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[spitfires north]

Hello,
Everyone here seems to know about guitars and the like so I'll try to employ your Budda-like wisdom. I'm after a pedal or number of pedals that will make some very wacky noises for a solo in one of our songs. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions? Hit me with them! I was wondering if anyone knew of a pedal that could create sounds similar to the ones Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead achieves for the solo at the end of 'Go to Sleep' on 'Hail To The Thief'? I know he uses a Mac patch for it but I was wondering it any one has ever come a across a pedal that can make similar robotic sounds (and can cut through loud distortion). Thank you, you're all lovely. Spitfires

Johnny Greenwood uses Max/MSP for that sound. You could try an electro harmonix 16 second delay.

edit: or you could try a Line 6 DL-4 or a Boss DD5 delay with an expression pedal to mess about with the delay time.

Originally Posted by spitfires north

Hello,
I know he uses a Mac patch for it but I was wondering it any one has ever come a across a pedal that can make similar robotic sounds

it's actually a self made max/msp patch. The closest aproxiamation would be to use sample and hold with delays or tremolos.

If you get a midi pickup you could use it to trigger different pre recorded samples. You could get a zvex oohwah, with the speed set on high on random mode it can sound very computer processed. i think if you used that in conjunction with a delay you'd be getting somewhere very close(but its quite expensive, probably as expensive as a second hand synth)

http://media.zvex.com/oohwah.mov

Theres also the tremorama (http://media.zvex.com/tremorama.mov watch the movie nearer the end when he turns the speed up on random mode, again it sounds quite computer processed)
This is basically an sequence lfo'd tremolo, It'l cut your signal in and out to a 'beat' which you can set, this might also come close to what you want if you used it with a delay and fiddled with the delay settings (which is what sandman galaxy suggested).


I own an alesis micron and this exact question came up on a micron forum, this is what one guy suggested:

"Hm. If you mean that sudden rapid LFO/Tremolo effect, I'd recommend an External In-type patch, and keying the rate of a Square or Saw LFO through the modulation matrix to an expression pedal. That LFO will go to the Filter Cutoff Frequency. I think the 4pole Moog LPF would be best, but I haven't done much guitar experimentation with my Micron yet. Also, you might consider a compressor (or at least a distortion or drive pedal, at low volume to protect your Micron's innards) to normalize the guitar sound. Oh, and in your Micron's patch, try out a high-level drive type... I'd start w/ a Tube Amp at about 30%. Assign your knobs to F1 cutoff frequency, LFO1 rate (fixed, not tempo) and Drive level; you're going to want the tweakage. Also, definitely make sure your filter to filter mix says F1>F2 100%; parallel routing won't cut it... and be sure the second Filter is set to Bypass.

That's the thing: w/ any modelling synthesizer worth mentioning (and of course the Micron) there's going to be at least one LFO with at least two waveforms. With an LFO you can cheat and get phaser, flanger, vibrato and definitely tremolo effects. Experimenting further with the rate (speed) and waveform shape (in Micron's case, Sine, saw, Csaw, square, Csquare... and also the "sample and hold" or as it's usually called now, random LFO) will reveal the warbles from "Bittersweet Symphony", the pulsing synth lead from Blur's "Girls and Boys", and so on.

You'll need to work around with that, but that should give you your best start. Let me know how it works out; I'm interested in those results myself. Cheers"

All the options are pretty expensive, but im not sure youl find anything convincingly similar on the cheap.
here's an oohwah in the usa on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Z-VEX-ZVEX-OOH...QQcmdZViewItem

you can get zvex pedals from hotroxin the uk
http://www.hotroxuk.com/store/erol.html

For the price of all that you could probably buy a powerbook, a signal splitter and Max/MSP!

Originally Posted by Ikaruga

For the price of all that you could probably buy a powerbook, a signal splitter and Max/MSP!

mx/msp runtime is free.

alternatively, pure data is exactly the same freeware without some visual objects, programmed by the same people.