Fun With Guitars

The guitar has been a primary instrument in pop music for years, but there is still so much about the instrument that remains mostly unexplored. Here are some fun ideas you might try with your music the next time you think of adding a guitar to the mix.

SOUND EFFECTS

Eddie Van Halen isn’t the only ace guitarist who has tried to find ways to make his instrument produce new noises. Scratching down the strings with your pick can make a wonderful slide sound, and just try that while pressing down or pulling up on a whammy bar—really fun! On one number my old band did, I had the volume knob turned completely down, fretted a chord, struck the notes with the flat of my hand then pulled up then reduced the volume to make a wonderful slow moan—very Jurassic Park sounding. In another band, I simply kept hitting the strings that same way instead of strumming while fretting chords in a normal fashion—gave an almost steel-drum sounding effect, and sounded very nice in a purely percussive song we were performing at that time. If you happen to be playing in that key, try picking the strings where they are stretched between the nut of your guitar and the tuning keys—very high-pitched and tinny. Then there is always the classic—face the pickups in your guitar towards the speakers in your amp, and turn up the gain until you get that wonderful feedback squeal—you can then just walk towards the amp with your guitar turned around to get that sound or away to diminish it. All that, and we haven’t even begun playing with foot pedals, rack mounted or computer effects, yet. Try playing with a few effects at your local music store, or see how you can get some neat new effects using items you already have. There are lots of great online sources (try my Links section) and books or magazine sections on the topic of getting unusual sounds from your “axe,” so try a few and see how you could use them to add to your composition arsenal.

LAYERING STYLES

Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page was an ace at this. If you take several guitars, but make each use a different playing style, you can put several of them on a tape and still get a clear-sounding song. In rock, you often hear the strummed guitar played alongside the single-string picked lead guitar, but that isn’t the only combination. You can try a guitar that is fingerpicked alongside a strummed instrument, and add a lead on top of that. You can even do a “double lead” where you have two lead instruments playing harmony to each other, like Thin Lizzy did in “The Boys are Back in Town.” In one cover band I performed with in college, we had an acoustic rhythm, electric rhythm and electric lead, and the effect of two guitars playing the same part sounded like an odd chorus effect. If you have some school-band trained guitarists like I did in my last band, you can both play the same part exactly together, and it will come off sounding like you have a 12-string guitarist in the band. To get this effect in the studio, you either need to write out the parts and play them exactly as written, or let two guitarists play simultaneously either in the same room or in separate rooms, but allow them to see each other’s hands so they can follow each other to stay accurate. If you fingerpick a part and use a heavy thumb while you hit the bass notes, it will sound like you have two bass players dueling on the song. It’s common in many country and folk tunes to use an electric lead and bass alongside an acoustic rhythm guitar to add depth to a song, but many rock, pop and folk tunes use this same configuration. Play around with different combinations other than the one you are used to, and see if there is one you like as well or better. You may even come up with several I don’t mention here. The important thing is to have some fun and see how you can use this exercise to come up with some more song ideas. You may even write a song to specifically showcase one of these styles. Enjoy!

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