Hey everyone, Sam from Professional Music Technology here
and in this video we're taking a look at 5 essential types of
effects to get you started playing ambient, atmospheric and experimental guitar music
So first up, what do I mean when I say ambient or atmospheric guitar?
Well to be honest, these can be slightly ambiguous terms,
meaning different things to different players
and spanning a wide range of musical genres
but one of the musicians most often recognised as the kind of the Godfather of ambient music
is producer Brian Eno
who is renowned for his conceptual approach to recording and his pioneering studio techniques
His work with King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp in the early 1970s
is seen by many fans of this style of music as the birth of ambient guitar
but over the years, Eno has also worked with many other guitarists
who weren't afraid to push the sonic boundaries
such as John Cale, Daniel Lanois and arguably most famously, U2's The Edge
So if i had to loosely describe ambient guitar music,
I'd say it's a way of taking a guitar and effects pedals
to create atmospheric soundscapes textures and unique tones
that don't necessarily sound like conventional guitar music
As I mentioned a moment ago,
this style of guitar playing can be heard across a wide variety of genres
from relaxation music and film scores, through prog rock and stadium rock
right up to modern day pop and more left field experimental styles
with my personal favorite examples being players such as Blake Mills
and Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'brien from Radiohead
So those are the kind of sounds that we'll be looking for today
so let's dive in and check out some of the most commonly used
types of effects and pedals for this style of guitar playing
So first up, and this is arguably one of the more important elements
in an ambient guitar player's rig, you're going to want a reverb pedal
Now I do want to mention right off the bat, that even though i've got a selection of pedals here
I'm not saying that you need to go out and buy all of these exact models
I've chosen the Strymon Big Sky because it's my absolute favourite reverb pedal of all time
but I do appreciate that it's not exactly the cheapest option
and you should be able to achieve similar types of sounds with more affordable pedals
with other great options being something like the Boss RV6 or MXR M300
What is important however is the types of reverbs and the controls that they offer
Now most guitar amps will feature a built-in reverb,
but these do tend to be based on vintage spring reverb units
which tend to be quite bright sounding and have pretty short decay times
For ambient and atmospheric guitar styles however,
we're going to be looking for a pedal that offers much bigger sounding Hall and Plate reverbs
Now a lot of ambient music is very sparse sounding with pretty minimalistic playing
atmospheric guitar isn't really about how fast or complexly you can play
but when you combine this minimalism with a massive reverb
you can still create some pretty epic and beautiful sounds
In terms of controlling and tweaking the reverb, one trick to increase that atmospheric feel
is to adjust the effects mix knob,
so you're actually hearing more of the reverb than you are the dry signal
you can even go 100% reverb on some pedals
and if your pedal allows you to, adding some slight modulation to the reverb tails
can really help to add a kind of otherworldly feel to the tone
Another pretty essential pedal on any ambient guitarist board is a volume pedal
I've got here the Dunlop Volume X,
which is one of the best feeling and smoothest volume pedals that I've used
and we're mainly going to be using this for creating volume swells on single notes and chords
Now of course, it is possible to do this by using the volume pot on your guitar
but as this swell technique is such a prominent factor in ambient guitar styles,
a pedal allows for much more control and expression
So by controlling those volume swells with the pedal, we're effectively removing that initial
attack that comes from picking or strumming the guitar strings
so it means that when combined with the reverb and the other
effects that we'll be looking at in a moment
you can create sounds that are almost synthesiser-like
or that you more commonly expect to hear from bowed instruments such as violins or cellos
Speaking of bowed instruments, the next ambient effect on our shopping list
isn't actually an effects pedal, it's the Ebow
Now if you haven't seen one of these before,
these quirky little gadgets have been around since the late 70s
and they work in the same way as a sustainer guitar pickup,
using a magnetic field to resonate the guitar strings to give you an infinitely sustained note
think that haunting drone-like sound that you can hear in the background
of David Bowie's "Heroes" or U2s "With Or Without You"
The great thing about Ebow is that, unlike a sustainer pickup,
you don't actually need to modify your guitar to use it
a sustainer pickup usually needs the body routing out a little bit so you can fit in a battery
and these feature two different modes
The first mode resonates the strings at their normal frequency
but the second activates the harmonic frequencies, resonating a harmonic note
higher pitched than the fundamental note that you're playing
So if you haven't tried one before, Ebows are a lot of fun to play with
and when they're combined with other effects, plus string bending and vibrato techniques
they allow for some really un-guitar-like tones,
perfect for the styles of music that we're talking about today
Next up in our ambient guitar arsenal is a digital delay pedal
Now just like the reverb pedal,
we need to make sure that this is capable of offering different types of delays
and more importantly longer delay times,
which is something that you don't often get from most analog delays
which usually only offer around about 800 milliseconds
Again I'm using an all-singing all-dancing Strymon for the examples today
but more affordable options such as the boss DD8 will still give you a lot of scope to play
with with delay times of up to about six seconds
Now there are obviously lots of different ways to use a delay pedal
from slapback echoes to U2 style rhythmic dotted eight note delays
but the reason that we're looking for those longer
delay times is for a technique commonly known as "Frippertronic" style delays
Now this type of technique originated when guitarist Robert Fripp, who we mentioned earlier
started playing around with old tape machines to create
super long delay times of three or four seconds or more
Those long echo times resulted in creating a kind of mini loop,
so layers could be added with each delay repeat
and the loop slowly evolving as the delay repeats start to fade out
To recreate this type of effect using the modern day digital delay
you'll need to set a pretty long delay time, as mentioned a good couple of seconds or more
and crank up the number of delay repeats
not necessarily all the way, things can start to sound a little messy with too much going on
but you do want enough repeats so you'll start to hear those mini loops start to form and evolve
So that brings us on to our final essential effects pedal for ambient
and atmospheric guitar playing
and this one's a pretty obvious choice
Expanding on the "Frippertronics" delay technique,
as this music is often based around drone notes and repeated phrases
you're definitely going to want to think about integrating a loop pedal into your rig
Now there isn't really much that I can say here that you probably don't already know about loopers
we have got a couple of looping guides on our channel if you did want to go and check those out
but the main things that you're going to be looking for from a looper for ambient guitar music
is a decent amount of looping time, over 30 seconds or more
and if you're using stereo effects like our Strymons,
which can really open up that sonic landscape
make sure that your looper has got a stereo input and output like this Boss RC-500
because you'll probably want to be putting it at the end of your effects chain
So there we go, we've picked our five essential pedals and
effects to get you started making some ambient and atmospheric guitar music
the last thing to do is combine all of these effects and techniques together
but just remember, although I hope I've given you a few ideas here
there's no real hard and fast rules for this style of guitar playing
the key thing is just to experiment and see what comes out, good luck!
So thanks for watching, for more information on
any of the gear featured in this video visit www.pmtonline.co.uk
or get down to your nearest Professional Music Technology store
For the demos in this video, I was running a stereo rig comprised of
a Fender Tonemaster Super Reverb and Boss Katana 50 MkII amplifiers
these were miked up with SE microphones and it was all connected together with Tourtec cables
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and i'll see you again in the next video