When playing his Squier Tele onstage, Kleier keeps his implements
closeby on a music stand.
Photo by Dominique Coupin
Pickup Sticks
Another common extended technique
is to thread some sort of stick under
or through your guitar’s strings. Frith
sometimes uses doweling rods. Kleier
often employs chopsticks. Whatever you
use, the main thing is that you cover all
six strings, which enables you to create
different overtones than you get with
alligator clips—and this approach is
perfect for generating metallic percussion
sounds. “A lot of this stuff [derives from]
looking for alternate sources of rhythm,”
Kleier explains.
This author found terrific sonic
modifiers—a set of meat skewers—at that
hotbed of musical equipment, Bed Bath
& Beyond. Threaded through the strings,
these long, thin, flat pieces of metal yielded
cool metallic overtones to the sound
of any string being picked. The end of
the skewers curved into a circular handle,
making them easy to twang, which created
a fantastically sustained ringing sound
that was ripe for processing.
In addition to using various sticks,
Kleier and Frith also often thread a spare
wound guitar string over and under the
strings of the guitar. In addition to creating
a unique set of overtones, it effectively
bows the strings when the spare
string is pulled back and forth. Which
brings us to an extended technique that
most guitarists are already familiar with,
thanks to iconic photos of Jimmy Page.
EBow vs. Real Bow
Up to this point, the eccentric techniques
and methods we’ve described are
foreign territory to the vast majority of
guitarists. But players and listeners alike
are likely to recognize the sound of a guitar
string being excited by a bow more
commonly used on a violin or cello.
Fans of Led Zeppelin or Sigur Rós have
seen Page or Jón “Jónsi” Þór Birgisson
stroke guitar strings with a bow to create
sustained, ethereal tones.
Although this technique appears simple,
perhaps even gimmicky or more visually
than aurally motivated, it’s anything but
easy—even for a guitarist who started on
violin, as this author did. It took Westerhus
a while to get the hang of it, too. “I am
still
learning,” he says. “It takes a lot of practice
and is a real pain in the ass, as it will sound
dreadful most of the time,” he relates.
That said, Westerhus clearly finds the
pursuit worthwhile, because he has put considerable
time and research into determining
which type of bow best suits his needs. “I get
the most dynamic range out of a cello bow,
both on normal and baritone guitar. I use
one made from some sort of carbon fiber. It’s
a lot stronger than a wooden one, and can
take being dropped—and it stays straighter
for a longer period of time.” As for
how he
uses it, he says, “By adjusting the firmness, I
get a lot of different textures. And your tone
will differ, depending on where you stroke
the string. The easiest place to start is pretty
far back towards the bridge.”
Frith, on the other hand, prefers a
smaller bow. “I mostly use children’s cello
bows—they’re cheap, sturdy, and easy to
put in a guitar case.” Technique-wise, he
says, “it depends what you’re trying to do.
If you play close to the bridge with the
edge of the bow, you’ll get more harmonics.
But if you play in the middle of the
string with the flat of the bow, you’ll get
a more beautiful, ringing tone. It also
depends on the stroke—how hard and how
quick you play—and how you lift the bow
from the strings.”
Regardless of the bow type or technique,
rosin is an essential supply for the bowing
guitarist. Rosin, which looks like a little
bar or cake of glycerin soap, is what violin,
viola, cello, and double-bass players use to
make the hair on the bow sticky so that it
grips the string and pulls it, thus creating
sound. As the bow moves, the string snaps
back to its original position and is caught
again by the rosined hair in a quickly
repeated cycle. Without rosin’s grip, bow
hair would slide over strings and produce
very little sound. “I’ve found that going for
something in between a cello and a violin/
viola rosin works well for me and doesn’t
kill the strings too fast,” says Westerhus.
Stian Westerhus uses implements like bows and electronics to tweak tones, but he eschews software.
“It’s all in the way two or more pedals interact with each other.” Photo by Behnam Farazollahi
For those wishing to create infinitely
sustaining strings with less wrist action
and a less drastic learning curve, the Heet
Sound EBow is an alternative to the classical
bow. Amusingly, the handheld electronic
bow Greg Heet invented in 1969 is both
the most mechanically complex
and the
most mundane implement in this article, in
terms of acceptance and familiarity among
the general guitar-playing populace. This
small plastic device has two plastic grooves
that are placed upon two nonadjacent
strings to enable the oscillating magnetic
field in the center of the unit to focus on
the string between them—which remains
untouched by the EBow itself. Like a violin
bow, it vibrates the string and creates various
harmonics.
Players as diverse as U2’s the Edge,
Be-Bop Deluxe’s Bill Nelson, Radiohead’s
Ed O’Brien, and Zakk Wylde have typically
used the EBow for sustained pedal
tones or string-like melodies and pads.
However, the word “typical” is never on
one’s lips when listening to the device
in the hands of an experimentalist like
Tammen. “I prefer to bang it hard onto
the pickups—it produces a very violent
screeching sound that you can’t get any
other way.”