The Remaining Few - Painted Air.

[Sancho Panza]

I love it. Been listening to it for three days now. Love everything from the scruffy intro, the eastern-based solo to the tempo-changes in the verse.

What's been bugging me though, is actually the introsound, I can't manage to figure out what it is. Is it a guitar? I am determined to find out what it is! Read somewhere that it was recorded in a garage, could this be the reason for the crappy, YET wonderful, sound of the record?

 

[chas_kit]

It's the lead guitar played with a slide, it sounds to me. Picking fast and furious down by the bridge, likely using the pick to saw the strings more than pluck them. Bass tone turned down and treble turned up. Lots of reverb of course. A stupendous sound, not easy to duplicate I imagine!

It's possible just holding the pick perpendicular to the strings while quickly sawing it back and forth between the two highest strings could get this sound. The slide effect would come from moving the pick up or down the neck while doing this.

 

[MopTopMike]

Place the edge of your fretting hand behind the bridge and lay it across the six strings to mute / deaden the vibration. Then play 16th notes by picking the B and E strings while moving the edge of your fretting hand toward the bridge to lower the pitch of the strings.

 

[Sancho Panza]

Mike: you have taking the fun out of this song and made it into rocket science.

 

[mansson66]

To me it just sounds like the guy's scraping/dragging the pick down and up the lower strings while 'shaking/vibrating' the pick to get a slight tremolo effect. Fuzzy reverb guitar sound of course.
I got intrigued and went and plugged in a guitar in my little amp I got here at home, and replicated the sound pretty much right away. I mute the strings with the fret hand and scraped(ca 16/4) the pick over the A & D string right over the bridge mic and down to the middle mic (on a Stratocaster... it's probably slightly different on different guitars). Sounds almost exactly the same.

 

[Sancho Panza]

That could be it ! Will try that when I get my guitar back, I can feel how my hands starting to shake now after three weeks away from it. Bet it's a Gibson through a Fender amp, seems like everyone played that combo. And a homebuild fuzzbox, will be impossible to duplicate, like chas_kit said, much like Stereo Shoestrings "On The Road South" (the fuzziest fuzz you'll ever hear, think that the lead guitarist broke a few strings on it)

Haha, I meant the sound quality of the recording .. :oops:

 

[mansson66]

Yeah a Gibson through a Fender sounds about right. With double coil mic's you may just need high volume and not even a fuzzbox. Probably a smaller amp than a twin though. But I just did it on my little Peavey Backstage, with the built in overdrive(not very powerful) on max - and it worked just fine.

I also mean the sound quality haha. I love when a sound takes me right into the song and the moment when it was played

 

[Sancho Panza]

I want to say a 335, I don't know why. That's propably what they used, they MAXED everything, Fenders can be small, but you can get a LOT of sound from it.

Haha, I do too, though the solo kinda took me by suprise, didn't expect that the first time I heard it.

 

[mansson66]

Fenders can be small, but you can get a LOT of sound from it.

Yep! I got a Fender DeLuxe '65 (a whopping 22W) and it's probably the best amp I've ever tried.

 

[Harlock]

It's actually a 1967 Guild T-100 D through a Kustom. Sorry for bringing up an old thread, but I thought I'd end the confusion.