Pierce Fulton – Free Fall EP

Mentioned in this August 26, 2020 Reddit AMA reply.

therichmanjansen: Pierce! It's Richard from the class :) I guess I have forgotten some of the things you've mentioned to us... but what are some of your favourite methods for processing guitars (DI or Pre-amp). That is, what might be some things you would load into the effects rack to make it sound clean, similar to your Free Fall (2014 version) guitar?

OfficialPierceFulton: Hey Richard! I'd recommend a decent audio interface. I use the UAD Apollo, which sounds great but my brother uses a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 which is really easy to use and sounds totally fine. Record with some good amount of headroom (maybe peaking around -6 generally) and if you're using Logic, their amp designer and pedalboard plugins are actually incredibly good. If you're off Logic look into something like Guitar Rig from Native Instruments, it's quite a workhorse for guitar amp emulation. Other than tone choice, play with your stock EQ and Compressor, try out different presets with "guitar" in the name to get a feeling for what settings a preset would use and try to dial in something in a similar setting by ear. It's cool to use the presets as a guide of where to go but get into the habit of setting EQ and compression by hand every song because each recording will be ultimately different. Also don't be afraid to break the rules, my early guitar recordings might have been CRAZY compressed or EQed in a weird way but I just did what sounded interesting. I'm a big fan of breaking the "rules" but also learning the "rules" to continue your knowledge of this stuff if you're interested in the engineering side.