guitar best friend

Sometimes a rhythm box and, say, an envelope-controlled modulated filter can sound like … love!

Whether it's 6-strings or drum machines—or any instrument—finding a perfect pedal partner can create a signature sound all your own.

Electric guitars are pack animals. They need a partner to do their thing—unless a very, very quiet acoustic guitar is what you really want. I like this kind of symbiotic approach to thinking about instruments. The guitar and the amp have been best friends for decades, practically inseparable, and it's useful to apply that same thinking to other things, in other contexts. Like the perfect pedal to complement your drum machine. It's not only helpful in a practical, sound-sculpting way. It also lends a nice conceptual structure: finding that one thing that gets along with another and brings the best out of it—and keeping them together, like one extended instrument.

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