Thanks Woody. I hear stuff from the top down. My partner in my scoring company hears things bottom up. I'm sure it's because growing up I was listening for the guitar, and ignoring the bass, and keys. When I remember many songs from my youth, I sing the harmony line, not the lead line. So there are some weird things that I've had to sort of unlearn myself. (if you will)
Thinking about it, one of the biggest challenges to me for rock music is the separation of bass guitar and E guitar. Until I was 20ish I would always try to cover both areas with the guitar. Listening to most hard rock, when the bass is following the guitar part, it just sounds like a huge deep guitar sound. Like I said, I'm listening top frequency's downward. I suppose if I was listening bottom up, I'd focus on the bass, then hear when the guitar takes over. So the idea of HPF / cutting the guitar bottom end to make the overall mix sound bigger was something I couldn't grasp.
Once I had to dig into orchestral arranging, it opened everything up for me. You can't really fudge an orchestral arrangement by adding distortion to the double basses, or massive low end EQ to cellos, or quad tracking cellos. Everything has to have it's place, and less is more, OR the end result is small the out of balance.
Guitar gets more complicated because the tone of guitar/pedals/amp can drastically effect it's optimal range, and how it blends with the other instruments. I think that's where the fascination comes from, because the tone of the guitar is almost as important as the parts. There are still some miracles out there like Pantera... how can everything be so scooped and cutting, but also full and punchy
