonda," that's interesting for a number of reasons:

1. You can hear the sophistication of their harmonies. There sure was a lot for them to remember.

2. You can hear how flat they are in the beginning of the session and how they get better as it goes along.

3. Murry Wilson (Brian, Carl and Dennis' father and early producer) giving them several "pep talks." You can already hear the resistance to his suggestions, leading to frustration all around.

My favorite quote (right at the end): "You guys are coasting. Chuck and I used to make one hit after another in 30 minutes. You guys take 5 hours to do it." To which Brian replies, "Times have changed."

It's long, but a good listen.

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Music For Speaker Setup

My Facebook follower Edgar Hernandez had a question about the music I recommend for testing a new speaker setup or helping you get accustomed to a new room. Here's a short excerpt from The Mixing Engineer's Handbook that describes my thoughts on the matter.

"Listen with source material that you know very well. The only way to judge a monitor is to listen to material that you’re very familiar with and have heard in a lot of different environments. This gives you the necessary reference point to adequately judge what you’re listening to. If you don’t have anything that you’ve recorded yourself that you know inside and out, use a favorite CD that you consider to be well recorded. Remember: don’t use MP3’s here! Use only CD’s or a playback system with an even higher quality 24 bit source like a personal digital recorder. That should give you some idea of the frequency response of the system.

One of the things that I learned when writing speaker reviews for EQ Magazine over the course of five years is that you can easily get used to just about any speaker if you use it enough and learn it’s strengths and weaknesses. It also helps to have a solid sonic reference point that you’re sure of to compare the sound with. For instance, if you know how things sound in your car, then adjust your mixes so they work when you play them there. Believe it or not, that’s still a go-to place for many major mixers to reference their work."

I hope this answers your question, Edgar.

To read additional excerpts from The Mixing Engineer's Handbook and other books, go to the excerpts page of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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New Music Gear Monday: iZotope RX 3 Restoration Tool

For those of you working in post or on archival projects, the latest version of iZotopes's RX software seems like a dream come true. RX 3 has a newly designed user interface and up to 6 times faster processing that the previous RX 2. RX 3 Advanced now also comes with the new Dereverb and real-time Dialogue Denoiser modules.

Anyone who's ever struggled with audio recorded in an overly ambient room will appreciate Dereverb. This could actually be great for those recording in bad sounding rooms with low ceilings, which tend to mangle drums sounds.

RX 3 can be used as a stand-alone tool or as an RTAS or VST plugin, and it's also 64 bit AAX compatible with Pro Tools 11.

RX 3 is expected to be available in September, and although no price has been announced, RX 2 listed for $349 and RX 2 Advanced for $1200. Upgrade pricing will also available. Here's a very short teaser video that explains it.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.