Reply to Post 19824 by Shippinnit in Guitar Pedals
I think pedals are all well and good, sometimes a bit of delay can add mood, chorus can make something sound bigger, reverb can add atmosphere. but i am totally with mike. and i know his knowledge of chords and harmonies is excellent, and having a good knowledge of the ins and outs of how to get the music that you want out of a guitar should always come before the expensive s**t you slap on top.
and i believe back there Haze you said something about the guitar being a generic or boring instrument? well im sorry but that is utter tosh. classical, or flamenco guitar is a wonderfully rich, warm and interesting sound. old jazz players like charlie christian, and django reindhart (cant spell it) could produce sounds and expressions out of the guitar that you couldnt dream of. neither could i. all with just a guitar and a little amplification. and django only had two fingers!!
True study of the instrument (i sound like a wanker, but f**k it) is always going to produce a better sound than spending lots of money on a lot of fancy pedals. turning a C chord into a swirling frenzy of wave forms and flanged out twizzles and echoes, doesnt make it anymore than a C chord. Rather than trying to find new ways of making the same chords sound weird, why not try learning some interesting chords, and thus making the music a lot more 3 dimensional? then add some carefully chosen effects to give it any extra atmosphere or p'nash that it needs. fuck, hendrix only had a fuzz and a wah, and a s**t load of volume. its the fact that played the fucking thing so damn well that made his playing sound out of this world.
i've always said an electric guitar is a horrible sounding instrument. if you don't go through an amp and plug straight into a mixer, you'd hear what a guitar really sounds like, guitar amps are big glorified effects units in themselves. but obviously, the compression/overdrive from turning up, a massive high frequency cut off at around 5kHz, EQ, maybe tremolo or spring reverb doesn't count because none of it is on the floor in front of you...
no matter how subtlely or how extreme you go, if you are using effects, then you are using effects. hendrix was a great player, but how he used effects was what made him even greater, he didn't hold back from using them either, embraced what was available to him at the time.
and please appreciate my use of effects and pedals has sod all to do with guitar, the vast majority of effects i use are freely available. i think i'd rather take the hendrix approach and make the most of what is out there, rather than just conform to that annoying guitarist attitude which is smoothered in irony. christ, even classical musicians utilise electronics.
the sounds you use are just as important as the notes/chords/harmonies as at the end of the day, music is sound.