A unique modulation effect derived from a fascinating audio illusion.
RatingsPros:Unique and musically engaging tones. Quality construction. Fun and inspiring. Cons: No battery option. Street: $249 Korora Audio Spira kororaaudio.com | Tones: Ease of Use: Build/Design: Value: |
Fifty-five years ago, Roger Shepard devised a fascinating audio illusion. Shepard—who was not a musician or acoustician, but a renowned cognitive psychologist—created a tone that seemed to rise in pitch. And rise. And rise. It seemed to spiral upward forever: a sonic equivalent to the stripes on an old-fashioned barber pole.
What’s the trick? It starts with a group of ascending synthesized tones separated by octaves. The highest note gradually fades till it drops below the level of the next highest note. This dupes our ears into thinking that the tone never stops climbing.
This “Shepard tone” is widely known among electronic musicians, but not so much among guitarists. Or at least that’s what I thought till I read the Wikipedia entry on the phenomenon, which cites its many uses outside experimental music. It’s been deployed in films, including Dunkirk, where it conveys a sense of ever-escalating tension, and in The Dark Knight, where it provides the sound for the Batpod’s engine. It’s been employed by EDM artists as a rise effect, and by rock bands, including Franz Ferdinand and Godspeed You, Black Emperor. And yeah, that’s a Shepard tone in the final section of “Echoes,” that nightmarish soundscape from Pink Floyd’s Meddle album.
Rise Up!
Korora Audio’s Spira deploys the Shepard phenomenon as a phasing/filtering effect. There’s no pitch shifting involved—your dry signal is unaltered. But the effect path is routed through a complex of band-pass (that is, wah-style) filters with resonant peaks in varying octaves. The filter levels vary, generating a resonant phase-like effect that seems to ascend forever. Trippy!
But as cool at this audio illusion is, it may not be the most exciting thing about the Spira. After all, you’re only likely to perceive the effect strongly when other parts don’t compete with the processed guitar. Strum a sustained chord in isolation, and whoa—Shepard city! But with a more active part, or when heard amidst other instruments, you’ll probably perceive it as simply an unusual phasing effect.
And that’s awesome! This is a profoundly different flavor in phasing/flanging, without the mechanical up/down motion that makes some players hate those effects. You get the texture, thickness, and animation of a good phase shifter, minus the repetitious up/down motion. It’s a fresh, ear-catching sound.
Resonant Evil
That’s the Spira’s core sound. But the pedal’s controls provide many variations on that theme.
A wide-ranging rate knob yields everything from fast flickers to super-slow shifts and a sweep freeze at the slowest rate. The blend knob sets the wet/dry balance. The resonance control regulates the prominence of the filter peaks. Maximum settings stop short of chaotic self-oscillation, but you can definitely get over-the-top whoops. Conversely, you might dial in a dry-heavy blend and low resonance for barely perceptible animation.
These are controls you’d expect to find on any phaser/flanger. But the Spira’s two 3-way toggle switches are more idiosyncratic. One switch sets the steepness/strength of the moving filters, from 6 to 12 to 18 dB per octave. The second toggle specifies the number of filters. One setting replicates the classic one-per-octave effect. Another doubles the density, with two filters per octave, each a tritone apart. The third setting splits the difference. Increasing the number of filters yields thicker, more harmonically complex timbres.
And oh—the Shepard effect works with descending filters as well as rising ones. A dedicated footswitch changes sweep direction. There are also internal controls that determine whether the effect defaults to on or off at power up, and defaults to ramp-up or ramp-down, plus an option for pulsing or non-pulsing LEDs. The Spira has no battery compartment, but a 9-volt adapter is included.
The Verdict
The Spira uses an old trick to create new tones. The ever-rising/ever-falling Shepard phenomenon is fascinating. Meanwhile, the pedal introduces new phase/flange flavors, minus their mechanical seesawing at high-resonance settings. The effects are digitally generated, but never cold-sounding. Spira can produce near-subliminal modulation, shrieking freakouts, and everything in between. The build quality is excellent. The results are inspiring.
Behind every great guitarist is probably a great tech.
The life of a tech is where art, craft, science, and sorcery collide. My story isn’t so different from thousands of others in the performing arts world. It began at an extremely young age, in what they now call middle school. As much as I wanted to play music, draw, paint, and photograph, I was also drawn to the technical side of the creative pursuits.
Luckily, schools at the time offered classes in photography and art right along with printing, drafting, woodworking, stage crew, and auto repair. I never thought of them as disparate—even then I knew they were all interconnected. There wasn’t a master plan—there was only a path.
Along the way, I met others who shared a passion for music and mechanics. One of the first was a ham-radio fanatic who also loved music. He was referred by a classmate for electronic repair on my guitar amp, and we soon found we had a lot of common interests. Vince was a high school student by day and a radio-phone operator by night. These were the days before cell phones, a time when car phones were huge radio transceivers stowed in the trunks of wealthy people’s cars. To place a call, the driver had to radio in to an operator who would connect them to a landline. Vince would make the connection and then go back to waiting for the next call. We got to talking about repairing guitar amps, or even the possibility of building one from scratch, and started work on an amplifier within days. While Vince worked on the amp chassis, I constructed a plywood speaker cabinet and stuffed it with 15" Utah speakers. After a few weeks and a dozen trips to the electronics store, we had a functioning, terrible-sounding amplifier. Vince was convinced it had something to do with the plate voltages. “Needs more pressure,” was his cryptic explanation. After that, we lost interest, moved on, and lost touch. But I’d learned enough to be dangerous to myself.
That was the beginning of my long-standing respect for technicians of all sorts. There was Gary, who owned a fledgling amplifier company and rental shop on the West Side of Chicago. His amps were robust and had plenty of clean headroom, which really wasn’t what guitarists were looking for by the end of the 1960s. Still, my long drives to his shop were rewarded with free-flowing lectures about amp design. It was a prototype for a DIY music gear business, which was inspiring.
“Because pros rotate through different tours, their experience and expertise come from an infinitely deeper and wider range of real-world experience than working in a music store or watching YouTube videos.”
Similarly, Bruce Gordon had a repair shop shoehorned into a tiny space off Dempster Street in Evanston, just north of Chicago. Gordon started his repair business while playing in local bands, including one that had a string of regional and national hits. I used to walk past his open door on my way to work in the morning and would often stop to talk to him. He might have been the first pro musician that I had ever met who was also a technician. Once again, I found a person who was willing to share information and tips readily. I worked at a later incarnation of his expanded business where I learned from more seasoned techs who were always comparing notes and helping each other.
Over the decades, I learned to lean on the expertise of pro guitar technicians. As the touring business grew, being a tech became a serious profession, and knowing the techs on the road was a constant source of great information and camaraderie. Because pros rotate through different tours, their experience and expertise come from an infinitely deeper and wider range of real-world experience than working in a music store or watching YouTube videos. When I deal with pro musicians as a guitar builder, it’s often through an introduction made by a tech as much as the other way around. If I find a guitarist to be lacking in the ability to verbalize their ideas, often a great tech is there to sort things out.
So here’s to all those who make the big wheels roll. They learn from each other and pass their lessons along to others freely with no strings attached. Like Jackson Browne sang: “They’re the first to arrive, and the last to leave.” They don’t get the spotlight, but the artists know that without them, there is no show. Without them, I wouldn’t be here today. Thank you to every one of you.
The incendiary giant of psychedelic guitar concludes his 21-date world tour this weekend in New York City. In this photo essay, PG’s editorial director reports on the opening date of the sonic architect of Pink Floyd’s historic five-concert run at MSG.
NEW YORK CITY–There’s a low, sustained tone that David Gilmour extracts from his Stratocaster at the beginning of Pink Floyd’s “Sorrow.” It’s the intimidating growl of a robotic tiger–or, more realistically, a blend of low-string sustain, snarling overdrive from a Big Muff, and delay that saturates the air and seems to expand into every bit of open space. It’s almost overpowering in its intensity, but it is also deeply beautiful.
That tone, and so many of the other sounds that Gilmour has conjured in his 46 years of recording with Pink Floyd and as a solo artist, inspired me to leave Nashville to attend the first concert of Gilmour’s five-night stand at Madison Square Garden, on November 4. I’d been lucky enough to catch Gilmour’s tour supporting 1984’s About Face and two later Pink Floyd concerts, but the guitarist is 78 this year, so I felt that the 21 dates he’s playing in a mere four cities might be my last chance to be in the same room with all of his extraordinary tones. Plus, Pink Floyd, and especially Gilmour’s solo recordings and his brilliant Live at Pompeii concert film, was my wife, Laurie’s, and my refuge during the Covid lockdown. This was our opportunity to experience the sorcerer at work in one of his temples, where he and Pink Floyd first played in 1977.
Gilmour wields his Black Cat Strat, which he also played on Luck and Strange’s opener, “Black Cat,” in the studio.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
Was it worth the price of two concert tickets, flights, two nights in a Midtown hotel, and a subway ride? If you need to ask, it’s likely you’re not as familiar with Gilmour’s playing as I suggest that you should be. For guitarists, outside-the-box musical thinkers, and lovers of exceptional songwriting–and even concert lighting effects and live sound–this show was a perfect 10. Gilmour and his ensemble, including his daughter Romany, performed a well-chosen set of tunes by Pink Floyd and from Gilmour’s solo work, including his recent album Luck and Strange, which is more about composition than guitar exposition. Live, this was not the case. “Luck and Strange,” “A Single Spark,” and others from the album were expanded to include 6-string excursions that–in his signature style–took the lyrics as their inspiration and expanded their emotional architecture.
A close-up of Gilmour’s famed Workmate guitar, a 1955 Fender Esquire that once belonged to Seymour Duncan.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
Repeatedly, Gilmour displayed his ability to play the perfect parts, and especially solos, for each song. Some, of course, like “Time,” require sticking to text, but his expansions of “Breathe” and other numbers incorporated subtle improvisations dappled by pitch-changing, his emotive string bending, and numerous shifts in tone and phrasing that nonetheless always respected his unmistakable core sound. In Nashville, a frequent compliment is that a musician “always plays the perfect part.” For me, that’s a warning that I’m probably going to hear very professional and predictable playing all night long, and that’s usually boring. But Gilmour’s ear-opening sounds and phrases are constantly peppered with surprises–a hallmark of his characterful virtuosity. In the first of his Garden shows, he stepped outside the box while always respecting its contents, and it was a pleasure to hear him repeatedly practice that high art.
Guy Pratt remarked, while speaking to the audience before the show, that his first gig at MSG with Gilmour had been 37 years and one day earlier. Live, it was clear that Pratt is Gilmour’s right-hand man, as he set up cues for the other players.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
A pre-tour rumor was that Gilmour would not be playing any Pink Floyd numbers. That seemed unlikely, given his role as the composer and vocalist of so many of the band’s showcase songs. And, indeed, “Speak to Me,” “Breathe,” “Time,” “Marooned” (with its pitch-defying solo), “Wish You Were Here,” “High Hopes,” “Sorrow,” “A Great Day for Freedom,” “The Great Gig in the Sky,” “Coming Back to Life,” and “Comfortably Numb” were all present during the roughly two-and-a-half hours of music. What seemed remarkable throughout was not only the perfection of Gilmour’s playing but his ability to still hit every vocal high note with the same energy and accuracy of the original recordings, including his superb recreation of the scatting in “Wish You Were Here.”
Gilmour’s acoustic guitar, especially on “Wish You Were Here,” sparkled with clarity and articulation, and his scatting on that song proved that at 78 he can still summon the power and precision to hit the high vocal notes.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
“Wish You Were Here” was his first acoustic guitar excursion of the concert, and he and supporting guitarist Ben Worsley made the song a trip in the Wayback Machine, effortlessly conjuring the introduction’s vibrant appeal and deep emotionalism. Their acoustic instruments sounded crisp and resonant through the arena-sized PA, which should not have been surprising given Gilmour and Pink Floyd’s high standards for live sound. And all night, Gilmour’s vocals enjoyed the same clarity, making every lyric understandable, which is quite a feat for any large-hall show. The only quibble is that the drums echoed off the Garden’s back wall, which, given its 19,500 capacity, was on par.
Guy Pratt, David Gilmour, and Ben Worsley keeping the rock in arena rock. In addition to his Fender Jazz Bass, Pratt also played an Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray, and an upright. For electric guitar, Worsley slung a PRS S2 SSH.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
Romany Gilmour played a vital role in the show, with her voice navigating the Celtic-influenced melody of “Between Two Points,” from Luck and Strange, before joining the already formidable voices of Louise Marshall, and Charlie and Hattie Webb, in the band’s chorus. All four took turns singing lead on Dark Side of the Moon’s wordless masterpiece “The Great Gig in the Sky,” as Marshall played piano and Gilmour took one of his turns on the table-steel guitar.
A crowd’s-eye view, with lighting-enhanced stage fog. At right, just out of frame, is famed keyboardist Greg Phillinganes, who first joined Gilmour’s ensemble as part of the Rattle That Lock tour of Europe and appears in the Live in Pompeii concert film.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
“In Any Tongue,” from Gilmour’s 2014 album Rattle That Lock, was, of course, a musical highlight, ignited by that grizzly tone, but furthered by expressive, powerhouse solos from both Gilmour and Worsley. The song’s anti-war theme was enhanced by the same back-projected, heart-breaking video shown in 2016’s Live in Pompeii film, which conveys the idea that military violence spares neither the often-reluctant invaders nor the invaded. And last, of course, came “Comfortably Numb,” with Gilmour’s holy grail guitar solos, perfectly executed as he and the band played from behind an allusive wall of light. With their deep, idiosyncratic bends, rich, howling midrange, and his perfect, vibrato-laden bends, squealing harmonics, touch, and phrasing, these solos were the ultimate 6-string microphone drop.
Gilmour and his Black Cat Strat–partners for the concert’s closing number, “Comfortably Numb,” from Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE
If that was my last opportunity to hear Gilmour live, it’s understandable. He’s a legend who has earned his status through nearly a half-century of remarkable playing and composing. He has no need to create or perform on any terms beyond his own. I’m simply happy to have been able to bear witness, and to share the experience with you.
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On this episode of the 100 Guitarists podcast, we’re talking about our favorite Lukather tracks, from his best rhythm parts to his most rippin’ solos. And even though he spends most of his playing time with the biggest names, we’ve managed to call up a few deep cuts.
Steve Lukather is one of the most documented guitarists in the hit-making biz. He grew up as an L.A. teen with a crew of fellow musicians who would go on to make their livings at the top of the session scene. By the time Lukather and his pals formed Toto, they were already experienced chart-toppers. The band went on to success with hits including the rockin’ “Hold the Line,” breezy, bouncing “Rosanna,” and the timeless “Africa.”
As a session player, Lukather’s reign in the ’70s and ‘80s extended from Olivia Newton-John to Herbie Hancock to Michael Jackson. And alongside Michael McDonald—whose “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” included Lukather’s distinctive rhythm riffage—Daryl Hall and John Oates, Kenny Loggins, Peter Cetera, and Christopher Cross (among many others) he may have earned the title of yacht rock’s number one guitar player.
On this episode of the 100 Guitarists podcast, we’re talking about our favorite Lukather tracks, from his best rhythm parts to his most rippin’ solos. And even though he spends most of his playing time with the biggest names, we’ve managed to call up a few deep cuts.