Queen of the Stone Age is the brainchild of guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer Josh Homme. Few bands have left such a lasting impression on the rock idiom since the 90s as Queens of the Stone Age, and it could be argued a lot of that is down to this man and the musicians and producers he surrounds himself with.
Queens… are themselves a revolving door of talented musicians with Homme as their ring leader. You’d be forgiven for thinking Josh Homme’s playing style is simplistic as it lacks the flamboyance and pomposity of other contemporary guitar heroes, while arguably it shares more in common with the directness of punk and grunge without some of the wilful ignorance towards the instrument some guitarists strangely take pride in. His style is DIY and idiosyncratic yet uncomplicated and well honed. He is (to borrow a dreadful cliché) a
(2002) left a lasting mark on my attitudes towards how the guitar was played but also song writing and music production in general. Even considering mytotal lack of understanding of music equipment I could tell there was quirks about QOTSA’s sound that set them apart from the Marshall/Strat/Les Paul tribe. Their more recent works haven’t perhaps shared the same cult plauditsas the aforementioned albums but commercially they have remained successful.
Patch Work:
This is not an exact ‘sound-a-like’ guide, nor should it be considered one. Hopefully it can shed some light on some of the more individual tones from one of this generation’s greats and inspire you to thing about different ways of processing your instruments. Enjoy!
I’ve long been fascinated with the QOTSA sound, and even though Josh has often kept his cards close to his chest about his pedals(note this parody video from their official YouTube channel) there’s still been some rigorous documentations of live rigs and studio techniques. This article is largely inspired by aSound On Sound video where
While it’s fantastically comprehensive most of us don’t own the relevant vintage microphones, rare effectspedals or boutique guitars to achieve this sound purely with hardware. However it got me thinking that we could probably get something
We Are The Most Difficult Simple Band. I've Often Heard Guys Coming Up To Us Saying, 'you Guys Are Just Playing Barre Chords!' I Am Glad You Think It Is That Simple!”–
The sound of Queens… is largely down to Josh himself, who has co-produced many of their albums including older Kyuss records too. This article does focus around the above video, detailing Eric Valentine’srecording of Songs for the Deaf, but elsewhere I’ll allude to Rated R, which was produced by Joe Barresi (who also went on to produce
Eric has recently become a father and moved from working full time in his Barefoot Studio to a hybrid setup at his home. Warren Huart fromProduce Like A Pro recently caught up with him to chat all things gear and
Is it a Strat? Is a Les Paul? No it’s some obscure guitar that’s not likely to become a household name anytime soon. Josh Homme has a vast collection of lesser-known guitarsbut perhaps the one he is more famed for using is the Ovation Ultra GP, which this website describes as the “ultimate junk guitar”(!).
Josh Homme's Pedals, Amplifiers And Guitars In The Spotlight
(C F Bb Eb G C). Without having your guitar setup by a professional or getting some custom extra heavy gauge strings this can cause the strings to be a great deal more loose than normal and flap around when strumming.
As you can garner from his WikiJosh has an extensive collection of classics amplifiers including the big-hitters such as JCM 900s, Bassmans, VOX and Orange as well as some more atypical, obscure inclusions.
By far the amp the QOTSA sound is most closely associated with though is theAmpegs, which Josh has a vast collection of. VT-40s with a 4×10 cabinet can be seen on stage, but there’s potentially a whole load of others that he’s used in various combinations to help sculpt his signature sound. You can see shots of Josh’s live amp settings here.
Troy Van Leeuwen:
There are various Ampeg simulations in Guitar Rig and Logic’s own plug-ins but by far the best sounding one I’ve heard is contained with IK Multimedia’sAmpliTube 4. This has by far the most flexibility of any guitar amp simulator with not only a plethora of famous amp models emulated but cabinet selection, microphone type and position (see below) and even custom rooms in-which to place your amps. As a rule of thumb I’ve tried to keep the cabinets to 4x10s where applicable. I purchased a few microphone options inside AmpiTube to give me a wide palette of sound choices.
For those of you more on a budget, Logic’s Bass Amp Designer has some Ampeg-like sounds and Computer Music have released a free simulation BassAmp CM, which is free with their magazine.
From the Valentine video we can infer he was using a tube condenser mic (Sony C-37A) for a warm, smooth and full bodied sound, a Sennheiser 441 dynamic mic, an RCA 44 Ribbon mic for the room and what he calls a‘salt-shaker’ mic close to the cabinet. This provides the aggressive, bright high-end sound which can be blended with the other three mics to achiever a wider range of tones.
Josh Homme's Guitar Gear, Pedalboard & Amps
The bass is my brother’s Ibanez bass tuned down using some parallel distortion from Logic’s pedalboard. The allows the dry bass to be mixed with the distorted one, keeping some clarity.
There are two guitars tracked – one playing the simple power chords and the other adding the bluesy lick at the end of the four bars. Throughout this article I’m using Fielding DSP’s Reviver to add third order harmonics into the guitar sound. This adds a slight touch of drive that’s pleasant, and beset of all it’s super cheap!
The amp settings used are below. Notice how much midrange is added here. A big part of the sound is obtaining distortion from overdriving midrange EQ circuits. In the digital realm you need to be careful with your gain-staging as this can sound flabby and muffled if you’re not careful.
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However this wasn’t quite right – I added iZotope’s Trash 2 to alter the tone some more. Trash uses the same convolution technology normally found in reverbs to simulate various cabinets and circuits. I used the Lincoln Standard to colour the sound and finished off with some SSL EQ.
The vibraphone is Logic’s EXS24 with some vibrato and plate reverb added. All the tracks are summed to a bus with a healthy bit of processing on. Some Kush Clariphonic EQ, Waves Fairchild emulation*, the excellent Goodhertz Vulf Compressor, followed by some tape saturation, a final bit of surgical EQ and limiting.
Protective of his floor-based tonal secrets in interviews and Baresi and Valentine respectfully corroborate his stance stance. However, perverted pedal snoopers have obtained various
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A huge part of Josh’s sound is EQ, and in particular boosts to themids and low-mids. In our DAW any digital EQ would handle this just finebut as Josh has been known to use a Boss GE-7 and MXR Graphic Equalisers I’ll follow in suit.
The drums are mostly mixed in the same way as the previous example except this time a healthy dose of Audio Damage Rough Rider (which is free, so no excuses for not downloading it NOW). This is an extremely aggressive compressor that works fantastically on shotgun mics to beef up toms or raise the room sound in the mix.
I added my own clap tracks, processed with iZotope Vinyl (another free plug-in) – I often use this as a limited EQ to thin sounds out. There’s also some gating, enveloping, EQ, limiting and mid-side processing to narrow the sound a little. Homme himself agrees:
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Low in this track, hitting the lowest C. To combat this I used some multi-band compression to tame the super sub sonics, as well as AmpliTube and some optical compression.It doesn’t sound like a lot on it’s own, as the guitars take up so much of the mix, but it supports the track nicely.
I double tracked the guitar and panned them each off-centre. There could well be more than just two guitars, but it’s hard to tell in such a dense mix. I used Logic’s pedalboard EQ to boost around 400 and 600 Hz, really digging into the Ampeg.
Both guitar were grouped together with some Reviver, Kramer channel stripand another favourite cheap compressor of mine; thePensadia SOR8, which is a Distressor emulation.
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Of course, not all of Josh’s distortion comes from overdriven midrange EQ – there are some classic fuzz sounds to be found on his board including the sought-afterUnivox Super-Fuzzand Fulltone Fat-Boost, as well as various Boss compacts.
The bass has a distinct distortion Nick Oliveri, which could well be aBoss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz. Without one available I’m using AmpliTube’s Fulltone range, employing their OCD do handle bass-fuzz duties. Run that into an optical compressor (Logic’s native one is fine) and some of the Console EQ, and you’re there or there-abouts:
The guitar is processed using Native Instruments Guitar Rig’s aptly named Distortion module, almost certainly a clone of the Boss DS-1. Keep the tone and distortion dials below 9’o’clock and adjust the input gain to get it to break-up nicely without blasting the life out of it.
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TheStone Deaf PDF-1 is acontemporary homage to theMaestro Parametric Filter MPF-1 (Josh can be seen using the MPF-1
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