MARILLION
Une interview récente de Steve Rothery, où il nous délivre pas mal d'informations concernant ses sonorités classiques et plus récentes, jusqu'au dernier (superbe) album Somewhere else.
http://www.musicplayers.com/fe(...)y.php
Je copie ici les passages qui concernent ce topic :
Au sujet de ses sonorités classiques et de leur évolution
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In the old days, we’re going back a few years, from our second album, Fugazi, through pretty much to probably Radiation, the two amps I used were a Marshall master volume head on a 4x12 for the crunch sounds, sort of heavy chordal sounds, and a [Roland] JC 120 which I used with various effects: digital delays, BOSS chorus, BOSS DS-1 distortion for solo sound… And that was kind of what I used to use for that clean picking arpeggiated sound. And sometimes I also used, with a slight variation, various [Scholz/SR&D] Rockman modules into an old [Alesis] Quadraverb, which gives a very clean, bright, compressed sound. I think if you really whack up the spins and the amount of reverb, you create something quite unusual that sort of sits on the top of what you think the normal guitar sound is gonna’ be.
But in terms of my classic solo sound, what I’ve used for most of my career is a Strat with EMG SA pickups into the Boss DS-1 distortion into some sort of digital delay, into the JC 120, and that’s kind of the sound on virtually all the records. The last two or three have changed a little bit. From Anoraknophobia onwards, I started using an amp that I’d had for a while but I hadn’t really used much in the studio, which was a Groove Tubes Trio preamp and Dual 75 power amp. And around the Anoraknophobia album I started using that with a Lexicon MPX G2, which is great sounding box.
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Yeah, some of that’s a spare. Sometimes, I was using an MPX G2, which is a great sounding box but with a couple of limitations – it’s got 300 presets but only fifty user presets, which is the first one. The second one is that it’s actually very slow switching between presets, so I decided on the Marbles album to incorporate one of my 2290s, so that does most of the switching because it’s instantaneous with patch changes, and it’s a great sounding unit anyway, which also meant I could use other things in the loops for that. So the signal goes from the guitar into the first part of the Lexicon which has got various modulation and distortion possibilities, out of that into the Trio preamp, then out of the Trio into the TC 2290 and out of that into the power amp. On the 2290, I can then post-preamp add things like the Hughes & Kettner [Rotosphere] pedal, the Adrenalinn and on this album a [Electro-Harmonix] POG Polyphonic Octave Generator.
[Also in the rack is] a BOSS CE-300 rack-mounted chorus. I’ve tried loads of other chorus pedals and I always come back to the sound of this. For me, the best chorus sound you can get is to try to find one of these second-hand on eBay. I think they stopped making it probably about twelve years ago, but I think it’s got great character.
I was trying a Carl Martin pedal yesterday which is supposed to be based upon it, and although it sounded good and it sounded cleaner than this one, it just didn’t do the same thing to the sound, like the edge of the waveform was almost too abrupt, so if you try to use too much Depth it just made it sound kind of unpleasant to me, like it was pulling the pitch too far. I think a great solo sound and a great chorus sound are just so important for an arsenal of sounds. I mean there are great sounds as well like a leslie pedal or a tremolo pedal. But having those different things at your disposal will really, really help.
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Well the clean picking sound at the front of the track called “The Wound” on the new album – that’s the POG pedal. The Adrenalinn pedal was used an awful lot on Marbles at the beginning of “Invisible Man,” “Drilling Holes”… the great thing about the Adrenalinn is that it’s synched to MIDI clock, so you have these great modulations and sort-of step sequences that, once you synch through MIDI clock, it’s tracking those tempo changes in the song. And that [pedal] can create an amazing groove. I’m not playing a very complicated part, but just using the sound to create the atmosphere and the mood that you’re trying to put forward.
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We have a really good relationship with Laney. Around the Anoraknophobia time we were flying in and out of a lot of countries, and the only way economically we could do it was to have equipment supplied. And they’ve always been really supportive of the band. So I found amps in the Laney range that would do the equivalent of what I was using the Marshall and the JC 120 for. So they were kind of like substitutes, if you like, for those amps.
Some of the Laney amps I think sound really good: their little ChromeOzone combo, I’ve got a little… I think it’s a fifteen-watt, Class A combo, I don’t think they make it anymore. Those in particular I think sound really, really good. But for me, I always go back to my Trio, because I just love… the tone controls. You know, their frequencies and the way that they interact with each other, are extremely musical on the Trio. In the past I’ve actually used the Trio preamp into the power amp section of the Laneys as well. But you know, you kind of try different things and my ultimate, really, is to go into the Groove Tubes power amp into a Marshall 4x12 with Celestion Vintage 30s. You put a Beta 57 in front of that and it’s just a great sound, really.
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I haven’t bothered much with stereo. The only time was on the first album with Steve [Hogarth], Seasons End, on the “King of Sunset Town” intro, and also on the front of “Berlin” – I was using two JC 120s and the TC 2290 can pan across then in stereo. So I had that happening. But really, most of the time I’m running in mono. If I’m using both sides of the stereo power amp, I’m more likely to have, when we’re writing, an Echoplex looper and one of the BOSS DD-20 things. I can loop up a guitar part and send it through a different cabinet, and balance the gain of that sound with my main amp, which is handy for writing. I actually quite like writing with loops like that. To be a guitarist in a band with two keyboard players you have to be sneaky like that! (laughs)
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MPc: Tell us about the guitars that you’re playing – the Blade line is not very well known in the United States. Are they your guitar of choice?
Steve: Yeah, actually, I’ve tried loads of guitars – high end ones, Tom Andersons… But for me the Blades have a nice compromise between playing well, sounding great, and not being ridiculously expensive. Sort of very versatile, you know? They’re a passive guitar with an active circuit you can switch in, so you can have either a mid boost or a treble and bass boost, and with pots in the rear to adjust the amount of boost that you give to those frequencies. I changed the pickups to put Lindy Fralin pickups in nearly all my guitars – the vintage pickups, which are a great sounding pickups, and really it’s just down to the individual guitar. More important than even the make, really, is [whether] it is a good piece of wood.
Quite often you’ve got to change the pickup, sometimes the electronics, to get exactly the sound in your head anyway. But that isn’t a big deal – you’ve just got to find a piece of wood with the right resonance. And sometimes you pick up a guitar and it sounds right and it feels right, and you can play half a dozen different guitars in the same range from the same manufacturer, but there might only be one that has that feeling for you.
So I think that’s a really important thing when people are buying guitars – they should try as many as possible. All my guitars… I’ve got how many now? Oh I’ve probably got around eleven or twelve, but they’re all very carefully selected like that. I mean I’ve got three Blades – two Strats and one Tele. I’ve got a couple of normal [Fender] Strats with EMGs, [Gibson] Les Paul, a custom made Steinberger double-neck that’s got three single coils on each neck, various acoustics…
MPc: I’ve noticed, lately, you’ve been playing Takamine acoustics.
Stvee: Yeah, again I think they do the job. They’re kind of like a workhorse really. Especially live, the Santa Fe and a twelve-string. I think you could probably get a slightly better [acoustic]… I think technology’s come a little bit in terms of acoustic guitar pickups and sound, but the twelve-string especially is not a killer. So many twelve-string acoustics are quite unpleasant to play, and this one sounds great and, you know, it’s a joy to play.
Maybe its because I’m a Yorkshireman, you know, which is from the north of the country and we’re very conscious of spending money, traditionally. (laughs) But it’s like I say – it’s a tool at the end of the day, and you want it to do what you want it to do. You don’t want it to limit your performance, you want it to sound good – as good as possible, but it’s got to stand up to rigors of life on the road.
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No, most of the time it’s all done by hand, however I’ve rarely ever used EBow. “You’re Gone” is pretty much all EBow. But god, there’s not much else – maybe the beginning of Misplaced Childhood, the occasional line here or there. But something like the last solo on This Strange Engine, which kind of sounds EBow-ish, is all done with controlled feedback.
The sound that I get with a DS-1 – the distortion is turned up full, the tone control is backed off all the way, and the amp has to be quite loud, and it has to be directly behind you, kind of at waist height, and then it’s finding the the sweet spot really in terms of volume and angle to that. Then obviously if it’s that overdriven, you have to mute all the strings you’re not currently playing on that track. It’s all kind of pulling off a lot of it anyway to open B, but it gives a kind of very fluid, singing, sound.
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“Cover my Eyes,” I think, is about 390 milliseconds, not too much on the feedback control, and on that particular part [the delay] has to be quite loud – you want the delay sound to be virtually as loud as the original signal. I think it’s 389, actually thinking about it, and it’s played with the thumb and first and second finger sort of stamping it slightly, capo at second fret, and then playing in the delays really to get the bounce of the count of the rhythm.
lemgement lemg
