Matthew James Bellamy (born 9 June 1978) from Muse, who has shown us that alternative rock wouldn’t have been as we know it today, if it wasn’t for that one unique pedal. His band’s music is not by chance qualified as Alternative Space Rock. As one of the main effects in his pedalboard, Digitech Whammy IV, V and DT models are his preference
Music has always been changing and will continue to do so. The urge to discover, develop, and change has always been inside human nature, and instruments from all over the world are just tools to express what’s in our hearts.
We will examine whether there is a clear boundary between where a perception of traditional music stops and where our ears perceive it as innovation in today’s article.
A lot of music recorded over the years combines not just the “usual” instruments, but also different “tools”. Using not so obvious choices, can lead to a variety of different sounds and music that is truly innovative.
Along with the unusual sounds made by various not-so-musical sources a little pedal which appeared for the first time back in 1989 and invented by people, who definitely wanted to revolutionize rock music, “Digitech Whammy”, caught the attention of the guitar players back in the days. Basically that pedal was used as a foot controlled pitch shifter.
It has become the favorite red box amongst many famous guitarists immediately and almost a couple of decades later, it’s already a must have in their pedalboards, giving them the possibility to create all kinds of different sounds and tones that you can imagine.
One of those guitarists is Matthew James Bellamy (born 9 June 1978) from Muse, who has shown us that alternative rock wouldn’t have been as we know it today, if it wasn’t for that one unique pedal. His band’s music is not by chance qualified as Alternative Space Rock. As one of the main effects in his pedalboard, Digitech Whammy IV, V and DT models are his preference, especially because those allow Bellamy to change the pitch on his guitar, running his finger along with his feet moving the red monster. Even today he continues to use them in his music. both in the studio and on stage.
It was very inspiring and challenging for the team of Kuassa once again to “…boldly go…” where the music makes a turn to innovation and to create that pitch shifting effect that can make your guitars produce all kinds of sounds from rumbling lows to squealing highs. Implemented with high precision and functionality, this effect called Whammo, brings you the willingness to create your masterpiece straight in front of your computer without the necessity of expensive purchases or too much hassle. Just your favorite guitar and the Efektor Whammo Pitch-Shifter. It sounds easy, isn’t it? Yes, it is even easier – you can control it via a Midi device. Such as
Harley Benton MP-100 MIDI Foot Controller. So let’s return to the exact point of our angle – using Whammo pedal in order to recreate one of our favorite songs of the band Muse, called Fury. This spectacular song is quite an example of what the pitch shifting effect is capable of. The great melody and awesome riffs make us get carried away in the deepest sites of musical creativity. Melodic harmonies intertwined with emotional intensity is what drives you to be part of creation.
The tone starts with whammo, then a noise gate to clean some of the noise of the strat we have used and then a distortion pedal pushing our Amplifikation Rectifor to that fuzzy and rich guitar tone. Then there are two delays panned left and right to emulate precisely to the original song, the overall sound, after that there is an EQ and Reverb. The EQ is to shape the signal a little further and to match it to the song as much as possible. So here is a screenshot for the whole rig in our Amplifikation 360, utilizing the full potential of our Efektor pedals and amps line in one environment.
Final words:
Everything around us is moving fast, why not move yourself faster and try more music alternatives? There is no fixed pattern, you may be pioneering the new approach to the music art.
Here you can hear the tone. The guitar is a Strat with stock pickups.
Audio Sample:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wyvBSyGAyE91C92hN8bcQOjO8rHENQW6/view?usp=share_link
Here you can download the preset and copy it to your presets folder:
Link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15wqGIOtKieW4bhSxmaFXO35r1hLFvYZJ/view?usp=share_link
The preset file for A360 looks like this: Whammo – Muze – Fury.ka360p copy the file after extracting it from the zip file at:
Presets folder:
Windows:
C:\Users\[User Name]\Documents\Kuassa\Presets\Amplifikation360
Mac:
/Users/[User Name]/Music/Kuassa/Presets/Amplifikation360
Stay tuned for more tones with explanations, presets, and history!