With “Souvlaki Space Station,” Slowdive really didn’t create a dub song, but they did create a tune that is completely drenched in delay and reverb. (Dub, incidentally, is a musical genre that makes great use of delay, so be sure to soak up some of those tunes.) The band’s main songwriter, Neil Halstead, said he was attempting to write a dub song. If there is a song that stands as a monument to delay, it might just be Slowdive’s “ Souvlaki Space Station,” the centerpiece of their 1994 album Souvlaki. By adding some DDLY and Trash 2 effects, we’re really able to create a more blistering wash of sound. It’s already somewhat shoegaze-like, but not noisy enough.
In this clip below, two ambient notes, sampled from a Korg Minilogue analogue synthesizer, are played on an Elektron Digitakt with some white noise and reverb. A synthesizer’s LFOs can even simulate effects like tremolo and vibrato, which is good to keep in mind when designing your sound. Use synthesizers, other instruments, and even samples to create shoegaze textures.Īs above, effects like delay, distortion and reverb do wonders for creating shoegaze textures, and the same holds true when these are applied to synthesizers. Make synths sound like shoegaze guitarsĪn important lesson in being inspired by shoegaze is this: don’t limit yourself to guitars. Using the tremolo arm in this way blends the two delays and the tape saturation’s lights fuzz into amorphous sound. While playing the chords, we bent the tremolo arm, much like how My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields does when playing. Below is a starter course in achieving some shoegaze sounds, with the hope that you go forth and experiment on your own. Beyond that, the shoegaze spirit is one of experimentation, whether it’s the beautiful white noise of MBV and Lovesliescrushing or the dreamier side explored by Slowdive, which influenced the likes of Beach House and Ulrich Schnauss. While the hallmark effects of shoegaze mentioned above are fairly constant, it’s really how you apply these to melodies, chord progressions, and rhythm that matter. Other bands, like Slowdive, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Ride-all still going strong-offer their own unique takes on the shoegaze sound some more ethereal, others owing more to 60s psychedelic and Britpop. My Bloody Valentine is undoubtedly the most iconic, but bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins and Spacemen 3 certainly helped lay the genre’s sonic foundations. There are reverb-laden swells, blistering distortion, and lots of delay, often all at once. Shoegaze is predicated on gauzy walls of sound.
0 kommentar(er)
