Bien vu, ça doit être un truc comme ça...mais en plus compliqué. J'ai trouvé une interview à propos du matos qu'il a utilisé sur "The Empyrean". C'est un peu long, je mets quelques extraits, le texte complet est sur :
http://www.yourforumisgluedtoa(...)rean/
What guitars and amps did you use on the album?
Pretty much the same ones I use with the Chili Peppers - a Marshall Major, a Marshall Jubilee, a '62 Strat, '57 Strat. It's the first time I've ever used the same stuff I use in the band on one of my solo records. But really, that equipment is more me than any other equipment I've ever used, so I figured I'd stop playing a game and do what I do. I also used a Fender Bassman amp for the guitar.
What effects did you use?
That BOSS Turbo Distortion, Electro-Harmonix English Muffin, BOSS CHorus Ensemble, Ibanez Wah Wah pedal - again it's the same stuff I use in the band. I think a Maestro Fuzz-Rite, but I used a lot of modular synth stuff. I would put things on tape, and then run them through a modular synthesier, basically using it as an effects unit. So most of the effects aren't guitar effects - the initial guitar tones were usually made using the things I mentioned, but I did pretty extensive treatments with the modular synthesiser. I also used some really cool outboard gear for treatments as well: the EMT 250 Reverb, Plate Reverb, Eventide Primetime - old digital reverbs - the EMT 250 was one of the first digital reverbs ever made, and it figures prominently on the record.
The solo tones on that song are spectacular and seem to morph into and out of each other. How did you get those sounds, and what is going on in the mix?
I played my Stratocaster while standing in front of a Marshall, and I probably used a Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion and a Mosrite Fuzzrite, along with the guitar's volume control, to get sounds from mildly distorted to blasting. I also used an Ibanez WH-10 wah to get the feedback at different frequencies, and I may have added a tiny bit of Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb. Once the guitar tracks were recorded, I flipped the tape over and recorded five or six tracks of different kinds of echoes and reverbs throughout the length of the song, then flipped the tape back over so that those effects would play in reverse. After that, I listened back to find the bits I liked, and equalized them to make them fit together - sometimes using extreme EQ, like filtering out everything but the highest frequencies of the echo or reverb. While mixing, I cross-faded and combined the effects in various ways to emphasize the performance that was already there. For example, if a note already sounded like it was rising up, I'd do something to make it sound even more like it was rising. (...)
The main stuff for guitar sounds was that rig, and I was treating it with a modular synthesizer. So the recordings usually had nothing more than a wah pedal, distortion and fuzz. I use the Boss Turbo Distortion pretty regularly, and an Electro-Harmonix English Muff'n tube fuzz, which has really extreme EQ and a big, thick, meaty sound. I used it on the solo for Enough Of Me. I turn the EQ up, but leave my guitar tone knobs down and use either the middle or neck pickup so the initial source sound is really dark and kind of plain. If you blast the tone controls on the effect, you get a really thick, beautiful sound that reminds me of an exaggerated Eric Clapton tone in Cream, where you have this really smooth fuzz. For that solo, I was jumping from low to high notes rather than following a linear train of thought. I was kind of thinking in two ways at once by alternately playing very low notes with high notes, where the octave was displaced by a couple of octaves, and it worked really well.
Bref, j'aurais dû me douter que ce n'était pas simple, vu le personnage. On doit pouvoir s'approcher du son avec disto+harmonizer, genre Boss ST-2 + Boss PS-6, je vais essayer...
