How about we run through some basic rules for working guitarists in any professional capacity - not youtube fantasies /Thread
1: Be bright - not as your parents wanted (though that helps), make your amp bright - you're playing in a mix, not by yourself. You have no place ordinarily being at 90 Hz. Bass and drums are there for a reason, give them space so you will be heard where you should be sitting.
2: Learn to love that bright sound. It sounds thin by yourself - but learn how it sits in a mix. Make it the sound you dial in because you've learned to love it. It brings out the best in both you and your gear *where it matters*... which brings us to...
3. ...Good gear meant for professional playing is often bright, often thin, and often unweildy and harsh sounding. For a reason. eg Dial in any Mesa with recommended settings from its manual and it sounds like arse by itself. With 3 or more band members, its a 'Hallelujah' moment
4. As an aside, the most expensive, professional grade gear you can buy, often sounds absolutely shit by itself and is hard to use anywhere other than *loud*. There's a very particular reason for that - it's not meant for your bedroom running on 1/15th of its output power.
5. Gain is your enemy - regardless of how heavy your music, you're probably - almost definitely- using too much gain on every occasion. The human brain struggles to highlight heavy gain sounds in a dense mix - the gain your heroes record and play with is much less than you think
6. Know your gear. Understanding why you need to use X guitar or Y amp or Z pedal or XYZ/ABC setup, is the same as a builder knowing what drill or saw to use. 9/10 music jobs entail your professional knowledge level, it's part of today's craft. Its not 1972 anymore
7. Know the relationship between preamp/power amp dynamics, learn about amp circuits and their uses, learn about active/reactive attenuators for volume constrained environments, learn about pedal circuits, learn about impedance, learn about mixing a live mix!
8. Protect your hearing! You have to figure that out yourself - be it in ears, ear plugs (and which of the millions work for you), stage management & amp positioning etc. If you're deaf, you're useless. I got laughed at for doing it, but I can hear & those twats are now all deaf
9. Gear! There's a correlation between price and gear quality, but it's not super strong. Cheap is still generally meh, but there are bargains. *Use your ears*. Also remember, the cost of a professional setup is 1/3rd what it was 25 years ago in real terms
10. I have never seen a guitar youtube personality that seems to know shit from sugar when it comes to knowing what's required of a modern professional musician, except those that are/or have been professional musicians or those that own large music stores.Not all info is equal
PS. Make music, think about it, and the best thing you can ever do is figure most of it out yourself. With the bits you can't, ask somebody that can help you - choose someone with experience (it matters). And go easy on the delay and reverb eh.
