Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => The Dressing Room => Topic started by: Muzzzz on April 03, 2008, 07:01:53 AM
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ok so for my year 11 music assessment, i have to write and record a 3-5 minute piece of 'experimental' music... it needs to have at least 8 tracks too.
i've decided to do an avant-garde jazz / free-funk piece, and to make it all the more experimental (which will score me even higher), i'm going to add things like hitting the strings of the piano with a stick (which was approved by the teacher, strangely enough!) and use the pitch bend and/or delay effects with my Boss GT-8 for guitar, as well as playing behind the nut of the guitar, etc etc...
but i need more ideas of how to make weird, tripped-out noises for my piece!! any takers? :)
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Sample various body percussion noises and make a drum rhythm.
Do the same with a printer a la Mattias Eklundh.
If you have access to a program like HYPERSONIC use some vintage arpeggiator sounds (I did this on my As-level piece for film & television music and it sounds the mutts no matter what keys you hit).
Listen to Frank Zappa, especially Baby Snakes.
have somebody talk nonsense over your work (like on Dark Side of the Moon).
Use a ring modualtor.
Do it in 11/8.
Have large periods of silence.
Have somebody singing about a long-lost goldfish who was eaten by a pie inside a cannabis leaf being chased by a monkey with the golden touch.
Play the piano parts in the style of Les Dawson.
Will they do?
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If you have badly potted or microphonic pickups in your guitar, try shouting into them and recording it. This seems to work well on my DiMarzios but not on my BKPs for some reason :wink:
edit: Another similar idea is record something, play it back through a speaker and put your guitar pickup infront of it and record that guitar signal for a very crude lo-fi sound.
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record me shouting into my pickups! thats AWESOME!!!! i cant wait!! :)
i'm sooo stealing some of those ideas, my old les paul copy has STUPIDLY microphonic pickups, i'll definately use that, and have lots of fun shouting into them :)
maverick, thanks for ur fantastic suggestions. ring mods are so horrible that they might just work! and theres an arpeggiator on my gt-8 too, i'd forgotten about it tho... i was considering doing big chunks of the piece in weird time sigs, 11/8 is a good one, i find that the 7/8 "da da da d/da da da d" to be a little overused.
keep 'em coming! :)
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I think the best effects are simple ones.
Like a stutter on a ringing powerchord, done with a killswitch, an extremely set tremolo, or even by cutting the audio files in your sequencer.
Another simple one is fade ins / fade outs - you could do something new with volume pedal, or you fade in/out the FX, that is always cool too. Like have an extremely reverberated sound that suddenly becomes dry (did someone mention the Solo of "Money"?)
Post your clip here when it's done!
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Use your avatar as inspiration, go for a Buckethead approach - he's about as varied as you can get!
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lol yeah buckethead is most certainly an influence... i was thinking about having it mainly in a funk groove, but maybe chucking in tritones and aug 5ths into the bassline while having really experimental leads and effects over the top.
kinda like praxis.
and thats where i can tie in the 'stuttering' killswitch effect. definitely using that one. also, if any of you remember Dream Theater's "Score" dvd, the middle section of Raise the Knife had some pretty tripped-out sounds just using wah and some weird harmony, might use that as well.
I just had another idea, for long sustained harmony i can rub the rims of wine glasses containing various amounts of water. its a pretty cool effect.
i'll post it up here when i'm done. thanks for ur ideas!
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If you want some weird background noise, put a thick, lush chorus on, add some delay, mute the strings completely at the neck and then rap your fingers on the strings near the bridge and you'll get a weird almost waterfall-esque sound. :)
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surprised no one suggested an e-bow so far...
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surprised no one suggested an e-bow so far...
I didn't becasue it would cost money.
Any device with an electric motor (or a speaker) should be able to introduce a signal to the pickups, or encourage the strings to move a bit.
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Play some dodgy music off your phone and put it against your pickups, the sound transfers. :D
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Ray gun !
can't think of anything of major use, but I would like to hear the end product
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lol yeah i'm gunna maybe write the music and set up a framework off which to build all these lovely soundscapes and such. i was bored on the bus home from school and had some manuscript paper in my bag so i penned a pretty cool/twisted funk bassline which i think i'll use...
now i need to find someway to add the 11/8 bit lol.. easier said than done!
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remote controls for tellys & what not all make different beeping noises when you hold them in front of guitar pick ups press the buttons. Analog watches are also good for amplifying with the guitar pickups (sounds cool with lots of reverb).
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You can set your GT8 up to sound like a pod racer off Star Wars
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remote controls for tellys & what not all make different beeping noises when you hold them in front of guitar pick ups press the buttons. Analog watches are also good for amplifying with the guitar pickups (sounds cool with lots of reverb).
Oohhhhhh, nice! I might have a fiddle with these ideas later, haha.
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I was reading about this guy Mattias IA Eklundh and he uses amongst other things a dildo, I don't know if it was for slide or to hit the strings....battery charge though!
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I would say put a signal through an echo and very heavy reverb and "play" them.You can get some moody stuff going and if you can remove the original signal and just use the repeats and the 'verb then you'll sound like a crazy cat. Also, get some really insane feedback and play around with compression and you can record it onto different tracks with different pitches so that you get these freaky feedback "chords".
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I was reading about this guy Mattias IA Eklundh and he uses amongst other things a dildo, I don't know if it was for slide or to hit the strings....battery charge though!
It was variable speed so he used it for simple melodies and drones (pickups picked up the sound of the little motor).
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Excellent !! MJ ..
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More ideas:
Record percussion backwards.
Play the guitar backwards.
Sing it backwards (if you're going to have vocals).
(I like TMV and I've recently gotten into David Lynch's Twin Peaks recently if you couldn't already guess)
Play about with your post-production.
If you have access to tape technology calibrate it incorrectly and then move the heads back to where they ought to be whilst running the tape the other way up.
USE A FLANGER!!!
Add war sounds and edit them into another drum beat.
Use midi to create a beat on a single drum then take the rhythm and change the drumset sound and stagger the tracks (you'll be surprised how danceable this is, especially if you do it multiple times).
Use a Hammond organ or, failing that, a simulation.
Put some slide guitar lead lines on (and play them backwards just for kicks).
Buy yourself a vibrator (a cordless drill will do) and use it up against the pickups/strings.
Take some video footage and, with some creative soldering of a lead, take the video output from the playback and put that into your line in input.
Use the whole-tone scale.
Suddenly swap to a classical piano piece at an inopportune time (Nigel Tufnel is a recommended composer).
Theremin is always fun.
Play a major scale with a raised 4th (Joe Satriani intro here we come).
Finally, lots of intervals such as the major 2nd would do well.
More may be to come.
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Play a major scale with a raised 4th (Joe Satriani intro here we come).
aye, 'twould be a Lydian mode of which you speak. and now u mention it, i'll probably use other modes as well, where it wouldnt normally be appropriate. so i'll probably use locrians (2b, 3b, 5b 6b, 7b) and phrygians (2b, 3b, 6b, 7b) as well.
bahaha and yeah i'll just take a dildo to school to record my piece. there are so many great ideas that i just dont know which ones to use! the analog watch/pickups thing is cool, and i'll definately use slide.
thanks for all the ideas, i'll post up my bassline soon!
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i'll just take a dildo to school to record my piece.
You may just make some new friends while you're at it :wink: .
Edit: One of the people on my As course is doing a conversation (The voices being replaced by instruments) using pitched percussion in an electronic notation program (Sibelius 4)), perhaps you could have a go at this.
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one thing you can try is getting someone to swing a mic around 360 degrees, and sing into the mic, then reverse the track, add reverb and bounce it. Reverse it again and add a panner to make it sterio. Another very strange one is if you have an amp with 2 inputs on it such as a fender Deluxe reverb, take the jack lead from your guitar and plug it into the other input, then add guitar pedals to get ultra annoying squeal noises.