'Joe Satriani wah' style solo,Gibson Les Paul, dorian mode, ebow, valve/tube tone, Digitech wah

"Lengthening Shadows" features a wah pedal guitar solo, in D dorian mode. The distortion tone of the guitar is produced by Mesa valves (or 'toobs' as those of North American origin call them). When it comes to distorted guitar tones, you can't beat valve/tube amps.

The guitar I used on this track was a sunburst Gibson Les Paul, a 1997 'Classic Plus'. The wah pedal was a Digitech 'whammy wah'. I also used an EBow in just one place, right near the end - where you hear some feedback ring out on the very last note. That was induced by grabbing the EBow and using it to make the string resonate more. There's more EBow on other tracks from the same album.

The guitar tone and style has been compared by reviewers to Joe Satriani, also to Jimmy Page, and someone else mentioned Jimi Hendrix. I am honoured that anyone would make such comparisons. On the subject of Led Zeppelin similarities, if you listen very carefully to this track backwards you will hear a very good recipe for a chicken korma ;-)

The instrumental album "Coded Constellations" is available from gtrmusic.com. Visit the website for more info.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• guitar
• gibson
• les
• paul
• digitech
• whammy
• wah
• mesa
• valve
• tube
• toob
• dorian
• mode
• synth
• joe
• satriani
• jimmy
• page
• jimi
• hendrix

[gtrjunky]

What did you use for the drums?

[codedconstellations]

@gtrjunky The kick, snare & hats samples are all from an Alesis DM5 rack unit.With a small room reverb on the hats,large room reverb on the kick, & bigger reverb on the snare. The kit parts were programmed into Cubase, but edited to make everything slightly out of time the way a real drummer plays. Programmed percussion sounds mechanical if everything's bang on the beat, no human musician ever plays exactly in time.Sometimes mechanical's what sounds good for a track,but I wanted this kit 'real'

[smiffy373]

listening on headphones i hear you got some cool delays happening there - like the notes are bouncing around left n right - did u record the delays as u played or add them after?

[codedconstellations]

@smiffy373 The guitar was recorded dry, just the valve/tube tone, and the wah. Delays and reverb added when mixing. It's better to work that way as it leaves options open. You can always add fx like delays, but you can't so easily take them off if the track's recorded with them on. I did have a monitor mix I was hearing whilst I was playing, that was set up with reverb and delay, to give me a feel of what the final mix would sound like.But that was just a monitor feed, not being recorded.

[smiffy373]

@codedconstellations so the delays are coming from studio rack unit - not a guitar pedal - or multifx?

[codedconstellations]

@smiffy373 After track laying, it was all mixed using Cubase, so all mixed in software and all done with hard disk recording. I used various software plugins for the delays and reverbs, so no, not strictly a literal rack unit, but a virtual one. I do have an Alesis Q2, quite an old rack unit now, but I still like it, and I have that set up to produce the same kind of stereo delays and reverbs you hear on this track. I didn't use it on this track though.

[micahguitar14]

what a creative piece! rock on!!!

[m0nk3ym0p3d]

The tone is pure Satch - this from a Mesa? What settings did you use as I can never get one to sound like that!

[sunburst59lp]

@codedconstellations But does it go up to 11 :)))))

[codedconstellations]

@gtrjunky Cheers!