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Brittle Head Girl
New Album 'Zero Heading' @ bandcamp
http://brittleheadgirl.bandcamp.com
How do you describe a buffer to non-musical/non-technical people?
I hate when people ask you questions like that. Do you give them the patronizing "they all make my guitar sound different" answer or do you attempt to explain how they make your guitar sound different, only to be met with the inevitable glazed look of incomprehension? It's so much easier if you can just play for them.
Once I had to try to explain to a bandmate's wife how I was making spaceship noises with my delay pedal by turning the repeats up full and turning the delay time knob. That was painful.
Don't talk politics and don't throw stones. Your royal highnesses.
Chorus - wobbly/shiny
Tremolo - throbby/swelling
Phaser - chewie
basically if it sounds rude, it must be right
What you really need to do is introduce Wah to all the songs though, that'll get them talking to you
Chorus:
Thousands of monkeys are sat on stools in a large hall. Each has a guitar like yours (getting repetitive yet?). They are all sat at different distances from you, and hence hear what you're playing at different times. As soon as you start to play, they all copy what you're playing. In an analog chorus, laid-back hippy monkeys (see analog delay) are used; in a digital delay straight-laced actuary monkeys are used. Because they are all playing just slightly out of sync with you, it gives a much richer, fuller sound. In most types of chorus, the monkeys are actually sitting on an old-style fairground carousel, and therefore each gets nearer and further away from you, hence playing with a different delay as the carousel turns and giving a warbled sound.
Yada yada tiny tiny monkeys yada yada. Nice knob controls how fast the carousel spins. Ta da!
Phaser:
Similar, overall, to chorus, but there are only, typically, 2, 4, 8, or maybe 12 monkeys in total. Phaser gives a sucked, whooshing noise.
Flanger:
Two monkeys. One has a guitar just like yours, but with a tremolo bridge (if yours doesn’t have one). He plays the same notes as you, but the other monkey is quite mischievous and is constantly wobbling the tremolo arm up and down. When the sound of the first monkey’s guitar is mixed with yours, the subtle pitch differences create a whooshing, almost jet-like sound. Some flangers use several teams of monkey guitarists and tremolo wobblers.
Compression:
Picture the scene. Sicily, 1947. A monkey. With a volume pedal. He has tinnitus, so he doesn't like loud noises, but needs things to be a certain volume level in order to hear them, poor little mite. He is wearing headphones. When you play, if it's too loud, he turns the volume down a little. If it's too quiet, he turns it up. He can do this quite quickly if he wants, but there's a big dial in front of him, telling him how fast he's allowed to turn the volume control. There's another control that determines how loud his headphones are compared to your guitar.
Pop the little chap in a box and paint it (traditionally) blue and off you go. Oh, it might be a good idea to replace him with some sort of electronics gubbins, to save his poor hearing.
Some compressors allow you to have a little effect loop in between your guitar and his headphones, so that you could (for instance) have him only listen to the bass part of your guitar sound, but work the volume control according to that.
Pitch Correction:
So, there's this monkey, goes into a bar (stop me if you've heard this one before), and he's got a little guitar just like yours with him. He also has a fancy Strobe tuner, and makes sure that he's perfectly in tune, and a music stand and the tab for your set. When you start playing, he unplugs you from the amp, sticks the cable into an A/B box, and plugs himself into the A/B box and then that into the amp. Both of you then start playing at the same time. If you go a little bit out of tune for any reason, the monkey carries on playing, and because of his shiny strobe tuner, he's always playing the right notes. He hits the A/B box pedal and plays until you get your act back together.
Just occasionally, you really muff up your lines. When this happens, the monkey throws his guitar to the floor in disgust and jumps on it, with bizarre noises as a result. He then quickly pulls out another guitar and carries on playing. But you know there'll be trouble later.
Solid State overdrives:
Take an infinite number of monkeys, each with a guitar. The first is a third the size you are, and plays notes at 3 times the pitch of yours. The second is 1/5th the size of you and plays at five times your pitch, and the third is 1/7th the size of you and plays at seven times your pitch, and so on for the rest. The smaller monkeys are quieter than the larger ones, as you’d expect. They all play along with you, and the sound from each guitar is added into your signal. This gives quite a harsh fuzzy sound.
Tube overdrive:
As above, but now the monkeys are different sizes. The first monkey and guitar are half the size of yours, and therefore play an octave higher than you. The next is a quarter the size of you, and plays two octaves higher, the next 1/6th the size of you and plays at 6 times your pitch and so on. Again, this gives a fuzzier sound, but one that's much smoother and easier on the ears than the SS overdrives.
Fuzz:
Essentially the same as solid-state overdrive, but the monkeys play louder, with the end result that the sound coming out is very very messy indeed. The monkeys particularly like this, because they get to play good and loud and generally make a racket. Fuzz monkeys are generally fed the most bananas.
Boutique FX:
Boutique FX function in basically the same way as non-boutique FX, with the following differences:
1) They only use free-range monkeys, who are very well fed and trained and love their work.
2) They are almost exclusively made with analog, hippy monkeys.
3) The monkeys, instead of having stools, have comfy designer chairs to sit on. Lay-z-boys are particularly popular. The boxes they live in are also brightly decorated, which the monkeys love.
These factors combine to make many people think that boutique FX produce better sound, due to the happier monkeys. However, these monkeys are very expensive to raise, and so the boutique FX tend to cost many more bananas to buy. There is much debate as to whether it's worth it.
Univibe:
Again, a monkey sitting on a stool. He plays the same thing as you, but there’s another monkey spinning the first monkey’s stool rapidly. This makes the first monkey dizzy, and the sound his guitar makes is therefore rather warbly. It’s like a combination of flanger and chorus. Univibe is seen as rather cruel to the monkey on the stool, and therefore many guitarists prefer the sound of a Leslie speaker cabinet, in which a speaker (or two speakers) is/are rotated by a motor. Many say that the Leslie is much superior in sound as well, but they’re bigger, heavier and more expensive than even a boutique monkey based univibe.
I've been tempted to ask if he'd prefer pink throb or purple throb...
I suppose in fairness it must be hard describing things if one doesn't know how.