AT-HOME TRACKING TIPS
No Compression
Give this a try when you’re
recording guitars. Turn off
the compressor and take
it out of your signal chain.
Use only your microphone
and mic pre to capture
the sound. Setting the pre
without any compression
can really make guitars
sing. It can add more dy-
namics to the tracked part
By Shawn Bradley (Electric Six, Thornley)
and give them a much
more “open” sound. There
will most likely be some
compression added during
mixing to even out any
parts that may be “sticking
out.”
Open-Back Guitar Cabs
When miking an open-
back guitar cab, put one
microphone in front of the
Intervals on “Bad Habits.” Guitar solos in general are a
rare thing for the band, though Rousseau does contribute
a kickass, tasty run on the track “Say Yes!”
“For Silverstein, a guitar solo is kind of a weird thing.
There’s maybe only two or three in the whole catalogue. I
just wanted to have something bouncy and fun and kinda
‘90s inspired. I always want them to resolve, I don’t want
them to feel pointless or come out of nowhere. But then
[Intervals guitarist Aaron Marshall] did that one in ‘Bad
Habits’ and I was like ‘Ugh, I gotta practice.’”
speaker and then try put-
ting a second microphone
behind the cab. Flip the
phase of this second mi-
crophone and blend it with
the front mic to your liking.
Double-Tracking Guitars
A little trick when @double-
tracking stereo guitar
parts is to choose a differ-
ent pickup select on the
guitar than the previous
guitar track recorded. For
example, the left guitar
track could be recorded
using the bridge pickup
and the right guitar track
could be recorded using
the neck pickup. The result
is a slightly different tone
from each guitar, which will
help them find their own
space in your mixes.
Born Again with
TOM SHEMER
The Damn Truth
Go-To Live Rig:
•@ Bunting Melody Queen Signature Model Guitar
•@ Demers V Guitar
•@ G&L Legacy Special Guitar
•@ Seagull Artist Prototype Acoustic
•@ Retro King Custom Bluesbreaker British-Style Amp
•@ Fender Twin Reverb Reissue Blackface Amp
•@ SolidGoldFX 76 Fuzz Pedal
•@ Foxrox Octron Pedal
•@ Mad Professor Little Green Wonder Pedal
•@ Empress Effects Super Delay Pedal
•@ Exotic AC Booster
•@ Lynx Cables
•@ Dunlop Nylon Jazz III Picks
Montreal has a long history with rock and roll, from The
Beau-Marks in the late ‘50s all the way up to contempo-
rary hitmakers like Sam Roberts and The Dears. But the
guitarist for one of the biggest up-and-coming bands, the
locally beloved The Damn Truth, got his start in a place
not really known for any guitar players of note: Israel.
Tom Shemer initially started playing the violin as a
four-year-old in his native country, but discovering rock
and roll led him to the six-string.
“My parents were nice enough to buy me a classical gui-
tar. I picked it up pretty quickly because it was very similar
to violin. A lot of the fingering I already knew, so at first, I
wasn’t playing too many chords; I was just mimicking the
stuff I heard on the radio – just melody, melody, melody.
That’s really how I got started, discovering Jimmy Page
and Slash.”
He soon found himself taking part in a surprisingly
developed guitar scene.
54 CANADIAN MUSICIAN