80s sounding Clean Chords & triads help

hollywoodrox

I enjoy playing with those 80s compressed  Chorus Delay reverb clean sounds like Landau ,Lukather 
  Dan Huff  etc  or what people use when demonstrating the sound .

  Is there a secret to this sound  I try and play a chord say G and leave in open strings (easily done on the guitar in this key ) or also play Sus 2 & 4 chords or add 9th & 11ths on the high sounding strings .

Keyboards always sound great with sus 2 & 4 and using inversions & having the third or 5th on the bass .

Perhaps too it’s the overall effect  the layering , mixing those big chords with diads & triads 
the single line rhythms with ghost notes (some call it bubble picking)  plus differentiate with a heavy power chord lick in other parts .

I know my intervals & can construct chords  , people demonstrating this tone  seem to be able to pull them out of thin air so I guess I need to get learning  just wondered which are best for this sort of 
sound/feeling /ambience . 

I do have Ted Greens  books on PDF but they’re a nightmare & I feel if I have an idea which ones I need & wether to include open strings I should with my basic knowledge of intervals be able to build them myself . (I’m sure somebody has bought a video or a book out  to help you work through Ted Greenes stuff  so others must have found it bewildering ) 

sometimes something so simple sounds bloody amazing though .
look at the first part of the riff/motif in Hysteria by def leppard 
With a D  F# & G which seem to fit in the key of D as I iii  & IV  intervals  it sounds so amazing 

anyway I’m rambling . Any tips or help appreciated 
thanks for reading 

edit  PS most stuff on YouTube  on these players usually focuses on these players solos or learning their songs which of course is a great idea but I did want to have an idea how to build them myself .
in the past I’ve looked at peoples keyboard lessons which seem to cover these  but a lot of the ideas like sus 2 & 4 etc I’m already using .

cheers 80s forever Paul 

gusman2x

Following with interest. 

Love that LA clean sound. I’ve been enjoying the vid a lot. I especially love the man in the mirror chords. https://youtu.be/XiCwR68Cp5I?si=pUlocTGSKdmubXvO

The boss dimension C Wazza helps too. 

Kebabkid

When it comes to that type of clean sound, the usual suspects are good but check out Michael Thompson gear vids/demos and you may pick up stuff from him

Adji

Love those sounds too.

I've begun putting together a poor man's version of the 80's rack rig using 'pieces that most players have never heard of'.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBEhkbuO__S/

For my fake version of this sort of playing: I've found that using recurring / common notes between chords really helps. Having the intervals spread quite wide too tends to give a more open / airier sound than using open chord or barre chord shapes. I also play a little bit of piano (which came after guitar) so when I'm improvising chordy stuff, I try to think more like the piano player in me.

Bowks

There's a huge transcription book, called LA Session Guitarists, lovingly put together by Magnus Carlsson, which covers the work of Lukather, Landau, Dann Huff and Jay Graydon from the 80s. That has a section on Landau's 'Schmo' approach to rhythm guitar, as well as rhythm from all 4 players.

It's out there as a PDF and well worth getting.

hollywoodrox

Bowks said:

There's a huge transcription book, called LA Session Guitarists, lovingly put together by Magnus Carlsson, which covers the work of Lukather, Landau, Dann Huff and Jay Graydon from the 80s. That has a section on Landau's 'Schmo' approach to rhythm guitar, as well as rhythm from all 4 players.

It's out there as a PDF and well worth getting.

Thanks I’ll defo have a search for that 

hollywoodrox

Any tips for building chords that would sound good for this  6ths 13ths etc  
  

hollywoodrox

Kebabkid said:

When it comes to that type of clean sound, the usual suspects are good but check out Michael Thompson gear vids/demos and you may pick up stuff from him

Most of the videos on Huff Landau, Thompson , Graydon ,Lukather usually focus on the soloing
side of things . The only I’ve seen look at rhythm is Paul Jackson junior  but even then he doesn’t give much away in chord construction more on his use of Ghost notes ,bubble picking 

Bowks

I've found the link, hidden in Youtube: https://bit.ly/LASessionGuitarists-August-11-2024

Keefy

Adji said:

Love those sounds too.

I've begun putting together a poor man's version of the 80's rack rig using 'pieces that most players have never heard of'.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBEhkbuO__S/

For my fake version of this sort of playing: I've found that using recurring / common notes between chords really helps. Having the intervals spread quite wide too tends to give a more open / airier sound than using open chord or barre chord shapes. I also play a little bit of piano (which came after guitar) so when I'm improvising chordy stuff, I try to think more like the piano player in me.

I’m no expert on this era of music but I’d suggest trying ‘open’ chord voicings where you take any inversion of a close-voiced triad and move the middle note up or down an octave:

C triad closed xx555x
C triad open   x35x5x or xx5x58

Kebabkid

hollywoodrox said:

Kebabkid said:

When it comes to that type of clean sound, the usual suspects are good but check out Michael Thompson gear vids/demos and you may pick up stuff from him

Most of the videos on Huff Landau, Thompson , Graydon ,Lukather usually focus on the soloing
side of things . The only I’ve seen look at rhythm is Paul Jackson junior  but even then he doesn’t give much away in chord construction more on his use of Ghost notes ,bubble picking 

Thompson is more chordal stuff and try these
- 
-
- 
- 

hollywoodrox

Bowks said:

I've found the link, hidden in Youtube: https://bit.ly/LASessionGuitarists-August-11-2024

Thanks so much for this , it’s sheer gold  has got loads of chords listed too . I could only find the solos & schmo one by myself so this is great. Really appreciate it 

hollywoodrox

 

Adji said:

Love those sounds too.

I've begun putting together a poor man's version of the 80's rack rig using 'pieces that most players have never heard of'.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBEhkbuO__S/

For my fake version of this sort of playing: I've found that using recurring / common notes between chords really helps. Having the intervals spread quite wide too tends to give a more open / airier sound than using open chord or barre chord shapes. I also play a little bit of piano (which came after guitar) so when I'm improvising chordy stuff, I try to think more like the piano player in me.

I can’t play the piano properly but use my midi keyboard & Logic  with DX7 sounds to create big 
inverted sus chords etc & all those lovely sounds 

hollywoodrox

Kebabkid said:

hollywoodrox said:

Kebabkid said:

When it comes to that type of clean sound, the usual suspects are good but check out Michael Thompson gear vids/demos and you may pick up stuff from him

Most of the videos on Huff Landau, Thompson , Graydon ,Lukather usually focus on the soloing
side of things . The only I’ve seen look at rhythm is Paul Jackson junior  but even then he doesn’t give much away in chord construction more on his use of Ghost notes ,bubble picking 

Thompson is more chordal stuff and try these
- 
-
- 
- 

Thanks so much  Michael Thompson is great , I’ve watched one video with him  that vertex effects guy seems to do some good ones. Thanks for the videos 

hollywoodrox

Thanks so much to all the people who contributed to this thread . I’m going to go through it again a bit later . I’ve already been messing about with some sus & extended chords & found some nice sounds . Some sound more 80s than others . 

One really good thing is  I found Some drum loops on line & was able to load them into my Headrush MX 5 & it makes it even better to practice & come up with ideas . You can load any sort of wav or mp3 file into the looper folder so it’s ideal .

digitalkettle

 @hollywoodrox do you know Richard Watson on Youtube? He's done a few features on this style.

hollywoodrox

digitalkettle said:

 @hollywoodrox do you know Richard Watson on Youtube? He's done a few features on this style.

Yes he’s brilliant 

duotone

Bowks said:

I've found the link, hidden in Youtube: https://bit.ly/LASessionGuitarists-August-11-2024

Thanks! This looks excellent.

rsvmark

https://youtu.be/QTYjS3wfhVM?si=Uou4HThz088brfy4

Dominic

'Bubble Pickin' ..............darn it boy ,we call that 'Chicken Pickin' round these parts Pardner !

Evo

Dominic said:

'Bubble Pickin' ..............darn it boy ,we call that 'Chicken Pickin' round these parts Pardner !

I'm gonna be the guy that's no fun at parties for a minute. 

Can't help it, it's the guitar teacher brain and I can't switch it off.

Chicken and bubble (or "popcorn") picking are two different techniques but in the same family.

Bubble picking is derived as an extension of the funk sixteenth note strumming thing which Nile Rodgers always demonstrates oh so well. Continuous sixteenth notes are happening but only so many actual notes are popping out with muted notes filling in the gaps. 

Chicken pickin' is deployed much more freely over phrases, bars, and individual notes. Using a muted click either right before or right after a note to generate the "clucking" sound. There's no real need for it to be continuous in any way, you can cluck away as much or as little as your heart desires whereas the bubble picking thing should be used in a similar way to funk strumming ideally. You can't really bubble pick one note, but you can chicken pick one note.