Re: OT the Guitar as percussion instrument in Live Looping

[Richard Graham <rock.guitar.guru@btinternet.com>]

That's very interesting Rick. I don't suppose you have any videos of this technique?

 

Ricky

Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com> wrote:

I'll start off with this:

My latest thing is using a very thin pick and really getting good at
controlling the
speed with which I scrape round wound sounds. Even though they are quite
small
and it takes some work, it is possible to play individual ridges as groups
of
16ths, triplet 16ths, 32nd and even 64 notes in either direction of the pick
arc.

I was showing a guitar student the other day (he's taking looping and
creativity lessons from
me, not guitar lessons........) that you can come up with a half a
dozen
completely different timbres using this method.

You can play like a quiro looooooooooong scrape, short scrape, short scrape
or you can get good and counting the number of ridged and the control them
rhythmically as bursts of either single notes or doubles or triples or
quadruples,
what have you.

It's very cool and with the judicious use of parametric equalization (and
I'm suprised that more
guitarists don't employ parametrics but that's another thread for the
future) you can really
get great percussion sounds.

Throw in a little double octave pitch bending in either direction and you
really can have great drums
(at least for looping purposes)