"The one with the hymn"

It’s that time! The time all session musicians and recording musicians look forward to; time to pick the amp, guitar, and effects for the gig!!! I absolutely love it. This time when I know what the gig is and know what the gig sounds like, and I get to go into my arsenal of gear that I’ve collected for so many years and pull out what I deem fit for my parts in this particular recording session. Oh man, my brain starts churning with possibilities and I really get into it. At this moment something in me normally tells me to chill out a bit, pull back from crazy gear nerd world, and calmly, professionally look objectively at all of my gear and start to put it together in my mind for what I’m about to be called on to do. 

A great example would be earlier today when I came into the studio. I had two completely different sessions ahead of me that called for a drastically different approach. The first session was going to be a re-arrangement of an old church hymn. So, I immediately thought about doing it on my old trusty Stratocaster, set very clean, into my Eleven Rack where I set a very lush plate reverb. It still wasn’t quite there with the dry tone though, so I thought about what I wanted to accomplish, and pulled out my Way Huge Pork Loin pedal. I set it to 100 percent clean boost with the drive all the way off and clean knob all the way up. I then adjusted the curve knob and tone knob to give it a little roll off of high’s. That did it! It boosted the signal a little bit and gave it that push into the eleven rack. The result was a beautiful track! 

The next session was a little more complex in a different way. I was going to be playing rhythm, lead, and bass on this one and it was to be a heavy, “Alice in Chains” type feel. I immediately thought of one of my favorite guitarist of all time,  Jerry Cantrell and his tone. I went into my Eleven Rack and dialed up a very close tone with the Soldano SLO 100 patch. I used this tone dry with a Gibson Les Paul R8 for the rhythm, and added just a small amount of tape delay for the lead tone. I went to one of my favorites for the delay, a newer purchase for me, but has quickly become my go to pedal for a lot of tones, the FoxGear EchoSex Baby. 

Finally, I had one more track to lay down and that was the bass track. I needed to shift gears quickly from guitar land to laying down some awesome low end! I went for my old fender P-bass and ran it through a very very light chorus and boosted it with yet again the Pork Loin pedal (very versatile pedal). I ran it into the front of my Eleven Rack unit and dialed up a trace elliott style bass amp simulation with a light compression in the circuit, and I was off to the races! The bass tone fit like a glove with the drum track and added a nice roundness with the light chorus effect. 

As you can see, there is no hard and fast rules here, or any book to tell you what to do! It normally starts with a gut feeling with me once I know what style i’m going for, then my brain normally jumps to a inspirational player reference where I can draw on the countless hours of research on other players that I have done over the years. Then, It all comes down to simple experience in hooking up the right signal chain for the project, and ultimately your very own fingers to complete the task! It pays to do your research, and it pays to try all sorts of gear for all sorts of genres of music. This will allow you to be able to effectively pull off any style in any session, and even do it back to back without skipping a beat! 

Today was a fun day, and just like many it resulted in very cool tracks after being edited and mastered, but even the sessions where you fall flat on your face and maybe even pick the completely wrong equipment make you a better player. These sessions almost make you a stronger player than the ones that go perfectly, for the simple reason that they hit you harder, stuck with you, and pushed you to work harder on your craft! I hope this installment provided a little insight into what I consider one of the hardest worlds to enter into; session work. It is my passion and if it is yours, go whole hearted into the studio and don’t be afraid to be you. Don’t hold back, and always remember to rock out wherever you play!!! Tune back in for part 5 on Frankenstein guitars and pedals…don’t be afraid to hack and solder!!!


~ Ryan Ridgeway 9/9/20

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