"Charmed" Guitar [?]

[petemoore]

What do you think that is on the intro to the show "Charmed" ?
 Not on Alyssa's blouse...the intro Song.
 It sounds like some kind of multi-tremolo.
 I've no idea what is really going on there, but that reverse sound on what sounds like rythm guitar is like spooky cool.
 Maybe an attack delay and trem...or reverse delay?
 ANy ideas, or anyone ever get anything remotely close to that?
  {Sorry I don't know the actual name of the song or artist...I'm sure someone recognizes the tune and sound].

[Bucksears]

IIRC, it's Love Spit Love (Richard Butler's band after Psychedelic Furs) doing a cover of The Smith's "How Soon Is Now?".
As far as the effect goes, it's sounds like a guitar going through a filter of some kind (synth?) and then through a tremolo.
Great (original) song BTW and a great cover by them.

The song was originally in the film "The Craft" (w/Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Rachel True and Neve Campbell), so naturally when "Charmed" spun from that success, the song tagged along for the ride.

[petemoore]

That sound/song was a real thriller chiller !!! Just about Cool !!!
 Great Mix.

[Ansil]

the song was also in the wedding singer when his ex girlfriend comes back when hes drunk... we see like the back of her legs and it starts doing the trademark sound.


btw i am trying to emulate that so i will keep all of you in mind.


season seven is just around the corner


Blessed Be

[Ed G.]

In the original "How Soon is Now?" by the Smiths, I think I remember reading that Johnny Marr got that tremolo sound by running a guitar through two Twin Reverbs, it took him a long time to synch the tremolo right.

[chumpito]

I think one of those old repeater pedals from a transistor organ could get pretty close.  I think the Kay trem. on GGG site might be like one of those.

[MarkB]

I'll see if I can find it - but if I recall, he ran the guitar into several Vibros, all set to different speeds.
He could only get them to sync like that for about 20 seconds at a time, so they recorded the entire song in little clips.

This is referring to Johnny Marr - from the original (Smiths).
"-)

OK - found the excerpt on another website..

"Singles-wise, my favorite is 'How Soon Is Now?'... 'How Soon Is Now' was in F# tuning. I wanted a very swampy sound, a modern bayou song. It's a straight E riff, followed by open G and F#m7. The chorus uses open B, A, and D shapes with the top two strings ringing out. The vibrato sound is f**king incredible, and it took a long time. I put down the rhythm track on an Epiphone Casino through a Fender Twin Reverb without vibrato. Then we played the track back through four old Twins, one on each side. We had to keep all the amps vibratoing in time to the track and each other, so we had to keep stopping and starting the track, recording it in 10-second bursts. This sounds incredibly egotistical, but I wanted an intro that was almost as potent as 'Layla' -- when that song plays in a club or a pub, everyone knows what it is instantly. 'How Soon Is Now' is certainly one of the most identifiable songs I've done, and it's the track most people talk to me about. I wish I could remember exactly how we did the slide part -- not writing it down is one of the banes of my life! We did it in three passes through a harmonizer, set to some weird interval, like a sixth. There was a different harmonization for each pass. For the line in harmonics, I retuned the guitar so that I could play it all at the 12th fret with natural harmonics. It's doubled several times."
- Johnny Marr, Guitar Player, January, 1990

"How Soon Is Now? was the one, though. I wanted to write a track with an intro that you couldn't forget, something that you knew straight away was The Smiths. In that regard it was very 'worked on'. I arrived at the studio with a demo of the whole thing, apart from the tremolo effect - though that was bound to surface on a Smiths track sooner or later, 'cos at that time I was playing Bo Diddley stuff everywhere I went. I wanted it to be really, really tense and swampy, all at the same time. Layering the slide part was what gave it the real tension. As soon as I played that bit on the second and third strings, John Porter put an AMS harmoniser on it. Then we recorded each individual string with the harmoniser, then we tuned the B string down a half step and harmonised the whole thing. The tremolo effect came from laying down a regular rhythm part (with a capo at the 2nd fret) on a Les Paul, then sending that out in to the live room to four Fender Twins. John was controlling the tremolo on two of them and I was controlling the other two, and whenever they went out of sync we just had to stop the track and start all over again. It took an eternity. God bless the sampler, 'cos it would have been so much easier! But it was just one of those great moments. When Morrissey sang the vocal it was the first time we'd all heard it. John Porter said, 'Oh, great - he's singing about the elements! I am the sun and the air...' But of course it was really, 'I am the son and the heir/of a shyness that is criminally vulgar'... A great track."
- Johnny Marr, The Guitar Magazine, January 1997