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Topic: Beginning..< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
Rileman Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 04:13

In the very beginning of Amarok, there's a down-bending
sound. I've heard this is the sound of a guitar tuner.
Is this right? And exactly after that, the two
first bits of the guitar fastriff sounds dry and muted. How to make this sound?


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Satyagraha Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 06:15

No guitar-tuner at all. Oldfield just depresses the vibrato arm on his PRS guitar.

A guitar tuner doesn't tune the guitar, you know (though I believe such an apparatus has been experimented upon), it simply measures the pitch of a string and tells you whether  it's flat or sharp. You can make it play the right pitch, but it sounds nothing like this, rather like a synthesizer beep.
There are various beeps in Amarok that might have been produced by the guitar tuner, though.

And yes, the sound of the first riff is rather odd. The normal way of muting is by damping the strings using the palm of your picking hand at the bridge, but that should produce a duller sound than this. He might have used felt or some similar fabric to dampen the strings by the bridge, like on some harpsichords.


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Rileman Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 07:33

Ok... :) Thanks for the answer.
When I try to play the muted fast riff, I wind a soft sock
around the strings next to the guitar saddle.  :D  :laugh:
But it's only a experiment to get that muted sound  :)


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Korgscrew Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 09:03

I believe the beginning is a highly strung guitar - so, the very light octave strings from a 12 string set. Play them palm-muted and scraping the nails of the picking hand over them (rather than just plucking) and you get something very close to that sound.
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Tati The Sentinel Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 09:30

So...where's the guitar tuner on Amarok?

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"I remember feeling that I'd been judged unfairly and that I was going to prove them wrong." - Peter Davison, 2011
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Sir Mustapha Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 10:02

There are a few points where there's a beeping that spells SOS in Morse (like on Fast Waltz). That could be the beeping of the guitar tuner.

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Korgscrew Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 12:53

We already covered that here!

I think it's at 15:10.
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Satyagraha Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 14:17

Speaking of beginnings, anybody's got any authority on what words Oldfields speaks into the vocoder at the beginning? I think the vowel sounds suggests "one, two, three, four", but there are no consonant sounds.

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Ugo Offline




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Posted: June 03 2004, 15:43

Quote (Satyagraha @ June 03 2004, 20:17)
Speaking of beginnings, anybody's got any authority on what words Oldfields speaks into the vocoder at the beginning? I think the vowel sounds suggests "one, two, three, four", but there are no consonant sounds.

I always heard those as 'wa ki ki ka' or 'wa ti ti ka'. :D

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Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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