i got bored, so decided to do random things with the guitar, and came up with a few tricks that may, or may not be popular. so, thats why i created this thread. if you have any tricks that do not include alternative picking, sweep, or anything else. and if you have some trick, make sure you tell what you need to have inorder to pull it off. for example, if you need a floyd rose, a wah, high distortion pedals, a slider or whatever... and if this trick can fuck up your guitar, give an advance warning. like using a drill machine on your fret board.

whats the point of this? honestly, nothing. just to make your guitar sound more interesting. and if you're in a guitar rut, this should help you come out of it.

for example(i'll post whatever i found):


violin/celloing:

you can do this with pretty much any guitar. but it works best with strats. its an easy trick to pull off. all you have to do is turn up your amp to a decent amount of volume, and turn down the volume on your guitar. now pick any fret(lets do 12th fret on High e) and then right after you strike the string, turn up the volume on your guitar with your picking hand. you can do the same with the bass strings to make it sound like a cello. it sonds better on clean tones.

and if you dont have a strat, then you can do this by hammering on a fret, and keeping your picking hand on the volume knob, and working around with that

this trick, though i stumbled across it myself, is apparently used by the band 'pearl jam' and bunch of other people


BIG BEN CHIMES

another easy one. it sounds better on clean with lots and lots of reverb! but you can do whatever you want. this can be done on any guitar, but works best with electric coz the strings are much thinner. any who, all you have to do is grab your B and G strings around the pick up areas using your picking hand. pull the strings together all the way to the 5th fret and use your fretting hand to place both G and B strings under your finger(i use my index). now gently strike both strings together. make it sound more spooky by playing it every 5 seconds or whatever

Bad Horsie

this is nothing too original. can be heard on Steve Vai's song called 'bad horsie'. and you need a guitar with a floyd rose bridge to pull this off. or, if you have a strat, then you can loosen your springs from the back, allowing your bridge to be floating over the body(heads up, this will increase your action of the strings!). use your wammy bar to loosen all the strings. now, strick a natural harmonic on the 7th fret on the B string, and then pull up your wammy bar so you stretch all your strings. screw around with the whammy bar to get it right. and apperently you can do the same thing using harmonics on the 3rd and 2nd fret. dont exactly know how to pull that off....


i have others like the elephant, but i'll do that later. or if someone else wants to explain it....

here's a cool one that joe satriani uses....i think he calls it "lizard down the throat" or something similar. basically what you do is hit a note, and slide your finger up the neck, at the same time that you're pressing down on your trem bar. if done right, the note should stay the same, but should have a sort of pulsing sound to it.

The violin/celloing, dosen't work that well on bass, but ill guess that it would work better on guitar.

Written by Guest on 30.01.2007 at 21:00

The violin/celloing, dosen't work that well on bass, but ill guess that it would work better on guitar.

i'm just thinking...

if you hammer on something hard enough, it might sound more like a cello

but yeah, i made the thread for tricks to be done on string instuments. i'm not a bassist, so i wont be able to help you out there. but if you have any bass tricks, do post it here


Record Slow Down

this is simple. you would need a Floyd Rose bridge for this. just play something simple. maybe just hammer on stuff like this:

e----------5-7-8---
b--------------------

keep hammering on that as fast as you can with your fretting hand. with your picking hand, grab hold of the tremolo arm, and SLOWLY lower the arm(towards the strings). it sounds like a certain riff is going slowing down, and then maybe going in rewind, or maybe a tiny bridge to introduce a whole new tune to a song.

I thought this was a nice video on YouTube.

Herman Li (Dragonforce) explains the various weird effects he does on guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtUiQJc7ZMI

Yeah, after watching this I started using them a bit more often.

Ive been messing around with amp bass settings latley, and come up with a reasonable way to get feedback to sound like distortion, without any effect peddles and the such, turn the bass down to 0, gain up to full, treble to full ( on bass, and Amp) so basicly turn all bass of and just have the trebble left so you have a really thin sound left, turn up the volume to quite high and bash away with some feedback distortion.

Turn the volume down on the guitar then hit two notes that sound dissonant together, the turn the volume up while bending the notes you have hit, simple but sounds cool.

Written by Guest on 13.06.2007 at 00:28

Ive been messing around with amp bass settings latley, and come up with a reasonable way to get feedback to sound like distortion, without any effect peddles and the such, turn the bass down to 0, gain up to full, treble to full ( on bass, and Amp) so basicly turn all bass of and just have the trebble left so you have a really thin sound left, turn up the volume to quite high and bash away with some feedback distortion.

Haha yeah your right, thats how you get the sorta clanky sound on the bass that some extreme metal bands incorporate, very raw sounding!

Maybe I'm an idiot and I have no ideea how to slap, but everytime i smash a string with my thumb just where the neck meets the body i get the clearest brightest harmonic out of it. Is it supposed to sound that way?