Ambient guitar pedals

earwighoney

MagicPigDetective said:
Or just go ahead and discuss ambient guitar in general  

In terms of ambient guitar, I consider Loren Mazzacane Connors to be the king of the genre, he's been making albums over 40 years and he uses a pretty small amount of pedals wah,and a few Boss pedals.

In terms of modern ambient guitar, there's Fennesz and he uses Max/Msp (a patch called LLoopp which is free and works a treat).

Oren Ambarchi is another guy who I love, he uses a lot of things. When I saw him play he had a lot of Lovetone pedals including a a RingStinger.

MagicPigDetective

Fretwired said:

MagicPigDetective said:

Any pedals you recommend? I know @joetele has tried them all!  
Or just go ahead and discuss ambient guitar in general  

When recording I use an old Line 6 POD HD Pro - delays, chorus and reverbs in the loop and drives in the front. I find it gives a better tone. I always record in stereo.

I use a looper - TC electronics - and often record a loop, reverse it and slow it down. The looper does this - it creates an ethereal pad I can play over. I also often use an octave pedal (Pitchford) which is usually setup in fifths to thicken the sound. Then into chorus/delay and reverb. I often like to use two reverbs - one after the other - to make the sound more complex.

A delay I use a lot is the TC Electronics Triple Delay - a great ambient pedal as you can stack delays that run into each other. Set the delays for different types - ping pong, digital etc and different time lengths and repeats .. creates interesting movement and complexity. I also have a Timeline and Dig. The Dig is fantastic - dual delay unit.

Which TC looper do you use, a ditto x2 or x4? 

Fretwired

MagicPigDetective said:

Fretwired said:

MagicPigDetective said:

Any pedals you recommend? I know @joetele has tried them all!  
Or just go ahead and discuss ambient guitar in general  

When recording I use an old Line 6 POD HD Pro - delays, chorus and reverbs in the loop and drives in the front. I find it gives a better tone. I always record in stereo.

I use a looper - TC electronics - and often record a loop, reverse it and slow it down. The looper does this - it creates an ethereal pad I can play over. I also often use an octave pedal (Pitchford) which is usually setup in fifths to thicken the sound. Then into chorus/delay and reverb. I often like to use two reverbs - one after the other - to make the sound more complex.

A delay I use a lot is the TC Electronics Triple Delay - a great ambient pedal as you can stack delays that run into each other. Set the delays for different types - ping pong, digital etc and different time lengths and repeats .. creates interesting movement and complexity. I also have a Timeline and Dig. The Dig is fantastic - dual delay unit.

Which TC looper do you use, a ditto x2 or x4? 

Ditto X2 ... X4 is good if you want multiple loops.

UnclePsychosis

Speaking as someone who regularly plays a Moby Dick and Caroline Kilobyte into a Princeton Reverb... the whole ambient guitar thing has become such a cliché. I'd love someone to do something ambient that wasn't just a big wash of lofi delay into big reverb. There's got to be something more interesting out there, surely?

I mean, don't get me wrong, playing around with delay pedals is fun but it's all become a bit circle jerky for me. 

DarnWeight

Go stereo, or go home!

I'm not set up specifically for ambient...I tend to lean towards a more shoegazey/lo-fi/drone thing, but if I chucked in a volume pedal, I could get there.  The business end of my board goes stereo chorus/flange (an Arion SCH-1 or a TC Vortex, but I'm looking for other options here) into separate delays (an Adineko and a Belle Epoch Deluxe) into a Neunaber WET, and then out to a pair of amps.  I've got a compressor up front, and a boost/reverb (T.Rex Fat Shuga) before my dirt/drive boxes, so I can do the pre-dirt reverb "thing" too.  Like I said this works for the kind of thing I like to mess with, but it can also handle ambient-style stuff pretty well.  I'm actually trying to dial things back a bit nowadays (much lower mix on delay/reverb), as I've found that going stereo gives you plenty of space without having to overdose on modulation for swirl or "dimension".

roberty

Not really clued up on these sorts of effects but the SoundCloud clip sounds really cool. I use reverse delay in the DD-200 into my spring reverb pedal which is quite ambient without smothering what you play so much. A dimension chorus could be quite good for this sort of thing

joetele

UnclePsychosis said:

Speaking as someone who regularly plays a Moby Dick and Caroline Kilobyte into a Princeton Reverb... the whole ambient guitar thing has become such a cliché. I'd love someone to do something ambient that wasn't just a big wash of lofi delay into big reverb. There's got to be something more interesting out there, surely?

I mean, don't get me wrong, playing around with delay pedals is fun but it's all become a bit circle jerky for me. 

You could say that about almost every genre of music / guitar playing. Especially on this site where some people seem to only play the same things and stick to the same artists from years ago. 

Some of us just like creating different textures and escaping into a wall of spacey sound. To each his own. I play what can be described as ambient because of how it makes me feel. It's what I enjoy playing and how I naturally play when I pick up the guitar and pedalboard. I'm also a big fan of drone music and creating soundscapes using pedals and the occasional synth. It's just what I gravitate towards. 

Come to think of it, I've probably been playing this sort of thing for around 20 years now, from the very early days of being inspired by The Appleseed Cast and Brian Eno and only having an Ibanez AD9 and a Digitech Digidelay, to the current pedalboard and the even spacier, more experimental stuff I've been playing the past few years. I got quite bored with conventional songwriting a while ago. I've enjoyed exploring and experimenting and discovering new sounds and new pedals. 

It's just what I naturally feel like playing. 

Karlos

Bookmarking this thread. 

I'm just putting a pedal board together for the first time in many years and I'm loving playing ambient stuff.

I got my first Memory Man in 1987 (i think). It was a loaner from a Youth Club guy who had some recording equipment - I've been addicted to delays since. I currently have a Boss DD500 and I've barely scratched the surface with it.

I need a looper, I had a Boss RC3 on loan last weekend which was super fun but I'm currently reading up on the alternatives on this forum.

Seems to be some disparaging words about modulation/dimension effects in this thread. I dunno, the day I get bored of a Dimension D (which I prefer to the Dimension C) will be sad day but I guess that's the Robin Guthrie in me.

I'd quite like to try a Z-Cat Polyoctave as well.

I have  Hall Of Fame 2 which is fine for now but I want something much more immersive and as I have a DD500 and an MD500 it might be wise to get an RV500 as well.

Some very nice tips in this thread.

Wazmeister

DarnWeight said:

Go stereo, or go home!

This has been my finding too...

A stereo set up sounds incredible, and actually you become less reliant on pedals.

But, nonetheless, the following are ambient dreams, imho;

- Strymon Big Sky (King of ambient)
- HX Stomp 
- Neunaber Immerse 
- FTT delays

MagicPigDetective

When you guys say stereo, do you mean using two amps, or playing into an interface with monitors? 
I'm using a Katana 100 as a clean platform. I do have an interface with monitors though but not sure how I could utilize the pedal board through them.  

MagicPigDetective

joetele said:

UnclePsychosis said:

Speaking as someone who regularly plays a Moby Dick and Caroline Kilobyte into a Princeton Reverb... the whole ambient guitar thing has become such a cliché. I'd love someone to do something ambient that wasn't just a big wash of lofi delay into big reverb. There's got to be something more interesting out there, surely?

I mean, don't get me wrong, playing around with delay pedals is fun but it's all become a bit circle jerky for me. 

You could say that about almost every genre of music / guitar playing. Especially on this site where some people seem to only play the same things and stick to the same artists from years ago. 

Some of us just like creating different textures and escaping into a wall of spacey sound. To each his own. I play what can be described as ambient because of how it makes me feel. It's what I enjoy playing and how I naturally play when I pick up the guitar and pedalboard. I'm also a big fan of drone music and creating soundscapes using pedals and the occasional synth. It's just what I gravitate towards. 

Come to think of it, I've probably been playing this sort of thing for around 20 years now, from the very early days of being inspired by The Appleseed Cast and Brian Eno and only having an Ibanez AD9 and a Digitech Digidelay, to the current pedalboard and the even spacier, more experimental stuff I've been playing the past few years. I got quite bored with conventional songwriting a while ago. I've enjoyed exploring and experimenting and discovering new sounds and new pedals. 

It's just what I naturally feel like playing. 

I'll be honest, I've been struggling to write and record 'conventional' songs for a while. I'm searching for a way to express creativity and emotions through music so I want to give this style a go. Perhaps it's more for myself than for anyone else's listening pleasure! 

ewal

I don't do proper ambient - more fairly spacious instrumental stuff. I currently use an Avalanche Run, Spring Theory, Obscura and Particle, all of which have lots of potential for creative use.

DarnWeight

MagicPigDetective said:

When you guys say stereo, do you mean using two amps, or playing into an interface with monitors? 
I'm using a Katana 100 as a clean platform. I do have an interface with monitors though but not sure how I could utilize the pedal board through them.  

Yeah I'm using two amps...a Vox AC15 and an Ampeg J20 (basically a Brownface Deluxe clone).  I'm having to keep them dialed low for home use, but it sounds great.

althy

UnclePsychosis said:

Speaking as someone who regularly plays a Moby Dick and Caroline Kilobyte into a Princeton Reverb... the whole ambient guitar thing has become such a cliché. I'd love someone to do something ambient that wasn't just a big wash of lofi delay into big reverb. There's got to be something more interesting out there, surely?

I mean, don't get me wrong, playing around with delay pedals is fun but it's all become a bit circle jerky for me. 

I strongly agree with that remark. What I perceive as detrimental for the ambient / post rock scene is how harmony and melody are mostly absent of it. 
If anything I believe this is the reason why everything sounds so same-y in this genre in particular.
Tonal contrast is also vastly overlooked. I notice a very wet and textured sound better in a set if uneffected sounds are offered in contrast. 
A drony part sounds great if it is only a part in some songs but it gets tiresome to me when it's all the band offers and sounds more like limitation or laziness. 
The structures are also so similar in most songs ( soundscapes, slow build up to climax and abrupt ending ) and the songs are all in minor, always which gets stale quickly.

All these gimmicks put together really limit the creative side and excitement of composition. It does take care very well of the textural aspect of electric music but puts all its efforts into that. Keeping everything how it is but adding more harmonic variation from one tune to the other and working on melody craft would probably make for the best ambient music I can think of.

--

Also to get back to the original post, the dr scientist reverberator and Atmosphere don't get enough attention. 
Particularly the atmosphere which has EVERY ambient sound available and great new flavours of them as well as being midi capable and having a great LFO. 
You get all the classic reverbs you'd expect plus a panned reverb algorythm, a rainbow machine one, a bit quest etc...
all preset-able. I find it baffling not to see it mentioned more often.

Fretwired

MagicPigDetective said:

When you guys say stereo, do you mean using two amps, or playing into an interface with monitors? 
I'm using a Katana 100 as a clean platform. I do have an interface with monitors though but not sure how I could utilize the pedal board through them.  

I was talking about recording, so monitors. My amp modeller has a stereo fx loop - I think having a stereo signal elevates what you can do with an ambient guitar track. You could also use two amps like Lowercase Noises.

EricTheWeary

JezWynd

Watching a demo of the Meris Polymoon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZyaUWga-d0

Came across a phone app at 3min 34sec used to generate input to pedal. Does anyone know the name of this app?

MagicPigDetective

JezWynd said:

Watching a demo of the Meris Polymoon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZyaUWga-d0

Came across a phone app at 3min 34sec used to generate input to pedal. Does anyone know the name of this app?

That channel just makes me want to spend my life savings on crazy reverb and delays!

I'm quite taken by the OBNE Minim with it's reverse reverb:



I see that @stickyfiddle bought one last year, I wonder if you still have it and what you make of it? 

stickyfiddle

Hey @MagicPigDetective - I did and it sounds amazing. I struggle with it sometimes as there's so much going on, but it's magic when you get a good set of settings. I have to admit I do wonder about switching to something like a HX Stomp just so I can have presets and more routing options built from smaller blocks of stuff rather than a single unit. 

The Minim is obviously a really powerful tool but possibly not quite the right tool for me. I'm strongly considering trying an Afterneath as well but I really like this sort of thing with screens and presets, which pushes me to the Stomp.

ewal

althy said:

UnclePsychosis said:

Speaking as someone who regularly plays a Moby Dick and Caroline Kilobyte into a Princeton Reverb... the whole ambient guitar thing has become such a cliché. I'd love someone to do something ambient that wasn't just a big wash of lofi delay into big reverb. There's got to be something more interesting out there, surely?

I mean, don't get me wrong, playing around with delay pedals is fun but it's all become a bit circle jerky for me. 

I strongly agree with that remark. What I perceive as detrimental for the ambient / post rock scene is how harmony and melody are mostly absent of it. 
If anything I believe this is the reason why everything sounds so same-y in this genre in particular.
Tonal contrast is also vastly overlooked. I notice a very wet and textured sound better in a set if uneffected sounds are offered in contrast. 
A drony part sounds great if it is only a part in some songs but it gets tiresome to me when it's all the band offers and sounds more like limitation or laziness. 
The structures are also so similar in most songs ( soundscapes, slow build up to climax and abrupt ending ) and the songs are all in minor, always which gets stale quickly.

All these gimmicks put together really limit the creative side and excitement of composition. It does take care very well of the textural aspect of electric music but puts all its efforts into that. Keeping everything how it is but adding more harmonic variation from one tune to the other and working on melody craft would probably make for the best ambient music I can think of.

--

Also to get back to the original post, the dr scientist reverberator and Atmosphere don't get enough attention. 
Particularly the atmosphere which has EVERY ambient sound available and great new flavours of them as well as being midi capable and having a great LFO. 
You get all the classic reverbs you'd expect plus a panned reverb algorythm, a rainbow machine one, a bit quest etc...
all preset-able. I find it baffling not to see it mentioned more often.

I agree with a lot of the comments about same-y nature of a lot of post-rock. However you can say the same about almost any genre. There's 1000's of bang average and predictable shoegaze, stoner, slowcore, grime, folk, insert your genre here artists and only a few who stand out.

Song structure - millions of songs follow the same verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8 structure - what's so different about conforming to a post-rock structure? As long as its done well of course.