Greetings folks,
Apologies if this isnt the right spot in the forum (i dont normaly frequent the 'Technique' section.....) to ask this, but how does one acheive musical (and to an extent, controllable) feedback?
Assuming I dont have a feedback-generating pedal (and Im considering finding a used one somewhere), is it really just a case of turning the amp up and standing in the right spot in front of the amp?
Is there a particular area on the fretboard that helps?
HB over SC pickups?
Semi-acoustic over solid-body?
High gain distortion instead of the amps' own crunchy overdrive? (Its a 25-ish watt valve amp, btw)
Thoughts and advice welcome, cheers,
Adam
Comments
“Theory is something that is written down after the music has been made so we can explain it to others”– Levi Clay
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
and Freqout if i have chance.
Adam
The recording space is very snug, so that might have something to do with it (in a larger room or on stage, you'd need a lot more volume to achieve the same thing. There's also something about the total area of speaker moving the air relative to the size of the room - in my cupboard I can achieve with 6" monitor speakers what I'd need multiple 12" speakers to do on stage.
First of all, what's happening is that the sound from the speaker is causing the strings to vibrate, which comes out of the speaker and causes the strings to vibrate. Etc. When you get musical feedback the result is quite different from using a pedal or an elbow (or a sustainer pickup) - you'll find you get feedback at particular frequencies (or multiple frequencies - all the Cs and some of the Gs, for example), while holding the guitar at a particular angle. Then if you move forwards or backwards or change the angle you're holding the guitar the fed back note will fade in and out and often a different note will feed back.
This is how Robert Fripp did his famous fed back part on Heroes - after some experimentation, he marked the different notes on the floor and walked between them. He uses a sustainer pickup now, though. Where it clicked for me was hearing the BBC Session version of Chance Meeting by Roxy Music:
(Guitar starts at about 0:45)
It's a totally different experience from sustainer pickups and eBows (which use electromagnets to vibrate the string - essentially a pickup in reverse) and pedals (in my experience something that generates a sound that sounds like feedback rather than being feedback in itself). When the note kicks in and basically starts playing itself, it's kind of like the guitar has come alive and is fighting back.
Anyway, although gain (distortion) helps a lot at lower volumes, it's perfectly possible to get that sort of feedback at lower gain but higher volumes. As far as I can tell, it all has to do with the amount of air being moved relative to the size of the room and the resonant frequencies of the amp and the room. Something else that will help might be compression (and, thinking about it, it might be the compression in high gain that helps rather than the fuzziness).
If you can, set up the amp with a lot of space, turn it up, then move around the space playing different notes on the low E string (although the feedback will work on all the strings, that seems to respond best). When you find something that works, try moving in and out of the feedback zone and put a bit of masking tape on the floor parallel to the direction you're holding the guitar neck and write the note on it.
Personally, I'm not scientific enough to do it, I just make the most of it when musical feedback happens accidentally, but if you want to that's what it takes. Good luck in your journey of experimentation, and I hope your family forgive you eventually.
This long rambling screed on musical feedback brought to you by the wonders of too much coffee.
The DF-2's output is actually not feedback at all, it's a monophonic synth oscillator which locks onto the last frequency it senses and then sustains it for as long as you hold the pedal down - it's completely separate from the guitar.
That's exactly why the DF-2 is so good - because it's completely synthetic, it's not volume dependent at all... in fact, it can be used silently on stage if you want. I used mine exactly like that, to get 'feedback' at acoustic-gig levels with the guitar going through the PA.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
A correctly set up Sustainiac device works at any sound pressure level but always sounds slightly artificial. (Think of it as a six string e-Bow or Gizmotron.) The downside is that the host guitar will need a fair amount of modification to house the PCB.
This is what Frank Zappa used to do with his Performance Stratocaster. (The one on the cover of the album Guitar.) Instead of passive treble roll-off tone controls, the guitar had two Seymour Duncan Midrange EQ Prototype active cut/boost devices. Zappa would spend part of the soundcheck tuning the boosters into the appropriate frequencies for the venue.
The Midrange EQ Prototype is so named because it never became a long-term production line item. The nearest modern equivalent is the EMG-VMC.
I agree, basically. I find some sustain, fuzz, compression etc can be used to tease out more feedback at lower volumes. A fuzz factory even. If you want crazy crank up the feedback on a delay/mod pedal too
I'm tempted to Google that sentence just to see what happens