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What's the strangest thing you've ever done to achieve a certain sound or effect?

Posted by Dustin Aurand on January 24, 2017 at 8:39pm in Cool gear discussion - that's not cigar box relate

This funny picture was posted on the CBN Facebook page this afternoon. It had a fan near/against an amp, with the caption, "Budget Tremolo." I found an unrelated video on YouTube, demonstrating this.

We know that certain gear, effects, etc can get expensive. My question is, what's the strangest thing you've ever done to achieve a certain sound of effect? I've even heard of folks shaking their guitars, and even the fake whammy bar.

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Replies

  • smilingdog1 February 4, 2017 at 10:50pm

    Every time I get that sweet tone or sound, it's almost impossible to replicate again. Back in 1980, shipmates were making a recording in the barracks and we found a good acoustic spot in a stairwell. We recorded it and took off for a Nashville radio station contest had to be in by midnight. We found it after 1AM and the guy opened the back door and was going to go ahead and take our recording until he noticed it was on the wrong format. We were sure we had the winner and it was a huge upset. So on the way home we stopped by Grace land and stared through the iron gates talking to the guard. Stairwells are actually good acoustics. 

  • Taffy Evans February 4, 2017 at 6:37pm
    Hi, this is not a practical approach, but.......I just drove interstate, 3000km, and on the way I stopped overnight in a 150 year old stone cottage. I got my 3 stringer out and the sound was fantastic, so much louder and clearer. That experience cost $99 for the night. Stone walls stone floor, the way to go.
    Cheers Taff
    • Dustin Aurand > Taffy Evans February 4, 2017 at 8:10pm
      There's an amphitheater in my hometown, on a mountain. I'd love to go there and play.

      IMG_1188.PNG

  • smilingdog1 February 3, 2017 at 11:37pm

    Bray to a pack of donkeys in the middle of the desert. We made good music together!

  • Willy Senkiwsky February 1, 2017 at 10:51pm

    I'm an Old Man, 63 is creeping up, never made it to Woodstock stuck in traffic. I remember, strange, thing I did. Before karaoke was invented I got up and played Honky Tonk Women as it played over PA, mid 70's, on guitar! Wish I had Keith Richards licks down! Was told I sounded good!

  • Robert Stapleton January 31, 2017 at 3:57pm

    I built a hollow body snare drum. Used a CNC machine to create a 1" thick drum shell that was hollow in the middle (with bracing). Thought since it made guitars sound good, it might work on a drum. The snare just sounded ordinary until you hit a rim shot and then it sounded very thin. Dissapointing. And it took a long time to build.

  • Kirk Bolas January 31, 2017 at 3:40pm
    Just remember...you asked. A few years ago, I had just gotten back from Ensenada, Mexico and made the mistake of consuming some rather tasty tacos from a street vendor for lunch earlier in the day on the way to the airstrip to catch my flight home along with my generous friend who had flown us down there on his own business jet. I know. It must be nice.

    Later that night as I was noodling around in my project studio, I developed the worst case of flatulence, aka farts, that I've had in my life. The volume in terms of quantity was only surpassed in terms of the dB of SPL that they were producing and the dwell was exceedingly long...i.e., the time from start until finish of each gaseous discharge. I had a stroke of creative genius...that or hypoxia from the oxygen being displaced by the superfluous amounts of methane, carbon monoxide & dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.

    Anyway, I grabbed my Royer R121 and plugged it into my Zoom R24 portable multitrack recorder. I spent and hour capturing some impressive "tail pipe detonations". It would be more accurate to call the sonic overpressure waves as the sequelae of an active "weapon of ass destruction".

    I then took the wave files from the R24 and uploaded them into my DAW at the time, Pro Tools 9.x and proceeded to create differ clips to loop in sequence. I ran them out through my old Tascam 18 whatever interface using out patch bay to send the signals to an assortment of old analog ElectroHarmonix, Moog and MXR stompboxes, including a ring modulator, an Electric Mistress Flanger and an envelope filter. I also used a little Eq massaging, via a low pass kinda shelving Eq to give my subwoofer a workout on the naturally low register examples.

    Now I did this in such a way that it's still clear that the basis for the sounds are still discernible as to their original origin, but the result is even more musical and would fit in with some of the kinds of songs that Les Claypool writes or what Dr. Demento would play if he were still with us, as an examples. They are stored in their very own folder on my HD that I named Code Brown.

    Be creative. Be a little twisted. There's music everywhere. Oh, and in recording I discovered another unintended use for an old, mic-stand attachable pop filter that gave its life for the project. "Huh", you say? I didn't want any unnatural muffling of the native tones produced and made sure there was no fabric to impede the vibrations captured. The rest is up to the reader's imagination. Yeah, I know. TMI.
  • the anonymous pick January 30, 2017 at 12:30am

     an old post of mine ; make your guitar sound like a church bell .


    Find more videos like this on Cigar Box Nation

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