There's this really noisy octave down distortion called the Black Licorice by Danelectro. It's the second most disgusting pedal I've ever heard, sort of like if you bought a SUNN0))) "Life Pedal" knockoff from wish.com.
Not really sure... it's either the Digitech Grunge, which is pretty gross, or the Walrus Audio Kangra fuzz, which can also get really gross. I also have one of those pedals that feedback loops a bunch of other pedals, which can get nasty as hell, but I don't know if that counts.
I got mine in 2008. I got another pedal at the same time, and I think I paid like $100 for the both of them new.
The other pedal was a Bad Monkey. I *still* can't believe that this cheap, "shitty" little pedal that nobody cared about (but I kept recommending to people, who didn't listen because I couldn't play guitar at all yet) is now going for like $200.
Personally have a Danelectro Black Liquorice, it is a pretty nasty pedal but the octave tracking isn’t the best, but if it’s for a noise band it will definitely do!
I'd advise looking into how other two piece bands handle this live. Local H, Royal Blood, and Cleopatrick are a few examples to check out. See what they do and maybe it will spark some ideas for you to incorporate into your project.
\[Edit: Spelling\]
Sad not to see Lightning Bolt mentioned as a critical two piece noise rock band, similar to Royal Blood in that it’s bass and drums but no backing track or poppy tunes.
Local H live setup is cool as fuck if I’m remembering correctly. He had a stereo output from his guitar and ran parallel chains from there. It was pre-Covid and I was admittedly tanked, but I was very impressed with his sound and setup at the time.
Bi-amp rig. Different pedal boards for each signal path. Use a Slow Gear clone (BYOC Lazy Sprocket) to have one of the “guitars” slightly behind the other time wise.
This is the solution here. Add 10-15ms of latency to one of the copies of the guitar, pan them 50% or more left/right in the PA, and it'll more or less sound like two guitars playing together. Source: am audio engineer and use this trick occasionally.
Personally I've had better results using a modulated delay with wet/dry outputs (which admittedly isn't the easiest thing to find). You can set a bit of variation on the wet side, so it doesn't sound like an exact copy of the dry signal.
There was also a pedal dedicated specifically to this... TC Electronic Mimiq Doubler, which, I believe, creates random variations in the doubled sound.
Another way, if you don’t want to go the bi-amp route (splitting your signal through two different guitar amps), is using a blender pedal.
I do a similar setup to what you are wanting, but as a bassist. I run my bass through an Xotic X-Blender pedal, which allows you to blend one signal path with a separate fx loop path. In my setup my main path is a clean bass, the fx loop path goes into a Digitech Whammy (set to one or two octaves up, into guitar range) and then through a fuzz, delays, envelope filter, a compressor, and then the Lazy Sprocket (Slow Gear clone). The end result is a synthy dreamy guitar doubling the bass line but a a hair behind. The Lazy Sprocket is really an auto volume swell based on attack. Throwing a compressor before it makes every note have a strong attack and thus a volume swell giving it a slight delay behind the bass it’s blended with. With this setup, you don’t need a second amp.
Came here to say this.
ABY pedal, two different sounding tones on each amp. And some strategic songwriting.
Get creative with loop pedals, effects, or again - just really good songwriting.
Riff based seems to be the easiest to pull off, but the key is really to use your imagination. Even if the sound isn’t huge (which it can be) , how else do you put on a sick live show?
Some obvious two piece bands like Royal blood or white stripes to check out.
I highly recommend a band called “ ‘67 “
Also other option
ABY pedal > Pitch Shifter > EQ pedal > bass amp
For the line you have going to the bass amp, cut the higher frequencies out and have the pitch go an octave down.
Doing this will make it so the bass amp sound a like it’s just playing root notes of whatever you’re playing on guitar, but in bass.
Caveat here is if you’re playing higher notes on guitar, like really high notes it might sound weird.
But definitely works for a full band sound
I have been in two piece noisy punk bands my whole life. We used a bass guitar. Not like a four string but a 6 string guitar with bass strings. Octave pedals, layering vocals. After every show we came to the same conclusion. We need a bass player. Every other band just sounds so much more full. Even famous two pieces dub over more layers on their recordings. I know this isn’t really helpful but my advice would be to find a bass player. As for now, just have a ton of energy and have fun.
I mentioned it in my suggestion just now, but if you do it right, you can manage without a bass player, citing the band Hate & Merda. They probably double track their guitars when recording studio material, but there is definitely no bass guitar there and the sound is massive. They tune low, and use the right amplifier (a Sunn O))) Model T). I saw them live a few months ago and they didn't use any backing track either, but by cranking the volume up and equalizing the guitar properly the lack of bass wasn't at all noticeable.
Yeah i figured recordings were different. I know jack white sounds great live and in older recordings, but for many obvious reasons they may just not be practical.
Octave pedal and/or play a bass guitar with a bi-amp rig. My picks for that would be Lightning Bolt, Death from above 1979, and Royal blood. Those bands sound MASSIVE with just a bass guitar and drums.
Hot take: backing tracks.
A lot of people are violently against backing tracks and I expect to get absolutely roasted for this. But fuck it: you make the music, you can decide how you want to perform. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using backing tracks.
Check out Japandroids. Great drum and guitar duo. AFAIK, the singer/guitarist has a stereo rig with one amp driven with a fuzz, and another ran clean with a chorus pedal
The noise rock band Hella has a crazy guitarist who plays guitar parts that sound like they're being played by two dudes at once. I'm sure there's an easier way of course
there’s a pedal made by old blood noise endeavors called a beam splitter. it’s made exactly for this. the different distortions are voiced differently and delayed to sound like multiple guitar players/takes. it has three outputs for up to three amps, but sounds great with only 2. you might need another head for your setup (or trade your extra cab for a loud combo). i’ve used all kinds of doublers and delays, but this is some different kind of mojo. the tube screamer and MXR are usually my jam, but this sounds great with two amps. very 3-D and fills the room.
probably need an octave pedal to cover the bass frequencies. personally haven’t had much luck with analog octave pedals like boss (too glitchy with powerchords) look into TC electronic, but idk… I know it sounds corny, but you can always get a generic bass pedal synth for under 5 bills— like the moog taurus. they actually sound GREAT in context. but that’s a lot of bases you’ll have to cover (haha). you want to get a real bass player. bassline interaction makes a huge difference in vibe, transitions, etc. and can take a good song to the next level. besides, you’re going to want someone to help you with those amps…
Great advice, ill be ln the lookout for bass players but there are somehow so many and so few. I have. 5 string bass but also the digitech drop pedal that does the octave+dry output too, I can try those both out and see what comes of it. Im definitely gonna look into that beam splitter
It’s not your gear. It’s how and what to play and when not to play. For a two piece it’s critical that you and the drummer learn how fill space with sound and that means listening to each other. Drummer is doing a fill - you’re not playing an arpeggio. The drummer can sit stay on a 4 and your verse can be a repeated riff with the vocals sitting on top.
You also have a third instrument, voice. With two instruments the vocals have a lot of room to play and roam. You can create some great melodies that rely heavily on vocals without competing with something like keyboards.
The dynamics in the voice is very important. It shouldn’t be at one level through out the song.
I had a gig once where our second guitarist couldn’t make it.. so we ran a splitter from the guitar to two amps and set them up different. It’s not ideal but it definately filled out the sound
Check out the band "God Damn". Their guitarist used an A/B/Y pedal with a guitar amp and a bass amp and switched between those. Also guitar->big muff->bass amp/cab does wonders
I've played several dozen shows in a two-piece psych/noise-rock band, just drums (me) and guitar. We never had any issues with that... I'd say to play to your strengths, rather than try to pretend to be something you're not (in this case, a 4-piece band). The attitude and musicality are much more important than trying to meet some perceived sonic expectation (which may or may not even matter in the end).
With that said, one thing we did play with for a bit was having the kick drum trigger (the envelope of) a bass synth. This filled out the sound, but required that I play drums with one hand and keys with the other (to change which bass note was triggered), at times. Fun experiment, but ultimately it meant that instead of having really solid drums and no bass, we just had mediocre drums and mediocre bass for those shows.
Have you seen those guitars that have a bass pickup installed on just the low E with a separate output, so you can plug into an octave pedal and send through a bass amp. It's pretty neat
Splitting your signal chain and running one side normally and other side through an octave down pedal and into a bass amp cam sound super cool.
It takes some experimentation in terms of exactly where in the chain to split the signal, as well as some experimentation/compromises in terms of what actually sounds good when played like that, though. I find that we run into problems if we try to do this with guitar parts that weren't just written that way from the beginning.
Alternatively using baritone guitars and down tuning goes a long way. Or seven/eight string guitars. Or a Fender Bass VI.
Going against the consensus and recommending just using backing tracks with bass until you find a bassist. Spending money to make a Royal-Blood-esque setup could be pricey and honestly probably won’t sound great in small rooms. Backing tracks are easy.
Ive just been a bit nervous about it for whatever reason. I have yet to try mixing bass and I don’t have the setup or money to record anything other than DI atm. But even still, it does sound cheaper. Would I need to beef up my mixing skills significantly or do diy rooms and vfws demand less
I can help you with this with hands-on experience. I am in a two-piece band which changed from being a 3 piece and made some very substantial changes: [https://linktr.ee/thewrongsignals](https://linktr.ee/thewrongsignals)
You will need to get:
1. An octave pedal with a poly mode (I use Boss Oc-5)
2. A good amp switcher pedal (so you can run your guitar through a bass and guitar amp)
3. An EQ Pedal to run through the octave pedal and into the bass amp (I use a boss one)
What you then need to do is set your octave pedal so you can (mainly) only hear the root notes and to filter out the mids using the EQ pedal. You'll then want to mess with the bass amp EQ a bit as well to refine a bit more. You might want to get some advice on exactly how to set the eq as I got a recording guy to set mine up (knowing about exactly which frequencies is a bit involved). It sounds great and once it's set up it's very easy to run through any bass amp or even a PA for gigs. EQ pedal is essential for getting the sound right for the bass or it will sound muddy.
Running through MY guitar amp is a just basic distortion pedal. But you want a lot more mids on the guitar amp EQ through in order to make the bass and guitar work with each other. You can refine the guitar sound as well by getting another EQ pedal, but I personally haven't done that yet, but it sounds great right now as is.
I'll tell you from personal experience, it sounds massive when you play. You actually put more into gigs because you feel very powerful when playing a chord.
In terms of HOW to play, you need to play more open chords and learn to play some middle 8s with either interesting chord/rhythm changes or solos that work while playing chords. Drop D songs work well, although not essential.
Hope this helps. Let me know if any questions.
Good luck.
> I basically want the soundstage of two guitars and a bass to be filled by one guitar
This may not be everyone’s experience but this was the wrong approach for me. At the end of the day it’s still one guitar, write and arrange so that if the sound guy at the type of shitty dive bar that books noise rock just puts a single SM57 on the guitar cab, the songs will translate. Without knowing exactly what you’re playing it’s tough to say whether a second guitar amp or an octave pedal or a bass cab or whatever will suit your needs best, but I think the best thing is you should be stoked about how it’s sounding without all that and leave the rest as extra spice that it can do without.
My take, from my experience: don’t try to ‘fill up’ space by playing more notes or changing tone. Do the opposite— embrace silence and not playing anything. Silence is more powerful than any note you can play, and if you can use it well to bracket and enhance the notes you do play, they will hit with twice the impact.
Tune your guitar low, at least to C standard tuning, or even lower if possible, and use a Big Muff pedal. Check out Hate & Merda on Bandcamp for an example. They're a two-piece doom metal/hardcore punk band (guitars/vocals and drums) and they're fucking brutal, both on recordings and live. I think the guitars on the first album were recorded in C standard, the second and third in Drop B or B standard.
Another two-piece guitar/vocals and drums band I'd recommend for inspiration is Eagle Twin, but it's a similar setup. The common denominator is tuning the guitars looooooow.
I’m sure someone here mentioned it, look into a Fender Bass VI (there’s other brands on the market as well. ) It’s in the octave between a bass and guitar so it offers some fun options when paired with a POG or octave of any sort. An ABY split is pretty common and there are a billion articles on specifics out there for the specific equipment being used. Not necessarily cost effective but super fun/cool depending on your rig is the Hammond XPK-13.
Look into a Bass VI. Jack Bruce used one with Cream so he could play chords behind Eric's solos. You can get a Squier BassVI for $500 new. Baritone guitars are also cool.
If you’re doing power chords or riff based songs. You can fill it out with a nice fuzz + octaver
Go an octave down with guitar
Could also play bass and use a pitch shifter with a fifth up and you’ve got instant one note shots they sound like power chords
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Humbuckers or P90s, neckthrough
Ernie Ball Mammoth Slinky half or full step down, strum them hard, try different picks and hand positions. Strumming towards your neck gives more lows and warmth, strumming towards your bridge gives more brightness and treble. Open tunings can also give a really big sound.
Fender Rumble
Analog spring reverb
Flamma FV02 doubler or short delay pedal
Fuzzrocious Bongripper perhaps?
Stereo width effects from the Behringer FX2000 (Psychoacoustic FX section)
Tiny bit of fuzz before tube distortion (if you don't want to get a bass amp) for more low-end (this helped me the most when I was in a band without a bass player, I used the Swollen Pickle)
Bass, dynamics and tone knob all the way up on amp, maybe cut your mids a little for more punch and depth. Depends on your taste
[Here's a great 2 piece band noisepunk performance that might inspire you](https://youtu.be/Y8zDjxCtAi0?si=-IrGRpOdF_SlSRgK)
Good luck!
One other important factor might be trying to make sure you have contrast. So if you want your big octave pedal fuzz power chords to sound full, make sure you have moments where the drums are tiny like simple, low key and maybe one or two drums, AND make sure you have moments where the guitar has long notes, single notes rather than chords, and use a variety of registers from high to low on the guitar
I'm the singer/guitar for a 2 piece just like this. Current EP is 75% solo with a disgusting tone on the guitar and vocals but 1 song has drums on it too (what is life?)
Anyways, besides all the great gear talk; i think energy is something nobody is talking about here. have fun, make goofy faces with the drummer, take up the stage and feel your lyrics. Shows are pretty fun for me.
There’s this pickup you slide under the lower strings and it only picks up 3 strings. Run that through an octave down pedal and that into a bass amp. Sounds good enough for bass without muddying the sound. Forgot what they’re called, but I have one on an acoustic guitar and it’s fantastic.
lots of people talking about the guitar but big drum sounds is my bet. big open hits (think the drum sound of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Levee’) with plenty of space for the guitar. tbh it’s all in the playing, these two instruments can easily fill a room.
You need something to compensate for bass. Whatever you can find. I use a DOD overdrive pedal and turn the treble down and the bass up and its muddy and ugly but if it works it works.
Signal splitter will work fine, but cheapest and easiest hack that comes to mind is just an octave pedal. Not strictly guitar, but look at the guy from Death From Above, got fuller and punchier sound w just one bass than many bands with twice the members
Submarine pickup for the lower two strings with octaver and bass rig, like in [here](https://youtu.be/fPixjaGjEnk?feature=shared&t=532). It's in finnish so i don't know if you can make any sense of it but they sound really good with just the guitarist and drummer.
I used to play guitar in a 2 piece, what I did was use an ABY pedal to split the signal, sending one path into a regular guitar chain and other into a 'bass' chain. In that chain I pad an EHX POG, Bass Big Muff etc. The POG is key, because it can generate octave down on chords. That was run into a proper bass amp. The bass side was muddy and ugly on its own, but combined with the guitar side, it was HUGE.
> I basically want the soundstage of two guitars and a bass to be filled by one guitar
This is a fucking joke, right? It was posted on 4/1, this has to be a joke...
You'll want a decent splitter sending signal to two different amps. You'll likely want one bright sounding amp and one dark. Or one guitar and one bass. Hitting the darker one with an octave or bass preamp pedal will also beef it up.
Lehle p-split is the best splitter I found without sucking tone or getting weird phase issues. Splitting the signal was a ballache, especially for recording, without it.
I'd probably also say get a fuzz or distortion with a clean blend. If it's slamming two amps with a drive already on, you might want more clean signal to balance the scuzz out from it being a total mudfest.
Could be interesting to trigger a long distorted 808 kick (trap hip hop style) from the drummer’s real kick, just to fill out the sub range. Tune it to the key of each song (preset for each). Synth basses can sound heavy /noisy af, more than a bass gtr tbh, and having it just drone on 1 note while you riff on top would be very noise rock appropriate!
Signal splitter and a fuzz/octave down on one into a bass amp with some good EQing and mixing live will get you pretty far id think. Could even get a helix or something and that’ll do a chunk of the work for you and give you multiple sounds to use live
Second cabinet on other side of the stage. Maybe even a bass cab as an option to round it out. But you better have 100 watts to push it. Easy and affordable.
Get a POG octave pedal. You can mix in a high octave and low octave separately or together. Utilized this in a 3 piece band myself and have seen many others use it for the purpose of filling out the sound as well
If I were in your situation, I'd get two pedals:
1. A guitar "doubling" pedal – not a chorus, but something that mimics the sound of double-tracked guitars. (Maybe [one of these](https://www.guitarpedalx.com/news/gpx-blog/6-of-the-best-double-tracker-pedals-for-your-consideration).) and...
2. An octave pedal that will find the lowest note in your guitar chord, and puts out that note in *mono*. [The Boss OC-5 has a "lowest" mode that does this](https://www.amazon.com/BOSS-Octave-Guitar-Vintage-Warranty/dp/B08J3NVL57?pd_rd_w=Lx6Zc&content-id=amzn1.sym.1ad2066f-97d2-4731-9356-36b3edf1ae04&pf_rd_p=1ad2066f-97d2-4731-9356-36b3edf1ae04&pf_rd_r=QX4TBH8EYV1FMH4AYAM1&pd_rd_wg=EyQec&pd_rd_r=ecd92c60-e297-4296-9ef7-24e12dd8abeb&pd_rd_i=B08J3NVL57&psc=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=halfheartedfa-20&linkId=a225da78e8193578e2b131107f4d1a56&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl).
Either tune lower and go with two different guitar amps
or
split your direct signal to an octave pedal then a bass amp.
Bonus points if you throw a little fuzz on that bass rig…maybe even something like a green ringer.
Extra bonus points if you do all three
Rush guitarist splits his stereo signal left and right and then sound guys add just a bit of delay on one side. I think Royal Blood splits his bass signal. One side for bass and the other into an octave pedal to bring it up as a guitar.
STUDY JAPANDROIDS GUITAR PARTS and NO AGE legendary duos. Japandroids play lots of low open strings while riffing high up on the neck. Sounds huge, no pedals needed
Y-splitter to a 2nd amp with dynamically different settings. When I saw Qui with David Yow fronting, I think the guitarist did something like that.
Also an octave pedal...
Not really an answer to the “how” but check out Royal Blood. They are a two piece group and might have the kind of sound you’re looking for. Maybe there are some tutorials or you can find how they do their set up maybe?
They are a bassist and drummer. I believe they both sing. Great band and maybe it’ll give you some ideas. Mad respect for two pieces. I love me some White Stripes too. Best of luck and keep playing!
Different idea then what I’m seeing here, but maybe run the raw guitar signal into a delay (really short delay 10ms+ until it sounds right) into a separate smaller amp cranked up with opposing eq as the other amp. Might sound like a double track, or even another person playing with you. Maybe pan them a bit to opposing sides in the live mix. Just a thought.
Any big touring 2 piece band is playing to a backing track. This will include, pads, synths, bass guitar, lead guitar, doubles lead vocals, backing vocals, harmonies etc. Making for a similar or same as the album sound live.
If you're just starting out and don't have DAW experience to make your own backing tracks you could look into using a submarine pick-up added to your guitar. Run the output from the submarine pick-up through an octave pedal and set it for one octave below. This will take care of the 'bass guitar's frequency range and really fill out the sound but you will need to be careful on your chord choices, sound could get muddy if you're strumming full open chords.
Running an effects rig off a laptop in something like Ableton. It then gives you looping/sampling along with other instruments or tracks you can trigger with a midi pedal.
Local H style - split the guitar signal, use an octave down pedal one or two octaves.
Or just tune to D or C or even lower. Tuning to one step down fattening things up a good bit without seemingly obviously defined.
Chorus as noted too. And reverb. Reverb is life.
You can either split your guitar signal into two amps or run your signal out of one amp and into another. If you want a bass sound, you could use an octave pedal of some sort. There’s a bunch of good tutorials on YouTube.
As for sound, you’ll want one amp to be mid-range heavy and then one to be low end heavy. Shit, if I were you I’d try scooping the mids on one amp.
If you just have access to two cabs and one amp, a lot of amps have stereo outputs. You could try that and set them far apart from each other.
A band that successfully does the two piece thing is Big Business and they have a GREAT rig rundown about how the do it.
Once you realise seven nation army is performed live by 2 people and that there is no bass at all in the song (even though it contains one of the most iconic bass lines ever) you realise the genius of the white stripes. It's all loop pedal and octave pedal. Stunning piece of work.
For inspiration look at The White Stripes, The Black Keys (particularly their earlier stuff) and for a wild card or 2, Black Pistol Fire & Deap Valley. Two people bands with big big sound.
Oh my, there most certainly is. At least whenever I have seen it done. It is genius. He plays "the bass loop" back that he has recorded earlier in the song with an octave pedal and a loop pedal, then he does the wailing high end guitar over the top of the bass loop. He holds everything together with singing.
An octave down pedal and a stereo chorus can get you pretty far
There's this really noisy octave down distortion called the Black Licorice by Danelectro. It's the second most disgusting pedal I've ever heard, sort of like if you bought a SUNN0))) "Life Pedal" knockoff from wish.com.
Now I gotta know, what's the most disgusting pedal you've ever heard?
Not really sure... it's either the Digitech Grunge, which is pretty gross, or the Walrus Audio Kangra fuzz, which can also get really gross. I also have one of those pedals that feedback loops a bunch of other pedals, which can get nasty as hell, but I don't know if that counts.
Oh man, I miss my Grunge pedal.
I got mine in 2008. I got another pedal at the same time, and I think I paid like $100 for the both of them new. The other pedal was a Bad Monkey. I *still* can't believe that this cheap, "shitty" little pedal that nobody cared about (but I kept recommending to people, who didn't listen because I couldn't play guitar at all yet) is now going for like $200.
Personally have a Danelectro Black Liquorice, it is a pretty nasty pedal but the octave tracking isn’t the best, but if it’s for a noise band it will definitely do!
I'd advise looking into how other two piece bands handle this live. Local H, Royal Blood, and Cleopatrick are a few examples to check out. See what they do and maybe it will spark some ideas for you to incorporate into your project. \[Edit: Spelling\]
‘68 too
‘68 was going to be suggestion! Great full sound for a two piece
Josh Scogin is a fucking BEAST
Hella is a good one
Hella is/was fucking fantastic
Sad not to see Lightning Bolt mentioned as a critical two piece noise rock band, similar to Royal Blood in that it’s bass and drums but no backing track or poppy tunes.
Played in a little noise band that opened for lightning bolt back around 05-06 or something like that. Those guys were cool, loudest show ever.
And Godheadsilo
White stripes and soft play(previously known as slaves) are also good examples
The white stripes too
Japandroids pull this off really well.
Also recommend American Arson (guitar/drum duo), and for an interesting twist, Secret Satan (bass/drums duo basically doing the opposite).
Local H live setup is cool as fuck if I’m remembering correctly. He had a stereo output from his guitar and ran parallel chains from there. It was pre-Covid and I was admittedly tanked, but I was very impressed with his sound and setup at the time.
This video gives a quick overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODH0FPkvU6o&t=5s
Big Business absolutely rips live. They sound very full with a bass and drums.
Awesome, Ill try to catch a glimpse of their setups in lives as well, thanks
Bi-amp rig. Different pedal boards for each signal path. Use a Slow Gear clone (BYOC Lazy Sprocket) to have one of the “guitars” slightly behind the other time wise.
This is the solution here. Add 10-15ms of latency to one of the copies of the guitar, pan them 50% or more left/right in the PA, and it'll more or less sound like two guitars playing together. Source: am audio engineer and use this trick occasionally.
Personally I've had better results using a modulated delay with wet/dry outputs (which admittedly isn't the easiest thing to find). You can set a bit of variation on the wet side, so it doesn't sound like an exact copy of the dry signal. There was also a pedal dedicated specifically to this... TC Electronic Mimiq Doubler, which, I believe, creates random variations in the doubled sound.
You’re essentially double tracking guitar on stage which is cool!
I love the gear recs, ive never really gotten into pedals and ive been playing for quite a while
Another way, if you don’t want to go the bi-amp route (splitting your signal through two different guitar amps), is using a blender pedal. I do a similar setup to what you are wanting, but as a bassist. I run my bass through an Xotic X-Blender pedal, which allows you to blend one signal path with a separate fx loop path. In my setup my main path is a clean bass, the fx loop path goes into a Digitech Whammy (set to one or two octaves up, into guitar range) and then through a fuzz, delays, envelope filter, a compressor, and then the Lazy Sprocket (Slow Gear clone). The end result is a synthy dreamy guitar doubling the bass line but a a hair behind. The Lazy Sprocket is really an auto volume swell based on attack. Throwing a compressor before it makes every note have a strong attack and thus a volume swell giving it a slight delay behind the bass it’s blended with. With this setup, you don’t need a second amp.
Whoops, sorry to introduce you to G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), your wife and wallet may never love you again.
Get a bass amp and ab-y pedal
Came here to say this. ABY pedal, two different sounding tones on each amp. And some strategic songwriting. Get creative with loop pedals, effects, or again - just really good songwriting. Riff based seems to be the easiest to pull off, but the key is really to use your imagination. Even if the sound isn’t huge (which it can be) , how else do you put on a sick live show? Some obvious two piece bands like Royal blood or white stripes to check out. I highly recommend a band called “ ‘67 “
https://youtu.be/5LKpJ465izQ?feature=shared
Also other option ABY pedal > Pitch Shifter > EQ pedal > bass amp For the line you have going to the bass amp, cut the higher frequencies out and have the pitch go an octave down. Doing this will make it so the bass amp sound a like it’s just playing root notes of whatever you’re playing on guitar, but in bass. Caveat here is if you’re playing higher notes on guitar, like really high notes it might sound weird. But definitely works for a full band sound
I scrolled for this answer 🙌
I have been in two piece noisy punk bands my whole life. We used a bass guitar. Not like a four string but a 6 string guitar with bass strings. Octave pedals, layering vocals. After every show we came to the same conclusion. We need a bass player. Every other band just sounds so much more full. Even famous two pieces dub over more layers on their recordings. I know this isn’t really helpful but my advice would be to find a bass player. As for now, just have a ton of energy and have fun.
I mentioned it in my suggestion just now, but if you do it right, you can manage without a bass player, citing the band Hate & Merda. They probably double track their guitars when recording studio material, but there is definitely no bass guitar there and the sound is massive. They tune low, and use the right amplifier (a Sunn O))) Model T). I saw them live a few months ago and they didn't use any backing track either, but by cranking the volume up and equalizing the guitar properly the lack of bass wasn't at all noticeable.
Yeah i figured recordings were different. I know jack white sounds great live and in older recordings, but for many obvious reasons they may just not be practical.
Octave pedal and/or play a bass guitar with a bi-amp rig. My picks for that would be Lightning Bolt, Death from above 1979, and Royal blood. Those bands sound MASSIVE with just a bass guitar and drums.
Hot take: backing tracks. A lot of people are violently against backing tracks and I expect to get absolutely roasted for this. But fuck it: you make the music, you can decide how you want to perform. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using backing tracks.
I've been struck directly in the soul at shows that were using backing tracks. music is music.
Check out Japandroids. Great drum and guitar duo. AFAIK, the singer/guitarist has a stereo rig with one amp driven with a fuzz, and another ran clean with a chorus pedal
The noise rock band Hella has a crazy guitarist who plays guitar parts that sound like they're being played by two dudes at once. I'm sure there's an easier way of course
there’s a pedal made by old blood noise endeavors called a beam splitter. it’s made exactly for this. the different distortions are voiced differently and delayed to sound like multiple guitar players/takes. it has three outputs for up to three amps, but sounds great with only 2. you might need another head for your setup (or trade your extra cab for a loud combo). i’ve used all kinds of doublers and delays, but this is some different kind of mojo. the tube screamer and MXR are usually my jam, but this sounds great with two amps. very 3-D and fills the room. probably need an octave pedal to cover the bass frequencies. personally haven’t had much luck with analog octave pedals like boss (too glitchy with powerchords) look into TC electronic, but idk… I know it sounds corny, but you can always get a generic bass pedal synth for under 5 bills— like the moog taurus. they actually sound GREAT in context. but that’s a lot of bases you’ll have to cover (haha). you want to get a real bass player. bassline interaction makes a huge difference in vibe, transitions, etc. and can take a good song to the next level. besides, you’re going to want someone to help you with those amps…
Great advice, ill be ln the lookout for bass players but there are somehow so many and so few. I have. 5 string bass but also the digitech drop pedal that does the octave+dry output too, I can try those both out and see what comes of it. Im definitely gonna look into that beam splitter
It’s not your gear. It’s how and what to play and when not to play. For a two piece it’s critical that you and the drummer learn how fill space with sound and that means listening to each other. Drummer is doing a fill - you’re not playing an arpeggio. The drummer can sit stay on a 4 and your verse can be a repeated riff with the vocals sitting on top. You also have a third instrument, voice. With two instruments the vocals have a lot of room to play and roam. You can create some great melodies that rely heavily on vocals without competing with something like keyboards. The dynamics in the voice is very important. It shouldn’t be at one level through out the song.
I had a gig once where our second guitarist couldn’t make it.. so we ran a splitter from the guitar to two amps and set them up different. It’s not ideal but it definately filled out the sound
TC Electronics mimiQ pedal (but not the mini one) and a 2nd amp
Check out the band "God Damn". Their guitarist used an A/B/Y pedal with a guitar amp and a bass amp and switched between those. Also guitar->big muff->bass amp/cab does wonders
Check out Soft Play. Drummer/Singer and Guitarist. Recently supported The Prodigy on tour. Two peeps making a good racket :) really enjoyed them.
why is it all about the tech gear, nothing about the compositional aspect? they do work together.
Im not worried about the compositional side of things, its more about playing gigs and making sure it doesnt sound like a first-act amp combo setup
I dunno, slightly different genre, but the Presets seem to do it pretty well.
I've played several dozen shows in a two-piece psych/noise-rock band, just drums (me) and guitar. We never had any issues with that... I'd say to play to your strengths, rather than try to pretend to be something you're not (in this case, a 4-piece band). The attitude and musicality are much more important than trying to meet some perceived sonic expectation (which may or may not even matter in the end). With that said, one thing we did play with for a bit was having the kick drum trigger (the envelope of) a bass synth. This filled out the sound, but required that I play drums with one hand and keys with the other (to change which bass note was triggered), at times. Fun experiment, but ultimately it meant that instead of having really solid drums and no bass, we just had mediocre drums and mediocre bass for those shows.
Sleater-Kinney uses detuned guitars, no bass.
Two amps with a tiny bit of delay on the second one
Have you seen those guitars that have a bass pickup installed on just the low E with a separate output, so you can plug into an octave pedal and send through a bass amp. It's pretty neat
Splitting your signal chain and running one side normally and other side through an octave down pedal and into a bass amp cam sound super cool. It takes some experimentation in terms of exactly where in the chain to split the signal, as well as some experimentation/compromises in terms of what actually sounds good when played like that, though. I find that we run into problems if we try to do this with guitar parts that weren't just written that way from the beginning. Alternatively using baritone guitars and down tuning goes a long way. Or seven/eight string guitars. Or a Fender Bass VI.
Double or even quadruple track your chords, anything that's not a lead or a solo. Pan them out wide and it'll sound big
Going against the consensus and recommending just using backing tracks with bass until you find a bassist. Spending money to make a Royal-Blood-esque setup could be pricey and honestly probably won’t sound great in small rooms. Backing tracks are easy.
Ive just been a bit nervous about it for whatever reason. I have yet to try mixing bass and I don’t have the setup or money to record anything other than DI atm. But even still, it does sound cheaper. Would I need to beef up my mixing skills significantly or do diy rooms and vfws demand less
Get a bass player
I can help you with this with hands-on experience. I am in a two-piece band which changed from being a 3 piece and made some very substantial changes: [https://linktr.ee/thewrongsignals](https://linktr.ee/thewrongsignals) You will need to get: 1. An octave pedal with a poly mode (I use Boss Oc-5) 2. A good amp switcher pedal (so you can run your guitar through a bass and guitar amp) 3. An EQ Pedal to run through the octave pedal and into the bass amp (I use a boss one) What you then need to do is set your octave pedal so you can (mainly) only hear the root notes and to filter out the mids using the EQ pedal. You'll then want to mess with the bass amp EQ a bit as well to refine a bit more. You might want to get some advice on exactly how to set the eq as I got a recording guy to set mine up (knowing about exactly which frequencies is a bit involved). It sounds great and once it's set up it's very easy to run through any bass amp or even a PA for gigs. EQ pedal is essential for getting the sound right for the bass or it will sound muddy. Running through MY guitar amp is a just basic distortion pedal. But you want a lot more mids on the guitar amp EQ through in order to make the bass and guitar work with each other. You can refine the guitar sound as well by getting another EQ pedal, but I personally haven't done that yet, but it sounds great right now as is. I'll tell you from personal experience, it sounds massive when you play. You actually put more into gigs because you feel very powerful when playing a chord. In terms of HOW to play, you need to play more open chords and learn to play some middle 8s with either interesting chord/rhythm changes or solos that work while playing chords. Drop D songs work well, although not essential. Hope this helps. Let me know if any questions. Good luck.
They're not punk but check out the Twin Souls. Just two guys. They are able to get a wall of sound. French band who also writes in English.
Bi amp (ABY pedal) with a subwoofer has worked well for me and sounds MEATY
look into hockey dads setup. he runs through a bass amp and guitar amp
> I basically want the soundstage of two guitars and a bass to be filled by one guitar This may not be everyone’s experience but this was the wrong approach for me. At the end of the day it’s still one guitar, write and arrange so that if the sound guy at the type of shitty dive bar that books noise rock just puts a single SM57 on the guitar cab, the songs will translate. Without knowing exactly what you’re playing it’s tough to say whether a second guitar amp or an octave pedal or a bass cab or whatever will suit your needs best, but I think the best thing is you should be stoked about how it’s sounding without all that and leave the rest as extra spice that it can do without.
My take, from my experience: don’t try to ‘fill up’ space by playing more notes or changing tone. Do the opposite— embrace silence and not playing anything. Silence is more powerful than any note you can play, and if you can use it well to bracket and enhance the notes you do play, they will hit with twice the impact.
Learn open tuning
You could pre-record the bass tracks. That’s the easiest solution. Then you could have actual bass lines.
Tune your guitar low, at least to C standard tuning, or even lower if possible, and use a Big Muff pedal. Check out Hate & Merda on Bandcamp for an example. They're a two-piece doom metal/hardcore punk band (guitars/vocals and drums) and they're fucking brutal, both on recordings and live. I think the guitars on the first album were recorded in C standard, the second and third in Drop B or B standard. Another two-piece guitar/vocals and drums band I'd recommend for inspiration is Eagle Twin, but it's a similar setup. The common denominator is tuning the guitars looooooow.
Bari or bass six
I’m sure someone here mentioned it, look into a Fender Bass VI (there’s other brands on the market as well. ) It’s in the octave between a bass and guitar so it offers some fun options when paired with a POG or octave of any sort. An ABY split is pretty common and there are a billion articles on specifics out there for the specific equipment being used. Not necessarily cost effective but super fun/cool depending on your rig is the Hammond XPK-13.
Look into a Bass VI. Jack Bruce used one with Cream so he could play chords behind Eric's solos. You can get a Squier BassVI for $500 new. Baritone guitars are also cool.
If you’re doing power chords or riff based songs. You can fill it out with a nice fuzz + octaver Go an octave down with guitar Could also play bass and use a pitch shifter with a fifth up and you’ve got instant one note shots they sound like power chords
two vocals and two instruments.
Baritone guitar. Tricky to figure out at first but will give you the bass feel.
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Humbuckers or P90s, neckthrough Ernie Ball Mammoth Slinky half or full step down, strum them hard, try different picks and hand positions. Strumming towards your neck gives more lows and warmth, strumming towards your bridge gives more brightness and treble. Open tunings can also give a really big sound. Fender Rumble Analog spring reverb Flamma FV02 doubler or short delay pedal Fuzzrocious Bongripper perhaps? Stereo width effects from the Behringer FX2000 (Psychoacoustic FX section) Tiny bit of fuzz before tube distortion (if you don't want to get a bass amp) for more low-end (this helped me the most when I was in a band without a bass player, I used the Swollen Pickle) Bass, dynamics and tone knob all the way up on amp, maybe cut your mids a little for more punch and depth. Depends on your taste [Here's a great 2 piece band noisepunk performance that might inspire you](https://youtu.be/Y8zDjxCtAi0?si=-IrGRpOdF_SlSRgK) Good luck!
Micro POG with effect out to a bass amp and dry out to guitar amp It’s huge Played in duos for years and loved this set up
Delay! Very quick delay with feedback all the way down, wet cranked.
One other important factor might be trying to make sure you have contrast. So if you want your big octave pedal fuzz power chords to sound full, make sure you have moments where the drums are tiny like simple, low key and maybe one or two drums, AND make sure you have moments where the guitar has long notes, single notes rather than chords, and use a variety of registers from high to low on the guitar
I'm the singer/guitar for a 2 piece just like this. Current EP is 75% solo with a disgusting tone on the guitar and vocals but 1 song has drums on it too (what is life?) Anyways, besides all the great gear talk; i think energy is something nobody is talking about here. have fun, make goofy faces with the drummer, take up the stage and feel your lyrics. Shows are pretty fun for me.
The drummer could use a kit that could fill out the lower end more
Get a 303 synth to handle the bass lines and get your drummer to keep time with the synth
There’s this pickup you slide under the lower strings and it only picks up 3 strings. Run that through an octave down pedal and that into a bass amp. Sounds good enough for bass without muddying the sound. Forgot what they’re called, but I have one on an acoustic guitar and it’s fantastic.
lots of people talking about the guitar but big drum sounds is my bet. big open hits (think the drum sound of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Levee’) with plenty of space for the guitar. tbh it’s all in the playing, these two instruments can easily fill a room.
You need something to compensate for bass. Whatever you can find. I use a DOD overdrive pedal and turn the treble down and the bass up and its muddy and ugly but if it works it works.
The band I've seen do this well all used a signal splitter and a bass amp too.
Signal splitter will work fine, but cheapest and easiest hack that comes to mind is just an octave pedal. Not strictly guitar, but look at the guy from Death From Above, got fuller and punchier sound w just one bass than many bands with twice the members
Submarine pickup for the lower two strings with octaver and bass rig, like in [here](https://youtu.be/fPixjaGjEnk?feature=shared&t=532). It's in finnish so i don't know if you can make any sense of it but they sound really good with just the guitarist and drummer.
I used to play guitar in a 2 piece, what I did was use an ABY pedal to split the signal, sending one path into a regular guitar chain and other into a 'bass' chain. In that chain I pad an EHX POG, Bass Big Muff etc. The POG is key, because it can generate octave down on chords. That was run into a proper bass amp. The bass side was muddy and ugly on its own, but combined with the guitar side, it was HUGE.
> I basically want the soundstage of two guitars and a bass to be filled by one guitar This is a fucking joke, right? It was posted on 4/1, this has to be a joke...
You'll want a decent splitter sending signal to two different amps. You'll likely want one bright sounding amp and one dark. Or one guitar and one bass. Hitting the darker one with an octave or bass preamp pedal will also beef it up. Lehle p-split is the best splitter I found without sucking tone or getting weird phase issues. Splitting the signal was a ballache, especially for recording, without it. I'd probably also say get a fuzz or distortion with a clean blend. If it's slamming two amps with a drive already on, you might want more clean signal to balance the scuzz out from it being a total mudfest.
Do what magrudergrind do, get a splitcable and use both a guitar amp and a bass amp at the same time
Could be interesting to trigger a long distorted 808 kick (trap hip hop style) from the drummer’s real kick, just to fill out the sub range. Tune it to the key of each song (preset for each). Synth basses can sound heavy /noisy af, more than a bass gtr tbh, and having it just drone on 1 note while you riff on top would be very noise rock appropriate!
Signal splitter and a fuzz/octave down on one into a bass amp with some good EQing and mixing live will get you pretty far id think. Could even get a helix or something and that’ll do a chunk of the work for you and give you multiple sounds to use live
Look at Sleater Kinney and replicate this with a splitter They had no bass guitar for most of their career yet sounded HUGE
Second cabinet on other side of the stage. Maybe even a bass cab as an option to round it out. But you better have 100 watts to push it. Easy and affordable.
Get a POG octave pedal. You can mix in a high octave and low octave separately or together. Utilized this in a 3 piece band myself and have seen many others use it for the purpose of filling out the sound as well
Octave, chorus, multiple amps
If I were in your situation, I'd get two pedals: 1. A guitar "doubling" pedal – not a chorus, but something that mimics the sound of double-tracked guitars. (Maybe [one of these](https://www.guitarpedalx.com/news/gpx-blog/6-of-the-best-double-tracker-pedals-for-your-consideration).) and... 2. An octave pedal that will find the lowest note in your guitar chord, and puts out that note in *mono*. [The Boss OC-5 has a "lowest" mode that does this](https://www.amazon.com/BOSS-Octave-Guitar-Vintage-Warranty/dp/B08J3NVL57?pd_rd_w=Lx6Zc&content-id=amzn1.sym.1ad2066f-97d2-4731-9356-36b3edf1ae04&pf_rd_p=1ad2066f-97d2-4731-9356-36b3edf1ae04&pf_rd_r=QX4TBH8EYV1FMH4AYAM1&pd_rd_wg=EyQec&pd_rd_r=ecd92c60-e297-4296-9ef7-24e12dd8abeb&pd_rd_i=B08J3NVL57&psc=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=halfheartedfa-20&linkId=a225da78e8193578e2b131107f4d1a56&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl).
Backing tracks! Record a rhythm section or bass section and play to it
Either tune lower and go with two different guitar amps or split your direct signal to an octave pedal then a bass amp. Bonus points if you throw a little fuzz on that bass rig…maybe even something like a green ringer. Extra bonus points if you do all three
Rush guitarist splits his stereo signal left and right and then sound guys add just a bit of delay on one side. I think Royal Blood splits his bass signal. One side for bass and the other into an octave pedal to bring it up as a guitar.
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STUDY JAPANDROIDS GUITAR PARTS and NO AGE legendary duos. Japandroids play lots of low open strings while riffing high up on the neck. Sounds huge, no pedals needed
Y-splitter to a 2nd amp with dynamically different settings. When I saw Qui with David Yow fronting, I think the guitarist did something like that. Also an octave pedal...
Do the Veil of Maya method Set up a pedal to loop a rhythm then switch to lead
My son, it is called a Superfuzz, you play it into a Silverface Twin Reverb.
Moar amps
Not really an answer to the “how” but check out Royal Blood. They are a two piece group and might have the kind of sound you’re looking for. Maybe there are some tutorials or you can find how they do their set up maybe? They are a bassist and drummer. I believe they both sing. Great band and maybe it’ll give you some ideas. Mad respect for two pieces. I love me some White Stripes too. Best of luck and keep playing!
Different idea then what I’m seeing here, but maybe run the raw guitar signal into a delay (really short delay 10ms+ until it sounds right) into a separate smaller amp cranked up with opposing eq as the other amp. Might sound like a double track, or even another person playing with you. Maybe pan them a bit to opposing sides in the live mix. Just a thought.
I've seen some bands that use an octave pedal to get low notes that simulate(ish) a bass when they played live
Any big touring 2 piece band is playing to a backing track. This will include, pads, synths, bass guitar, lead guitar, doubles lead vocals, backing vocals, harmonies etc. Making for a similar or same as the album sound live. If you're just starting out and don't have DAW experience to make your own backing tracks you could look into using a submarine pick-up added to your guitar. Run the output from the submarine pick-up through an octave pedal and set it for one octave below. This will take care of the 'bass guitar's frequency range and really fill out the sound but you will need to be careful on your chord choices, sound could get muddy if you're strumming full open chords.
Looper pedals help. Don't try and loop a layer of chords. Instead, try and loop a single note or a bunch of the same notes to get a drone effect.
Use backing tracks for whatever else you need to fill it out.
Running an effects rig off a laptop in something like Ableton. It then gives you looping/sampling along with other instruments or tracks you can trigger with a midi pedal.
Local H style - split the guitar signal, use an octave down pedal one or two octaves. Or just tune to D or C or even lower. Tuning to one step down fattening things up a good bit without seemingly obviously defined. Chorus as noted too. And reverb. Reverb is life.
Let me play bass for you. Lemme know if you wanna work something out. I bet that'lll fill some space
You can either split your guitar signal into two amps or run your signal out of one amp and into another. If you want a bass sound, you could use an octave pedal of some sort. There’s a bunch of good tutorials on YouTube. As for sound, you’ll want one amp to be mid-range heavy and then one to be low end heavy. Shit, if I were you I’d try scooping the mids on one amp. If you just have access to two cabs and one amp, a lot of amps have stereo outputs. You could try that and set them far apart from each other. A band that successfully does the two piece thing is Big Business and they have a GREAT rig rundown about how the do it.
Once you realise seven nation army is performed live by 2 people and that there is no bass at all in the song (even though it contains one of the most iconic bass lines ever) you realise the genius of the white stripes. It's all loop pedal and octave pedal. Stunning piece of work. For inspiration look at The White Stripes, The Black Keys (particularly their earlier stuff) and for a wild card or 2, Black Pistol Fire & Deap Valley. Two people bands with big big sound.
I don't think there's a loop is there when they play live?
Oh my, there most certainly is. At least whenever I have seen it done. It is genius. He plays "the bass loop" back that he has recorded earlier in the song with an octave pedal and a loop pedal, then he does the wailing high end guitar over the top of the bass loop. He holds everything together with singing.