KVR Audio

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:12 am

I know this has probably been done many times before, but i thought it might be cool to share some weird and wonderful axe techniques. By this i mean ways that the guitar can be used in totally none convential ways.

Iv experimented a little in this area, but have never come up with anything too original. I got some interesting sounds by operating a TV remote right up against a pickup. Recorded some interesting hurdy gurdy type sounds by bowing an old mandolin and an autoharp. Probably the best technique iv used is to midi the guitar up to a sampler and do some wacky live pitch bends on strange samples. I tried it with some processed chime samples and got WEIRD results!

An area which particularly interests me is the application of guitar in ambient music. I have some great samples where guitars licks have been washed in delay, compressed then looped to form ambient textures. Very organic sounding stuff indeed. The same techique also works wonders with other fretted instruments. Send the result through a fuzz box and your in business.

So, any wacky guitar nuts fancy sharing any bizarre methods for concocting 6 string madness?

jtxx000 · Post by **jtxx000** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:17 am

A while back I recorded some strange stuff where I used a slide and recorded the same thing at different octaves... let me see if I can dig up the piece.

jtxx000 · Post by **jtxx000** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:27 am

here it is: <cleared to free up space>
everything's guitar except the drums.

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:28 am

i sometimes use a face fan on the strings whilst playing chords (you know the little battery operated fans for holidays) through a Dimension C pedal for extra space - then maybe some space echo on top - ambient central. Also use E Bow a lot, but that's a bit of an obvious one.

Mr A

PS. i ripped the fan idea from a John Myers piece i saw performed at the Barbican (along with Glenn Branca et al).

Landphil · Post by **Landphil** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:31 am

I've always enjoyed using an EBow with huge amounts of echo. Especially when hovering over the pickups as it starts to scream.

digitaldoom · Post by **digitaldoom** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:50 am

I read about a cool effect that Trent (NIN) used. I haven't (yet) seen a VSTi that could do this. It may be possible in Reaktor, and if so... I'd sure love to actually know how. He used some modular synth called Turbo Synth to do this:

Create a patch that will take an incoming signal and use it as an oscillator. Then have a sub oscillator (maybe a sine or pulse wave) mix in with the incoming signal. The thing is then to detune the sub oscillator. Supposedly if used with an incomming guitar signal it can make the guitar sound very heavy. He also said running vocals through it was amazing.

I wish I knew how to do it... But I can't find anything that will use an incoming signal and mix with a wave-generated sub oscillator

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 1:23 am

Are you sure he didnt just use a sampler? Surely it would be irrelevant whether or not the sound was live or pre-recorded. This sounds like he is simply using a lo sine wav to beef up the bottom end on his guitar tracks. Or possibly he was talking about a ring mod, with a sine wav as modulator?

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 1:35 am

jtxx000 wrote:here it is: http://www.annoware.com/fctm.mp3
everything's guitar except the drums.

Cool, I'll have a listen to that when i get a sec to dl it.

Cheers!

Newbie Brad · Post by **Newbie Brad** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:28 am

Something I've enjoyed for unorthodoxy guitar-wise is (are) my fretless guitar(s). Try it, you'll like it (them). You can get a lot of info related to fretless from the forums of www.kronosonic.com and www.unfretted.com.

Mr Lizard · Post by **Mr Lizard** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 9:58 am

A friend of mine showed me an absolutely amazing technique for unique sounds.

Put blutack on the strings - simple and amazing.
Mess around with putting it in different places on the fretboard and you can get some amazingly strange chiming, bell like sounds.

meeks · Post by **meeks** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 1:45 pm

Mr Lizard wrote: Put blutack on the strings - simple and amazing.
Mess around with putting it in different places on the fretboard and you can get some amazingly strange chiming, bell like sounds.

What is 'blutack'? It must be a UK thing, I've never heard of anything such as that.

There is a book that is called "The Guitar FX Cookbook". It has stuff such as Caltpso Pans wherein you get to heavy pluctrums and weave them in at the saddle to allow the acute points of the picks to barely touch the 3rd and 4th string, then play the 3rd and 4th strings.

Mr Lizard · Post by **Mr Lizard** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:05 pm

Its that putty kind of stuff you use to put posters up with. Um, I can't think of any other names for it.

Newbie Brad · Post by **Newbie Brad** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:15 pm

Another thing is replacing drum machine drum samples with guitar samples you've made and then live streaming a drum machine session with them.

spaceman · Post by **spaceman** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:30 pm

I can do some decent sweep picking..

but I haven't touched a guitar for ages.. it's collecting dust.. erm.. somewhere

Har · Post by **Har** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:04 pm

Ahh, guitars making weird non-guitar sounds...my favorite subject!

Recently I've been recording a lot of ambient guitar stuff, using software to process the living daylights out of my Strat to the point where it's mostly unrecognizable.
One quick example is a recent demo tune I did for the SmartElectronix KTGranulator plugin...this is just my Strat played cleanly and occasionally with some two-handed tapping to play parallel parts, "bowed" using a Morley volume pedal, then processed to death with a bunch of software in real-time to come up with a breathy, ambient orchestral pad sound. This was recorded in one pass with no overdubbing, with no synths or samplers:

Har - Fragment K

I also used this sound and technique on the collaboration tune I did with Mystahr, "UKnighted". Infor and link on this thread:

http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ed&start=0

On another tune, one I did with Scot Solida, I did some long Frippertronics-style looping to create the floating synth-ish pads (as well as the more standard solo near the end). Info and link for the tune can be found on this thread:

http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

Aside from mangling my Strat's sound with software

...other techniques I like includes "bowing" across the strings using a heavy stainless steel pedal-steel slide-bar in a circular motion to create long, sustaining tones (Dave Gilmore of Pink Floyd used this technique a lot on older tunes like "Echoes").
And of course the old-fashioned method of "bowing" using the above mentioned volume-pedal to blur the attack of the notes.

I'm getting a new Chapman Stick on Monday, and I'm looking forward to trying all this weird stuff on it as well.

Unorthedox Guitar Stuff