The Black keys Sound

The Black Keys Sound

To describe this I would say that it is all about the union of guitar and drums, low fidelity guitar effects and a drumming technique that some purists might describe as slightly off tempo or even sloppy. In a publication by 6 Music called “Alternative Jukebox” Lloyd Bradley describes their sound as “forthright, noisy blues-based rock”. “lonely Boy” is one more example of the Black Keys taking enormous care to give us something sounding totally spontaneous (Bradley 2014)

I think to replicate this sound I need to rehearse the combination of guitar effect and use the right drummer for the job.

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Glyn Johns Technique

The Glyn Johns Technique (GJT) is a technique used for recording drums created by the British sound engineer Glyn Johns. "who most notably worked with Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, and even started his career assisting for The Beatles." (The Recording Revolution 2011). From this we can clearly see the the GJT is worth researching as it has been used by some of the most influential musicians of all time. The beauty behind the GJT is the pure minimalism behind it. Instead of having to mic up each tom symbol, ETC. The GJT only uses four microphones. It starts with simply placing one mono-overhead above the snare or middle of the kit approximately 3/4 feet. This will allow you to gain a over all balanced sound of the kit. Equally balancing the entire kit. The next microphone (also an overhead) should be placed "to the right of the floor tom, maybe 6 inches above the rim and facing across the tom towards the snare and hi hat" (Th...

Vulfpeck's Sound

As the genre of the EP has had a last minute change I've used all my spare time trying to make my self more familiar with the funk/soul genre. To start off i dove deeper into a bands discography I already listen to (Vulfpeck). "One thing you'll idubitably notice early on when listening to this album is that there is less of a funk vibe to it, and more of a soul/r'n'b sound." (Dominik Boehmer 2017). This qoute perfectly describes the tone of the bands sound which helped me a lot when song writing and definitely influenced my decisions when picking chords and melodies. The rhythm guitarisrt of the band "Cory Wong' is a massive inspiration of mine and is one of the reasons why I took an interest in the funk genre. A video from the youtube channel "Reverb" features him discussing his guitar technique on how he uses his right hand to play guitar. He discusses letting his picking hand go limp in order for him to strum faster, he mixes this with...

Funk/Soul Guitar Tone

Although I originally planned to use just clean guitar tones when I changed the EP's genre to funk/soul I still feel like it is necessary to educate my self on how to get a funky guitar tone, I have already discussed technique and chord types through Cory Wong and Rex Orange County however this piece of research will focus more on gear and equipment rather than theory and technique. One effect that is massively used in funk guitar is Wah-Wah. This is ideal for me as for one of my first projects at college was focused around how the Wah pedal is used. A few examples of the Wah pedal being used in funk sounding songs is Maggot Brain played by Eddie Hazel and All along the watchtower by Jimi Hendrix. As in funk music the purpose of the guitar is generally to accompany the percussion the instrument the wah pedal does a excellent job of taking emphasis of the notes or chords being played and rather puts emphasis on the strumming/picking pattern. There are other more commonly used effect...

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