dueling guitars

One of the coolest, but most difficult and annoying things about playing in a band is playing with multiple guitar players.

Playing by yourself (i.e. power trio) has its own challenges with filling out the sound, but at least no one steps on each others shoes.

Playing in a power trio + a keyboard player is little different. I think it's easier in terms of staying out of the others way - a keyboard/piano rarely ever sounds similar to a guitar, so doubling up on parts actually ends up sounding better, rather than boring.

Bring an acoustic guitar to our power trio (still four people). Again, an acoustic guitar tends to fill out the sound a bit, but strumming styles can start to fight each other.

Add a rhythm guitar/lead guitar combination, and then the two guitar players have to really work together to make a song arrangement work. They can play the exact same thing, but if that's the case, why have two guitar players? The parts need to be separate, distinct, and complementary to each other in order to make the song arrangement as natural and full as possible. Its tough work, especially if there is a lot of gray area in the rhythm/lead separation.

All that being said, when everyone is playing what complements everyone else, things sound better than any other situation. The band sounds full, the music sounds great, and both guitar player have the ability to more clearly pick out their own playing on a recording or in a live mix.

One of my favorite examples of a band that does this perfectly is Third Day, particularly on the album Conspiracy No. 5. Most of the songs on that album feature Brad Avery and Mark Lee playing electric, dirty guitar, and every moment they play together, they stay out of each other's way, complement how the other is playing, and even the stereo mix of the album adds to keeping the two guitar parts separately. The songs are so complete, that learning one of the guitar parts hardly comes close to making it sound good; you need someone playing the other part so that it will be faithful to the original! Check it out, if you haven't, if only for the guitar work.