Develop Your Ambient Guitar "Voice": I've Got Tips!

greetings all welcome to the live stream i'm gonna grab my headphones here and play a little tune before we get going there we go and here we go i'm going to start over again i had some errant sounds going on here we go [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yes [Music] [Applause] [Music] um good evening here in the eastern u.s i know it's not evening all over the world but wherever you are hello hello so glad to be here so glad that you're here too i see a bunch of people on the chat already awesome guys and gals thank you so much i'm trying a couple things differently on this live stream i've got a little ipad here set up in front of me and hopefully i can see the chat as we go along so let's see who we have we've got our wilson blue sky tomaz we've got inverted popes we've got mr blank we've got david jacob daniel tim hey tim how's it going mike jones david jacob greetings everybody so happy to be here so on this live stream i'd like to do a couple of things one is uh you know we'll play a little play a little music here over time but i'd also like to talk about as the title of the live stream says developing a unique voice for your guitar so let me uh and and of course i'll answer any questions you all might have as we go along but let me let me tell you what i mean by oh man my guitar strap was on backwards there weird uh but let me tell you what i mean by developing a voice for the guitar i i'm a big believer that as instrumentalists so whether you sing and play or whether you just play the instrument itself speaks i believe music is such a deep and powerful thing that even instrumental music communicates and speaks on a very deep level so for example i'm going to speak to you right now [Music] all right what did i just say well i can't tell you in words it's non-verbal communication but when i play i feel like i'm communicating with everyone anyone who's listening to what i'm playing that's what i mean by a voice a musical voice let me see what's going on here hello folks who've been hopping on so glad to have you on board so anyhow the big question is as you're thinking about your playing how do you develop a voice for your instrument how do you develop a language or maybe an accent right how do you develop that nonverbal communication to be able to communicate to your audience and that's whether it's recorded or live right and how do you develop a voice that is unique to you so i'd like to what i'd like to do during this live stream tonight is talk about a few techniques tips and tricks that i think can be very helpful as you might if you don't already feel like you have a unique voice as you're thinking about developing that unique voice so i've got a i've got a little uh got a little assignment here for all of you on the live stream right now if you would just throw in the chat window the name of your favorite guitarist like the guitarist beyond all guitarists who has influenced you more than anyone else go ahead and throw that in the chat i will play here a few notes while i'm waiting and then i'll read off some of the answers here [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] all right that took a couple minutes because of the lag in a live stream but i'm seeing some come in tim says john ackerman great choice uh we've got omar rodriguez stewart adamson we've got jeff becks stevie ray hendricks and uh moodle mochter if i got that wrong i'm not familiar with him jack white johnny greenwood jeff beck michael hedges doug smith there's so many yes there are aren't they uh let's see joe satriani allen holdsworth oh bill vincel well thank you i appreciate that um but what i want you to do is think about that guitarist that you really like and think about what you like about that guitarist and i am willing to bet that at least part of it is the way that guitarist actually creates the notes on the guitar right so the phrasing the tonality like the whole picture of what they're playing just speaks to you and somebody mentioned alan holdsworth there motorsport and um he's a great example for me one of my all-time favorite guitarists and what i really i love his tone but what i really love about alan holdsworth's music is the phrasing that he uses to achieve his lead lines and his chords and so it's it's the language to use alan as an example it's the language that he is developed that he developed right may he rest in peace he's no longer with us but it's that language that he developed and then used to communicate to us right and he told us something that we can't speak in words but we understand it deeply right because he had a very unique voice on the guitar all right great let's see we've got bob fripp mark bird gary moore uh alvin lee oh man you guys are all over the place that's great julian bream and john williams all right two classical guitarists part excellence tale winkenfeldt oh and mike oldfield yes all right so let's talk about some techniques to think about in terms of developing a voice so first before we get to the fingers part we do have to think about the instrument itself so i i don't want to get too lost on the instruments because once you develop your voice your musical voice you will find that it translates to other instruments perhaps besides your main guitar or whatever you know i think of many years ago one of my son's friends brought me guitar to do a setup on i think it was an old yamaha guitar and so i did the setup and then as i was finishing it up and put new strings on it i went ahead and played it for a little bit and my son who was i don't know 12 13 at the time walked by and said dad how come you still sound like you on jeremy's guitar ah so you get that that's the musical voice but obviously an instrument has a lot to do with the musical voice so as we think about it as you think about think about the types of tones that you like and they can be from your guitar heroes that's totally cool and think about the types of guitars they play in and that's probably the direction you want to be in whether it's a humbucker single coil p90 style single coil whether it's a standard guitar or maybe it's a baritone like i have they all have unique tonalities to the instrument itself and that can certainly be the beginning of your voice right because that's going to provide part of the musical color of what you're going to be saying musically the next thing just real quick to think about is let me go ahead and turn off some delays here i'll talk about effects here in just a sec the next thing to think about is the amplifier or if you're like me using an amp modeler but that's kind of the basis of your tone right [Music] and you want to find a tune that complements the types of music you're going to play the the types of chords you like to play maybe the types of leads you like to play you want to find a tone that kind of complements that so um i'm going to hold off on the effects you can see them there in the bottom right hand corner but the other thing i will say is as you think about the actual tone coming out of the guitar amplifier also think about how as you go from clean to a distorted tone getting tones that complement each other they're not going to be exactly alike but they should complement one another so there's my clean tone and if i kind of go for a little bit of crunch or dirt you'll hear that it's very similar all right so it gives me a little extra [Music] but it's still off in the direction of that clean tone and even when i go into a full lead tone it's still off in the direction it's very distorted but it's off in the tonal direction of even the clean tone so that gives me a consistent feel kind of across whatever i'm doing so i would encourage you to explore that too as you're thinking about tones that you like maybe it's a fender amp style or a marshall amp rectifier or whatever it might be kind of give that some thought and how you can build some consistent tones all right let me pause there and see if we've got comments or questions that i can respond to and then i'll talk about effects for just a minute and then we'll continue on with the uh kind of the tips for the voi the musical voice all right all right good okay we got daryl sturmer in there too hey lightning how's it going man uh yeah daryl is a very talented player always has been all right so let's go ahead and talk about effects i had sent out a couple of messages yesterday and say it said hey what amp modeler would you like me to use for the live stream tonight and it was kind of surprising um more than 50 percent overall it was on instagram facebook and the youtube community uh more than 50 percent uh voted for the strymon iridium so if you look in the lower right hand corner you'll see it sitting there that's that little black box there on the left hand side of the pedal board so what i've got going on is three strymon pedals the compadre which is the compressor that i'm generally using right now if you've been around for a while you know that i used and still have a wampler ego compressor which is a really great compressor and you know i i've used it for years and i know that i'll continue to use it in the coming years but the compadre is really really nice and i've been enjoying that since i've had it since i bought it earlier in 2020 that's followed by the strymon riverside that's the yellow box and that's what's giving me the crunch and the full on lead tone and again the the iridium and i mentioned defender amp model and what i'm running on the iridium let me look real quick yeah i had to remind myself just to make sure what i'm running there right now is a vox amp model it's the uh it's you put the switch in the middle on the amp model setting it's supposed to emulate a box so it's got kind of a chime to it [Music] but i've got it set up really clean because for this live stream i just want the distortion coming from the strymon riverside all right somebody else said hey bill can you throw a couple petals on that you haven't used for a while and i kind of went back and thought you know i haven't used the source audio nemesis or the collider for a while so i've got the nemesis set up with a tape delay and here's what that sounds like [Music] sorry about that [Music] hopefully my voice my musical voices and broken tonight anyhow you can hear that's kind of a tapey kind of thing going on and then on the collider i've got the e-dome reverb just a little bit and i've got a bunch of pre-delay cut just to have it swell in and then i also have another delay set up on the collider so i've got delay on the nemesis and the collider it's the digital delay type on the collider [Music] okay and if you put it all together you get [Music] yeah yeah it's a nice simple sound but it kind of fits my vibe and that's where i want to go next we are going to get to the hands right which are really the most important part but we do need to talk about effects a little bit as ambient guitarists so one thing one thing i'll a couple things i'd like to mention one is get a good amp sound we already kind of talked about about that but i'll just reiterate that get a good amp sound that you really like that works well with effects if you're using delays or reverbs pitch shifters whatever it might be and then my suggestion is don't use more effects than you need to use to achieve the kind of sound you're going for so really if you look at that pedal board it's not that crazy i do have a volume pedal set up also it's actually an expression pedal plugged into the iridium so it acts just like a volume pedal [Music] but really it's a pretty simple basic kind of effects chain but it is very flexible even with the you know kind of the delays the way they're set up now [Music] you can get very nice volume swells you can still kind of play okay so cool and i won't do the distortion but you know it sounds really good with distortion too so don't forget about that and as you think about effects only use what you need now you might need a lot of effects to achieve what you're looking to achieve but don't use any more than what is absolutely necessary all right let me check the chat here real quick uh let's see hey how do you make ambient sound like the sound of a tambora if i recall a tambour is kind of a drone right but it's it's it's you know it's from indian classical music so a tambura remind me tell me if i'm wrong here but if i remember that tambura is the drone instrument in an indian classical indian music piece so it's going to not only have the string that's providing the main pitch but there are a bunch of sympathetic strings so i think you're going to have to try to figure that out i don't have a good answer for you right here i'd have to do some experimenting all right how do you choose and tweak the virtual amps now that's a great question i think about virtual amplifiers much like i think about a real physical amplifier so i start by twisting the knobs or if it's all on a screen moving the controls on the screen into positions that i might use with a real amplifier so for me let's take i don't know let's take a fender style amplifier that has lows mids and high you know controls i would probably set the amplifier up for a pretty clean sound because that's what am that's what fenders do best i think is that kind of sparkly clean sound it's different from the chimey vox but it's a nice sparkly high end and then i'll typically dial in the mids to where i want so it's going to be somewhere in the middle the highs will be somewhere in the middle and the lows will be brought down a little bit because i don't want it too boomy so maybe three or four or something like that that's the kind of thing i like to do and then since it's an amp modeler i'll tweak it from there but i think the first thing with the amp modeler is to find the actual amplifier model and then the speaker cabinet model that you're looking for and put them together so again for my example i love fender amp models combined with marshall 4x12 speaker cabinets and i typically like the models of the greenbacks like the 20 or 25 watt greenback cabinets so i put those together and that gives me basic sound and then i tweak the tone controls from there all right great question all right so we've got effect we've got guitar we have effects we have the amp models we've got a sound that we like now how do we start creating a voice that is unique you know i think one question or one um answer to that is not to play the same thing that everybody else plays but that can be easier said than done right because there are millions of guitarists in the world but i think maybe another way to think about it is to to think about how you can give each note that you play some meaning so let me let me give you an example here so i've got yep so let's just say i'm playing uh this is by the way uh g sharp minor on the baritone tune f sharp major okay so let's just say i'm playing these chords [Music] all right you know and that's cool but everybody can play that right even guitarists who've only been playing for a few months once they learn a bar chord they can play that and the strumming is you know pretty straightforward and i would say that i have not given all the notes that i just played meaning so the way i would think about that those two chords is maybe something more along these lines having the same kind of rhythm [Music] all right so i cut almost all the notes out but the notes that i had left i could concentrate on a little bit more so again as you think about your voice on guitar think about cutting out some notes [Music] now i want to switch this up a little bit to kind of demonstrate maybe my next point as we think about adding meaning to each note let me slow that down a little bit so i'm going to stay on those same two kind of the same kind of chord [Music] progression okay so if i was playing the whole chords [Music] okay [Music] [Music] so what i'm attempting to do and i'm not doing it very well tonight um is making space again for the notes but also creating um creating a kind of variety between notes that sustain and notes that i'm not letting sustain [Music] okay and that's another technique to think about using and you don't have to do just like i'm doing it here right you may not be you know hybrid picking you might have a totally different tonality but again you're kind of paying attention to the notes you're playing and trying to give each one some meaning as you play it and then one of the big things to think about also with your favorite players is what kind of movement are they injecting into each note that they play right so these notes are not just bare notes your favorite player does something special with each note so on that on that note there i'm actually using the fingernail of my right ring finger to create a more kind of wispy sound on that note and that's actually a technique that i use a lot for quieter more clean pieces so that's there are techniques that your favorite players have like that that they're using to create movement or textures or tonality to the notes that they play so i would also suggest maybe looking for techniques that you enjoy playing that can help you provide variation in the tonality of the notes let me pause here and just kind of look look through the chat for a minute uh already let's see here what about effects so sarander says what about effects such as tremolo univibe and leslie which are more tempo than tone but also add some tonality yeah absolutely you know if you think about some of the so in particular some of the older players using those old leslie cabinets to create movement in the notes and tonality that that was a great technique it sounds wonderful you can do a lot of great things with it i love like like kind of grungy slide playing through i don't play slide by the way but i love to hear grungy slide playing through a leslie cabinet i think it sounds really good all right why do time zones exist yeah that's a great question okay anyhow you can use these techniques of kind of playing less notes and trying to emphasize the notes whether you're playing clean or whether you're playing with you know a little bit of dirt or crunch now the thing you'll notice is because of the distortion notes notes tend to blend together more easily and become less distinct so as you move up in the gain you're going to have to learn how to deal with keeping the notes distinct [Music] that still sounds pretty good but if i go full distortion with what i just did it's going to be fairly muddy [Applause] and you know that's not bad but as i think about playing there i'm going to want to control the notes more to allow them to ring out clearer as you can hear i i didn't allow notes to ring too much a little bit but not too much because i wanted to make sure that i was maintaining clarity with all of that gain right otherwise it's just kind of a mess so that kind of i'm kind of rolling here from one thing to the other right so another thing to think about is whether you're allowing strings to ring out or stop them i kind of said that before but one technique i use a lot is actually stopping the strings by palm muting or since i do a lot of hybrid picking my ring my middle finger and ring finger and pinky finger are usually available and actually use them to stop strings also so that i can just focus on the strings that i want to sound out when i'm playing leads so let me show you what i mean just kind of watch my hand here [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do so i'm i'm trying to maintain control of which strings are ringing at all times to make sure that only the ones i want to ring are actually producing sound hopefully that makes sense let me check some more comments here uh let's see here how would you set a delay if you had to play odd time signatures ha i actually have a video for that where i'm playing in different time signatures and setting delays for that basically what you can do if you wanna if you're using a tap tempo um and i don't have time to demo it now but basically think about the pattern let's say you're playing in five and you're subdividing and three and two one two three one two one two three one two one two three so you can do that a couple of ways you can just tap in your your delay beat every five beats one two three four five one two three four five one now that's going to be a fairly long delay or you can tap in on three or two and then let the delay kind of cycle in and out of rhythm which gives it a really cool sound so that's i as i mentioned i've got a i've got a whole video on some of those techniques okay i have some problems growing my nails what would be a good way to get oh yeah a nail growing so i would i've been growing mine out for a long time i don't let them get super long i just want enough so that the flesh of my finger and the nail can contact the string and this will lead into another point about your musical voice but i don't have any good tips for growing nails out i would suggest maybe trying to avoid all those harsh chemicals of coating your nails if you don't have to i don't think that's the best thing for health but that this does lead into another tip to think about and that is the type of pick that you're using or your fingers that's going to make a big difference in the tonality of your playing right which is going to affect your musical voice so i i like to use picks that are pretty thick this is a two and a half millimeter uh jazz pick that i i really like on the baritone and i even use it on regular guitars the reason why i like it is because i do use my fingers and my pick together and i think it give i feel like it gives me a consistent tone between the pick and the fingers [Music] so it yeah blends together really nicely and even with a distorted tone i can really kind of blend them together so that works for me and i have spoken with a number of people who do not prefer very thick picks as a matter of fact one of my best musical buddy friends really he likes basically a fender medium which i think is like i don't know 0.6 or 0.7 millimeters it's not even a one millimeter pick and i gotta admit he plays some pretty fabulous guitar so what works for him and what works for me are two different things but it is important to think about that pick and how it affects your tonality all right a little more chat here let's see what we got going on uh okay now we got the nails thing uh how do you loop multiple tracks with the same tone without sounding muddy yeah so i don't have a looper set up so i can't demo it but what i would say is play less notes like that full okay that might sound really cool on the first loop layer but by the time you add two or three layers it's going to be full just muddy right so play less notes use that technique of really kind of concentrating on only the notes that you want to wring out yamaha thr 10. somebody mentioned that i would like to try one of those i've heard a lot of good things about that unit okay [Music] so there's okay i can't do it here um what about delay with distortion because delay will repeat the strings you just muted which defeats the point of meeting the strings that's that's a very good point and you've got it you've got to be really aware and be thinking about what every note is going to be doing through the delay so yeah i've got a muted note there [Music] right so you've got to really think about all the notes that are going on through the delay and you're right if your delay is not set up properly or if you have too much delay for the style of music or the piece that you're playing it can get out of hand pretty quickly okay let's see john white says do you get these pedals for free sponsoring them i've so i've i've addressed this before but happy to address it again because i know not everybody hears all the video it watches all the videos or whatever typically what's typically for me it's a combination i buy i actually buy a lot of gear one of the things i'm really thankful for this youtube channel for is that while it does not provide enough money for me to quit my day job it does provide money to help me buy equipment and in some cases in many cases i buy equipment so that i can share it with all of you so as i look at the pedalboard there i purchased the strymon compadre and i purchased the source audio nemesis and the riverside and the iridium and the collider i did not purchase now i was not sponsored in the sense that those companies paid me money to do a demo but typically the way it works is they have a but they all they all have budgets for sending out demonstration units of pedals to different you know players and they're going to be players that have some kind of audience on youtube or instagram or whatever and then the hope is that if they send them a pedal they'll like the pedal and decide to do some content a video or a blog or whatever about the pedal so that's typically the way it works i've only done two or three sponsored videos here on the channel over the last seven years where a company is paid me money to demonstrate a pedal i also only like to do when i'm demoing or reviewing a pedal i only do generally positive demoing or reviews in other words i don't i don't like to demo pedals here on the channel that i don't enjoy using or that i wouldn't recommend for you guys i want to make sure that whatever i'm showing you are pieces of equipment that i like that i use that i would be happy to use if that makes sense all right any advice for a bass player venturing into ambient noodling i don't have a ton of advice i'm a fake bass player but what i would say is you have the same challenge before you as the guitarist do in the crowd right so your challenge is to create a base voice and i think a lot of these techniques kind of go across instruments right you're going to be dealing with your tonality your phrasing what notes you're allowing to wring out what notes you're not allowing to ring out lots of things like that right all right so i'm gonna hold off there on some more comments or questions and let's keep talking about building that voice that's unique to you that communicates musically what you're interested in communicating one thing i would suggest as you think about building or developing that voice is to leverage techniques that maybe you've learned from another genre of music so for example if you're looking to build an ambient guitar or progressive rock voice use some different techniques here's my example one of my loves music loves is bluegrass and one of my early influences guitar wise is norman blake who is a fabulous bluegrass flat picker so when i was a teenager i learned how to flat pick [Music] [Music] now i could do better on an acoustic guitar but hopefully you get the you get the point right i'm using flat picking techniques for something that is not blue grass [Music] you never know what you know what you're gonna come up with but it will be interesting and it may very well be something that you can leverage to build a truly unique voice so i i like to think there's not too many players out there in the ambient guitar field who are essentially flat picking [Music] yeah yeah so kind of cool i i will even use that a little bit with leads sometimes but again i've got to be really careful right because i don't want all those notes to ring out all right another that's another thing to think about all right so let me let me do one more thing here and then we'll get back to comments and questions another thing to think about is in terms of adding color to your notes your voice is the use of vibrato and i've gotten critiqued here on the channel occasionally about the way i use vibrato usually but anyhow as you think about vibrato there's really three different ways that you can move the string to create a vibrato effect obviously you can move the string across the fingerboard in other words in line with the fret right and that's pretty common in rock music you can use a more classical guitar kind of type of vibrato or maybe violin right and that's going to be a little more subtle because you're not kind of doing mini bends on the strings but there is a third way that's even more subtle that i use quite a bit you may or may not be able to see it as i play but it's actually pressing the string into the fingerboard and then lightening the touch on the string so i actually do that quite a bit it's not i'm exaggerating it here just so you can kind of see it but what that does is it creates a little micro bend in the pitch of the string as you push down on it and you can use it to create very subtle movements in the string that are almost like a it's a vibrato for sure because the pitch is changing but it can create very subtle chorusing effect so i it's hard for me to demonstrate it because as i'm thinking about it i'm doing it i'm doing it way too obviously but i i actually prefer instruments with higher frets because i like that technique this this prs has jumbo frets and they're decently high but i really like my old carvin um fat boy the hf2 it's you've you may have seen it here on the channel it has very high frets and as you play it you can re it's almost like having a scalloped neck in a subtle way right but you can you can really bend the strings and apply vibrato uh vertically if you will by pressing harder or lighter on the string so think about vibrato and how you're using it to add i like to think of it as an accent to your notes right in your language in your musical language [Music] [Applause] [Music] i would say especially for lead almost every note i play has some kind of movement to it i very rarely just play straight notes with no pitch movement all right i'm leading into the next tip but i'm gonna hold off for just a minute see what else we got going on here on the chat sorry man there's a lot of comments tonight that's awesome guys really appreciate it what are my thoughts on robert fripp's solo soundscapes i love them they're great he certainly has been a pioneer in that whole side of things what are the cheapest best results for frippertronics again thinking of robert tripp i would say get any get the cheapest delay you can find that has at least a four second delay preferably six or more seconds and then just hook that in to your effects chain and then crank the delay time up to the longest time and you have instant frippertronics obviously if you're using uh something like the strymon el capistan or if you've got a looper that does decaying loops like the the uh tc electronic flip uh fripper the tc electronic ditto x4 you've got more flexibility in terms of the time of the loop but that's it basically and if you listen to robert fripp's early frippertronics you'll hear that most of his loops are only a few seconds long five four five six seconds or so because of the physical limitations of the two tape decks that he used any advice on how to choose strings i would say get the strings that you're comfortable with and do a little trial and error to see what you prefer um i tend to prefer heavier strings not super super heavy strings but for standard electric i like 10 46s the 09s and the 08s i feel like i'm gonna break the strings and i don't feel like there's enough beef there for me to be able to play subtly if that that sounds weird right with a heavier string but that's and i and i do like the tone better i know that rick biato did uh an episode uh i think last year about lighter strings and i i respect it but i still feel like for me they sound a little bit better but it's a very personal choice like so many things so i what i would suggest is um just invest a little bit of money and buy four or five sets of strings of different brands and gauges and then change your strings once a week with a four or five sets and then see which one you like the best uh let's see here best department app you would recommend well i for an apartment i would recommend an amp modeler and that way you can keep the volume down as low as you need to but dial in the exact tone that you're looking for i would i don't i don't use an amplifier at all anymore i still own four amps but i don't use them i'm strictly amp modeling partially because i have complete control over the volume for my old tender ears do you think you could do a blues number on your channel no i don't think so that's not really the direction of the channel i love blues though bb king rocked like sirius rocked and also mississippi fred mcdowell i love mississippi fred mcdowell um oh here we go another one about blues so carolina skye says i love playing blues can you combine blues and ambient together you can what is ambient anyway it's whatever you want it to be right we're artists we can the sky is the limit for us we can do whatever we want if you love blues and you love big delays and reverbs put them together and and figure out how to create something unique out of it maybe that's your musical voice right ambient blues if you hear a fire siren it's because i live in an old town that still has a firehouse that blows the fire siren so it'll be over in a minute i'm gonna ignore it um tips for using the game changer pedal plus i can't give you a tips tonight i do have a couple of videos about that pedal uh so i suggest you look look them up all right so where else do we go here we talked about uh we've talked about uh vibrato let's talk about uh other ways to move the string okay to give variety to your playing your phrasing as you're playing notes or chords so one there we go [Music] there we go that's what i want okay so we've got vibrato don't limp don't be afraid to use vibrato on your cords [Music] that's a really cool technique that's well worth kind of figuring out how to do well yeah it's really nice a couple of other things though that are related are the use of hammer-on and pull-offs [Laughter] [Music] that can really bring a lot of variety as you're playing either chords or uh or leads because a pulled off or hammered on string sounds different than a pick string [Music] okay [Music] and it does get very interesting when you're playing lead you you don't have to pick every note [Music] i think it's well worth practicing if you dial up a lead tone just play lead lines and don't use a pick at all you can use your right hand to mute the strings so you don't end up with a muddy [Music] mess [Music] it's definitely worth uh figuring that out it's really you'll you'll find a lot of use for it so one of the other things too so we've got kind of vibrato hammer-on pull-offs another thing that i think is really important is bending strings and somebody gave me a five dollar super chat hey thanks dylan i really appreciate that that's very kind of you um and i don't know if you ask a question but if i see it i will definitely answer it um give me just a minute though uh one of the other things i think that's related are bending strings right so we can do those typical you know kind of bends but you can use them in a very subtle way too [Music] one of the thing i one of the things i like to do sometimes is i'll bend before i play the note so i can do a down bend now i can do the up bend but i can also do a down bend [Music] and i can also bend into another note i like that technique a lot actually so that think about bends so if you don't practice them a lot practice them some now i i'm not doing you know i don't have a whammy bar and i'm not doing dive bombing kinds of bends these are baritone strings i can't bend them very far but it doesn't really matter and just a little bit of bending of the string can add a lot of life and variety to your notes all right so let's go back here to some of the chat and see what's going on here man all right i'm looking for question marks my oof faulty tenor my whole synth rig is software based via laptop and ipad excellent i'm kind of working on that with this ipad i just recently bought this ipad and i'm trying to get it that's part of the reason why i used it was to kind of set it up what pedal do i use for that soothing voice well i've got a little mic here that you can't see and that goes into a tube mic preamp and uh that's how i get the voice no that's i don't know how i get the voice that's just kind of what it is actually i will tell you if i can diverge from guitar voice to voice voice my i i do feel like the quality of my voice has changed some over the last seven years since i've been on youtube some of that certainly is age if you're younger what if you're younger congratulations you're going to be old someday like me but if you as you get older your voice naturally changes and it's tonality and certainly mine has but from listening to my voice every single week editing videos i think it's really kind of changed my voice as i've listened i thought i don't like what i do there so i've kind of shifted a little bit it's kind of interesting and this i re i wasn't thinking about this but this kind of relates also to playing right so as you play more as you practice more as perhaps you're recording your music and listening to what you're playing you're going to be hearing things that you love and hearing things that you don't love and then take the opportunity to make those shifts and you don't need to change big things right you can you can change small things a little bit at a time and what you'll find is that over a longer period of time it'll make a big difference all right again dylan thanks a lot i found your found your super chat in the chat window um all right what's your best way to get a volume swell without using the knob or a pedal i mean there are some auto swell units out there right the slow engine the slow gear etc um i don't i use them occasionally but i don't think any of them can replace a volume pedal in particular and i'm sorry that you can't see my foot that pedal board there on the screen is actually a photograph i don't have two cameras yet i'm working on it but i don't have two cameras yet set up for live streaming [Music] you you can't i've never s i've never played or used an auto swell unit that can provide that variable expression right as you're actually playing the notes [Music] right that's really hard to do with anything except for a volume pedal or or if you've got a guitar with a volume knob in the right spot yeah you can do it with that too uh can you can you not just use software to do all the strymon stuff it is all software driven right yeah i mean i if you've been hanging out here on the channel you've seen me use the valhalla delay plugin which is one of the most fabulous delays i have ever used bar none pedal or software so yeah i think i think at this point it's possible to go full software and get an incredible incredible tone for sure but i still love pedals all right do i have an eq pedal or do i eq in post i do not typically use an eq pedal on my pedal board if i'm using a multi-effects unit like the head rush pedal board the hx stomp or the helix lt which i just purchased and i did purchase that one recently i do find that those units benefit more from having an eq in the chain somewhere but typically on pedal boards i find that if you're careful dialing in the amp modeling i haven't i don't typically feel need to use an eq pedal all right so there there are some uh i guess some thoughts about moving the strings right you've got your right hand oh i guess i should mention with the right hand too you don't just have a pick available you have other fingers so if you take the time to learn how to hybrid pick there's a lot you can do [Music] do [Music] all right it i love hybrid picking because it gives me so much more flexibility for how i'm sounding notes together but again so i would definitely recommend it if you're not into it that's cool but it's definitely worth looking into if you haven't tried it another thing to think about as you're building your musical voice is stay looking for unique chord voicings and i i'm saying that carefully because i don't think that i really do anything unique um with any one single chord right so [Music] if i was playing a standard guitar that would be that would be uh kind of a a c with an add nine right but that you know with that shape that's not unique right i didn't invent that but you know if i combine it with some other things that are maybe a little less common maybe the minor seventh interval [Music] [Music] [Music] you know i again i don't think anything i'm playing is unique each individual chord shape but when i put them all together maybe it's a little less common maybe you hear it a little bit less from a lot of different players so i would suggest looking for your version of that right so look for those chord structures those intervals don't be afraid to leave out notes to isolate notes in what you're playing and look for those tones that really kind of please you that that you feel are speaking right to the people who are listening to your music all right let me look at a few other things here what [Music] what would you say creating youtube content makes you feel transcendence uh yeah i'm i'm a little unclear as to what you mean there by the wording but what i would say about creating youtube content it's been a very enjoyable thing for me when i first started the youtube channel i didn't really view it as part of my art right so i've got my music over here and i have a youtube channel over here but what i've come to realize over the years is that this youtube thing really is part of my art right it's part of what i do as a musician as an artist so i view it as as a kind of a holistic activity and it's real well the thing that's been really great for me is it's kept my enthusiasm up to keep creating right so um and i always want to play music here on the channel even though we're talking about techniques tonight always want to play music and that's part of the and you know the impetus to keep creating so i i would suggest for you guys to find you know maybe you don't want to be a youtuber youtube's a great place though but so it's not for everybody but find something like that that really impels you forward as an artist to keep you enthused and keep you moving forward so i don't know if that answered your question but that's my answer dadgad well this is not dead dad but i do love dadgad though i'm just using a split uh partial capo2 fake dadgad tuning shape [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] yeah that's totally fun totally fun don't use your pinky ring finger is stronger in classical music nobody uses the pinky for picking yeah i don't use my pinky for picking either so that this brings me to another thing as we think about leads if you guys are still okay i'll go for go for a little bit longer you guys good with that um think about you know when you're dealing with a higher gain tone there's a lot of interesting things that come out as you pick the strings so let me show you what i mean oh that was interesting wasn't it isn't that interesting so you hear the harmonic series kind of shifting as i hit the string and that that was not a pinch harmonic um you know i didn't i actually played that string with my ring finger and used a little bit more of the nail and caught the string on the edge of the nail so it allows the string to start out in a high gain situation with the kind of the more fundamental but as it rings you can hear the harmonic series shifting that's being emphasized which is a real it's really cool but again that can provide a really interesting um coloration to the note that you're playing so definitely play around with if you want to do more standard pinch harmonics that's cool play around with those play around with other ways to shift the tonal color of a distorted lead note definitely definitely worth working with you know and practicing uh let's see have i tried any of the neural dsp neural neural neural neural neural dsp amp plug-ins i have not i've seen them though they look pretty interesting uh okay let's see uh one other thing to think about too as you're kind of creating that unique voice don't forget about the controls on your guitar there is a move either and there has been to simplify controls on the guitar in the in an effort to get a quote pure sound from the guitar to the amp um i was watching a rob chapman video the other day and he was demoing some stuff and had a green guitar with i don't recall the brand it was a green guitar with one humbucker and one volume control and no tone control i i respect that but i couldn't live without my tone control i also really really enjoy having a volume control so that i can vary the volume the gain coming into the petals [Music] now that didn't get rid of a lot of the distortion but it definitely reduced the gain and if i just use a slightly crunchy tone [Music] you guys know this trick right you back off the volume control and and the the sound cleans up right the tone of the guitar cleans up [Music] right and of course you can you can also control that by picking softer or harder so don't forget that either i forgot to mention that earlier but the tone control in particular is where i really vary a lot i very rarely turn my tone control all the way up [Music] i usually keep it about three or four [Music] and if i'm playing lead i turn it all the way down [Music] i find it gives me a much my cable's getting in the way i find it gives me a much smoother tone which i really like i realize not everyone likes it but i like it so it is a difference let me turn the tone control up and you'll hear it [Music] you you heard when i turned it up all of a sudden you heard that p90 kind of spank come through right the transients came through when i rolled the tone control down the p90 sort of went away and i was left with a very smooth mid-rangey kind of honk i like to call it again this is me right this is what i like you you may hate that and that's totally fine right the point i guess i'm trying to make is take make use of your controls you you you may not know about all the really cool sounds that your guitar can make unless you really play around with the controls to understand how they react with the pickups and the strings your effects pedals and your amplifier all right somebody says p90s or humbuckers why does it have to be ore how about p90s and humbuckers and fender style single coils i love them all and i have them all on different guitars so i don't think you have to go either way you do need to think about the tonality of your pickups though and then decide what fits the kind of music that you want to make but the [Music] yeah that wasn't a good chord was it there we go the p90 pickup has a really cool i really like the treble but the bottom end has a [Music] it it ha it's more fender single coil-ish in the bottom end but it's not as rubber bandy sounding as a fender is and i mean that in a good way right that little that kind of spanx right that you can get out of a fender you can't really get that out of a p90 but it is a cool sound but i do love me some good humbuckers as long as they're not high gain i like lower gain humbuckers hey bill let's see have oh have i experimented with six string bass yes i have a an ibanez sr c6 short scale six string bass so it's tuned an octave lower than a standard guitar so e a d g b e so e a d g are the exact same tuning as your standard four string bass i like it it's fun i'm not a bass player though i'm a guitarist that fakes bass so when i play it i play it like i would play a guitar but it's it's pretty cool nonetheless uh all right david said i'm late will this be up uploaded as a vod yes so all of my live streams will show up as video on demand it might take a little while for youtube to process it but yeah it'll it'll be around for sure uh let's see hey bill i use a roland grf-55 synth have you tried one i have i don't own one but i remember trying one in a store at some point and they're very cool um very you know i i have a long history with guitar synthesizers my first one i bought in 79 i want to say it was an arp avatar and i lit i was working i was in college working part time as a janitor and it literally took me about that was about a third of my salary for that year to go out and buy that arp avatar but uh but i i used it a lot in the band i played in and then i've had several since then right now i'm using the jam stick studio midi guitar and that's been working really well to plug into the computer through a usb port and then be able to use the software plugins in my case with logic it's working out pretty well all right do i ever can have i ever considered an album without reverb and delay no i have not even my acoustic guitar album from 2008 has a decent amount of reverb in and it's mostly room reverb but i can't imagine mixing down an album without at least a little bit of reverb to create a space around it all right do i have any favorite scales or modes i i like them all i think they all have their places um i don't think in scales i think more in terms of melody when i'm playing so i don't analyze what i do like when i am preparing to play a piece which tend to be fairly improvisatory i'm not thinking oh i'm going to use mixolydian this time or you know lydian or whatever [Music] do [Music] yeah i wasn't thinking in a mode there i was just thinking okay that minor seventh would sound pretty good so i actually probably think more in intervals yeah that's probably what it is i think more in intervals than scales because i typically don't just play up a scale [Music] and i know that's not what you do with the modes or anything like that but that's i i don't practice scales i practice melodies i practice playing intervals i practice a lot of different techniques but i don't typically just practice scales whether it's a modal or actually everything is a mode right but anyhow i know that's a really bad answer isn't it it's kind of the best i got uh let's see will i in the fut will i will i in the future make an album with both acoustic and electric guitar as either backing vice versa i love that sound yeah actually i have done that um and if you go back in my catalog to 2014 i did an album called vision and there's a lot of acoustic and electric guitar together on that album i'm playing old uh traditional tunes on that album in an ambient guitar arrangement so if you haven't heard vision it's it's just you know vision like looking uh look you know you can look it up it's on spotify itunes all that good stuff uh it's from 2014. any recommendations for using the grand canyon with an expression but no i don't have any specific ones i think that's that's a good experimentation source for you i'm planning on a telecaster build it's cheaper to buy one but i want the reward of the build any thoughts yes i have been thinking about building a telecaster style baritone for the last year probably from buying the parts from warmth and i i can't get it out of my head and i know it would likely be cheaper to buy one but i feel like i want that challenge of putting together a guitar i'm not a i don't want to carve the neck but i'd love to kind of do the the whole build i think that would be a lot of fun so i applaud you for that desire because i have the same desire i love let's see nuno says i love tc electronics flashback for delay what do i think i think tc electronic makes great uh delay pedals i've enjoyed using them over the years is in particular one of my absolute favorite delays of all time is the flashback triple delay oh i love that pedal that's a great great great pedal and to the uh question earlier about whether i get pedals for free or stuff that was one that i purchased um and i was happy i'm so glad i spent the money to buy that pedal [Music] all right in a jam do i recommend abandoning a stalli digital notes maybe a drone kind of thing a stale digital note i'm not exactly sure what you mean um in a if you're in a band setting and you've got lots of delays and reverbs i will say this though you can easily overwhelm the band so you do need to think about the texture of sound across all the parts and the musicians in the band and and you know that to me that's one of the hardest parts about being in a band you're working with a group of people a team um hopefully your friends but sometimes you get into arguments right about who should be able to do what in terms of arrangements so definitely it's a challenge in particular when you start adding in more ambient textures for sure how do i so maxwell says how do i choose or program rhythm sections to accompany my tone so what i like to do so i'm assuming you're asking about if i'm going to add a synthesizer track into a recording which i do which i do from time to time if it's if i'm not using drums which i don't do very often what i will do is use logic pro since i use logic pro as my recording software i will use its ability to evaluate what i just played and figure out what my tempo was and then i'll add in the synthesizer track and it will follow along in terms of the actual tempo that i played at right because i'm i'm just a human right i'm not a machine so when i play my tempo is kind of you know it stays kind of in a range but there's a definite range of bpms right to the notes so it's really helpful to have logic be able to say oh okay this is how your tempo went and that way for example if i'm using a synthesizer that's got maybe a modulating drone modulating to the tempo it will adjust as i play to stay in time with me hopefully hopefully that helps 9 or 10 gauge bill 10. all right so let me let me play a couple of other things here and just if if i could just to ask you to kind of look at what i'm doing with some of the hands and i'm not even sure what i'm going to play yet i think we'll turn on the i think we'll do that i'm going to stay in the this key of b major here but just look at some of the techniques i'm using as i play [Music] [Music] um [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] did you catch some of those techniques that i talked about there was a bunch of them in there right pull-offs hammer-ons vibrato bends the picking with fingers and pick for different textures um etc so yeah i try to live by some of those some of those techniques i i told you about you know through this live stream so anyhow i think it's about time to sign off for the evening i do have i've got a little glass of beer on the floor it's a stout love stouts and i was hoping to enjoy a little bit of alongside the live stream but i've been having too much fun but i'm going to get back to that and and enjoy that and you know i just i want to close this out by just telling you all how much i appreciate each one of you for hanging out here on the channel uh for listening to the music for commenting for just being a part of this community if you uh if you know if you have any questions or want to chat about anything i love i i really do read the comments a lot on all the videos each and every day so um you know some people post silly things and i don't bother you know responding to that but for people that post real questions and want to chat about real topics i'm all over that love having conversations so feel free to hit me up in any of the video comments and um uh again i just really appreciate all of you for being part of this great awesome ambient guitar community and uh yeah we're in a we're between holidays here in the u.s maybe in a lot of the world right between christmas and new year so i'm going to take this opportunity to wish all of you a happy new year and now i'm going to go end the live stream but yeah i've got this cool little ipad here but what i didn't do was move the end the live stream button close to me so i'm going to have to actually walk over here what a great way to end this live stream anyhow hope you all have a great holiday happy new year and when you when you go back to work i'll be i'll be back at work on monday when you go back to work on monday don't be too depressed think about all the great music that you can make as an ambient guitarist that's enough to make anybody happy all right i'm done preaching see you all later i'm gonna turn it off now here we go boom

Channel: Chords Of Orion

Views: 11,178

Keywords: ambient guitar, bill vencil, baritone guitar, EBow, Frippertronics, musician life, guitar techniques

Id: pGtSV2w8KXw

Length: 92min 35sec (5555 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020