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Guitars in parallel - Musical Creativity 1

Mon, 07/16/2007 - 18:26 — Alan

Guitars in Parallel

Send a guitar through a parallel bus and put a noise gate followed by effects on the bus.

Why? If you set it up properly, you can have the sound change based on the input volume, e.g. pick the strings harder and it will bring in the effects, play quieter and leave the tone clean. Depending on how the noise gate is set, you can have this fading in and out or cutting in and out, almost stuttering. This is a more drastic change than what you'd get out of a valve amp set just on the edge.

Steps

  • Using a DI input, setup a guitar channel to record
  • Create a bus
  • Add a noisegate to the bus
  • Create a send on the input channel to the bus
  • Set the noise gate while playing the guitar, make sure that its threshold is activated when you play the guitar at middle-high volume when plucking or strumming and that the signal is off when plucking quietly
  • Add your chosen effect (e.g. a distortion)
  • Set the volume output of the bus so that the clean and distorted sounds have similar volumes
  • Play your guitar and record

    •  

    Variations

  • Change the noisegate to be listening to a lower frequency
  • Change the effects
  • Use a compressor on the bus with sidechain to the clean signal
  • Use a sidechain on the noisegate keyed to a drum or bass track (can bring in the effect with the beat)
    I've attached a sample and a screenshot of how it works in Logic Pro. I actually used a few more effects than just a distortion to make it work better for me.

    • Try it and let me know how you get on.

    Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.


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