A lot of Canterbury-based bands like Caravan, Soft Machine (and other bands that couldn't afford synthesizers in the 70s) used electric organs/pianos with fuzz and wah pedals hooked into guitar amps. It makes for a really unique sound that would be great to hear again. Guess it became a lot more convenient to gig with a synthesizer than a big setup with an organ + amp.
Back in 1989 my friends and I played Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden in the school music competition. We only had one guitarist and a keyboard so put the keyboard through a boss HM-2 to replicate the other guitar. The whammy kind of does the same job as the "bender" control which I think originated with the mini moog? Of course, you have to try a Boss Metalzone. And the Korg Miku.
Pedal order matters with Wah and distortion Most guitar players in my experience tend to go wah first then distortion But distortion then wah can be cool If you have two distortion pedals, put one before and one after the wah so you can use either Or have both distortions on Part of the fun with pedals is playing around with pedal order
I think also a lot of the sound of Deep Purple is coming from the distorted organ. Probably a lot of piano with fuzz is out there, you just kind of assume that it's a guitar if you hear some riff with distortion in a song.
You should probably put the whammy pedal first, because the noise and overtones from the big muff can cause the whammy to glitch and sound more like a ring modulator.
not done as often cause harder to play some chords on Keyboard with the same speed as guitar, harder to accent strings, Slides, vibrato, etc in the same way a guitar would sound, and harder to head bang and look cool on keyboard.
Fender Rhodes and wah pedal was a very popular combination early 70s (Pink Floyd, Alan Parson project spring to mind but there were many others), Chorus pedals have been used extensively with keyboards from electric pianos and early synths which didn't have in-built effects. Phaser was one Jean-Michael Jarre used a lot especially on the emininet string synth to give the sweeping effect on his early albums.
Tony Banks used a Fender Blender fuzz during the prog days with Genesis. They just reissued the Fender Blender, so there's a good option. The Big Muff is not a good match for a keyboard, but other dirt can be. A Strymon Deco has subtle tape overdrive that sounds wonderful on keyboards, as does the drive circuit in rotary sim pedals like the EHX Lester K. So any other low-gain effects like that will sound better than a sloppy-sounding Muff.
@@LeifNelandDk You reminded me of the first iteration of The Misfits. A rare instance where a punk band had no guitarist, but a fuzz keyboard played by singer Glenn Danzig. th-cam.com/video/RCAtTQf5T1E/w-d-xo.htmlfeature=shared I wonder what fuzz he used though, as it actually doesn't sound half bad, even with the crappy recording.
The Wah pedal was originally imagined as an effect for organs which (I think) generally take effects better than a piano. If you want a great example of how an organ can sound with something like the Big Muff you should check out the version of 'Speed King' by Deep Purple on their Made In Japan Album. Admittedly Jon Lord is running his Hammond B3 into an overdriven Marshall guitar amp but the effect is pretty similar.
It was a pot circuit taken from a Vox amp. The engineer was playing with the sweep using his fingers on the pot. It was suggested to mount it into a volume pedal. So they did and used it on a guitar. The leader of the company said it sounds like a trumpet with a mute and wanted to sell them for trumpet players. He couldn't be convinced by the inventors it was a guitar product. He even got Clyde McCoy (a then popular) to put his name on it to sell more units. So a trumpet player who never used it, got a commission for each one sold, which was almost exclusively used on guitars.
@@kentl7228it’s funny because the original Maestro Fuzz was marketed as “make your electric bass or guitar sound like a brass instrument”. It was a FLOP until Keith Richards used it on “Satisfaction”(and he was actually using it to mimic what he thought would be replaced with an actual trumpet!)
@@kentl7228 One of my favourite parts of music/instrument history is that there's so many examples of people trying to make one instrument sound like another that end up becoming staples of either a particular genre or instrument for completely different reasons, the first overdrive pedals were marketed towards making b sax or brass sounds, as were the wah, and the early uni-vibe, which was the precursor to chorus, phase and flange pedals, was apparently marketed to make your guitar sound like a sitar, hell, the entire synthesizer industry is built upon trying to emulate various instruments and not doing a very good job. I think some of what is missing in modern music creation is that aspect of failed emulation leading to new and interesting sounds. Kinda hard to mess around with a half-assed trumpet sound and get something new when you've got 100's of genuine trumpets available at a click.
This is basically the entire spiel behind “Is it any wonder” by Keane: Just a singer, drummer and heavily distorted electric piano. They use it to great effect; it’s a very unique sound 🙂 Just from the title, that song was my forest thought, and I had to pause this video to relisten… Also, the video is simple, but awesome! I love that song, but the point is not the effects… They’re cool and all, but it’s the artistry that matters!
@luke5100 I was actually with Keane for part of the Hopes and Fears tour and I’m not aware of them using any effects pedals, at least on the CP-70B. They did use a number of piano effects on Under the Iron Sea. I’m happy to be corrected though.
Keane, and especially their _Under The Iron Sea_ album, was my first thought after watching the video, since they use such a unique piano sound for it that it left a pretty big lasting impression on me. Very glad to see others bringing them up here too! I did find a video on the making of _UTIS,_ and about 7 minutes in they show Rice-Oxley experimenting with the sound for _Is It Any Wonder?_ with a ton of effect pedals stacked on top of the piano, adjusting some individually and then combining them all. It's quite a fascinating process that I'm a little disappointed that I never looked into sooner. Listening back to the _Hopes and Fears_ album, it seems like there are a few tracks that do more minor distortions to the piano, but none of it is as extreme as _UTIS_ and they usually stick to a clean piano sound instead.
Nice David! Would love to see a part 2 on this focusing on modulation pedals i.e. chorus, phase, flanger, tremolo, vibrato, uni vibe, etc Some fantastic sounds to be had with those, and more suited to keys 😊
Fun fact, Keane's entire album Under The Iron Sea (2006) was deliberately recorded using piano/synth and guitar effects, making it completely different to their debut album Hopes and Fears. It has this otherworldly quality to it, what sounds like an electric guitar suddenly has overtones because the chords are built differently to guitar chords.
Guitar player here. There are no hard rules for pedal order; do what sounds good to you. However, Wah-wah is usually better earlier in the chain, especially before fuzz/distortion. With the Big Muff first, it generates all those high fuzzies and static-sounding frequencies then the wah-wah sweeps those as well as the fundamental tones of the instrument. If you, instead, put the wah first, it sweeps the instrument tone, then the fuzz is applied to that sound. It’s hard to describe, but just try swapping the order of the pedals around to see what you like. No wrong answers if you like what you’re getting. 😎
@@zantetsuken-zero EQ at the end of the chain does a perfectly valid nice thing… as does putting it at the front of the chain. It just depends on personal preference and what your goals are.
@@jeffmansfield914EQ at the end gives the most control. The point of an EQ is to sculpt/filter the final output so that any frequency you want less or more of can be adjusted accordingly. Granted an EQ at the start of the chain or between two pedals in the chain can help achieve interesting effects but the intended use is most effective if placed at the end of the chain.
@@NotDingse That last sentence is where you stop making sense. “The intended use is most effective when…” Well… that depends on what the intended use is. If *your* intended use is to shape the final sound, then putting it at the end works great. If, however, someone else’s intended use is to cut some low frequencies coming from a particular guitar before it hits an overdrive pedal which gets a bit mushy with too many lows, then having the EQ near the front of the chain makes sense. In that scenario, low frequencies might cause the overdrive to break up a certain way that highs and mids don’t, and simply taking the lows out at the end of the chain isn’t going to change the characteristics of that breakup. Simple test: if you have access to an EQ pedal and an overdrive pedal, hook just those two pedals up and run 3 or 4 different settings of each pedal. Without changing any knobs or sliders, swap the order and see if it makes a difference, then go to the next settings, play, swap, etc. You’ll find that shaping the EQ before the OD makes the OD respond differently, whereas using the EQ to shape the tone after the OD works in a different way. Neither is wrong. It’s all a matter of your total rig, your priorities, and your preferences. What is “most common” is irrelevant. What a TH-camr recommends is irrelevant. What *I* say is irrelevant. There is no “most effective”, there’s only “most effective in giving you the sound you want”.
There's a pedal called the Screen Violence by Old Blood Noise Endeavors which was developed for the group CHVRCHES for their last album. It's a stereo modulated delay and reverb into a distortion (or the reverse, you can change the order), very shoegazey, and sounds incredible with keys.
I tend to use a Digitech whammy alot with my band I feel like when you pitch shift up it sounds glassy. kind of fragile but when you drop it down it gets really beefy.
I've played around with this before and got some pretty good results out of it. Tim Rice-Oxley from Keane is well-known for using guitar effects with keyboards, and I believe the intro of 'Forever Chemicals' by Placebo is a distorted piano. Also, I've tried using wah and whammy at the same time on guitar. Can confirm I couldn't get them to work well.
Several people have already mentioned flanger, and I'm a +1. Jan Hammer uses one to get some great timbre controls (not exactly piano I know, but he definitely created the state of the art for keyboards + effects back in the day.)
Those were interesting choices for pedals. Wah with keys, especially a Clavinova can sound amazing. I would suggest using an overdrive over a fuzz as fuzz just gets too chaotic. Modulation effects such as chorus, flanger, phaser, and tremolo all sound good with keys. Time-based effects such as delay and reverb also sound good, especially if you get a good modulated delay to use.
@@kentl7228yeah when I first saw the pedal choice in the video it really left me scratching my head since i was thinking reverb delay and chorus are no brainers for piano and those are some of the first kinds of pedals I would think to use for a video like this, idk how he thought a distortion pedal would sound good with a piano, I've tried it a lot in DAWs before and I can guarantee you it never sounds particularly great 😂
The Digitech Whammy would work well for synth leads. You'd simultaneously get the full octave pitch bend, similar to Chick Corea on a Minimoog, at your feet; and half/whole step bends, similar to Jan Hammer, at your fingertips on the keyboard. It's easier to play smaller intervals on the keyboard pitch wheel when the wheels range is a half or whole step. Save giant steps for your feet ;)
Great video. I love experimenting with timbre. I once put my Clavinova through my Leslie rotary speaker in an attempt to recreate the piano sound from the beginning of Pink Floyd’s Echoes and it sounded so good. Don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before!
Tony Banks from Genesis ran his piano/keyboards through a Fuzzbox for leads - especially after Anthony Phillips left the band, and Tony had to try to play or cover for some of the missing guitar parts.
The key to the Big Muff (dependent on variation tho) is to not crank the sustain knob too much. Anything past 1 or 2pm is really brittle and too saturated, you lose any note definition and fundamental.
5:04 heavy My Bloody Valentine vibes with the distortion going on while holding the keys. Mindblowing video! The Beatles experimented with piano sounds by putting them through an amp. Imagine the possibilities with all the effects pedals out there! There needs to be a second part.
One along these lines that you might want to explore is a sound used by Pink Floyd on their song Echoes. They ran an acoustic piano through a Leslie rotating speaker and hit a high note to create something that sounds like a sonar ping in movies involving submarines.
The Big Muff was the first guitar pedal I bought back in 2016 when I was 17 because my band at the time was playing Today by the Smashing Pumpkins and I wanted to get closer to Billy Corgan's guitar tone (since he's one of the best known users of those pedals) and it's still one I love using but this was still incredibly cool to watch nonetheless, the fuzz and Whammy setup was definitely reminiscent of Jack White's sound since he used both of those extensively with the White Stripes and the wah by itself instantly made me think of Money by Pink Floyd since that was what Richard Wright used for his keyboard part. If you decide to try this again I'd love to see it with modulation pedals like chorus, phaser, flanger, tremolo/vibrato or delay and maybe a different kind of gain pedal like an overdrive because fuzz can get pretty harsh, but great vid as always David, and it was super cool getting to catch the premiere as well
Canterbury bands like Caravan and Soft Machine among others used electric organs paired with fuzz pedals, wahs, guitar amps to get a really cool tone in the 70s. The big muff was a great useful pedal when I played keys in a band too!
@@GNVS300there’s not much difference between guitar and ‘bass’ effect pedals, usually just one capacitor swapped out to respond better to lower frequencies. The best thing to do for your bass is get an EQ pedal and put it before the rest of your pedals
This is cool, and you've discovered the secret to big effects on keys - play as if it were not polyphonic. I have an entire board set up with a Moog Sub37, which is not strictly monophonic, but it doesn't like playing too many notes at once either. The board started off with "spares" from my main guitar board - OD, delay, trem, Mel9, phaser, yet another delay. Two tips: two pitchy effects in the same chain start to get weird with digital artifacts (esp EHX), the Whammy IV can be touchy but works beautifully to get the "I wish my keyboard had a proper whammy bar" feel - as you played at the end. The dive bomb works nicely in reverse too, which I did on an EP a couple of year ago - start dug in to the centre of a black hole and then haul the tone out into open space. So to speak (!).
The Band's Garth Hudson played a Clavinet fed through a wah-wah pedal on "Up on Cripple Creek" (1969).[1] Keith Emerson played the instrument on Emerson, Lake & Palmer's cover of "Nut Rocker", heard on 1971's Pictures at an Exhibition. Thanks for another great video
A fun thing for piano folks who have no experience with synthesizers and their associated filters, envelopes and other gadgets. Instead of the 'whammy' pedal, I'd go with a tremolo pedal; as many pianos will have a portamento/glide control anyway. The 'muff' being a fuzz pedal was always going to be too harsh; far better to use an overdrive pedal, which is much more subtle and controllable (my biases: BOSS BD-2 Blues Driver). Autowha pedals, while not giving the control, can be good for the initial (filter sweep) attacks of the 'chuck-a-whucka' sound of a manual wah. As sortof alluded to, making your 'keyboard' sound like a guitar is definitely a 'thing'... and I always go to Jan Hammer's "Miami Vice" theme for a good example of it... and again, he used the Fairlight CMI for some of the sounds (go Oz!)... th-cam.com/video/dEjXPY9jOx8/w-d-xo.html
I believe Gary Wright uses a wah pedal with his keyboard here. Spooky Tooth: Moriah live 1974 th-cam.com/video/g39KU0tIwrE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=E2dQhfJEap_oZoIy please correct me if I’m wrong, but I see him using a pedal.
The whammy and the wah work well with keyboards. Even for guitar, a Big Muff would sound better used in moderation for sustain with some compression and distortion. Here's a short video I just made recently of an updated version of the Big Muff to get a smooth sustain on guitar single notes. th-cam.com/users/shortsphNkN9YJgSQ
The fuzz pedal sounds like NIN! Is that what Trent Reznor has been doing all these years, using guitar pedals with his keyboards (amongst other unknown effects and equipments, of course)? The point being, it's a great idea!
I think using a Big Muff-style pedal with a mix knob would work better on piano. That way you could blend it in in parallel and still have the clean signal underneath. I know my Bass Big Muff has a mix knob. I imagine others do too, especially when you consider the hundreds of Big Muff knockoffs made by other companies.
Eddie Van Halen used distortion on his Rhodes/Wurlitzer on ...And The Cradle Will Rock, probably not a Big Muff. I think the trick with distortion and piano is not to overdo it, less is more.
Ahh you need a phaser like a phase 45 and a morley wah which is much wider range. a leslie pedal like a Vent would be amazing as well! Also a good tremolo like the JAM harmonious monk. These are all pedals better suited to piano/electric piano. Do you have a Rhodes or Wurlitzer sound in the nord?
I think some time-based effects or modulation effects could be cool too: delay, chorus, flanger, tremolo, etc. Reverb is probably a bit too basic. I think we've all heard a piano with reverb on it.
When I saw the title I immediately thought of Is It Any Wonder? by Keane. I am sure they used lots of effects on the Under the Iron Sea album, though I'm not sure exactly what technology they used. Your demo of the Big Muff does sound like it though.
Distorted piano sound was a very instrumental part of Keane's "Under The Iron Sea" album - songs like Is It Any Wonder and Crystal Ball in particular! Worth a listen for sure
I actually really love the sound of some of these and could imagine using them to great effect in a song, not just as a fun goof on the internet. The way you're using the whammy and wah-wah was interesting because a few of the pieces you played with each (and both) reminded me of the sort of manipulation hip-hop producers do to samples for trap music. They use a lot of that kind of "hey, there's something wrong with the record" tweaking with effects to give samples a weird vintage, distorted, dissonant, and/or glitched vibe. As far as other pedals for future videos, I don't have any particularly good ones jumping out of my brain at the moment (I just recovered from a nasty case of the covid and am running on only about half my cylinders presently), but I'd love to hear you try to use the whammy pedal again (by itself or in conjunction with the other pedals) in a more targeted way to get the effect a good guitarist gets when playing a soulful solo. Y'know, bending the notes in a more meaningful way/time/distance rather than just sort of dropping it in as a rhythmic accent or glitch-moment like you were doing. Something like the way David Gilmour might play a guitar solo, for instance. I think you could get some real bluesy vibes going and bring emotion to a piano piece in a different way than you might normally. Anyway, great video! I love this kind of "experimenting with unusual equipment combos" type stuff.
You might get some uses out of things like delay, chorus or tremelo. It would be interesting to run the stereo channels through different effects, like a delay on one side and light overdrive/chorus on the other
Thanks for your videos David. The theory stuff is always fascinating and well presented. This video is a bit different, which is good, and got me thinking which of my guitar pedals might work well with my Nord. Thanks.
Very interesting - sent me to my laptop to mix PianoTeq with effects from Helix Native. Lots of nonsense fun but I think there’s a good reason why grand piano isn’t usually subject to effects. Kind of loses its character. A clean guitar signal by contrast isn’t very characterful and is only really useful for percussion/funk/ska. Would be interesting to see an exploration of how effects are actually used on tracks with e-pianos etc.
Whammy and wah was cool! Univibe maybe? Chorus and delay seem too obvious unless you try stacking delays? EHX Super Ego or Mainframe? Way Huge Atreides? I really liked the pitch wobble from the Whammy 😍
Dunno about you, but when I put my wah in front of the univibe it gets slightly gritty/boosted. Would love to hear that as well cos it's such a sick sound imo
@@P_p_Br0 wah/fuzz order is an interesting one for sure! Could do with like an A/B switch to flip the order 😎 univibe into chorus can sound pretty trippy too ✌️
I would love to see more sound design sort of stuff on this channel!
I was just thinking how keyboards are a bit inhibited (hushed My mouth!).
A lot of Canterbury-based bands like Caravan, Soft Machine (and other bands that couldn't afford synthesizers in the 70s) used electric organs/pianos with fuzz and wah pedals hooked into guitar amps. It makes for a really unique sound that would be great to hear again. Guess it became a lot more convenient to gig with a synthesizer than a big setup with an organ + amp.
In The Land Of Grey And Pink, Rotters’ Club and Soft Machine’s Third are my favourites
@@CentipedeMKDS You took the words straight out of my keyboard. I prefer "Fourth" to "Third", though
*Mike Ratledge has entered the chat* 😂
Oh man I love Caravan so much.
Richard Sinclair is my favorite bassist
Back in 1989 my friends and I played Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden in the school music competition. We only had one guitarist and a keyboard so put the keyboard through a boss HM-2 to replicate the other guitar. The whammy kind of does the same job as the "bender" control which I think originated with the mini moog? Of course, you have to try a Boss Metalzone. And the Korg Miku.
You could split the signal into two equalizer pedals to send high a low notes through different effect chains
Pedal order matters with Wah and distortion
Most guitar players in my experience tend to go wah first then distortion
But distortion then wah can be cool
If you have two distortion pedals, put one before and one after the wah so you can use either
Or have both distortions on
Part of the fun with pedals is playing around with pedal order
Awesome! There was this band called Oh My God that used to do stuff like this.
It would be great to hear how chorus, delay, shimmer reverb or flanger sound with piano
I think also a lot of the sound of Deep Purple is coming from the distorted organ. Probably a lot of piano with fuzz is out there, you just kind of assume that it's a guitar if you hear some riff with distortion in a song.
Auto wah (envelope filter) on piano (especially a clav) is instant Stevie Wonder
You should probably put the whammy pedal first, because the noise and overtones from the big muff can cause the whammy to glitch and sound more like a ring modulator.
Cool. Reverb, delay and phaser next?
Chorus, phaser, and or tremolo pedals would all be neat to hear.
not done as often cause harder to play some chords on Keyboard with the same speed as guitar, harder to accent strings, Slides, vibrato, etc in the same way a guitar would sound, and harder to head bang and look cool on keyboard.
Give the Life Pedal a try!
tempo delay , reverb , chorus , phazer , all the stuff they chuck thue synths
Are you running that into an FRFR amp or are you routing it back into the Nords onboard speakers?
Fender Rhodes and wah pedal was a very popular combination early 70s (Pink Floyd, Alan Parson project spring to mind but there were many others), Chorus pedals have been used extensively with keyboards from electric pianos and early synths which didn't have in-built effects. Phaser was one Jean-Michael Jarre used a lot especially on the emininet string synth to give the sweeping effect on his early albums.
Tony Banks used a Fender Blender fuzz during the prog days with Genesis. They just reissued the Fender Blender, so there's a good option. The Big Muff is not a good match for a keyboard, but other dirt can be. A Strymon Deco has subtle tape overdrive that sounds wonderful on keyboards, as does the drive circuit in rotary sim pedals like the EHX Lester K. So any other low-gain effects like that will sound better than a sloppy-sounding Muff.
What floyd songs use it?
The big muff just make the keyboard sound like an electric guitar, which doesn't make sense to do, unless you don't have a guitar (player)
@@NBrixH First one that comes to mind is Money during the sax solo
@@LeifNelandDk You reminded me of the first iteration of The Misfits. A rare instance where a punk band had no guitarist, but a fuzz keyboard played by singer Glenn Danzig. th-cam.com/video/RCAtTQf5T1E/w-d-xo.htmlfeature=shared
I wonder what fuzz he used though, as it actually doesn't sound half bad, even with the crappy recording.
Very nine inch nails with the Big Muff
And like Muse with the arpeggios
I was thinking either Muse or My Morning Jacket
Very SHIT sound indeed
ooh look at me, I'm so much better than you because I don't like things @@Kouros-t6d
very daft punk also
The whammy pedal with the piano has such a magical sound. It’s reminds me a lot of Thom Yorke’s music, especially “Pink Section”
I’m glad I found this comment. It reminds me of the album A moon shaped pool!
Incubus - Stellar.
The Wah pedal was originally imagined as an effect for organs which (I think) generally take effects better than a piano. If you want a great example of how an organ can sound with something like the Big Muff you should check out the version of 'Speed King' by Deep Purple on their Made In Japan Album. Admittedly Jon Lord is running his Hammond B3 into an overdriven Marshall guitar amp but the effect is pretty similar.
All a whammy is an middle EQ pot so you can get the same affect scooping the middle on any amp.
It was a pot circuit taken from a Vox amp. The engineer was playing with the sweep using his fingers on the pot. It was suggested to mount it into a volume pedal. So they did and used it on a guitar. The leader of the company said it sounds like a trumpet with a mute and wanted to sell them for trumpet players. He couldn't be convinced by the inventors it was a guitar product. He even got Clyde McCoy (a then popular) to put his name on it to sell more units. So a trumpet player who never used it, got a commission for each one sold, which was almost exclusively used on guitars.
@@kentl7228it’s funny because the original Maestro Fuzz was marketed as “make your electric bass or guitar sound like a brass instrument”. It was a FLOP until Keith Richards used it on “Satisfaction”(and he was actually using it to mimic what he thought would be replaced with an actual trumpet!)
@@kentl7228 One of my favourite parts of music/instrument history is that there's so many examples of people trying to make one instrument sound like another that end up becoming staples of either a particular genre or instrument for completely different reasons, the first overdrive pedals were marketed towards making b sax or brass sounds, as were the wah, and the early uni-vibe, which was the precursor to chorus, phase and flange pedals, was apparently marketed to make your guitar sound like a sitar, hell, the entire synthesizer industry is built upon trying to emulate various instruments and not doing a very good job. I think some of what is missing in modern music creation is that aspect of failed emulation leading to new and interesting sounds. Kinda hard to mess around with a half-assed trumpet sound and get something new when you've got 100's of genuine trumpets available at a click.
David actually had to put shoes on for this one
Or he just wears his shoes but never actually shows them in videos because there's no need to for most of the time
@@tlazohtlalia Frankly weird if that's the case
This is basically the entire spiel behind “Is it any wonder” by Keane: Just a singer, drummer and heavily distorted electric piano. They use it to great effect; it’s a very unique sound 🙂 Just from the title, that song was my forest thought, and I had to pause this video to relisten… Also, the video is simple, but awesome!
I love that song, but the point is not the effects… They’re cool and all, but it’s the artistry that matters!
@luke5100 I was actually with Keane for part of the Hopes and Fears tour and I’m not aware of them using any effects pedals, at least on the CP-70B. They did use a number of piano effects on Under the Iron Sea. I’m happy to be corrected though.
Keane, and especially their _Under The Iron Sea_ album, was my first thought after watching the video, since they use such a unique piano sound for it that it left a pretty big lasting impression on me. Very glad to see others bringing them up here too!
I did find a video on the making of _UTIS,_ and about 7 minutes in they show Rice-Oxley experimenting with the sound for _Is It Any Wonder?_ with a ton of effect pedals stacked on top of the piano, adjusting some individually and then combining them all. It's quite a fascinating process that I'm a little disappointed that I never looked into sooner.
Listening back to the _Hopes and Fears_ album, it seems like there are a few tracks that do more minor distortions to the piano, but none of it is as extreme as _UTIS_ and they usually stick to a clean piano sound instead.
Nice David! Would love to see a part 2 on this focusing on modulation pedals i.e. chorus, phase, flanger, tremolo, vibrato, uni vibe, etc
Some fantastic sounds to be had with those, and more suited to keys 😊
As a guitarist who dabbles in piano I've long thought it an interesting idea to make a solid body electric piano. Imagine the pickups on that sucker!
Fun fact, Keane's entire album Under The Iron Sea (2006) was deliberately recorded using piano/synth and guitar effects, making it completely different to their debut album Hopes and Fears. It has this otherworldly quality to it, what sounds like an electric guitar suddenly has overtones because the chords are built differently to guitar chords.
Compressor, phaser and chorus pedals are also worth experimenting with. And echo of course :)
Yes, chorus pedal specifically would be interesting.
I think the wah wah pedal would be really interesting to play with just for the two different tones
Guitar player here. There are no hard rules for pedal order; do what sounds good to you. However, Wah-wah is usually better earlier in the chain, especially before fuzz/distortion. With the Big Muff first, it generates all those high fuzzies and static-sounding frequencies then the wah-wah sweeps those as well as the fundamental tones of the instrument. If you, instead, put the wah first, it sweeps the instrument tone, then the fuzz is applied to that sound. It’s hard to describe, but just try swapping the order of the pedals around to see what you like. No wrong answers if you like what you’re getting. 😎
Wah after muff is at least for me, someone who is into garage rock, almost like the correct way to do it.
you should put your equalizer at the end of your pedal chain though
@@zantetsuken-zero
EQ at the end of the chain does a perfectly valid nice thing… as does putting it at the front of the chain. It just depends on personal preference and what your goals are.
@@jeffmansfield914EQ at the end gives the most control. The point of an EQ is to sculpt/filter the final output so that any frequency you want less or more of can be adjusted accordingly.
Granted an EQ at the start of the chain or between two pedals in the chain can help achieve interesting effects but the intended use is most effective if placed at the end of the chain.
@@NotDingse
That last sentence is where you stop making sense.
“The intended use is most effective when…”
Well… that depends on what the intended use is. If *your* intended use is to shape the final sound, then putting it at the end works great. If, however, someone else’s intended use is to cut some low frequencies coming from a particular guitar before it hits an overdrive pedal which gets a bit mushy with too many lows, then having the EQ near the front of the chain makes sense. In that scenario, low frequencies might cause the overdrive to break up a certain way that highs and mids don’t, and simply taking the lows out at the end of the chain isn’t going to change the characteristics of that breakup.
Simple test: if you have access to an EQ pedal and an overdrive pedal, hook just those two pedals up and run 3 or 4 different settings of each pedal. Without changing any knobs or sliders, swap the order and see if it makes a difference, then go to the next settings, play, swap, etc. You’ll find that shaping the EQ before the OD makes the OD respond differently, whereas using the EQ to shape the tone after the OD works in a different way. Neither is wrong. It’s all a matter of your total rig, your priorities, and your preferences. What is “most common” is irrelevant. What a TH-camr recommends is irrelevant. What *I* say is irrelevant. There is no “most effective”, there’s only “most effective in giving you the sound you want”.
There's a pedal called the Screen Violence by Old Blood Noise Endeavors which was developed for the group CHVRCHES for their last album. It's a stereo modulated delay and reverb into a distortion (or the reverse, you can change the order), very shoegazey, and sounds incredible with keys.
At 4:48 it almost sounded like you were going to play the electric version of Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)" cool sound!
Haha…YES. BUT would also be great for “Spirit In The Sky”. Often imitated, never duplicated. 😅
I love that piece at the end, sounds a bit like tape-flutter. Very beautiful.
I tend to use a Digitech whammy alot with my band I feel like when you pitch shift up it sounds glassy. kind of fragile but when you drop it down it gets really beefy.
I love this channel. Thanks for teaching me stuff I never knew existed!👍❤️
I like your profile picture and banner as well
I've played around with this before and got some pretty good results out of it. Tim Rice-Oxley from Keane is well-known for using guitar effects with keyboards, and I believe the intro of 'Forever Chemicals' by Placebo is a distorted piano.
Also, I've tried using wah and whammy at the same time on guitar. Can confirm I couldn't get them to work well.
A Keane observation 🙂
Several people have already mentioned flanger, and I'm a +1. Jan Hammer uses one to get some great timbre controls (not exactly piano I know, but he definitely created the state of the art for keyboards + effects back in the day.)
Reminded me of George Duke's guitar solo on synthesizer back in '83. Fooled alot of guitarist 😀 And it's all in the phrasing.
Cheers from 🇸🇪
Tony Banks messed around with keyboards through guitar pedals in the past. Phasers and such. They sound very interesting!
And when he doubled with Hackett it was wonderful, wasn't it?
Those were interesting choices for pedals. Wah with keys, especially a Clavinova can sound amazing. I would suggest using an overdrive over a fuzz as fuzz just gets too chaotic. Modulation effects such as chorus, flanger, phaser, and tremolo all sound good with keys. Time-based effects such as delay and reverb also sound good, especially if you get a good modulated delay to use.
As soon as he started playing with the wah, I could totally hear Stevie Wonder with a wah and a clavinet.
Absolutely correct. He should have demonstrated a capable delay pedal, but like you said, tremolo, flanger and phaser too. He should do a part two.
@@kentl7228yeah when I first saw the pedal choice in the video it really left me scratching my head since i was thinking reverb delay and chorus are no brainers for piano and those are some of the first kinds of pedals I would think to use for a video like this, idk how he thought a distortion pedal would sound good with a piano, I've tried it a lot in DAWs before and I can guarantee you it never sounds particularly great 😂
Love the sound of Fender Rhodes with phaser or chorus !
I guess most Rhodes we hear on recordings will have been sent through some kind of effects. Tremeolo/Panning would probably be the most common.
Oh yes! A friend of mine uses a Roland Jazz Chorus amp for his Rhodes. The built-in Chorus of this amp fits perfectly to the Rhodes.
The Digitech Whammy would work well for synth leads. You'd simultaneously get the full octave pitch bend, similar to Chick Corea on a Minimoog, at your feet; and half/whole step bends, similar to Jan Hammer, at your fingertips on the keyboard. It's easier to play smaller intervals on the keyboard pitch wheel when the wheels range is a half or whole step. Save giant steps for your feet ;)
i actually loved how the big muff and the wah pedal interacted
The big muff sound almost reminds of Pokémon music on an old Gameboy 😂
Great video. I love experimenting with timbre. I once put my Clavinova through my Leslie rotary speaker in an attempt to recreate the piano sound from the beginning of Pink Floyd’s Echoes and it sounded so good. Don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before!
Tony Banks from Genesis ran his piano/keyboards through a Fuzzbox for leads - especially after Anthony Phillips left the band, and Tony had to try to play or cover for some of the missing guitar parts.
The key to the Big Muff (dependent on variation tho) is to not crank the sustain knob too much. Anything past 1 or 2pm is really brittle and too saturated, you lose any note definition and fundamental.
yep, there are sweet spots to find
Yeah, I wasn't impressed he just dimed it. Or put the wah AFTER the fuzz. Unless he tried different ways and just dug this...
Ackshuallyyyy
That muff sounds the bollocks!! Would love to hear it on an album or live.
Smashing pumpkins use it in every song
As a guitar player, when i played a digital piano for the first time i was sad to find out none of the foot pedals was a wah wah pedal
5:04 heavy My Bloody Valentine vibes with the distortion going on while holding the keys. Mindblowing video! The Beatles experimented with piano sounds by putting them through an amp. Imagine the possibilities with all the effects pedals out there! There needs to be a second part.
One along these lines that you might want to explore is a sound used by Pink Floyd on their song Echoes. They ran an acoustic piano through a Leslie rotating speaker and hit a high note to create something that sounds like a sonar ping in movies involving submarines.
The Big Muff was the first guitar pedal I bought back in 2016 when I was 17 because my band at the time was playing Today by the Smashing Pumpkins and I wanted to get closer to Billy Corgan's guitar tone (since he's one of the best known users of those pedals) and it's still one I love using but this was still incredibly cool to watch nonetheless, the fuzz and Whammy setup was definitely reminiscent of Jack White's sound since he used both of those extensively with the White Stripes and the wah by itself instantly made me think of Money by Pink Floyd since that was what Richard Wright used for his keyboard part. If you decide to try this again I'd love to see it with modulation pedals like chorus, phaser, flanger, tremolo/vibrato or delay and maybe a different kind of gain pedal like an overdrive because fuzz can get pretty harsh, but great vid as always David, and it was super cool getting to catch the premiere as well
Canterbury bands like Caravan and Soft Machine among others used electric organs paired with fuzz pedals, wahs, guitar amps to get a really cool tone in the 70s. The big muff was a great useful pedal when I played keys in a band too!
Big Muffs work great on bass too. Chris Wolstenholme uses 2.
@@wingracer1614 does he use the Bass Big Muff? Because I have the Big Muff Nano and it sounds dreadful with my bass.
@@GNVS300 Probably but i'm not sure to be honest. Could be the old russian greens for all I know
@@GNVS300there’s not much difference between guitar and ‘bass’ effect pedals, usually just one capacitor swapped out to respond better to lower frequencies. The best thing to do for your bass is get an EQ pedal and put it before the rest of your pedals
This is cool, and you've discovered the secret to big effects on keys - play as if it were not polyphonic. I have an entire board set up with a Moog Sub37, which is not strictly monophonic, but it doesn't like playing too many notes at once either. The board started off with "spares" from my main guitar board - OD, delay, trem, Mel9, phaser, yet another delay. Two tips: two pitchy effects in the same chain start to get weird with digital artifacts (esp EHX), the Whammy IV can be touchy but works beautifully to get the "I wish my keyboard had a proper whammy bar" feel - as you played at the end. The dive bomb works nicely in reverse too, which I did on an EP a couple of year ago - start dug in to the centre of a black hole and then haul the tone out into open space. So to speak (!).
The Band's Garth Hudson played a Clavinet fed through a wah-wah pedal on "Up on Cripple Creek" (1969).[1] Keith Emerson played the instrument on Emerson, Lake & Palmer's cover of "Nut Rocker", heard on 1971's Pictures at an Exhibition. Thanks for another great video
Hudson used a”Mutron”.
Effects pedals are “inspiration in a box”. Using them can send you into places you might never have thought of. Definitely recommend experimentation!
A fun thing for piano folks who have no experience with synthesizers and their associated filters, envelopes and other gadgets.
Instead of the 'whammy' pedal, I'd go with a tremolo pedal; as many pianos will have a portamento/glide control anyway.
The 'muff' being a fuzz pedal was always going to be too harsh; far better to use an overdrive pedal, which is much more subtle and controllable (my biases: BOSS BD-2 Blues Driver).
Autowha pedals, while not giving the control, can be good for the initial (filter sweep) attacks of the 'chuck-a-whucka' sound of a manual wah.
As sortof alluded to, making your 'keyboard' sound like a guitar is definitely a 'thing'... and I always go to Jan Hammer's "Miami Vice" theme for a good example of it... and again, he used the Fairlight CMI for some of the sounds (go Oz!)...
th-cam.com/video/dEjXPY9jOx8/w-d-xo.html
I believe Gary Wright uses a wah pedal with his keyboard here.
Spooky Tooth:
Moriah live 1974
th-cam.com/video/g39KU0tIwrE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=E2dQhfJEap_oZoIy
please correct me if I’m wrong, but I see him using a pedal.
The Big Muff makes the piano sound like you boosted the volume beyond the max.
I recently used a univibe on my piano and it actually sounded amazing. Ig that's kinda like the thing u tried to do with the first pedal
The whammy and the wah work well with keyboards. Even for guitar, a Big Muff would sound better used in moderation for sustain with some compression and distortion. Here's a short video I just made recently of an updated version of the Big Muff to get a smooth sustain on guitar single notes. th-cam.com/users/shortsphNkN9YJgSQ
The fuzz pedal sounds like NIN! Is that what Trent Reznor has been doing all these years, using guitar pedals with his keyboards (amongst other unknown effects and equipments, of course)? The point being, it's a great idea!
I think using a Big Muff-style pedal with a mix knob would work better on piano. That way you could blend it in in parallel and still have the clean signal underneath. I know my Bass Big Muff has a mix knob. I imagine others do too, especially when you consider the hundreds of Big Muff knockoffs made by other companies.
Eddie Van Halen used distortion on his Rhodes/Wurlitzer on ...And The Cradle Will Rock, probably not a Big Muff. I think the trick with distortion and piano is not to overdo it, less is more.
Ahh you need a phaser like a phase 45 and a morley wah which is much wider range. a leslie pedal like a Vent would be amazing as well! Also a good tremolo like the JAM harmonious monk. These are all pedals better suited to piano/electric piano. Do you have a Rhodes or Wurlitzer sound in the nord?
5:55 sounds like something LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER would do on his modular synth setup
David, that's an interesting experiment !! I like the Wah/Whammy combo. I think a stereo delay with a ping pong effect would sound interesting!!
I think some time-based effects or modulation effects could be cool too: delay, chorus, flanger, tremolo, etc. Reverb is probably a bit too basic. I think we've all heard a piano with reverb on it.
Couldn't you just have used the built-in effects on your Nord which means your could just use an expression pedal for wah-wah?
Effects like fuzz + distortion tend to benefit from the tone shaping of a cabinet or other IR downstream. It gets rid of some of the harshness.
Keane's 2nd album was recorded using guitar pedals on a piano. This band doesnt have a guitarrist. It sounds like a weird guitar.
When I saw the title I immediately thought of Is It Any Wonder? by Keane. I am sure they used lots of effects on the Under the Iron Sea album, though I'm not sure exactly what technology they used. Your demo of the Big Muff does sound like it though.
The issue with distortion pedals is that keyboards are much bigger level than guitars, so any level sensitive overdrive goes nuts.
Keyboard can have integrated these kind of bend and expression shifts, but having them as a pedal frees the left hand.
Hi David!!love your videos got me into music and jazz theory thanks!
Ps I would love it if you did more videos on Jacob collier. I’m big fan :)
Very interesting, in an experience before you die sort of way; but, that's enough.
Alt Title: “Pianist discovers the joy of being a guitarist!”
4:12 sounds like Stoner Rock or like Justice - Waters of Nazareth
Reverb, delay, tremolo, and the Chase Bliss MOOD!
Distorted piano sound was a very instrumental part of Keane's "Under The Iron Sea" album - songs like Is It Any Wonder and Crystal Ball in particular! Worth a listen for sure
I actually really love the sound of some of these and could imagine using them to great effect in a song, not just as a fun goof on the internet. The way you're using the whammy and wah-wah was interesting because a few of the pieces you played with each (and both) reminded me of the sort of manipulation hip-hop producers do to samples for trap music. They use a lot of that kind of "hey, there's something wrong with the record" tweaking with effects to give samples a weird vintage, distorted, dissonant, and/or glitched vibe.
As far as other pedals for future videos, I don't have any particularly good ones jumping out of my brain at the moment (I just recovered from a nasty case of the covid and am running on only about half my cylinders presently), but I'd love to hear you try to use the whammy pedal again (by itself or in conjunction with the other pedals) in a more targeted way to get the effect a good guitarist gets when playing a soulful solo. Y'know, bending the notes in a more meaningful way/time/distance rather than just sort of dropping it in as a rhythmic accent or glitch-moment like you were doing. Something like the way David Gilmour might play a guitar solo, for instance. I think you could get some real bluesy vibes going and bring emotion to a piano piece in a different way than you might normally.
Anyway, great video! I love this kind of "experimenting with unusual equipment combos" type stuff.
The reason us guitarists don't use two expression pedals at the same time is because it doesn't leave us with a leg to stand on!
You might get some uses out of things like delay, chorus or tremelo. It would be interesting to run the stereo channels through different effects, like a delay on one side and light overdrive/chorus on the other
I wanna see you try some milder overdrives like the Tube Screamer, and maybe some Spring Reverb
You almost got a bit of C64 SiD sound there with the Muff.
7:07 - When I hear this sound, I immediately 'heard 'The Status Quo's 'Pictures of Matchstick Men' from 1968!
Haha! Your enthusiasm and creativity reminds me of when I first got my first Boss flanger and delay pedals back in the 80's.
That’s some great looking converses you’ve got there my man😅
Thanks for your videos David. The theory stuff is always fascinating and well presented. This video is a bit different, which is good, and got me thinking which of my guitar pedals might work well with my Nord. Thanks.
Thank you 😊
A phase pedal would have been a better choice than any of these. MXR phaser with a Rhodes sound is a classic combo
you should try the big muff with an amp/cab sim. no guitarist will plug a guitar and a distortion pedal straight into an audio interface
Pianists discovering keyboards/synths:
The Big Muff on a piano sounds like extremely bass-boosted music.
Interesting, the effect chorus was created for keyboard, but guitar players adopted it.
Surely a chorus pedal would sound great on a piano?
Sound quite nice with a bit of distortion on the electric piano
I believe Keith Emerson used to run his Hammond B3 through some sort of distortion pedal.
Very interesting - sent me to my laptop to mix PianoTeq with effects from Helix Native. Lots of nonsense fun but I think there’s a good reason why grand piano isn’t usually subject to effects. Kind of loses its character. A clean guitar signal by contrast isn’t very characterful and is only really useful for percussion/funk/ska. Would be interesting to see an exploration of how effects are actually used on tracks with e-pianos etc.
The whammy bar could be used to get some microtonal notes !
remember to use power chords with fuzz!
I actually got your own ad on this video lmao
hey david bennett piano you should do a video on my time by bo en the chords are very cool
Whammy and wah was cool! Univibe maybe? Chorus and delay seem too obvious unless you try stacking delays? EHX Super Ego or Mainframe? Way Huge Atreides? I really liked the pitch wobble from the Whammy 😍
Dunno about you, but when I put my wah in front of the univibe it gets slightly gritty/boosted. Would love to hear that as well cos it's such a sick sound imo
@@P_p_Br0 wah/fuzz order is an interesting one for sure! Could do with like an A/B switch to flip the order 😎 univibe into chorus can sound pretty trippy too ✌️