
Albert Einstein, shown here circa 1947, called quantum entanglement, "spooky action at a distance."
An exploration of the creative process, quantum entanglement, and how songs can appear out of thin air.
When you are writing a song, improvising a solo, or coming up with an arrangement, where do these ideas come from?
There are endless theories on how one creates art, but I suspect that most people approach the task by
- Relying on your influences, tweaking things others have done.
- Digging inside yourself, where there's a deep reserve of ideas that can—with focus, work, and patience—be mined.
- Connecting to some creative power of the universe outside of yourself.
We all rely on our influences to a certain extent, but when it comes to genuinely creating something fresh, the first option feels like plagiarism. Sure, you can nick changes or a melody from something else and tweak it to sound like its own thing, but it rarely feels like you're breaking new ground.
Approach #2 feels like a lot of pressure. Every mine (and mind) eventually runs dry. Even if it doesn't, it can take a long time to find the gold hidden amongst the debris.
If you like the mystical third option best, you're in good company. There are a lot of seemingly level-headed people who attribute the inspiration of their art to this paranormal technique. There's a documentary about that famous New York songwriting hotbed, the Brill Building (episode 8 of This Is Pop on Netflix). Several of the Brill Building's biggest-hit songwriters said their songs came to them from something outside of their body. Neil Sedaka says songs would just pop into his head, claiming, "I'm a vehicle or have an antenna thing going."
Songwriter/producer and 4 Non Blondes' vocalist Linda Perry expanded: "I'm not tapping into something. Something is tapping into me." Willie Nelson has mentioned in several interviews that, "songs are in the air; you just grab them." Paul McCartney maintains that the perfect melody of"Yesterday"came to him fully formed in a dream. He reportedly fell out of bed, went to the piano to figure out the key, and played it. You can't definitively explain this phenomenon, but let's try.
About the creative process, John Mayer said, "If you're not Ouija-boarding immediately, you're wasting time."
Let's start with consciousness. The prevailing consensus amongst scientists is that consciousness originates in the brain. However, there's a theory even amongst some scientists that our brain is just a filter for an external consciousness. (Warning, the oxygen gets a little thin up where we're going.)
Neuroscientists still cannot explain why countless people experienced consciousness after they were reported "physically" dead. Combine that with the many documented cases of intelligent humans functioning at a high level with nothing but a brainstem. Add this to your own hair-standing-up-on-your-arm experiences (like when the person you're thinking of calls you or your dog barks uncontrollably at a blank space) and, admittedly, although it seems improvable, it's not impossible. Quantum entanglement, what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," might explain it.
Quantum entanglement sounds more like paranormal activity than physics, but it's not a theory: It's a real phenomenon. The over-simplified explanation is that objects can become inextricably intertwined and assume a new, collective identity. Any actions performed on one of the particles affects the other, no matter the distance between two particles. This may not seem like a big deal, but the larger implication of this phenomenon is that the Universe at the most basic level is connected. This is something scientists observe on a subatomic level, but musicians experience while making music. Like when the drummer, whom you're not even looking at, hits the exact same improvised triplet you do. It could be a coincidence, or it could be that you and the drummer are connected. If you watch a great band long enough, you'll recognize this phenomenon—the tell being the players will look at each other with uncontrollable grins on their faces right after that magic happens.
I saw a livestream video interview where John Mayer, egged on by an interviewer, improvised a song on the spot. About the creative process, Mayer said, "If you're not Ouija-boarding immediately, you're wasting time." I think what Mayer meant is that you're jumping out into this spiritual connectivity, trusting that something you cannot see will guide you. Mayer hinted at this in his ad-lib lyrics when he sang, "go get it from the Universe, you can't rehearse." This technique is nothing new. Homer's Odyssey, which was composed in the 8th or 7th century BCE, starts with the poet saying: "Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story…." Homer's role was to be a voice for the goddesses of literature, science, and the arts.
This is the realm where science feels like spirituality. Science tries to prove it, spiritualists try to feel it, but when you break it down, both are saying there's something Big outside of us that connects us all. Maybe the reason some music connects so closely to us is because we, like the performer or creator, are connected to this same source. SRV's "Lenny" moves me more deeply than words. Is it quantum entanglement? Spirits? Aliens? Ghosts? God? Who knows. Whatever it is, I want to tap into it.
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Lollar Pickups introduces the Deluxe Foil humbucker, a medium-output pickup with a bright, punchy tone and wide frequency range. Featuring a unique retro design and 4-conductor lead wires for versatile wiring options, the Deluxe Foil is a drop-in replacement for Wide Range Humbuckers.
Based on Lollar’s popular single-coil Gold Foil design, the new Deluxe Foil has the same footprint as Lollar’s Regal humbucker - as well as the Fender Wide Range Humbucker – and it’s a drop-in replacement for any guitar routed for Wide Range Humbuckers such as the Telecaster Deluxe/Custom, ’72-style Tele Thinline and Starcaster.
Lollar’s Deluxe Foil is a medium-output humbucker that delivers a bright and punchy tone, with a glassy top end, plenty of shimmer, rich harmonic content, and expressive dynamic touch-sensitivity. Its larger dual-coil design allows the Deluxe Foil to capture a wider frequency range than many other pickup types, giving the pickup a full yet well-balanced voice with plenty of clarity and articulation.
The pickup comes with 4-conductor lead wires, so you can utilize split-coil wiring in addition to humbucker configuration. Its split-coil sound is a true representation of Lollar’s single-coil Gold Foil, giving players a huge variety of inspiring and musical sounds.
The Deluxe Foil’s great tone is mirrored by its evocative retro look: the cover design is based around mirror images of the “L” in the Lollar logo. Since the gold foil pickup design doesn’t require visible polepieces, Lollartook advantage of the opportunity to create a humbucker that looks as memorable as it sounds.
Deluxe Foil humbucker features include:
- 4-conductor lead wire for maximum flexibility in wiring/switching
- Medium output suited to a vast range of music styles
- Average DC resistance: Bridge 11.9k, Neck 10.5k
- Recommended Potentiometers: 500k
- Recommended Capacitor: 0.022μF
The Lollar Deluxe Foil is available for bridge and neck positions, in nickel, chrome, or gold cover finishes. Pricing is $225 per pickup ($235 for gold cover option).
For more information visit lollarguitars.com.
A 6L6 power section, tube-driven spring reverb, and a versatile array of line outs make this 1x10 combo an appealing and unique 15-watt alternative.
Supro Montauk 15-watt 1 x 10-inch Tube Combo Amplifier - Blue Rhino Hide Tolex with Silver Grille
Montauk 110 ReverbThe two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
Kemper and Zilla announce the immediate availability of Zilla 2x12“ guitar cabs loaded with the acclaimed Kemper Kone speaker.
Zilla offers a variety of customization to the customers. On the dedicated Website, customers can choose material, color/tolex, size, and much more.
The sensation and joy of playing a guitar cabinet
Sometimes, when there’s no PA, there’s just a drumkit and a bass amp. When the creative juices flow and the riffs have to bounce back off the wall - that’s the moment when you long for a powerful guitar cabinet.
A guitar cabinet that provides „that“ well-known feel and gives you that kick-in-the-back experience. Because guitar cabinets can move some serious air. But these days cabinets also have to be comprehensive and modern in terms of being capable of delivering the dynamic and tonal nuances of the KEMPER PROFILER. So here it is: The ZILLA 2 x 12“ upright slant KONE cabinet.
These cabinets are designed in cooperation with the KEMPER sound designers and the great people from Zilla. Beauty is created out of decades of experience in building the finest guitar cabinets for the biggest guitar masters in the UK and the world over, combined with the digital guitar tone wizardry from the KEMPER labs. Loaded with the exquisit Kemper Kone speakers.
Now Kemper and Zilla bring this beautiful and powerful dream team for playing, rehearsing, and performing to the guitar players!
ABOUT THE KEMPER KONE SPEAKERS
The Kemper Kone is a 12“ full range speaker which is exclusively designed by Celestion for KEMPER. By simply activating the PROFILER’s well-known Monitor CabOff function the KEMPER Kone is switched from full-range mode to the Speaker Imprint Mode, which then exactly mimics one of 19 classic guitar speakers.
Since the intelligence of the speaker lies in the DSP of the PROFILER, you will be able to switch individual speaker imprints along with your favorite rigs, without needing to do extensive editing.
The Zilla KEMPER KONE loaded 2x12“ cabinets can be custom designed and ordered for an EU price of £675,- UK price of £775,- and US price of £800,- - all including shipping (excluding taxes outside of the UK).
For more information, please visit kemper-amps.com or zillacabs.com.