Get into the garage

For longer than I care to remember I have been on a search for the perfect guitar sound. My conclusion? It most likely doesn’t exist. But there are ways of getting close. Intrigued? Read on my friends and I’ll hip you to my trade secrets.

A lot of it depends on what you are into. If you are a one dimensional, one style, one speed guitar player then it is probably a possible thing to get a guitar sound that will float your boat every time. But even then, one person’s perfect guitar sound is another person’s aberration. If you like to mix things up and play a range of styles, it gets more complicated. In that case you are going to need more than one perfect sound. How to do it? Easy(ish).

Mixing things up is a lot easier if you have access to unlimited funds via a juicy record company contract and tech company sponsorship. Oh yeah, I’ve got people banging at the barn door with all that stuff continually, right? In situations where that doesn’t happen (ie in 99.99% of cases) you have to be a bit adaptable by opening your mind and lowering your sights. By getting into the garage in other words.

If you are willing to broaden your horisons and accept 'perfection' as something less than perfect you are going to blow your music world wide open. There still need to be limits because there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed, like out of tune instruments for instance, but if you are hung up on hearing only blemish-free sounds you’ll be cutting off your nose to spite your face. Garage sounds have warts. They aren’t quite right. They don’t sound like the radio. They could be improved, but if they were they wouldn’t be distinctive.

Technology has painted musicians into the corner of a shiny glass box. Everything is possible, but nothing is real (thus spoke Living Color – thx). The ability to paint a glossy sheen over everything via technology changes the way your hear sounds. Everything is homogenised, predictable and artificially brilliant. Too good to be true in other words. Even bands coming out now that are allegedly “punk” sound pristine and moderne in a way that say, The Clash, were not. What does it lose? It loses its character people. Old fashioned word that, ‘character’, but it’s what makes you recognisable from all the other designer options out there. You need to accept character or you are destined to be subservient to corporate cloning. And that is a future no one wants (Artificial Intelligence Rock anyone? Don’t snigger, it will happen.)

People have accused my little guys of being a bit garage. And we are guilty as charged. But guess what – it isn’t them, it’s me. I have attached myself to my crusty old guitar set up for a long time and have found ways of using it that sound good to my imperfect ears. Garage you say? Hell yeah. Recently though, I have decided to upgrade, without getting out of the garage completely. I have invested a ludicrous sum (for me) on two new effects boxes to refine what is already there and take it to the next level.

The sounds I use the most are overdrive and delay. They have been the subject of my recent attention, triggered mainly by my researching how to create more efficient delay loops. The results have been spectacular, even if I do say so myself.

Overdrive: I have laboured for a long time with an old Ross distortion that acts more like a fuzz box. It has been included on lists of the ten worst distortion pedals by people who care about such things. Fair enough too. Cranking the distortion up creates a treble-heavy squeally buzz that wouldn’t be out of place on a Jefferson Airplane album. Ugly as fuck. But that’s not how I’ve been using it. By keeping the distortion on minimum and cranking the level up it acts as a warm sounding overdrive that boosts lead parts without obliterating the sound of the guitar. Check out the solos in Soaking up the Suds and Easter to hear what I’m talking about. Not bad, but I wanted to beef up the rhythm sound as well. The rhythm has to be chunkier than the lead to support it. That’s where I looked to improve things. Not to try and imitate anyone else (there are too many great guitar sounds to choose from), but to try and create something in my set up that floats my boat. And hopefully if it floats mine it will float others too. That’s the principle.

Some judicious research on the Tube lead me to two options that would give me what I was looking for, and it was a toss-up which way I went. It was the Obsessive Compulsive Overdrive vs the Electro-Harmonix Soul Food (I’m not making this up). The OCD came with an enviable reputation, but had a similar description to my good ol’ Ross. Why have two of the same right? So the Soul Food won out. And a good thing it did. It is a thing of simple beauty and has a whisper to a scream incremental drive that can take you from John Lee Hooker to Billy Gibbons at the twist of a dial. Add it in line with the Ross and the result is naastay. I love it, and you will too. It will be all over future Hopkinsville Goblins products for your enjoyment, so stay tuned.

Delay: Likewise. My search for the perfect loop didn’t take me there but it took me to the Rocktron Short Timer instead. Using this baby I can do space loops like Monolith Surfing and Synaesthesia on the fly, but I can also pull it back to produce surf/rockabilly type echo. Combine that with the Soul Food, phaser/wah and reverb/compressor and the sound just got coloured up. Nice. Super stupid! Then my existing studio delay can then be brought into play to reverse the sounds. Whoa!! Given all that, you have the recipe for some sick shit. All channelled through my sparking and popping old clean as a whistle valve amp and you have … garage? Hmmmm, garage. My garage. Just the way I like it.

This is more than a shameless plug for Electro-Harmonix and Rocktron products (although they can throw me some beans if they want), it’s to give you an insight into how you can use technology to create your own ‘perfection” without losing your identity.

Sermon over. Back to the bottom line. Oh. No wait. That’s the next post.