Not exactly unguitar-ing, but one of my favourites David T Walker had this “pinky harp” technique that made the guitar sound like a harp. Once I learned to do it I cant stop using it, such a nice sound.

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Norns has arrived, and running the OX into MLR is a total dream come true. Will post some stuff if I ever crawl out of my cave.

If it hasn’t been mentioned already, Ultomaton is fantastic for unguitar vagaries.

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Not much original, but since it wasn’t mentioned, I say Old Blood Noise Endeavors Dark Star reverb pedal, especially in crush mode, especially if externally pitch-controlled. I occasionally run it into an heavy distortion pedal later in the signal chain (that is the opposite of the usual distortion into reverb): the way the development and decay of the reverb level affects the distortion amount would create interesting textures. Just my two cents.

Talking about works of other, well, Lisbon by Keith Fullerton Whitman is easily my favorite un-guitar piece.

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All of the T Putnam Hill/Travis P. Hill (me) albums here (https://lomaeditions.bandcamp.com/) at least attempt for un-guitar territory. Granular delay and/or synthesis is almost always involved, as are all sorts of reverbs, amplitude modulations, and in the older pieces, a very handy 4MS Nocto Loco, which I regrettably parted with several years ago.

“Quaver_C” was composed of some very junky acoustic guitar recordings I thought I had no use for. But then I ran them through Ableton and some M4L devices and got that little ditty. The other three albums are all live “playthroughs” (as KFW might call them)—no overdubs, using the aforementioned techniques.

Another useful tool in my un-guitar adventures—and which I also regrettably parted with—was the Lightfoot Labs Goatkeeper (https://lightfootlabs.com/gk3/), which was a great way to remove the attack from my playing, among other uses.

As a side note, I got rid of the Goatkeeper awhile back because it just took up too much space on my pedalboard. In my search for a link to share in this post, I was super surprised and happy to find out that Malekko has overhauled it into a smaller format (https://malekkoheavyindustry.com/product/malekko-goatkeeper/). I might have to grab one after my next paycheck.

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Thought this would be a good place to post a bit of @Justmat’s Bounds working some magic on a very simple guitar lick.

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thank you so much for sharing this!! i read your post a while back and tried the drumstick between the strings trick. turns out it functions as a weird bouncing whammy bar as well. one of the resulting experiments made it onto my new “guitars only” e.p. based on dante’s inferno. track #9 is the most explicit example of “the drumstick guitar” (still not sure if i’m playing it “right”… is there a right way here?!) constructive criticism and any other ideas would be more than welcome…

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I think the rules are:

  1. Sound cool.
  2. Don’t break anything.
  3. If Rule 2 isn’t followed, @merlatte is not liable.

So, yep, seems all correct. Nice track! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Recorded my guitar yesterday while it was windy

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A couple months ago I did this little ditty on a nylon string guitar using a pencil as a third bridge, similar to what a lot of you in this thread have done with drum sticks. Since it’s thinner, it’s less firmly attached and causes all of this buzzing and rattling.

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that was gorgeous, thank you for sharing - especially liked the rattle on the lower strings

I’ll definitely be raiding my son’s pot of pencils at some point in the near future!!

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anyone know where to get a partial capo with individual ’ ’ fingers ’ ’ that depress any chosen strings

saw one in an instagram ad once and now im like … I want one …

seems like a useful tool for those folks (me) who only ever play open strings and harmonics (me) & hit the stings w/ household items (m e) so it sounds “ambient” ( ( me ))

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could you be thinking of the Spider Capo?

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yes that is the thing !

jokes aside it actually looks like a really smart and creatively useful

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Just came across this.

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A heads up that the heads for the spidercapo that let you capo harmonics are sold separately.

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I’d love to hear some sounds from this

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I should record some, will post here if I do :slight_smile: not actually used this thing much since I built it :-/

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