Back To Ampersand Index PAGE 4 - The Guitar - From the beginning, I knew I wanted a few different sounds/colors/textures and conceptual devices to paint my solos with. The tone featured on The Tundra, Halyard, a part of Sinking of The Zenobia, and the first section of Boolean Mortality (as well as their reprises, which I will mention later) was an extension of an idea created for a solo I played on Paul Wertico's record, Stereonucleosis, (on the track, "We Needed The Rain"). Both were created using an eBow, a device invented in the 1970s which produces an electromagnetic field strong enough to vibrate the strings of a guitar without making any physical contact with the guitar body or the string being played. It is usually used to create background parts for a song, with its bowed violin-like envelope often overdubbed upon itself multiple times to create chords (as Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Billy Corgan has done countless times). In other instances it is popularly called upon to evoke a soaring/howling melody line, as in Pearl Jam's song "Wishlist," or the U2 song, "With or Without You" (which is technically something else). In any instance I've ever heard recorded, the player makes the greatest attempt possible to limit the sound of the rails (the sides of the device which rest on the two adjacent strings in order to maintain stability and isolation) from hitting the strings and most importantly from allowing the eBow to ever become close enough to choke off the sound of the string it is vibrating. While recording the guitar solo for "We Needed The Rain," I needed more control over the dynamic expression of the eBow than would be required for a background part, and it felt appropriate to me at the time to do what was neccesary in the moment to articulate that properly. I was very intrigued afterwards by the raw intensity it was able to achieve while still maintaining a very legato sense of phrasing, but especially by the actual sounds of the plastic hitting the strings. After playing the eBow more, I also discovered that the particular way my hands shake naturally created a very desirable and unique way of repeatedly interrupting one continuous note, which added a rough, complex texture to what is normally the smooth envelope of an eBow. If my hands didn't shake, aside from the inevitability that I wouldn't be searching so earnestly for different ways to still be able to play the guitar, I never would have discovered that sound. Another element of this new sound that was intriguing to me was the ability of the eBow to create a very quick break in register by allowing it to hit the string being played, causing the sound to crack to a pitch an octave or higher, similar to a human voice or woodwind instrument. The rest of that sound is created with a very straightforward setup similar to any normal sounding guitar tone. In the last few years, before learning any wind instruments, I had begun to get frustrated with the textural limitations of the guitar. A number of guitarists like The Edge from U2 and Brian May from Queen have developed picking techniques that create very textural attacks (beginnings) of the notes they play, but the rest of the execution of the notes has been generally left unexplored by most guitarists. While listening to a singer like Peter Gabriel, or most good vocalists for that matter, I heard such incredible detail and expression in the simple sustain and release of the notes they sang. The guitar tone used on November Frontlines, the second part of Boolean Mortality, &hearts, Soul Partition, and Dead Pixels was the result of trying to disprove the widespread opinion that "everything has already been done," an opinion which resonates particularily strongly with guitarists. In fact, there are quite a few dimensions of guitar tone that have gone largely unexplored (to the best of my knowledge). Over the summer of 2002, while recording an album under the project name "Temporal Marking" with Vampire For Hire drummer, Chris Stiles, I decided to develop one of these tones that offered control over the texture in the sustain and release portions of the sound. The technique I used to play this way was one which was not tremendously hindered by the problems with my hands (as it was somewhat bombastic and unrefined), which gave me a reason to make it even more my own by using equipment to develop it further. Immediately, one tool seemed undoubtedly the key to that control: a noise gate. Used to shut off a signal when it drops below a certain amplitude, noise gates can somewhat effectively eliminate unwanted sounds created by electronic gear or electronic interference in a guitar rig by shutting off the final output every time the guitarist stops playing. Since the unwanted noise itself would often be loud enough to trigger the gate as open, noise gates usually have something called a sidechain, which allows a "listen point" to be placed in a different location in the signal path than at the gate itself, but rather, before the offensive technological component creating the unwanted noise. The basic principle I employed on my guitar setup was to be able to create a sound, have it repeat, and then use the guitar itself as the chokepoint for how much of that regenerating sound can be heard while dissipating. Here is a very simplified diagram of the components pertaining to this technique. The dry sound coming out of the guitar is first run through a distortion effect, which essentially amplifies the sound a great deal, chopping off all of the loudest sounds created in the process so drastically that the sound becomes "distorted." In this case, it provides both the tone for the soloing (similar to most lead guitar sounds) and also makes the signal highly sensitive, amplifying even the smallest sounds to the same volume as the large ones. Since the sidechain allows the signal to pass unaltered, we will pretend it's not there for right now. The signal is then run through a heavy delay effect which lengthens the notes beyond the time they actually exist, which is neccessary to create a false dimension of time in the perception of when the note is being created by the guitar and when it is being manipulated by the guitar (which happen in immediate succession, but should appear to be happening simultaneously). You are usually supposed to put the sidechain of a noise gate immediately after the signal comes out of the guitar, but in this case the sidechain is immediately after the distortion. This allows very low amplitude sounds (in this case, the sound of my palm or guitar pick rubbing over the ridges of roundwound guitar strings) to trigger the noise gate to open, which has attack and release times set to open and close as quickly as possible. This process, although creating the proper sound, leaves the end of the sound very emaciated and weak, so it is run through heavy compression immediately afterwards to raise all of the soft sounds to the same volume as the loud ones, which accents this textural quality created by the noise gate. If you safely understand that concept, you can also introduce the idea that the sounds I'm using to contour/control the chokepoint are soon going to be the sounds I will momentarily be hearing through the delay and contouring with even more new sounds. For simplicity, I've taken out many of the points of the signal chain which fine tune this to function the proper way when tracked (EQs and the Preamp) and allow it to sit the proper way with the other instruments while mixing (more delay, EQ, compression, etc). Eddie Van Halen once said that a good guitar tone is defined by something that makes you play your best. Both of these guitar soloing tones actually helped define different ways for me to play my best when problems with my hands prevented me from playing as well as I once could in traditional methods. Both methods required focussing my creative expression on dimensions and qualities of the sound I normally take for granted. The guitar used for all of Ampersand, my trusty $300 Epiphone Dot. NEXT PAGE Back To Index