
Cloning the otherworldly sounds of the Southwest’s ruins.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archeologist—until the day I shared the dream with my mom.
“Why would you want to do that?” she cried. “You’d just spend your life in some dingy closet, polishing pottery scraps with a toothbrush!”
Fortunately, mom was more supportive of my guitar fantasies—in fact, she taught me to play. By the time I’d mastered the fiendish F chord, my archeology dreams had faded, along with my hopes of receiving a mini-bike as a bar mitzvah present. (I got a Jazzmaster instead.) Yet I’ve always maintained an armchair interest in ancient civilizations. My wife and I were even planning an archeology-oriented trip to Syria a couple of years ago, but, um, some stuff happened in that corner of the world, and the trip got nixed.
But living in the American West, we have archeological riches closer to home, particularly the remnants of the great Ancestral Puebloan civilizations (often referred to as the Anasazi, Navajo for “ancient ones”). About 1,000 years ago, these ancestors of the modern Pueblo people created the lofty cliff dwellings and grand cities whose ruins dot Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, including the vast complex at Chaco Canyon. I recently had a chance to revisit a favorite site, Wupatki, about an hour north of Flagstaff. And this time, I had music on my mind.
Sinagua Slapback Wupatki boasts glorious sandstone ruins, the largest of which were created by the Sinagua people during the 12th century (Photo 1). The site includes a large stone ring (Photo 2) widely believed to be a ball court like the ones associated with the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures. (It’s the northernmost example of its kind.) A growing body of evidence hints at cultural exchange between the ancient Puebloans and Central America. (My take: “How could there not have been?”)
When I first visited Wupatki 25 years ago, I noticed a uniquely eerie echo when standing within the stone ring—a series of short but perceptible slaps as sound waves ricocheted between the low stone walls. Back then we lacked the technology to digitally capture the effect, but this time I packed a mobile interface with the aim of snaring an audio snapshot so I could clone the sound in the studio using an impulse response reverb. (I discuss this technology in my April 2014 Recording Guitarist column.) I squatted in the mud and clapped. The echo was every bit as spooky-cool as remembered. I unzipped my bag—and realized I’d left the interface at my hotel, two hours south in Sedona. (I wonder whether the Ancestral Puebloans had a word for “D’oh!”)
So I just set my iPhone on a rock in a puddle, fired up iOS’s free Voice Memos app, and started clapping, as heard in Audio Clip 1. The results as captured through the phone’s cheapo built-in mic aren’t promising. The echoes don’t sound terribly dramatic, and there’s wind noise, plus my scuffling feet and heavy breathing. Time would tell if I got anything good.
Photos 3 & 4 — The conical coal kilns in a remote corner of Death Valley generate an eerie, flange-like reverb.
Photos by Joe Gore.
D’oh! Redux History repeated itself a few days later as I returned home via Death Valley. I’d driven to a remote mountainous corner of the park to check out the Wildrose Coal Kilns (Photo 3). Designed by Swiss engineers and built by Chinese laborers, these spooky-beautiful conical structures were used in charcoal production during the 1870s.
It was “D’oh!” déjà vu: Again, I was unarmed—it didn’t even occur to me till I was standing inside one of the kilns (Photo 4) that these stones cones generate bizarre and capture-worthy reverb. I set down my phone and clapped, stomped, and clacked rocks, as heard in Clip 2. The echoes were shorter than at Wupatki, but they regenerated longer, producing an almost flange-like resonance.
Photo 5 — Impulse-response reverbs (such as Apple’s Space Designer, seen here) let you clone ambient spaces using clips of percussive sounds recorded in the target location.
Studio Surgery
Back home in my San Francisco studio, I hacked away at these lo-fi recordings. I filtered out background noise using iZotope’s RX4 audio repair software, my first experience with the product. Holy crap, it worked great! Compare Clip 2 to Clip 3, the same with RX4 processing. Next I snipped the file, isolating some of the better-sounding hits. (The isolated clips run from the initial percussive attack through the last audible echo.)
Next, I just dropped these short recordings into Space Designer, the impulse-response reverb plug-in included with Apple’s Logic Pro, saving the results as presets (Photo 5). (The procedure is similar for all IR reverb plug-ins, including Audio Ease’s Altiverb, Waves’ IR-1, Avid’s TLSpace, and shareware products like LiquidSonics’ Reverberate and SIR1 from SIR Audio Tools.)
The results, while better than anticipated, weren’t dramatic enough, so I ran the short clips through a slow-attack compressor, maintaining the initial impact while fattening the tails of each sound. Hear the result in Clip 4, where I play a classical guitar (low-tuned and strung with absurdly expensive Thomastik-Infeld “rope core” strings) through the Wupatki ball court reverb. Clip 5 is the same performance, played through the coal kiln reverb. (The mixes are excessively wet, but I wanted to emphasize the effect.)
These lo-fi files don’t yield the most accurate of spatial snapshots, yet these reverbs definitely evoke their idiosyncratic sources, providing cool, unique sounds you’d never get from a factory reverb preset. But would they work on an entire mix?
Death Valley Drums
At some point I realized that the claps, clicks, and clunks from Clip 2 might have another use. I dropped a dozen or so isolated sounds into Battery 4, Native Instruments’ sampling drum machine plug-in. I fiddled with tunings and EQ till the sound of large rocks on dirt felt like kick drums and clicks behaved like shakers or hi-hats, retaining some reverb tails to convey the cone’s eccentric color. I sequenced a simple beat, and then overdubbed nylon- and 12-string guitars, a Dobro played acoustically with an EBow, and some primitive synth bass, moistening the instruments with my new Space Designer coal kiln preset (Clip 6).
I won’t claim the results sound “good” in any audiophile sense, nor are they an entirely accurate portrait of the modeled space. Still, the ambience feels eerie and evocative. Many engineers and musicians rightly fear the homogenizing effect of digital audio and its ubiquitous plug-ins. But sometimes the best way to break free from “in the box” production is to capture fresh colors and make your own crayons.
Until you get around to creating your own otherworldly ambiences, help yourself to mine! This free download includes my edited impulse response recordings in WAV and AIFF formats, ready to insert into any impulse-response plug-in. I’ve also included some of the processed “drum” sounds culled from my field recordings. Just drop them into a sampler and pound away!
Columnist Janek Gwizdala with heroes Dennis Chambers (left) and Mike Stern (right).
Keeping your gigging commitments can be tough, especially when faced with a call from a hero. But it’s always the right choice.
Saying “yes!” to everything early on has put me in a place now where I can say no to almost everything and still be okay. That wasn’t without its challenges. I’d like to share a story about a “yes” that would haunt me for years.
As bass players, we can, if we choose, quite easily find ourselves in a wide variety of situations without having to change much about our sound or our playing. If your time is good and you’re able to help those around you feel good and sound better, the telephone will pretty much always ring.
Playing jazz as an electric-bass player living in New York City from 2000 to 2010 was somewhat of a fool’s errand in terms of getting work. No one wanted electric bass, and bandleaders would go to the bottom of a list of 100 upright players before they would even think about calling you. Not only that, but I wasn’t even at the top of the electric list when I first moved there. Not even close. Anthony Jackson, Richard Bona, Will Lee, Tim Lefebvre, James Genus, Lincoln Goines, Mike Pope, John Benitez, Matthew Garrison—that’s a who’s who of the instrument when I first moved to town, and I was very much a freshman with almost no experience. Almost…
I’d been lucky enough to play extensively with Kenwood Dennard (Jaco’s drummer), and a little with Hiram Bullock (Jaco’s guitarist) before moving to NYC which helped create a little momentum, but only a VERY little.
This is where the story begins:
I’d sent Mike Stern a demo back in late ’97. He’d not only taken the time to listen to it but had called my parents’ house right after I moved to the U.S. to tell me he loved it and wanted to hang. I missed the call but eventually met him at a clinic he gave at Berklee.
Of course, I was buzzing about all of this. It helped me stay laser-focused on practice and on moving to NYC as soon as possible. I got the typical “look me up when you get to town” invitation from Stern and basically counted the seconds through the three semesters I stayed at Berklee until I could split town.
I arrived with a ton of confidence but zero gigs. And nothing happened overnight. It really took saying yes to literally everything I was offered just to keep a roof over my head. Through that process, I felt like I was getting further away from playing with my jazz heroes.
The early gigs were far from glamorous—long hours, terrible pay, and sometimes, after travel expenses, they cost me money to play.
“Whenever I have a single moment of doubt, I think about the time I had to say no to my heroes—the reasons I moved to America, the reason I do what I do.”
When Stern finally called, a few years into living in NYC, things started to move pretty quickly. I began playing a lot of gigs at the 55 Bar with him, and short road trips became a thing—a four-night stint at Arturo Sandoval’s new club in Miami, gigs in Chicago, Cleveland, and upstate New York, and then some international work, including a tour of Mexico and a trip to Brazil, if I remember right.
But the hardest phone call of my career came from Mike not long into my time touring with him. It went something like this:
“Hey man, what’s your scene in April? Lincoln can’t make a trip to the West Coast. It’s just one gig. Trio… with DENNIS CHAMBERS.”
Mike didn’t shout Dennis’ name, but that’s how I heard it. My all-time hero. Someone I’d been dreaming about playing with for over 15 years. And here’s the kicker: I had to say no.
I’d just committed to six weeks with Jojo Mayer’s band Nerve in Asia and Europe, and there was no way I could bail on him. And there was no way I could afford to ditch six weeks of work for a single gig with Mike. To say that haunted me for years is an understatement. I was destroyed that I had to turn it down.
The tour with Jojo was amazing—the posters hang in my studio as a reminder of those times to this day. And thankfully, I was able to go on some years later and play dozens of shows with Mike and Dennis all over the world—truly some of the highlights of my career.
I still think about that phone call, though. Whenever I have a single moment of doubt, I think about the time I had to say no to my heroes—the reasons I moved to America, the reason I do what I do. I get emotional writing and thinking about it even now. But I've learned to never have regrets and understand you just have to believe in the process and maintain the willpower to continue—no matter what.
New RAT Sound Solution Offers a Refined Evolution of Distortion
ACT Entertainment ’s iconic RAT brand has unveiledthe Sterling Vermin, a boutique distortion guitar pedal that blends heritage tone with modernrefinement. With a new take on RAT’s unmistakable sound, Sterling Vermin delivers a new levelof precision and versatility.
“The Sterling Vermin was born from a desire for something different — something refined, withthe soul of a traditional RAT pedal, but with a voice all its own,” says Shawn Wells, MarketManager—Sound, ACT Entertainment, who designed the pedal along with his colleague MattGates. “Built in small batches and hand-soldered in ACT’s Jackson, Missouri headquarters, theSterling Vermin is a work of pure beauty that honors the brand legacy while taking a bold stepforward for creativity.”
The Sterling Vermin features the LM741 Op-Amp and a pair of selectable clipping diodes.Players can toggle between the traditional RAT silicon diode configuration for a punchy, mid-range bite, or the BAT41 option for a smoother, more balanced response. The result is a pedalthat’s equally at home delivering snarling distortion or articulate, low-gain overdrive, with a wide,usable tonal range throughout the entire gain spectrum.
The pedal also features CTS pots and oversized knobs for even, responsive control that affordsa satisfying smoothness to the rotation, with just the right amount of tension. Additionally, thepolished stainless-steel enclosure with laser-annealed graphics showcases the merging of thepedal’s vintage flavor and striking design.
“From low-gain tones reminiscent of a Klon or Bluesbreaker, to high-gain settings that flirt withBig Muff territory — yet stay tight and controlled — the Sterling Vermin is a masterclass indynamic distortion,” says Gates, an ACT Entertainment Sales Representative. “With premiumcomponents, deliberate design and a focus on feel, the Sterling Vermin is more than a pedal, it’sa new chapter for RAT.”
The RAT Sterling Vermin is available immediately and retails for $349 USD. For moreinformation about this solution, visit: actentertainment.com/rat-distortion .
The Miku was introduced about 10 years ago and is based on the vocal stylings of Hatsune Miku, a virtual pop icon. But it does much more than artificial vowels and high-pitched words.
It’s tempting to think of this pedal as a joke. Don’t.
It all started a few years ago through a trade with a friend. I just wanted to help him out—he really wanted to get a fuzz pedal but didn’t have enough cash, so he offered up the Korg Miku. I had no idea then, but it turned out to be the best trade I’ve ever made.
Here’s the truth: the Korg Miku is not your typical guitar pedal. It won’t boost your mids, sculpt your gain, or serve up that warm, buttery overdrive you’ve always worshipped. Nope. This little box does something entirely different: It sings! Yes, sings in a Japanese kawaii accent that’s based on the signature voice of virtual pop icon Hatsune Miku.
At first glance, it’s tempting to dismiss this pedal as just a gimmick—a joke, a collector’s oddity, the kind of thing you buy for fun and then forget next to your Hello Kitty Strat. But here’s the twist: Some take it seriously and I’m one of those people.
I play in a punk band called Cakrux, and lately I’ve been working with a member of a Japanese idol-style girl group—yeah, it’s exactly the kind of wild mashup you’d ever imagine. Somewhere in the middle of that chaos, the Miku found its way into my setup, and weirdly enough, it stuck. It’s quirky, beautiful, occasionally maddening, and somehow … just right. After plenty of time spent in rehearsals, studio takes, and more sonic experiments than I care to admit, I’ve come to appreciate this pedal in unexpected ways. So here are a few things you probably didn’t know about this delightfully strange little box.
It’s Not Organic—and That’s OK
Most guitar pedals are chasing something real. Wah pedals mimic the human voice—or even a trumpet. Tube Screamers? They’re built to recreate the warm push of an overdriven tube amp. Cab sims aim to replicate the tone of real-world speaker setups. But the Miku? It breaks the mold. Instead of emulating reality, it channels the voice of a fictional pop icon. Hatsune Miku isn’t a person—she’s a vocaloid, a fully digital creation made of samples and synthesis. The Miku doesn’t try to sound organic, it tries to sound like her. In that sense, it might be the only pedal trying to reproduce something that never existed in the physical world. And honestly, there’s something oddly poetic about that.
A World-Class Buffer
Here’s a fun fact: I once saw a big-name Indonesian session guitarist—you know, the kind who plays in sold-out arenas—with a Miku pedal on his board. I was like, “No way this guy’s busting out vocaloid lines mid-solo.” Plot twist: He only uses it for the buffer. Yep, the man swears by it and says it’s the best-sounding buffer he’s ever plugged into. I laughed … until I tried it. And honestly? He’s not wrong. Even if you never hear Miku sing a note, this pedal still deserves a spot on your board. Just for the tone mojo alone. Wild, right?
“The Miku is one of those pedals that really shouldn’t work for your music, but somehow, it just does.”
Impossible to Tame
Most pedals are built to make your life easier. The Miku? Not so much. This thing demands patience—and maybe a little spiritual surrender. First off, the tracking can be finicky, especially if you’re using low-output pickups. Latency becomes really noticeable and your picking dynamics suddenly matter a lot more. Then there’s the golden rule I learned the hard way. Never—ever—put anything before the Miku. No fuzz, no wah, no compressor, not even a buffer! It gets confused instantly and says “What is going on here?” And don’t even think about punching in while recording. The vocal results are so unpredictable, you’ll never get the same sound twice. Mess up halfway? You’re starting from scratch. Same setup, same take, same chaotic energy. It’s like trying to recreate a fever dream. Good luck with that.
Full Range = Full Power
Sure, it’s made for guitar, but the Miku really comes to life when you run it through a keyboard amp, bass cab, or even a full-range speaker. Why? Because her voice covers way more frequency range than a regular guitar speaker can handle. Plug it into a PA system or a bass rig, and everything sounds clearer, richer, way more expressive. It’s like letting Hatsune Miku out of her cage.
The Miku is one of those pedals that really shouldn't work for your music, but somehow, it just does. Is it the best pedal out there? Nah. Is it practical? Not by a long shot. But every time I plug it in, I can’t help but smile. It’s unpredictable, a little wild, and it feels like you’re jamming in the middle of a bizarre Isekai anime scene. And honestly, that’s what makes it fun.
This thing used to go for less than $100. Now? It’s fetching many times that. Is it worth the price? That’s up to you. But for me, the Korg Miku isn’t just another pedal—it’s a strange, delightful journey I’m glad I didn’t skip. No regrets here.
Two guitars, two amps, and two people is all it takes to bring the noise.
The day before they played the coveted Blue Room at Third Man Records in Nashville, the Washington, D.C.-based garage-punk duo Teen Mortgage released their debut record, Devil Ultrasonic Dream. Not a bad couple of days for a young band.
PG’s Chris Kies caught up with guitarist and vocalist James Guile at the Blue Room to find out how he builds the band’s bombastic guitar attack.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Devilish Dunable
Guile has been known to use Telecasters and Gretsches in the past, but this time out he’s sticking with this Dunable Cyclops DE, courtesy of Gwarsenio Hall—aka Jordan Olds of metal-themed comedy talk show Two Minutes to Late Night. Guile digs the Dunable’s lightness on his shoulders, and its balance of high and low frequencies.
Storm Warning
What does Guile like about this Squier Cyclone? Simple: its color. This one is also nice and easy on the back, and Guile picked it up from Atomic Music in Beltsville, Maryland.
Crushing It
Guile also scooped this Music Man 410-HD from Atomic, which he got just for this tour for a pretty sweet deal. It runs alongside an Orange Crush Bass 100 to rumble out the low end.
James Guile’s Pedalboard
The Electro-Harmonix Micro POG and Hiwatt Filter Fuzz MkII run to the Orange, while everything else—a DigiTech Whammy, Pro Co Lil’ RAT, and Death by Audio Echo Dream 2—runs to the Music Man. A TC Helicon Mic Mechanic is on board for vocal assistance, and a TC Electronic PolyTune 3, Morley ABY, and Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 3 Plus keep the ship afloat.