It is a common occurrence that people will hear a demo or recording of a modulation effect, like a flanger, or phaser, or filter, using a wide bandwidth signal source, like a mixdown or white noise or sustained chord on a string synth, and wonder why the heck their pedal doesn't sound nearly that good.  Of course, the answer is to be found in the signal source.  One can nudge a guitar closer to the direction of those signals by throwing in a fuzz, but the fact remains that the harmonic content of a guitar, even a fuzzed one, doesn't last very long after you strum/pick, so the filtering that such effects do does not have the opportunity to sound as majestic as it can when the bandwidth and broad spectral content hangs in there for a while.

It occurred to me that gating in a bit of noise with the guitar might be able to make such effects sound a little more spectacular.  I remember RG sent me a brief write-up of a "breath" mimicking circuit some time back (still have that page) that he was thinking about, though I forget if it was intended to be appied in the manner I'm thinking of here.

Anyhow, I was wondering if any of you had ever blended in some noise with your gutar in such a manner for these reasons, whether live, recording, or just noodling around.  If so, is it feasible, decent sounding, in need of much further refinement?

The theory made me mess around with my daw. Pink Noise would work best but ideally the amplitude of the noise should vary with feedback. -30dB below the signal is pretty much as loud as you can make it without the noise being explicit.

I built a Gaines Noise Gate a while back and it has a "Key" or trigger function that allows you to trigger an external sound when the guitar's signal level is above the gate's threshold setting. I haven't played with it enough, though, to know how well it works.  I've heard that gates with this feature are popular with drummers to blend in a synth sound when they hit one of their drums, usually the bass, al la Phil Collins.

Quote from: Jazznoise on July 27, 2012, 05:30:14 PM
The theory made me mess around with my daw. Pink Noise would work best but ideally the amplitude of the noise should vary with feedback. -30dB below the signal is pretty much as loud as you can make it without the noise being explicit.

Neat!  Thanks!

I remember reading an interview with Mike Mathews where he was saying he preferred pedals that weren't studio quiet, because the hiss would give a flanger something to chew on.

If you can find Boscorelli's much maligned Stompbox Cookbook; check out Modu-Matic. This might be exactly what you are looking for. 

Quote from: Processaurus on July 28, 2012, 07:19:33 AM
I remember reading an interview with Mike Mathews where he was saying he preferred pedals that weren't studio quiet, because the hiss would give a flanger something to chew on.

As opposed to a cigar! 

Quote from: oldschoolanalog on July 28, 2012, 07:44:48 AM
If you can find Boscorelli's much maligned Stompbox Cookbook; check out Modu-Matic. This might be exactly what you are looking for. 

Much maligned yet much purloined!

I haven't thought of trying this before, but it's a very intriguing idea. I will have to try it sometime!

Some fuzzes (like octave fuzzes, specifically something like the OUSB) can be pretty noisy with regards to pick attack and so forth. Might be worth experimenting with plugging that into the Liquiflange set up for TZF. Hmmmm...

Edit: I completely forgot- A delay comes in real handy for doing this. Put it between the fuzz and the flanger and you get a dramatic flanger effect.

i leave a cranked fuzz face on 90% of the time, so..... 

noise?

I find that I tend to rely fairly heavily on modulation when I'm mixing/mastering within Ableton. There's something about running drums or percussion through a flanger that just simply fasinates me, to no end. Since all our drums and bass are produced inside Ableton, they tend to get the royal treatment. I can honestly say that phasers and flangers in Ableton get a lion-share of work.

As for guitar, if ever I cheat, it's with delay. Since I'm no shredder, by any stretch of the imagination, I'll use delay to "multiply" notes . My fav example is the solo in S.T.P.'s "Vaseline", at the beginning of it. I can only cop it with delay. There we go... cat's outta the bag.

And of course, since I have everything linked up via MIDI, I can sync all these phasers, flangers, and delays to the clock. So, do I cheat?

You bet your a$$!

I use an Echoplex that is too noise to use with high gain in the guitar input, so I have it in the FX loop.