Citation:
“When we started rehearsing the songs for live performance it was a real bummer, because everything sounded so empty without the modular synth and other treatments we used on the album. But I found a way to approximate many of the sounds using an array of Moogerfooger pedals controlled with a couple of CP-51 Control Processors.
“I have both the regular and the bass MuRF pedals on my pedalboard—which not only produce sounds like those on the record, they are also good for adding an element of accident, because you never know what to expect from them. For example, one night, I was playing some open chords with distortion or something, and when I kicked in the MuRF, it started playing one of the baddest ‘drum’ beats I’ve ever heard. The next night, I tried to do the same thing, but I couldn’t even come close. You’ve just got to let the pedal take you wherever it’s going to take you.
“I also have three Moogerfooger MF-101 Low-Pass Filter pedals. One of them is set to make a sort of wa-wa-wa-wa, or futuristic Leslie sound, by modulating the filter’s envelope with the LFO in the CP-51. I use that to simulate the modular synth filter sounds on “Dani California,” and a few other pieces. Another filter pedal is set to produce that super-fast filter “Martian” sound that I use on “Death of a Martian,” and the verses of “Tell Me Baby.” The third one is used to cover any other sort of envelope filter sound I may want to make. Finally, I have an MF-103 12-Stage Phaser for emulating the Analogue Systems phasing effects, and an MF-102 Ring Modulator.
“What I came to realize, however, is it’s really a matter of shifting the energy, and, some nights, I might just as easily create the same effect by jumping around like a maniac at the point in a song where, on the album, I turned on some treatments. Or maybe Chad [Smith, drummer] will just pump up the drums at those points—as long as there is some sort of movement. The band has got such a new energy since we’ve started getting along better, and we’re just flying on stage now. You can put me up there with no effects and a tiny combo amp and I would still feel great—as long as we have that feeling between us.”
Citation:
“Dani California” I used a straight Strat tone on the first section of the first verse, and on the second section the guitar signal is split and panned in stereo, with the original part on the left, and a part processed using my Doepfer modular synth on the right. Basically, the signal from the tape is used to trigger an envelope generator (or ADSR), which responds to playing dynamics, and uses that information to dynamically control a low-pass filter. Unlike a typical envelope filter pedal, this setup allows me to create many more sounds than mere wah effects. Then, those two sections are repeated, and as I’m hanging on the sustained chord which transitions into the chorus, a Mellotron string part slowly rises behind the guitar. You can hardly hear the Mellotron, but it’s what makes it feel like something really big is about to happen. On the chorus, I doubled the guitar parts, which were played using a Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion pedal.
The second verse begins with a couple of guitars playing in harmony. After they were recorded, I ran them through a Moog MF-105 MuRF (Multiple Resonance Filter Array) pedal six times, and recorded the results on individual tracks. The MuRF is very unpredictable, and sounded different on each pass. I kept going until I got a take that I really liked, though we actually wound up using all six takes in combination. Otherwise, the processing is the same as on the first verse.
For the bridge, the rhythm guitar is processed with the Doepfer’s LFO (Low-Frequency Oscillator) controlling its high-pass filter, so that the filter opens and closes rhythmically. The drums are also filtered, so that they are small and panned to one side at the beginning, then gradually get bigger and pan out across the full stereo spectrum, which lets you hear the guitar treatment more clearly.
On the third verse I overdubbed an additional rhythm guitar track. Then, on the buildup to the chorus, I added some diminished chords along with several harmony parts. To get the highest harmonies, we slowed the tape down and recorded them at a slower speed, so that they would be pitched above the range of the guitar when the tape was sped back up.
There are lots of additional harmony guitar parts on the second half of the third chorus, positioned in two groups panned to either side. Also, Eddie Kramer came in and showed our engineer how to do ’60s-style tape phasing, which we used on an early mix, and we wound up splicing a section of that mix into the part transitioning out of the chorus.
I played the original solo when we recorded the basic tracks, and then doubled it later, except for the super-fast wah part at the end, which was too difficult to double perfectly, so I put that section through a Delta Labs Effectron II digital delay set to a quick delay with just a touch of slow modulation.
