Day Two - Creepy guitar noises

Today was a short session. We added some final touches on the first song.  Highlights included percussion, acoustic guitars and a really crazy electric guitar effect (as depicted below).

Andy sent his Telecaster through a his Line 6 Verbzilla set to "Octo" mode.  The mix was set to 100% wet, and the signal was split into two amps; a Fender DeVille and a Valvetech Hayseed 30.   On the way to the DeVille the there was a tremolo pedal set to a slow-shallow pulse.

The result was a lush creeping noise that complimented the acoustic guitar parts nicely.



To capture this super strange sound we placed a partition between the amps and on the Hayseed mic'ed with an AKG 414 set to cardioid pattern slightly off-axis (to help reduce high frequencies).  The DeVille was mic'ed with the MXL 990 also set off-axis.  On headphones the sound dances back and forth.  Lots of fun.


A lot of guitar pedals sport stereo outputs.  But as many of you guitar players know all too well, they're rarely used.  Like it or not it's just not realistic to take two amps to a gig (as much as most guitar players would love this).  Not only that, but in a venue the audience will NEVER be able to hear the stereo effect.  The studio is a whole different ballgame.  By recording multiple amps to separate tracks and panning them hard left and right come mix time you can create all kinds of swirly tones.  Don't worry too much if you don't have two of the same amp.  The whole idea is to make an interesting sound, not a perfectly uniform one.

This trick also works with delays, phasers, flangers, tremolos and just about any other pedal with a stereo out.  For extra credit try piping something OTHER than a guitar to the stereo effects (keyboards, vocals, accordion..... hmmm..... now there's an idea....)   

Till next time,
- Charlie

Side note:  I'm listening to a lot of Lhasa de Sela right now, it's some of the best creepy-type music I've ever heard.  Like a multilingual female Tom Waits.

Studio Mascot