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Rick and all, Thanks for your elaborated response. I actually printed it out to really digest it. The Martini skewer in-the-strings was lots of fun.... I have a follow up question - Does the Digitech vocal processor have intelligent harmonies? Thanks, Patrick -----Original Message----- From: Rick Walker/Loop.pooL [mailto:GLOBAL@cruzio.com] Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 7:42 PM To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com Subject: PERCUSSIVE TECHNIQUES for LOOPING GUITAR: a new thread? hint hint........... ;-) Hey Patrick, Rick Walker here. I'm a percussionist and thought I might be of some assistance with your dilemma. Not all acoustic guitars sound the same percussively for obvious reasons. If you have a guitar that doesn't have a naturally resonant set of bass drum sounds (the hardest to get) here are a couple of suggestions from a percussionists standpoint: 1) if you are looping and have a programmable equalizer (parametric or 31 band) practise getting the best acoustic bass drum sound that you can from your axe. This is best accomplished by playing in the middle of the back of the guitar with the side of your thumb..........you want to do a very quick rotation of your wrist so that thumb (with palm facing you)of your right hand is to the right and then quickly wips (without moving your elbow or forearm) laterally so that your palm turns completely face down and then returns to the open position as fast as you can. Strike the back of your guitar with the fleshiest portion of the side of your thumb (most akin to a hard felt bass drum beater) or actually use a soft felt mallet ($20-$30). Now equalize that sound until you find the resonant frequency of the guitar being struck and raise it's volume. You can cut all of the really high frequencies out of this sound but leave a little 6k in there for the 'attack' of the sound. Store your sound. 2) Now go to the part of the guitar where sides join the bottom or the top (the place of least resonance) and use your 1st or 2nd finger or middle three fingers together and quickly slap that place (making sure that no fingers touch further into the guitar)..........now eq the bass and low mid frequencies completely out of the sound and boost everything from 1k to 6k. Store your sound. Voila! instant bass drum and snare drum analogues. Because you will be layering your 'drum' sounds into your mix, you can recall the 'kick' drum sound, layer it's rhythm, then call up your snare eq and layer that rhythm. 3) Go to half speed record on your looper and play half speed 8th notes by very quickly scratch the grooves of your strings so that they make little short and discreet sounds and then return to full speed: Voila! instant 'hi hat' sounds 4) other cool sounds can be going to the edge where the front meets the sides and 'snapping' your finger to produce sharp wooden sounds (clave/) lightly palm mute your strings and then play harmonics by striking the guitar with anything from a plastic martini skewer to a hammer dulcimer mallet to a bic pen to a chopstick...........again, if done at half speed while in half speed record you can produce much faster sounds at normal speed that are very interesting an percussive. 5) By creatively using a parametric equalizer you can go to several parts of the body and while striking it with your thumb you can take on band of the parametric, make the band width extremely narrow and sweep the frequencies with the volume of that band very high and all the other bands very low. You will come across several different distinct and loud tones that can also serve as your 'tom' 'tom's. At my gig on New Year's Eve (at the Monterey Museum of Art) I used a frisbie with my new digitech vocal processor (more cool bang for the buck than any effects processor I've owned so far!!!!) and used the fact that I can statically change the pitch of the input from two octaves below to two octaves above to create a myriad of different drum sounds. It was awesome!!! Any really cheap pitch shifter (boss has a really nice one for $165 called the IntelliShifter that is a simple stomp box pedal with even a little bit of intelligent pitch shifting options and a very cool stutter and 'whammy bar' effect built in---even pretty nice fidelity and relatively low noise.). I'm not a guitarist per se (although I own a few acoustic and electrics) but I've had great fun by striking, bowing, malleting, sliding and preparing guitars. Old stand bys are 1) lacing forks and knives and spoons under and over your strings to create 'faux' gamelan sounds......... 2) rolling large ball bearing balls down the strings 3) dropping hard rice kernels on prepared guitars (stole that one, like every one else and there mother's uncle, from Fred Frith......the maestro). 4) tuning the strings to an open chord and playing the back of the guitar like a hand drum but micing it right under the bridge with a high quality condenser mic so that you get the chordal sympathetic vibrations. You can then take that sound and equalize all of the lower 'drum' sounds out of it and you get a very cool and unusual rhythmic chordal sound that has overring like a bowed psaltery. and, hey, what else guys and gals? what other cool percussive things can we do to the guitar (or cello or bass or violin). This might be a good thread!!!! have fun and let me know if you recieve any other good suggestions for your dilemma. your, Rick