Strange techiques...

[Tecx]

Avant?.. Electro-Acoustic?..

lets share...

Alex

[fiveways]

screwdrivers
slides in both hands
percussion devices
vibrators
remotes controls
multiple hold delays
weirdly placed msultieffects
conplete abondonment for your instrument
learning how to create harmonies that makes sense(as most guitarists only use single note melody lines without a harmonic knowledge)
Blowing on the stirngs
finger picking.
plucking
rubbing stuff on strings
punching the instrument
kneeing the instrument to get percussion tones
detuning strings in real time
alternative tunings
avoiding pentatonic
avoiding modes
12 tone stuff
serialism

I will think of more

[Tecx]

Hey shane... You use vibrators too?.. Cool... I am not alone... The wife don't like it much - but meh... Stainless steel egs work really well... especialy with a guitar/bass prepared with aligator clips...

I use many of the same objects... Although I am moving more into obscure modifications via preparing latley... I have to get some more aligator clips...

Alex

[i_finlayson37]

Originally posted by fiveways
punching the instrument

I managed to get a really good sound with a combination of effects and punching my guitar but I was never able to achieve it again.

[LaneNarrows]

various ideas, some I've used, some I've seen

bows (electronic and real)

smooth stones

misc powertools

multiple capos (esp half capos and the like)

all manner of prepared guitar (alligator clips,
aluminum foil, silly putty, bits of guitar strings.
steel wool, bag ties, pieces of leather, heat
skrink wrap, ear plugs wedged between
strings, sand paper, files, keys, saw blades,
springs of all sorts, tape, sponges, etc)

plastic slides

plastic cups help against strings (fun since
it sounds partially like a banjo, but also makes
for interesting feedback)

attacking tremolo strings (smacking, "pick sliding", above mentioned powertools)

transducers (home made, piezeo, "soundbugs", etc) held against headstock

[Formica]

I'm big on electric toothbrushes, the kind that have removable heads and just a shaking metal bit. Either on the strings, or straight contact with the pickup. I often lodge pens or paintbrushes between strings for percussive loops... Contact mic clipped to the soundhole of an acoustic, or just about anywhere interesting... Shane pretty much covered every possible option, I think. Rubbing the edge of a metal slide above the frets is fun, nice with lots of reverb and some delay. I once contemplated the logistics of snapping strings with pliers live, but decided I was too poor.

As for effects, the stuff the Ibanez PM-7 is capable of is astounding. I got it free in a trade, but i've grown to love it dearly. Also, using the DD-20 as a static looper, then bending and shifting sections with the delay knob. The input can be clean, unaltered guitar, but you can edit and layer up some amazing stuff. I know people around here all seem to be learning the amazing thing this pedal can do, i'm no different. My magic stomp which arrived today would seem to offer limitless noises...

(oh, if we're being as general as "alternate tunings", I use a 4 string guitar for a lot of interesting sounds. Sometimes you really don't need 6 strings...)

[Tecx]

Damn straight!.. you should just play bass! There is so much more you can do with a bass in these situations...

:D

Alex

Originally posted by Formica
Sometimes you really don't need 6 strings...)

[i_finlayson37]

Originally posted by Tecx
There is so much more you can do with a bass in these situations...

I've been messing around with slides on my bass and it can give some interesting sounds with the right effects.

[GDan]

Bending notes by pressing the string at the headstock. Allows you to bend low Es.

Also. If you have a delay and a lot of distortion to compress the sound you can get intresting sounds by tapping the high e b and g strings above the pickup with the pick. If you syncronise the delay time right. you can get a sequence of fast beeps like a modem connecting.

[duluxdog]

Originally posted by fiveways

avoiding pentatonic




^^^^^^^^^ Best idea ever.

[christoph]

what I have found to be very interesting is if you crank up all your gain pedals (OD,dist, whatever), tap on the delays, and possibly some reverb as well, and sing or make some type of vocal noise into your bridge humbucker (make sure your pickup switch is activated for the bridge!) and sample it! That's right, you can sample your voice through your guitar, sounds very pseudo lo-fi effect. when I do it, people look at me like i am kissing my guitar or something, haha.............

[BossMXRHarmonix]

Running your guitar through a radio or a TV gives you a pretty radical sound.

[screamingdaisy]

Originally posted by fiveways
punching the instrument

Hmmm. Up until now I was the only guy I knew that used the guitar as a percussion insturment.

Works well with high gain and feedback. I like to hit it and pitchshift the feedback with the whammy bar.

[fiveways]

Originally posted by screamingdaisy
Hmmm. Up until now I was the only guy I knew that used the guitar as a percussion insturment.

Works well with high gain and feedback. I like to hit it and pitchshift the feedback with the whammy bar.

I often beat percusion out of my guitar and loop it live.


I should post a clip.

[doingtheunstuck]

shane touched on a lot of them. i also like beating directly on the strings near the bridge, but not pulling up... so you're getting the percussive sound, but deadening them at the same time (thus getting a nice percussive sound without any ring)

setting the guitar up so that the neck is resting on something, with the body on the ground.. thus creating an incline.. and rolling marbles down the strings.

taking a piece of figured wood and placing it under the strings between the middle and bridge pickup.. thus cutting that string section off from the fundemental string tones and such... good for getting something akin to a "behind the bridge pickup" on a jazzmaster, ala sonic youth.

using my single coil bridge pickup and placing it right against my computer screen while manipulating my effects.

i've recorded some good fuzzy background stuff like this:
guitar > effects > computer line in > ****ty computer speakers > ****ty computer mic > computer mic input

keeping the cord only halfway plugged into my guitar and then jittering it in and out while sustaining notes

letting my cats walk on my guitar while i manipulate effects.

[zoso451]

one time I got really pissed at my tele and ripped out all the strings with my hand. Then took the broken G string from the bridge and streched it out on the fretboard and strummed it with my right hand. Then I turned up the reverb delay and used the PS-5 to change the pitch so it was all haunting and crazy. Then I took the first metal object I could find and rubbed it against the magnets on the pickups and mixing it with the delay so it was just this wall of insane magnetic feedback.

another fun thing to do is put on a lot of distortion and put on a long delay or loop and say things into your guitar. Then use a whammy or ps-5 and make your voice go high to low. Fun stuff.

by the way pulling strings with your fingers so hard that they break is a painful process.

[BossMXRHarmonix]

Originally posted by duluxdog
^^^^^^^^^ Best idea ever.

Also, avoiding solos - silence instead of licks.

[apocalypsecow]

I love fooling with high gain stuff, but selling all my pedals has made me appreciate just how much weirdness you can get out of a detuned, clean guitar, with a two amp (amp and speaker cab.) setup. Some interesting phases happen if you get everything just right.

By the way, shane, what's serialism? I'm moderately familiar with 12-tone... Is it something in that vein?

[fiveways]

Originally posted by apocalypsecow
I love fooling with high gain stuff, but selling all my pedals has made me appreciate just how much weirdness you can get out of a detuned, clean guitar, with a two amp (amp and speaker cab.) setup. Some interesting phases happen if you get everything just right.

By the way, shane, what's serialism? I'm moderately familiar with 12-tone... Is it something in that vein?

Kinda, it is using math to dictate music, google it for some....INTERESTING reading.

[brassdolphin]

wow, that is some interesting reading. i made the mistake and googled serialism here at work. now i,ve been sitting here for two hours reading various essays i found and i still dont fully comprehend how it's all supposed to work.now this is gonna drive me completly crazy till i found a book to read about it or something.

[GDan]

Originally posted by apocalypsecow
By the way, shane, what's serialism? I'm moderately familiar with 12-tone... Is it something in that vein?

I had to do serialism for A level music. We spent the whole course pestering the teacher with varitiations of "But whats the POINT...."

[OneStepBeyond]

i had to do 12 tone for my theory 4 class, and it all just didn't make any sense... but the reason that our teacher told us that it even existed was to take the emphasis off of the melody and have the rhythm take over. because when you take away the melody, the rhythm becomes more important

[doingtheunstuck]

Originally posted by OneStepBeyond
i had to do 12 tone for my theory 4 class, and it all just didn't make any sense... but the reason that our teacher told us that it even existed was to take the emphasis off of the melody and have the rhythm take over. because when you take away the melody, the rhythm becomes more important

but what happens when you remove the rhythm? :D

[Tecx]

or meter, time, and structure...

Alex

;)

Originally posted by doingtheunstuck
but what happens when you remove the rhythm? :D

[fiveways]

Originally posted by Tecx
or meter, time, and structure...

Alex

;)

Ummm....The direction that you, anthony and I are heading in happens?

[Tecx]

:D

Alex

ps. wait till they hear out colleorborations!...

EVIL!..

[Shiro]

i did some wierd stuff by just turning my dist. all the way up and the volume kinda high and drumming on the guitars body while lightly hammering on a few strings..sounded kinda reverb-y...and tapping my whammy bar to get odder vibrations..
one time i turned the mids and highs on my amp to zero and the bass to 10 the dist to 10 and the volume high, the tone knob on my guitar to bassier tone and used the neck pickup....i tapped a string and got this really low bassy-non fuzzy feedback...that went on forever tho...i went to eat and it was still going..gave me a headache later tho....i wish i had more effects...

[whoresays]

try using the backside of a knife on strings with high gain. it's similar to the bow/screwdriver style, but you get more of a saw meets violin sound. plus, no matter how bored or mean the audience is being, when you pull out a big ass knife and start playing with it. they listen.

[Wayjurn]

Here is one I found out the other day while messing around, that I really like.

Anyone here own a handheld tape recorder? I bought one the other day, just a simple one with a built in mic and speaker. I've been recording passages of cool loops and oscillation and just fun stuff on it. Well the other day I was pretty much grabbing anything in my room that looked interesting and trying to make some noise with it, and then I found the tape player. So I held it up against the pickups, and I heard a fairly musical droning noise. Cool. It has a playback speed control, and when I adjusted it the drone changed in pitch. Really cool. Now here's the cool part -- I turned up the volume all the way up on my tape player. So now I had the cool loop I recorded a few weeks ago that I never figured out how to recreate, playing through my entire pedal chain all over again! Lots of fun was had. Anyway, yeah, so there are a lot of possibilities for fun with a tape player.

CD players also make some cool noises too.

[doingtheunstuck]

Originally posted by Wayjurn
Here is one I found out the other day while messing around, that I really like.

Anyone here own a handheld tape recorder? I bought one the other day, just a simple one with a built in mic and speaker. I've been recording passages of cool loops and oscillation and just fun stuff on it. Well the other day I was pretty much grabbing anything in my room that looked interesting and trying to make some noise with it, and then I found the tape player. So I held it up against the pickups, and I heard a fairly musical droning noise. Cool. It has a playback speed control, and when I adjusted it the drone changed in pitch. Really cool. Now here's the cool part -- I turned up the volume all the way up on my tape player. So now I had the cool loop I recorded a few weeks ago that I never figured out how to recreate, playing through my entire pedal chain all over again! Lots of fun was had. Anyway, yeah, so there are a lot of possibilities for fun with a tape player.

CD players also make some cool noises too.

definitely cool. if it has an earphone out, just go direct from it... get a 1/8-1/4 (or whatever you need... also, you can sub a 1/8-1/8 with a 1/4 converter and such) and plug it into your rig. even cooler than going through the pickups, IMO.

[screamingdaisy]

Yesterday I figured out that if you pull the lead out of your guitar and wave the jack over an AC power cord or the transformers powering your pedal you can make Starwars lightsabre noises.

[booshi]

Cell phones.
I first tried this with a friend in front of his house with my amp cranked. His voice sounded very faded and distant when he called my cell phone. I had the phone up against my pickups.

I like the sound of a hard drive booting up on an MP3 player through pickups too.

[intorvert]

Originally posted by screamingdaisy
Yesterday I figured out that if you pull the lead out of your guitar and wave the jack over an AC power cord or the transformers powering your pedal you can make Starwars lightsabre noises.

I believe the original noise was created by waving a shotgun mic at a cranked woofer/sub-woofer...or something like that.
I know the laser blasts were made by striking a taut steel cable with a wrench and moving the mic along the cable as you struck.

[i_finlayson37]

Originally posted by screamingdaisy
Yesterday I figured out that if you pull the lead out of your guitar and wave the jack over an AC power cord or the transformers powering your pedal you can make Starwars lightsabre noises.

I do something similiar occasionally, sitting the lead against my mouse cable, as the mouse moves noise is created.

[RocketStar]

I was playing at a friend's house the other day, and they discovered that cell phones would be amplified through the pickups. So I had to stand there waiting for them to try out all of their ringtones through the guitar before I could play again. Admittedly, some of them sounded pretty cool, especially when it was vibrating too.

[skip tracer]

Originally posted by fiveways
Blowing on the stirngs


When I was playing drums in a band, we'd often do three guitars, bass, and no drums for song intros, and I had a guitar part based on a fan blowing on the guitar. A big fan was part of my guitar rig for a while. I can't believe I forgot about that until now!

[Clayton38]

You guys are all crazy mother****ers!

IF you wanna rock, call me... I'll be using my hands like a true guitar player! WOOOOOooooooooo0000000RD UP!

[Rents]

Originally posted by fiveways
...learning how to create harmonies that makes sense(as most guitarists only use single note melody lines without a harmonic knowledge)...

amen fiveways man. my piano teacher taught me about the frequencies of notes and overtones and stuff, and it's been totally usefull actually knowing what im doing with harmonics.

yeah

rents

[zoso451]

the other day I plugged my pedals into my PA and put a mic into the speaker of my stereo. Then I put it on some jazz station and played around with my pedals.

Oh yeah and the speed knob on my delay doesnt raise or lower up the pitch like most digital delays do. Instead it cuts the guitar sound into pieces and makes short beat loops when the feedback is turned up all the way. It's a lot of fun to mess with.

[gary]

You guys are all giving me IDEAS! Crazy, fun ideas. :D

Another interesting one is using a slide with an ebow.

[FakePlastic]

1. Get a large hall of reverb/delay going

2. Scream into pickups

[davil100]

dildo.

[Tecx]

Always good, and Shane and I already mentioned it... Just don't let your wife catch you with her gear... BAD FOR YOU, VERY BAD FOR YOU...

:D

Alex

Originally posted by davil100
dildo.

[flipperbaby]

lately ive been playing slide with a wine bottle