Hey guys.

I play guitar in a band, and we all are influenced by Devy in some way. I'd like to be able to incorporate the "wall of sound" in our music, but I'm fairly uneducated in that field. How would I go about doing it? From what I understand, a lot of compression is required, obviously multiple instruments...

Would anyone be able to explain this to me?

Thanks a lot.

I think that this got discussed in another topic not too long ago. The answer is not easy to answer for all cases. Someone did have a good general answer though I recall.
Compression is one part. But reverb/delay can play a role too. As well as the right way of using EQ together with it all. And the arrangement of the song itself also plays a role in how all the effects should be applied.

When I use the technique, I usually just go nuts with a huge amount of barely audible sample/ambient layers. Most of them match up with the beat of the song in some way, but some are just random recordings of ambiance, etc. that I throw really quietly in the background. Delay on the guitar helps a lot too, but it's not the entire focus of the technique for me. Sometimes I delay other instruments as well, such as drums-- the delays are always extremely quiet though. For me, it's all about things you can barely hear, but an insane amount of those things. It all adds up.

guitars. 4 tracks. use open tuning and have two guitars panned around 10-2 (mess around to find your preference) and then doubled guitars for each about 9-3 and less db. then make room in eq for the different instruments, samples, etc. room sounds are very important too.

Um, hope this helped? I don't know if you're recording off the floor with the band or using direct in. If room, use room!

Room is good! Well, sometimes A decent sounding recording from a room mic can give some cool extra depth in a mix I think. But as always it depends on the material you're working with.

what type of guitar are you using?

mh, I'm by no means an expert but I guess the idea is to have something going on in every corner. Use the full stereo range, use the full frequency spectrum... for starters.

Everyone has said something useful, put it all together n you got it:

1) look at the song you have and work out an arrangement that allows for many parts that take place in different registers and with different sounds. For example, you may wish to have low, chunking guitars, high sparkling keyboards, vocals in the middle etc... The arrangement is the most important thing of it all really because you have to figure out how all the pieces fit in order to make this sound good.

2) Record the parts and listen. Do they work together or against each other? Are the parts too different and create a distracting effect or do they sounds great and combine to be one giant thing? If not, then go back and remove the ones that don't work and keep on recording until everything is complimentary.

3) Mix the track using judicious use of EQ. What I mean is every sound has a little bit of every frequency in it but the fact of the matter is not every frequency NEEDS to be in every sound. What you need to do is find the key frequencies that summarize that sound and remove all others. For instance, you can pretty much cut all of the low end out of every sound other than bass instruments and kick drums because having all that excess low frequency will muddy up your mix like all fuck. This part of the process will take a lot of time and experimentation, especially if you'r enot used to doing it.

Now as for compression, I say less is more. Don't go too hard but you will undoubtedly need a compressor on your output bus to stop peaking from occurring. I would use a subtle compressor like Waves Renaissance Compression. Select one of the presets for mixes (maybe Master Firm or something) and tweak it until it sounds right.