I love Mk.Gee, his sound is super nostalgic to me- I couldn't afford a guitar amp so I used to play into a tascam tape recorder when I just started like he does.
You mention Mk.Gee being a modern guitar hero. Nick Reinhart is my modern guitar hero. What's funny is David Rainger said he was inspired from seeing Nick Reinhart do some gated reverb stuff and that's how we now have the Reverb-X.
@@AudioHaze Nick was apart of a RU-vid collaboration with Juan Alderete called Pedals and Effects up until a few years ago when Juan got into an accident. If you look up Pedals and Effects:Pedal-X by Rainger Effects in that video Nick tells the story I was referring to. I also recommend checking out “TERA MELOS 40 Rods to the Hog’s Head Live @ The Media Club” just some insane improv and Nick uses like 30 pedals over the 11 minutes of the songs and most “Math Rock” is in alt tunings but it just blows me away with how much Nick is able to do in standard!
@@cadenbenton6235 Love seeing Tera Melos brought up! Nick has had a streak of bad luck yet everything I hear about him, he stays the nicest. Thanks for the reminder to listen to their album!
Haha, me too. I can't play anything like him, but I think the most important thing is his touch of course and his guitar setup. 11s (flatwounds nowadays?) with a fairly low action and fairly straight neck. So I had to work on a light touch and when you dig in you get the right amount of snarl or growl from a Telecaster without choking out.
THAT'S why those tascam recorders suddenly got so expensive. I've been trying to get my hands on one. Side note: I love that you always take an ideas-first approach with these breakdowns. It's a cut above a lot of other people who go straight to the gear.
Thanks man! Yeah concepts before gear every time, I also the tascams and similar equipment keep going up with the lofi revival from Mac Demarco and stuff too. People want that raunchy tone I guess
Another important element of his sound is his use of a roland vg-8 processor and roland gk (hexophone) pickup. This processes each of his strings separately (you can hear him using this practically throughout the new album) and creates these synth-like textures. At concerts, he processes his guitar signal in parallel (mono signal from the tascam, and stereo from the gk pickup)
I genuinely love that he celebrates the ultra dynamic Aspect of his Tone. In Modern Rock and Metal nothing seems to be anything close to Dynamic anymore. Everything is super compressed and tightly fighting into the correct pocket. Although i would turn the Tape-y Distortion way down. For me the Melody is still King, not the Sound.
Yeah I love that too! And its such a distinct example of how dramatic of an effect dynamics can have, not only in playing but using gates and distortions on your tone as well
I really like the different tiers, as someone who has no money for new gear atm. I'll add that making it mono at the end of the chain for the first 2 tiers might help it sit in the mix similar to the high tier. Excellent vid here will def be referencing :)
This reminds me of how kevin parker got crazy tones out of the boss BR600/864. It’s Always some random piece of gear that explodes in value once people find out about them. Same with the KTG.
This was an amazing video! I’ve been on a MkGee tone exploration for a while and this was spot on. The gated reverb thing in a DAW is a game changer here. Great insight! My 2 cents: Hornet Plugins makes de 644 plugin which emulates the Tape Machine preamp perfectly. And it’s a very affordable plugin!
Oh sick, I'll check that out! I've also had a few good recommendations for postastudio pedals as well, seems like there are lots of more affordable options out there
@@maciejrembikowski5415that looks awesome! I have Aberrant's Digitalis, which is the digital version of this (lots of shitty digital artefacts that can be dialled in to taste)...by far the most creative FX plugin I've seen. Will have to check this out!
There is also a big part of his sound, at least live, that comes from the blending of his amp rig with patches from the VG88. From live pictures you can see both Mike and Andrew using it live with a GK3 going in parallel to their amp rig. This piece of gear can especially be heard on Andrew Aged's tone, which most of the time plays keys/washy guitar parts behind Mike on some songs. As I reckon the GK3 allows you to split the strings into different sounds, allowing Mike to play bass only on lower strings on certain songs. I'm curious if you'd be able to recreate Andrew's tone the same way, which sounds to me like the perfect blend of chorusy guitar with spacious DX7-esque patch
Killer video my dude! Super cool seeing you use an actual Tascam. I was expecting to see one of the IK Tascam plugins that they put out but excited to see the real deal.
The Chase Bliss Gen Loss is a fun pedal to use for a clipped tape preamp sound. Its not the Mk.gee thing exactly but if you want that gritty, tape thing I highly recommend
Yes dude, been waiting for this one since you first teased it on Instagram! Would love to see your take on some Jack White tones as well, especially since he just released a new album. Maybe some song recreations too, like you did with RATM!
Love my Rainger. Pretty sure Mike puts at the end of the chain but gonna try it near the start. Worth emphasizing how light his touch is like none of this would work if his clean playing wasn’t so nuanced
I think 17:02 was my favorite tone in here tbh- fantastic demo of a lot of mk.gee tones but I think this shows that it’s a good idea just to use these ideas as a stepping stone for your own experimentation
I would LOVE some video editing tutorials from you (or your editor if you have one) those plugin screen effects are awesome! And as always amazing job on the reconstruction of the sound ❤ Love this channel
Thanks Brenda! This one I edited myself, but I do have an editor and we typically split the work :) those are effects in premiere, the glitch is VR digital glitch, and using keyframes to automated the master amplitude, and the 3D effect is called basic 3D, and you just keyframe in the tilt!
Dude, yes! I've been obsessed with his album since the Rhett Shull vid turned me on to him. I recently ordered the MXNHLT Effects Porta424 pedal for the channel strip sound. Figure it it's smaller and way, way cheaper than what those tape recorders go for now haha. Great vid!
I literally just heard about the pedal from another commenter that probably would’ve saved me some cash hahahaha, oh well, the tape deck is super fun to play around with
@@AnthonyEvans-wl5ts I've had the Rainger Reverb X and it nails a lot of the gated verb/distortion. But the tape preamp pedal really gets that bite in his tone when settings are near maxed.
It's great you're going through different options and methods. I'm never one to really want to mimic or copy a sound, but I want the jist or similar elements so I can work it into my own tone where it fits for me.
Yeah honestly a lot of the tones I found with this setup inspired a bunch of riffs! Thats the great thing about finding new sounds, they lead to an entirely different way of playing sometimes
People are chasing tones kids make in their bed room with their starter gear now? Oh boy. Don’t get me wrong Mcgee is awesome and a fantastic talent. But the tone sounds like something cool we figure out by messing around with our first effects processor as new players. It’s not like some genius magic trick. What’s magic about him is his songwriting, chord voicing and singing.
Great stuff man, really cool and useful idea dialing in the tone using hardware and software gear and compare them, I would love to see the same thing as this video but trying to re-create some of Jack White's tones (not the White strips era but the newer one) ... cheers
Great video! Another very important aspect of his tone is the roland VG-8 that he uses with their midi guitar pickup (the one ductaped to his guitar). It's a guitar/amp emulator (like a pod kinda) but with a really unique synth section for each individual string, and thats where a lot of the synthiness of his sound comes in. I have a roland gr-30 that's pretty close sounding and specifically the "bowed string" preset is i believe what he uses on the more agressive songs like candy and alesis. It also has its own onboard flanger/chorus and reverbs so I believe the flange for his live tone mostly comes out of that as well :)
Btw they are super hard to find anywhere and the ones i've seen are like upwards of 500 bucks so just something to keep in mind, the gr-30 i got gets damn close for a lot cheaper (250-300 bucks) and has a lot of it's own character and other sounds that are pretty inspiring imo
Thanks for the info dude!! Lots of people mentioning the vg8 which is definitely something I missed, the individual strings part is crazy though, had no idea
Diud you mention the most important part? Fingers. had fun cranking rubbish old behringer mixers, and fostex 4 tracks for years. you can get those (if the cassette part is not working) basically for free. just try with whatever you have.
Bass VI is basically a modified Jaguar. You can get one of those and put lighter strings on it, or stick with the bass strings and honestly it sounds super thick.
@@AudioHaze Trust me when I say it sounds great. Now I don't have a lot of real amps. Just a practice amp and a ToneX pedal. If you turn the bass cut switch on, and run it through a guitar amp/sim and not a bass amp/sim, it sounds super good with heavy OD/fuzz
I played through my dad's Sears and Roebuck stereo and shredded the speakers as a kid...they sounded only slightly worse that this. I have a Tascam 424, so I may still experiment an approximation out of curiosity sake...
So the overdriven preamp of the 424 is a thing now.... I guess the holy grail transistor in the gray 424 search is on and we'll see price of these go up to the thousands.
Correct! Lots of people mentioning the vg8 which I failed to bring up in the vid, although I will say it seems to mostly apply to tones like candy and such
Great job on the general tone! You probably came across this while researching, but he does utilize a Roland VG8 (which may or may not be harder to get than the Rainger....) that I believe is heavily utilized on both the videos for Alesis and Dream Police. I wanted to add for Dream Police, I think it is closer to a more synth/MIDI sound where lighter notes have a longer attack and digging in gives more bite. I found using Ableton's Gate with a low bar (when you p[lay lightly, it should pass through easily) with an attack anywhere from 75-150ms kind of gives it the sound I was looking for. I think Envelope Follower could get it even better, however, I only have Ableton Lite (which again, LOVE getting more free options, big fan of the BritPre but got a better idea on the Fx chain) Would DEFINITELY love a recreation of any of his live songs! Interested in some of his other sound design elements outside of his guitar
Would anyone recommend any good third party sound banks people make in the style of artists like mk.gee, james blake, sampha for example? Or a good VST to get? I have Arturia bundle which has a lot of stuff I think works for their sound but I'd love to buy a bank of 100+ sounds (keys, bass, pads etc) specifically in that style so I'm not searching through thousands.
That would be a super cool study! I feel like a lot of the vocal production is similar to Dijon in how they use omni room mics to capture a distant kind of tone
i think you were close, but his rig refinetly has a really clear dry blend or buffer, thats what your tone is missing. it sounds like a fuzz, and phaser clearly instead of that glasslike tone because theres no buffer
Good job man I was looking forward to this. For budget friendly stuff Valhalla space modulator is a free really cool flanger. Sketch cassette 2 is not free but really cheap and great. Billie and finneas like it so it's not just me lol
Yeah I love space modulator! Should've definitely reached for that, although the cassette plugin is actually Tape Cassette 2 by Caelum audio! Totally free
Prices of cheaper cassette portastudios will fly to the moon now :D BTW, there is pedal "Mid Fi Demo Tape Fuzz" that reimplements input circuit of tascam's portastudio. Kinda channel strip in pedal. And there're also some kits of clones to build("B-side fuzz" for example).
Yeah I've had a bunch of cool tap emulator pedals recommended! Good to know there's lots of options to getting good tones out there. lol I hope the cassette prices stay low-sh...they're legit insanely fun to play around with
I got the tascam and rainger a couple months ago before the prices blew up to get this tone, I'm still trying to figure out the rest of his sound so a full breakdown would be great!!
People also don’t seem to realize that mkgee doesn’t really use the gate on the reverb x, he just turns it on and off mostly controlling the gate himself. You can hear the pedal click off and on.
Love the channel and love the video as always, really helpful info here! I'm confused by the first sentence though. The closest we have to a guitar hero in 2024? There are other modern legends I'd give that to over him who have had monumental influence on the world of guitar (Tosin Abasi for instance) - unless you're just talking about mainstream accessibility?
Actually I cut the second like where I mentioned that Tosin Abasi and Tim Henson could be considered hero’s as well, then talked about how Mk gee’s style is more reminiscent of a less technical era, but I cut it because I thought it was ramble 😂
@@AudioHaze That totally makes sense! 😂 I think there is something to be said about people making guitar cool for a more mainstream audience as opposed to the more progressive music world. Mk.Gee could have a similar effect to when John Mayer was coming up, or John Frusciante inspiring more "pop" audiences to pick the instrument up
McG. Bro is ordering McDonalds. Great vid once again AH. I feel like you’re destined to make a Clairo video soon. One of the four horsewomen of the indie folk scene :)
Most of it would be string tension! Because the baritone is a longer neck, the strings would stay at a comparably similar tension to a regular guitar in standard tuning, whereas my guitar here had super bendy strings :) it may also make tuning a bit more of a pain compared to a baritone. Hope that helps dude!
