Daily Archives : October 12, 2014

Noise

I did a Mile Zero Dance show called Sho-tel a while ago. Mile Zero does a lot of really interesting things in this city, bringing together dancers, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, archivists, folklorists.

The show I did happened at a motel in the west end, seedy and gradually falling apart.

I made noise.

By noise I mean that I played with timbre. I didn’t worry about melody, chords, or playing in any conventional way. In other words, I concentrated on the sound character of the instrument. Check my soundcloud page under experimental guitar if you want to hear examples.

https://soundcloud.com/stream

Timbre and the electric guitar is an insane topic. There’s just so much you can do.

 

Effects

 Here’s a basic list of effects:

Distortion

Phaser

Chorus

Delay

Reverb

Ring modulation

Filters

Harmonizers

Equalizers

Compressors

 

Each effect has a range of intensity, so you can get a variety of timbre out of just one of them. When you start combining them…

 

You can also get interesting sounds out of your guitar without effects.

 

Prepared guitar

All of this applies nicely to abstract or avante-garde music. But how do you use it to write songs?

Try re-conceptualizing the guitar as a different instrument. Make it a percussion instrument by weaving some felt through the strings and tapping the strings with a chopstick. Can you hear this in an intro, or as a coloristic device in the chorus?

When you use timbre this way, it’s a good idea to start simple. Don’t overplay. Play the sound once and let it ring (if it’s a sustained sound). If it’s different than the sounds around it, it will draw focus. Think of it as highlighting important events – beginnings of verses, choruses, etc.

If it’s a percussive sound, you could use it in place of the drums, or as part of the drum sound.

These are suggestions for where to start. As you work with this, ideas will occur to you. Follow them.

Experiment by making sounds that don’t normally fit in the stuff you normally write.