More Fun With Effects

If you are like most songwriters you don't have a lot of musical instruments at your disposal, and it isn't easy to keep up with technology and the latest in effects and synth patches. This is where your creativity can really come in, and you are forced to make the best of what you do have to work with. Here are a few more ideas you may not have considered to add more sounds to your songwriting arsenal.

PUT YOUR KEYBOARDS THROUGH GUITAR PEDALS

It is really amazing what wondrous noises you can come up with if you create a new sound by taking your favorite keyboard patches, run a cord from your keyboard to a guitar pedal, and there to your amp. Place those pedals underneath your keyboard, just pop them with your foot when needed, and note what new sounds you can come up with. Typing them up and giving them a name and a description in a small notebook to keep near your keyboard will help you keep track of your new discoveries. Incorporating them into a song where they might give you a needed punch or distinctive sound is your next job. Chaining effects for your keyboard just as you would your guitar also works, as does turning them on and off at key parts of your song to create the desired sounds.

PUT ANALOG INSTRUMENTS THROUGH GUITAR PEDALS

Just as you can put your voice into a microphone that is patched through your guitar pedals, other instruments can be given this same treatment. One of the most wonderful sounds I was treated to was an electric cello that was run through a distortion pedal. Adding effects to cornets, violins and various woodwinds has created similarly strange yet familiar sounds. One of the most notable things I have seen is one pal who would play her flute through various effects including a preamp to boost the signal sufficiently to play it in a heavy metal band. If you have the pedals there on stage while playing live, too, you can turn them on and off when needed just as a guitarist would. In the studio, you can do this also as needed during parts of a song, and this can really help you cut down on numbers of takes if you rehearse sufficiently using these effects in a live situation, and can do it smoothly enough that you don't have to stop the action to change an effect.

Go To Page: 1 2 3