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

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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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on January 29, 2017 at 6:56pm

no . its a cbn post . if you refresh and still cant see it , try this ,

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/church-bell-guitar-trick-revisi...

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Permalink Reply by Dustin Aurand on January 30, 2017 at 2:48am

I looked up just the basic trick online. Basically you cross 2 strings over, hold them in place. And play them at the same time.

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on January 30, 2017 at 2:58am

yup , pretty much . twist 2 strings with a pick .then push down on the pick like you are fretting that note .. works great on 12th , 5th , and 3rd frets ... and others too .

not sure why you cant see the vid . must be your settings . i can see it and it plays fine .. anyone else see it ? or not ? .

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Permalink Reply by Dustin Aurand on January 30, 2017 at 3:05am

I'm on my iPhone. That could be it.

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Permalink Reply by Dustin Aurand on January 30, 2017 at 3:26am

It won't even play on your original post. Is it somehow set so only you can see it? Just wondering.

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on January 30, 2017 at 4:12am

considering i have comments there , im guessing others can / could see it fine .

here ,, i used the effect in this tune . you should be able to see it .. its a ytube

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/for-whom-the-carol-of-the-bell-...

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on January 30, 2017 at 1:42pm

maybe the phone is the problem, plays ok on my pc

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on January 30, 2017 at 2:38pm

cheers Darryl ;-)

Permalink Reply by Dustin Aurand on January 30, 2017 at 3:34pm

Sorry if I offended. Just didn't know. Anyway, I tried it, and it sounds great. If you do it on the 3rd fret, 2 lowest strings on a CBG, you can do Hell's Belks on the high G.

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on January 30, 2017 at 4:29pm

offended ???? . no no , not at all . and yup . 3rd is a nice spot . ;-)

Permalink Reply by Kirk Bolas on January 31, 2017 at 9:40am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Stapleton on January 31, 2017 at 9:57am

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.