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Re: Civitas Urbanus (new album release)
On 23 jul 2007, at 01.58, Qua Veda wrote:
> if you don't mind, I'm curious how you manipulate the guitar
> sound where it kind of spins off into the wild blue yonder .
> example is at 1:40 on Track 1. Do you create that while you are
> playing guitar? or in post production
Well, it was simply played like that. That track is a typical "push
record and play" thing, utilizing the function of Mobius's that
renders a stereo file on the hard drive from the summed stereo
output; no separated track, you just get everything in one go. I
didn't play it on a guitar though, but on an EWI. So the sound source
is a synth played through Native Instrument's Guitar Rig 2. The
breath strength is binded to the wha effect, so the harder I blow the
more wha treble, just like you could play it with the foot if using a
guitar plus wha pedal. Right before 1:40 I'm doing a couple of short,
hard attack staccatto notes (sounding like angry ducks fighting) and
catching those into a loop (you can hear them quacking along in the
background, as a loop for a while). As contrast to those angry
quackers I go into playing longer notes which I modulate by glissandi
and vibrato. When playing those long notes I alternate between
portamento and no portamento (pitch gliding from note to note).
Playing a fast scale with portamento is what sounds like that "whammy
bar space shop lift-off", gliding through several octaves. I'm also
playing some notes with a soft but rather fast fade-in attack and
vibrato added right from the start as well as doing pitch-bending
while my tone is still still in heavy vibrato (a phrasing approach I
picked up from hearing Hendrix long ago). I can do that on strat as
well by hitting the string with volume knob down, applying vibrato
and then turning the volume knob up, but to achieve the same thing on
a guitar is more difficult because you need to use the twang bar for
the vibrato (needs to go both above and below the nominal pitch,
which is not possible with finger vibrato) and that makes it
difficult (but not impossible) to also turn the volume knob with your
right hand. For many aspects of floating twang bar guitar playing
techniques I'm actually finding the EWI better, which is kind of
strange since it was created by a wind player and not by a guitar
player. Probably just a lucky coincidence.
Anyway, it's strange that so many words are needed to simply describe
one tiny musical gesture of attitude. It looks very boring when
described like this ;-)
Greetings from Sweden
Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)