Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: Feb. 24 2013, 05:16 |
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I'd say the first part of the secret to that sound is in the instruments listing - the mysterious 'highly strung guitar'. Take the low strings off a 12 string so you're just left with the octave strings of the pairs (plus the conventionally tuned B and E at the top) and you have a highly strung guitar. Tune the bottom E down to a D and you have a highly strung guitar that you can play the Amarok fast riff on and have it sound an octave above normal.
You can hear that played in its full, ringing, highly strung glory once the riff really kicks off, but...
Take that and stuff something under the strings, then go in close with the mic...and that'll get you the rest of the way to that opening sound. Stuff what under the strings, though? That's more open to guesswork. I'm not going to admit to having tried putting a sock under the strings of a guitar to try and answer this question, but...well...let's just say that if you position one right, you might find that it works (I'd recommend using a clean one). Maybe if you write nicely enough to Mike on Facebook, he'll send you one of his for that extra bit of Amarok mojo. You could try a nicely cut piece of foam instead, I suppose 
It needs to be fairly near the bridge so that the notes still sound to pitch. If you're using foam, I'd suggest experimenting with the width of the strip you use. You might also want to try using fingerpicks, if you don't have the Oldfield fingernails (I'm told Mike doesn't normally answer requests from people wanting to be sent those), to get that clicky, slightly scraped attack. Metal ones would no doubt help with the metallic quality of the sound.
There are two of them there, panned left and right, playing the exact same thing, but with slight differences in muting leading to them sounding slightly different. They're joined by a distant highly strung part before the full fat fast riff kicks in. Once it does, you've got a low part with a dropped D on the left and the same thing an octave up on the other side. No nylon string guitars were harmed during the first 51 seconds or so of the album - up until there, it's all steel.
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I don't think there's anything under the strings - the unusual sound depends partly on 'palm muting', and partly on Mike's usual way of playing an acoustic steel-string guitar, i.e. very hard. 
And I also don't think he's using his nails, right there - it sounds to me very like a plectrum, and not a very thin one.