Victory Pill's Jim Davies on layering guitars

Jim Davies shows you how to layer guitars without crowding your mixes.

by The MusicRadar Team, Wed 11 Jun, 2:15 pm BST

Jim Davies is a master of layering guitars

Everyone knows that if you turn your back on a guitarist in the studio, he'll fill up your songs with 47 guitar parts that won't leave room for anything else on the track.

Layering guitars doesn't have to be a sludge-fest. With careful planning you can layer guitars so they compliment each other and, most importantly, the song.

In this video lesson, Victory Pill main man Jim Davies and live beats/synths man Pete Crossman show you how to layer guitar parts using different tones and pitch ranges to help the guitars sit together well.

If you want to see more Victory Pill videos then check out their other lessons on compression and building loops. For more information visit the official Victory Pill website.

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User comments (1)

musophilr

12 weeks ago.

Interesting ideas, audio quality somewhat compromised by the volume of the backing music behind the spoken instruction which made it hard to pick out what he was saying.
Perhaps other topics to address could include
1. Panning parts so that they don't crowd each other, or placing the echo return in a different place in the stereo image to the dry original.
2. Using instruments with significantly different tone quality (eg LP for main tunes, Strat for harmonies).
3. Different EQ (similar idea to above, but try scooped sounds for rhythm and middley sounds for solos).
4. Musical construction of parts (call-and-response, or countermelodies).

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