I've had a few people here, and around the web in various dark places ask "how did you achieve your sound?" I'm in the process of putting together a few posts to cover some of the details. To enlarge the photos you're gonna have to click the links, not the preview pic.
The second post of this thread, has sound samples, check it out.
WHAT TYPE OF CONTENT WILL BE COVERED?
I'm going to stick to mainly general concepts of mastering, EQing, "proper use of Shreddage" (whatever that means), and trying to give you tips on getting a good mix. I won't cover how to make your amp sim sound good, this is really a personal preference, and I can't tell you what amp sounds good and what doesn't(personal preferences). I'm also not going to tell you how to write cool songs, I'm still trying to figure out how to do that myself. What I will do however is try to steer you clear of any "bad habits", and give you some tips to make your music composition a little easier.
Here's a partial view of my guitar amps:
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/236/amps.png
As far as how I get my guitar tone from Amplitube...you'll just have to experiment, I'm using 2 amps in stereo for each instance of Shreddage 2, one for left, one for right. It took me some time to "perfect" this, and get something I truly love. I still tweak these daily though.
You'll see the EQ curve I'm using as well to create the sound I want by removing excess bass and treble frequencies, this makes room for the bass guitar and kick drums, and on top makes room for guitar solos, vocals, etc. Part of the reason this needs to be done, is every instrument, effect, and voice occupy nearly all parts of the audio spectrum. While your voice is imperceptible at say 30Hz, if you speak into a spectrum analyzer, you'll see there is SOME audio there. The same is true of your voice at 20Khz. Because of this factor, you'll need to make room for instruments or else you'll suffer audio clipping, buffeting, and other strange audio artifacts.
If you listen to any electronic music, you'll notice on a lot of songs the bass kick almost mutes all the other sounds temporarily. The reasons for this are varied from track to track, but for some, it's due to extensive compression. Bass notes carry the most energy, hog your compressor, and will stand out more than any other frequency(except maybe high pitch notes in the 4-8KHz "sibilance" range). High frequency notes also contain a great deal of energy. It's the midrange notes that actually have the least effect on compression. Considering I will recommend compression on your final track later on, you don't want to overdue the bass before hand, or else it'll get out of control. If you don't drop the bass a bit on the guitar through the EQ(depending on how much bass your amp setup is producing) it may compete with the bass guitar for "presence" on the musical stage. Too many sounds at the same frequency will muddy, and tend to blend together. Having a mix that just blends together too much causes some people to react by bumping up the track volume on a specific instrument, when really, it's just competing for audio spectrum with something else.
Here's my Shreddage 2 screen:
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/438/ ... uttons.png
Notice I have the SCREAMER PEDAL, AGGRESSIVE EQ, and COMPRESSOR enabled. This really makes Shreddage 2 sound better in a distorted, metal setting. I leave the Screamer Pedal off for clean guitars, and the other two, I leave on (for now). This is a personal preference, but try it out just for fun, it's a very different beast with/without. Having all three of these enabled will allow you to get a really thick metal tone, with a lot of attack and presence.
Here's the guitar part:
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/539/guitarpart.png
Note: lots of single notes. This guitar part moves around a bit, not excessively so, but when making complex parts, don't be afraid to use single notes. For most "riffs", a guitarist would probabaly only use a few 2 or 3 note chord patterns, and single notes. Anything beyond that will typically be for open sustained chords. You'd be surprised how many single notes real guitarists use(I PLAY REAL GUITAR TOO), and I get most of my guitar advice from my friend who's been playing for about 15 years. He helps me to keep my parts "realistic"...at least to as much a degree as is possible with a VST.
Here's the lead guitar part:
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/354/sologuitar.png
Nothing highly complex here, but remember that overlapping your notes forces Shreddage 2 to use hammer-ons, so note transition is smoother. A real guitarist doesn't actually pick every note, many times the fingers simply change frets, taps a string, resulting in a smooth note transition without the harsh guitar pick sound. If you never use hammer-ons, your lead guitar WILL sound fake. My hammer-on overlaps are very tiny, so they not be immediately visible. The length of the overlap doesn't matter a whole lot, differing lengths will create different sounds though, so experiment a bit. Hammer-ons are also useful for emulating tapped guitar parts, like arpeggios, and a lot of "shredded" guitar parts. I'd go so far as to say that half the notes played in your average guitar solo(a good one mind you), aren't even plucked with the guitar pick, but are done with finger tapping instead.
