Topic: Creating a sliding guitar

[djp]

Hi does anyone know how to create a a sllding guitar effect , i saw one done in a bass and wondered how it was achieved
Thank you

[mikf]

You use pitch bend, can be done by hand or with a foot pedal (expression pedal).
Mike

[DrakeM]

You can slap the key real hard and get a slide effect too.

Funny you should ask ... because I have been making a bunch of Hawaiian styles for several songs. I have been using the Aloha guitar with some effects on it. We only have two Hawaiian styles to look to for examples. There is a third one but it is called "Hawaiian waltz" but the hula is only done to 4/4 timing. So, the waltz style is USELESS ... thanks Yamaha for nothing on that one ... lol

Next week I will post the first of my Hawaiian songs called the "Drums of the Islands" (it contains no Aloha guitar parts) then in two week I'll post "Lovely Hula Hands" (which has the Aloha guitar). 

Regards
Drake

[Duffy]

Many thanks in advance Drake.
Really looking forward to these because, like you, I think Yamaha have skimped badly when it comes to Hawaiian styles & sounds.
It's such a gentle and relaxing sound to listen to and, apart from an old Asian guy on You Tube, I haven't heard anyone do a convincing job.

[jwyvern]

In addition to Hawaiian, you can look for slide guitars in the Legacy section.
In the E. GUITAR section there are 6 more and in A. GUITAR there are 2. All slide when you play with higher velocity, the E's sounding more impressive to my ears by default, but they probably all can be improved upon by assigning suitable DSP's.

John

[djp]

You use pitch bend, can be done by hand or with a foot pedal (expression pedal).
Mike

N n actualy create the slide effect

[mikf]

There are some voices with built in slide, but I have never thought they were very realistic because the length or depth of the slide cannot be tailored and the way you activate them - sharp press of the key - changes the volume. Don Mason is an expert at using the pitch bend wheel, and has mastered moving his lh from the chord to add the pitch change and back without missing a chord change. He is the best I have heard using this method, and it always sounds very authentic. I prefer to use an expression pedal to bend and slide notes. It seems the easy way to make note slide sound very realistic, not just on guitar, but on sax and trombone. I played piano, drums and guitar, so using foot pedals was normal for me but with a little practice I think anyone can master this.
Mike

[jwyvern]

N n actualy create the slide effect

I used to create slides on various voices (saxes, trumpets violins as well as guitars). This was done by editing the appropriate preset voices in the PC Editor (provided for Tyros) , which was the fore-runner to YEM, producing so called custom voices. Without going into all the detail you could duplicate 1 or more of the existing voice elements, and using the editor could lower the pitch a semitone or so at the start of the duplicate element(s) sliding the pitch back to normal, all within say the first half second of the tone.
Then the velocity range of the original element would be altered, say to 1-95 while the sliding element's should in this case be set to 96-127. This results in the voice playing normally at modest velocities, but if you hit the keys harder the standard element will stay silent while the duplicate takes over with its accompanying slide up to pitch. Some voices had 2 slides of differing length depending on the precise hit velocity.
These voices (made for Tyros1-4) still work fine on Genos and sound realistic because they were adjusted  to be so and the playing technique needs to follow suit but unfortunately the YEM editor no longer allows you to set velocity ranges on preset elements, although it can be done with external voice samples eg wav files, if anyone wants to try it.

John

[djp]

thanks for that info as i have a genos what programme would you recommend

[jwyvern]

Hi djp,
Nowadays I too have Genos and unfortunately the full capability of the previous PC Editor is no longer available for it (or Tyros5). YEM does provide for editing of a limited range of preset voices but since it does not permit setting of velocity ranges on their voice elements you would need to create (by recording say to wav) your own samples of a voice (in this case you could include SA voices if you wish) and since these would be "external" samples YEM  will enable assigment of velocity ranges in this case.
Some of the preset voices eg. BrightTrombone contain multi-elements so that the stridency changes as the player uses higher velocities. It was relatively easy to edit the third element using YEM to put in a slide/bend without a need to edit velocity in this case, so that the modified voice will bend when the default velocity for that element is reached. It works well but is not a general solution.
Sorry, I have no experience with 3rd Party software to create samples or to edit voices to produce slides, although hopefully others on the Forum may be able to help.
Regards, John

[andyg]

There is a third one but it is called "Hawaiian waltz" but the hula is only done to 4/4 timing. So, the waltz style is USELESS ... thanks Yamaha for nothing on that one ... lol

Maybe not totally useless? Pagan Love Song is in 3/4 and I have a great Hawaiian arrangement of that one. I've not tried that style but if it's around 80 to 90 at its natural speed, it should work!

And yes, using the pitch bend wheel or lever (and perhaps the mod wheel as well) whilst not missing a chord does take some thinking and a lot of practice to get right. I get my students using it early on, and develop that skill as they progress through the grades.

[Amwilburn]

Not the same thing, *but*

Instead of assigning a pedal to pitch bend (or using the joystick/ pitch wheel, which tends to sound artificial) you could set a pedal to glide (down) and basically tap the pedal just before you play a note (let go of the pedal just as you play the note). Set the off speed to 1 (otherwise the portamento /glide time is too long). Of course, this is useless if you're trying to bend a single note on top of a chord polyphonically (like the built in Hawaiian guitars)

Unless you're not talking about a 2 semitone glide, but like an octave+ pick slide? In which case any pitch bending solutions while sound fake, and you're better off putting a sampled pick slide as the higher velocity sample.