How To Make an Electric guitar sound like a bagpipe

Here's a different electric guitar bagpipe effect, that I haven't seen displayed yet on YouTube. Not that novel though, getting an electric guitar to sound like a bagpipe. Many famous guitarists, also did this ages ago to great effect. Maybe not just exactly this way. You have to play/phrase like a bagpiper. For the intermediate to advanced guitarist. Beginners might find it a bit hard to grasp.

You have to use a guitar of yours with the longest natural sustain possible. Single coil or humbucker doesn't matter. Use bridge pickup only, full treble, full volume.

Prerequisites:

1. Pick, made of steel or stone.
2. Know how to play "Scotland The Brave" - like this one - or some other bagpipe tune.

EFFECTS NEEDED:

1. Compressor, with long sustain setting as possible.
2. Distortion/Overdrive pedal with some EQ possibilities. Or distortion from any amp. Make sure distortion comes before any delays and reverbs then!
3. Delay/looper pedal with HOLD/INFINITE REPEAT function. Set at anything above 500ms with lots of feedback to get the drone effect.
(4.) Maybe any chorus effect to produce "lots of pipes" effect. However, this is optional.
(5.) Maybe some reverb, or lots... to your taste.
(6.) Volume pedal, as a noise gate. Can get quite noisy.

HOW TO:

1. Lay down the drone note first, with a regularly picked Bb on the bottom string, fade/swell it in with volume into the delay, and then build up a drone, let it ring for a while, then press the hold/infinite repeat switch to keep it going.

2. Steel or stone made pick to tap/fret with. That is what it takes and is a crucial difference. This is what really makes a difference. Plastic pick or with fingernails/finger pad won't do.

3. Tapping and FRET HARD with the side of your pick, and use lots of hammer ons and pulloffs with the left hand/fingers. Do not tap lightly on the strings, you have to get the note going and going, a bagpipe has no silent breaks, it just sounds all of the time. As fast as you hear your string running out of sustain, pick/fret again with the side of your pick.

4.You have to stay in the key of Bb. And keep the melody and scale in mixolydian mode. Use high E and B-string only, except for the drone which is Bb on the thick E-string. Keep the pick always on a suitable note/fret in the scale, say one octave Bb above, and then on Eb on the second string and so on. Do not tap with the pick on any arbitrary fret!

At the end I've doubled it some 12 times just go get to the effect of a bunch of bagpipe players. No matter how I've tried, I couldn't get the video to sync perfectly. And there's a wobbly sound and flutter that the video capturing software added especially at the beginning. Couldn't get rid of it no matter how I tried. Sorry about that. But the sound and actual take is better than the one before.This is an update from earlier inferior quality recordings, and so, I have dodged comments, because I don't think it's needed to explain further. No tabs or no nothing exists. Either you'll get the idea or you don't.

Good luck!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Electric
• Guitar
• Bagpipe
• Instructions
• Special
• Effects
• Music