Unusual gig coming up - need some out-of-the-box thinking

paulk

Ok folks, here's the situation so please bear with me for a bit. An actor friend of mine who also happens to be a very well known TV personality here in the Netherlands due to him having been the 'face' of a national supermarket chain in their adverts for over 10 years has a solo theatre show next weekend. It's a short 45 minute set that's part of a larger national festival taking place in 3 cities over numerous weekends and consists of him doing some storytelling and singing some of his own compositions.

He called me up a few days ago and asked me if I would want to join him in the performance of one of his songs on the last evening of his run. It will consist of the two of us onstage, him singing and playing an autoharp and me an electric guitar. Sound is all taken care of and I'll be running my strat into a Zoom G3X that will go direct to the PA. Room size is around 300.

The song he wrote is a sort of mutant Jacques Brel country waltz with pretty dark lyrics. It's a simple song structure: Dm - E7 - A7 - Gm - Bb - C - F are the basic chords.

(If you're still reading so far, thank you )

Here's where I'd like some input/ideas. He asked me to build a progressively intense layer of sound behind the song. If you play the chords in waltz time you should get a pretty good feel of where things go.

The first thing that sprung into my mind was Marc Ribot - the unsettling junky skronk stuff he did with Tom Waits. BUT, I've never really done stuff like that before in terms of sound crafting.

SO - I'll have no problem figuring out a part to play BUT what sort of quirky lo-fi/out there effects and sounds could make things interesting.

Thanks for reading.

koneguitarist

Tremolo, Reverbs possibly phaser later in song.

EricTheWeary

Can you do something like tremolo depth and reverb on a patch used with the expression pedal, getting deeper as you progress? Something like that anyway. Tape style delay as another alternative for something similar.

robwright

Tremolo and loads of reverb! Big 'hanging' chords - get atmospheric on his ass, maaan!

Cirrus

For that sort of thing I like to bring the chords closer together by finding the notes that are common between the greatest number of chords played, and mostly sticking to them... eg the change from E maj to A maj sounds quite obvious, but if you then add a part that's mostly E and Gsharp, then E and A, the chords bind together more because in that part it's only one semitone difference.

Maybe I've explained that poorly...

Roland

Well, I understood it. I'd do just that, using diads as a starting point, and adding more strings in later verses.

As for effects, I might add layers of subtle chorus or de tune to thicken the sound, and perhaps an Octaver.

A really neat trick, if you've got the equipment, is adding synth, string, or organ pads

Gassage

D minor, the saddest of all chords, you say?

Have you considered a Jaques Brel influenced version of 'Lick My Love Pump'?

thecolourbox

If you had a really mental dirty reverby patch set up in a true bypass loop (or non tb to be fair, like the boss line selector) with a volume pedal before the reverb, as the song progresses you could just had more and more volume to the dirty reverb so that it ended with a huge wet sound!

mike_l

Gassage said:

D minor, the saddest of all chords, you say?

Have you considered a Jaques Brel influenced version of 'Lick My Love Pump'?

And now we know @Gassage 's favourite chat-up line..........

 

As for the guitar part, a delay and/or reverb, chorus, set low for a slight shimmer, or a low set phaser (Phase 90)...

paulk

Having fucked around with it and using some of the suggestions here (thank you all) I think I have it pretty much nailed. Delay/reverb for the win plus some deranged fuzz for shits and giggles.

Cabicular

have you got a looper?

you can build a soundscape in layers fairly easily

With a bit of luck you might even drown out his Auto harp

paulk

Apart from the hat it all went well  - thrust upon me as part of the show but, yeah, ya gotta serve the primary artist.

slacker

I like the hat