Recreating Slowdive’s “When the Sun Hits”
Guitar Tone in Amplifikation 360
“As the sun hits, she’ll be waiting
With her cool things and her heaven
Hey hey, lover, you still burn me
You’re a sun yeah, hey hey”
Neil Halstead and Christian Savill could be considered as the originator of the shoegaze style. The shoegaze style, or some says ‘shoegazing’, is a genre of music connected with the dream pop style all under the hood of alternative rock.
The music is distinctive with its dreamy space created by guitar riffs, crafted with long delays, lush reverbs, blurred fuzz and distorted lines, washed with modulation pedals such as choruses, flangers and phasers. The guitar itself is heavy processed and it’s all about the space and the mood that it creates. It’s a form of art that is greatly appreciated. To have their tone recreated in a software amp simulation will be a good addition in your arsenal of guitar presets.
Some of the pedals and effects used by Slowdive are: the ProCo RAT, Ibanez Tube Screamer, Boss’ classic Super Overdrive, and Digital Delay pedals. Also, worth mentioning is The Yamaha FX500 effect unit.
The FX500 has a lot to do with the shoegaze genre. In the 90s Slowdive relied heavily on the FX500, and especially the patch 40 “Soft Focus” That we will recreate in next week’s article.
Let’s recreate the two guitar tones in the song “When The Sun Hits’ with guitar amp software and guitar effect plugin pedals in our Amplifikation 360, a complete solution for guitar players.
The intro guitar is a simple rig with amp, chorus, delay and reverb.
We will use an American Classic amp simulator, our Tribunal Chorus efektor, the digital delay module and a reverb efektor at the end of the chain.
Our virtual software peal board starts with a Noise Gate, then the BIG Fuzz for the overdriven part of the song, a compressor for the clean parts and the tribunal chorus for the all clean part in the song which is essential!
Then is the American based clean amp
After the amp we have a simplified effects unit utilizing a delay, two reverbs: one for the cleanest parts with long tails and one room reverb for the fuzz driven melodic part. The last is a volume module to balance each sound in the one A360 preset.
Here is the full Slowdive preset in Amplifikation 360 guitar software pedal board builder and amp suite:
Dimi Nalbantov using the Live Slots to create different patches in the global preset for each guitar part in the song.
Audio Sample using the preset:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OYxtU7sTJ1lRaSZHVUP-5VmJrU0_pnN3/view?usp=sharing
Here you can download the preset and copy it to your presets folder:
Link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GdAxkolSxDXfXLtL_6nZlAmBqNcNiJjM/view?usp=sharing
Presets folder:
Windows:
C:\Users\[User Name]\Documents\Kuassa\Presets\Amplifikation360
Mac:
/Users/[User Name]/Music/Kuassa/Presets/Amplifikation360
Hope you enjoy this famous Shoegazing tone recreation!
Stay tuned for more tones in the next week with screenshots, explanation and preset for download!
Happy Shoegazing and dreamscaping!