Steve Lukather's Rosanna isolated guitar track

tone1

The Distortion sounds like a Boss GT-8 COSM unit..

Bucket

I love the main solo, of course, but 4:50-5:00 at the end is just sublime - what a brilliant couple of licks!

richardhomer

Am I right in thinking the main solo was played on a vintage Les Paul?

bingefeller

richardhomer said:

Am I right in thinking the main solo was played on a vintage Les Paul?

Just checked and it was a Les Paul.  I always thought it was his Robot Valley Arts guitar.  

I guess the Les Paul scale length helped him with those wide bends in the second solo.  

richardhomer

bingefeller said:

richardhomer said:

Am I right in thinking the main solo was played on a vintage Les Paul?

Just checked and it was a Les Paul.  I always thought it was his Robot Valley Arts guitar.  

I guess the Les Paul scale length helped him with those wide bends in the second solo.  

It sounds like there's a harmoniser on it, or some kind of processing - so in a sense, I suppose the guitar doesn't matter that much.

He's such a good player, I don't think the guitars matter at all, really....

bingefeller

richardhomer said:

bingefeller said:

richardhomer said:

Am I right in thinking the main solo was played on a vintage Les Paul?

Just checked and it was a Les Paul.  I always thought it was his Robot Valley Arts guitar.  

I guess the Les Paul scale length helped him with those wide bends in the second solo.  

It sounds like there's a harmoniser on it, or some kind of processing - so in a sense, I suppose the guitar doesn't matter that much.

He's such a good player, I don't think the guitars matter at all, really....

Could be a chorus, very short delay, or a rack detune effect.....if that was even around at that time.  

siraxeman

Elx said:

If you want to hear more examples of shitty sounds thats sound great together check out the Aja documentary from the Classic Albums series, the bit when they are soloing the tracks one by one on the mixing desk, I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about...

Exact same thing on the Classic Albums DVD Floyds DSOTM - Gilmours solo sound isolated sounds absolute pants! Like some cheapo Gorilla beginners practice amp - pure fizz/wasp in a jam jar tone yet when they bring up all the other faders to the other tracks it sounds really great. That was a HUGE lesson to me when I first saw/heard that. What sounds horrid on its own can sound magic in a good mix.

thomasross20

Thanks to Blackstar ISF I can sound good at home and in a band. 


Lol..

bingefeller

siraxeman said:

Elx said:

If you want to hear more examples of shitty sounds thats sound great together check out the Aja documentary from the Classic Albums series, the bit when they are soloing the tracks one by one on the mixing desk, I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about...

Exact same thing on the Classic Albums DVD Floyds DSOTM - Gilmours solo sound isolated sounds absolute pants! Like some cheapo Gorilla beginners practice amp - pure fizz/wasp in a jam jar tone yet when they bring up all the other faders to the other tracks it sounds really great. That was a HUGE lesson to me when I first saw/heard that. What sounds horrid on its own can sound magic in a good mix.

I really want to hear what Ty Tabor's Gretchen tone sounds like isolated.  I bet it's horrible with loads of treble.  Once you add in Doug's massive bass sound it's glorious.  

monquixote

Is it possible that the process of isolating them has made them sound a bit more tinny?

Comparing to the original track though there is a "nastyness" to the tone it seems amplified in the isolated mix.

impmann

I'd go further... The tone in your bedroom often sounds shite in a band mix when playing live.

At the weekend I had many compliments about my guitar sound - "sounds immense" was one comment. As we were playing as bass, single guitar and drums, I'd pushed the upper mids up and the gain slightly down on the RAT to fill the space in the mix out. If the other guitarist had been playing, I would have upped the gain and the top to sound different to him - I know his sound.

Its not rocket science, but it's about listening and rather than making your tone sound pleasing in isolation, you need to think about where the sonic gaps are - your tone will then sound 'bigger' because you aren't stepping on the toes of another player's frequency range.

Sadly most players defeat this idea by playing with too bassy a tone, but then use volume to compensate. It works to a degree, but rarely sounds as good FOH.

Back to Luke - incredible player. Just shows that a vintage Les Paul doesn't need to sound like most folks think it sounds...

professorben

impmann said:

I'd go further... The tone in your bedroom often sounds shite in a band mix when playing live.

At the weekend I had many compliments about my guitar sound - "sounds immense" was one comment. As we were playing as bass, single guitar and drums, I'd pushed the upper mids up and the gain slightly down on the RAT to fill the space in the mix out. If the other guitarist had been playing, I would have upped the gain and the top to sound different to him - I know his sound.

Its not rocket science, but it's about listening and rather than making your tone sound pleasing in isolation, you need to think about where the sonic gaps are - your tone will then sound 'bigger' because you aren't stepping on the toes of another player's frequency range.

Sadly most players defeat this idea by playing with too bassy a tone, but then use volume to compensate. It works to a degree, but rarely sounds as good FOH.

Back to Luke - incredible player. Just shows that a vintage Les Paul doesn't need to sound like most folks think it sounds...

attitude to live and die by right there regarding tone. 
Wis'd. 

peteri

Wow! Thanks for this, was just learning when this came out - always been in awe of the solos.

Loved the sounds to be honest, I was really happy that it sounded more like a 'normal' sound without the studio polishing.

What a player!

Skipped

A fascinating listen.
No attempt by Lukather to deliver Godlike tone on the day. Just great playing that sounds fantastic in the context of the mix.

Danny1969

A lot of these isolated tracks (almost all ) come from stems taken from the rock band \ guitar hero game. The stem your hearing  is called a stem rather than a track because it's a combination of the track and the post production ...... the raw track recorded would sound very different. The EQ, compression, verb, chorus is post production 

welshboyo

I have been a MASSIVE Lukather fan since god knows when (at least 25 years), he is a huge influence on my playing.

Been out of vogue for many a year, cited by many as the reason for the cheesy 80's guitar sound which is so so wrong...

Finally, people are starting to realise how good Luke and Toto were as a band, real musicians playing real music instead of the current trend of bedroom player standard musicians with access to autotune...

Rosanna (the album version anyway) is not one of my favourites even though it has that epic outro solo but its still great to hear the tracks in isolation - there's another one banging around which is a radio article from some US channel where they listen to other isolated tracks off Rosanna and that's great too.

english_bob

welshboyo said:

there's another one banging around which is a radio article from soem US channel where they listen to other isolated tracks off Rosanna and that's great too.

No sooner had @welshboyo mentioned it, but:

welshboyo

english_bob said:

welshboyo said:

there's another one banging around which is a radio article from soem US channel where they listen to other isolated tracks off Rosanna and that's great too.

No sooner had @welshboyo mentioned it, but:

Thats the one - Jeff's groove is unbelievable...

But is also shows the other isolated tracks sounding particularly ropey on their own - Hungate's bass in particular

andyoz

I've noticed similar with the EVH isolated tracks that are floating about...althhugh his stuff even sounds 'in your face' on the records.  I've also noticed the delays, etc. sound a bit too overdone but just alot of that get masked by the other instrument in the final mix.

impmann

I don't know how many other people know this, but Luke played all the guitar on Jackson's Beat It, apart from the solo - and there is some epic riffing/rhythm tone on that. Apparently he did record a solo but nobody was happy with it... including him.

I can't believe people blame him for the 80s cheese tone - he never had the wasp in jam-jar with dollops of chorus sound that I associate with that. He always seemed to have the right sound for the song - and live too.

I agree that Jeff's groove is wonderful. One of the best drummers to ever grace us, IMHO.