Making a Backing Track – Pink Floyd

Making of a Backing Track – Pink Floyd

If you’ve ever wondered how people make their backing tracks then this is for you. This is a walkthrough of how the Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II” backing track, that was featured in an Ultimate Guitar shot, was made.

Revv G20 Tube Guitar Amplifier

The Revv G20 (pictured in purple) is both a Tube Guitar Amp and a direct recording amp all in one.

It is a 2 channel amp that is foot switchable. It can also be controlled via MIDI. It can be connected to your computer via USB and works with the “Torpedo Remote” software.

It also features silent recording via a switch on the back which will provide a dummy load for when a guitar cabinet is not connected and uses an XLR (microphone cable) output for direct recording.

Line6 HX Stomp

The Line6 HX Stomp is an all-in-one guitar rig and recording interface. This is an awesome and fairly budget minded unit.

If you had no other equipment other than your computer and wanted to make great sounding guitar recordings, then I highly recommend this.

This has guitar amp and cabinet simulations, guitar pedal simulations and is very easy to use. You can edit your guitar rigs using the “HX Edit” software or you can do your editing on the device itself.

I am using this in conjunction with the Revv G20 guitar amp so I am only using the pedal simulations in this scenario.

The pedal models that I have setup on my pedal board from the HX Stomp are as follows:

EZDrummer2 by ToonTrack

EZDrummer2 is a Virtual Instrument for drums. This is made by an amazing company called ToonTrack.

In a nutshell, you have drumkits to choose from, then you have pre-built drum patterns you can use and everything can be edited in your DAW. The whole thing is “drag and drop” and is very easy to use but also has alot of deep editing if you really want to get crazy.

What is really special about EZDrummer2 is that all of the sounds are real recorded samples with extreme fidelity played by some incredible drummers.

You will be shocked at how real sounding these drums are and also how easy it is to make your own beats or make variations of the pre-built patterns.

Fishman TriplePlay | MIDI Pickup

The rhythm section for this song doesn’t appear to have any guitar in it. It is possible there is but the prominent instrument is Organ. For this I used the Fishman TriplePlay.

This is a MIDI Guitar Pickup. It attaches to the guitar and then converts the vibration of the guitar strings into MIDI information.

MIDI can be understood by a keyboard and therefore will allow me to play keyboard modules or apps or virtual instruments.

This is not as magical as it sounds, this technology still has a long way to go, but if you don’t mind working within the limitations, it is very useful.

The organ parts could just have easily been sequenced in my DAW and not have to be played but I prefer to play things live when I can.

Doing this helps add some more human element to the music.

For the organ sound I used the IOS app by Korg called “Module Pro”. This has alot of great sounds in it and Korg is highly regarded for their hardware and software.

Correction

What order does my guitar equipment go in?

The “signal chain” refers to the order of devices as a signal passes through them from the source to its final destination. This isn’t limited to audio. This could just as easily be used to refer to a video signal.

In our case, I want to discuss the signal chain for my guitar rig for the lead guitar sound.

In this diagram you can see the signal chain that I used for the lead guitar.

• The sound starts at the guitar
• it then goes through the Tube Screamer Pedal
• then it goes into the input on the front of the amp
• the sound goes through the preamp section of the amp (EQ, Volume and Gain Stage)
• the sound is sent out of the back of the amp into the Delay Pedal
• the signal then goes into the Reverb Pedal
• it returns back to the amp (Power Section) and is sent to our virtual Speaker Cabinet

In this particular case I am using a real amp so to make this signal chain, your amp must have an effects loop. The effects loop lets you send the signal of the preamp section of your amp to other devices before it returns to the power amp section and then on to the speaker to be heard.

If you are using an all-in-one amp modeling device, you can do the same thing in the software of the device (This is true for all of the all-in-one devices I have used – there may be some that cannot do this).

If I only used the Line6 HX Stomp, I could have done this same signal chain but using only the amps, cabs and pedals in the “Stomp” and put them in that same order.

Your overall guitar sound can be changed simply be changing the order of your devices. There are definitely some recommended methods but it doesn’t mean you can’t experiment.

The method I have used is a very common signal chain method.

1. Guitar
2. Tuner / Wah / Volume pedals
3. Overdrive / Distortion Effects
4. Front of Amp (Input Jack)
5. Effects Loop Send
6. Time Based Effects (Chorus, Phaser, Delay, Reverb, etc.)
7. Boost Pedals
8. Effects Loop Return to Power Section of Amp
9. Lastly, the sounds comes out of the Speaker

This method is only a recommendation. It is a good one to put to memory but it is by no means the only way to order your equipment.