Back on the train solo

[ColForbin]

Can anybody enlighten me as to what the frig Trey is using for effects during his Back on the Train solo?  Is it something to do with the Whammy?

Thanks so much.

[strangedesign]

i would say he's probably doing something like Whammy at 1 octive down, light tubescreamer and wha at about 50%

[ColForbin]

Thanks man!

[raisingfreen]

Just remembered an article from like Guitar Player (or something similar) right after the Farmhouse album came out and the interviewer asked Trey how he got the sound for various songs on the album. He gave quite a bit of info including that he used a Strat for part of one the songs on the album. I guess the strat had been left for him to sign and he just took it home. I do remember he said he had used the bridge pickup for something.

Anywhoo, I do remember that he said it was a one octave down plus leslie, obviously a TS9 in there too. If anyone can find the article that would be cool. He basically went right through a bunch of sounds and even mentioned he did not want to give away too much info as he felt he was giving away his secrets.

Anyone remember this article? Not sure which mag.

[Poster]

this subject has been thoroughly discussed in the treys rig section. there are no secrets anymore as we have built clone rigs and replicated literally ever sound Ive heard him make. Go check it out you can learn alot and save yourself some time.

[raisingfreen]

My bad. I just thought I mention the article if anyone had it laying around in their archives. I have been warned and it won't happen again.

[Poster]

no worries mate, not trying to break balls, just alot of work went to that section and their are easter eggs all through there, enjoy!

[Walker done done]

Yeah, but to be honest poster we haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet, IMO.  I still think we're missing something, and I think it's worth discussing until it's unearthed once and for all.  Has anyone even tried the above mentioned setup (ts9, octave down, leslie, etc.) ?  Do we know that it is infact the sound we're all talking about on GBOTT, latter day TAB Jibboo's, et al?

[ColForbin]

I've been playing it (when we cover it) with tube screamer, wah cocked about 80% and whammy one octave down and it's relatively close, not quite though.  However, I don't have a Leslie or a Languedoc, I reckon that would make up the difference.

[Poster]

do you have a whammy 2? and what wah wah do you have? if its a garmopat tweakable one youve got to clone the sound of treys wah to nail it with the internal pots. It doesnt matter what guitar I use...

[cactuskeeb]

I've got that article.  Send me a PM.  I'm sure if GW found me posting it publicly they'd want it taken down. 

[Poster]

^ lol you are paranoid sir. GW couldnt find their way out of a paper bag. Scan it and chop the header off the article, crop out the bottom page number part, and your gold Jerry! Gold!

[strangedesign]

as long as you give guitar world credit i think you will be fine. The worst they would do is simply ask that I take it down. Post it!

[cactuskeeb]

Phish's Trey Anastasio Trips Out On Guitar Loops.(Interview)

Source: Guitar Player
Publication Date: 01-AUG-00

MORE THAN 15 YEARS AGO, PHISH EMERGED FROM THE UNIVERSITY of Vermont as a local club band known for its extended jams, intricate ensemble playing, and wacky humor. Since then, guitarist Trey Anastasio and bandmates Jon Fishman (drums), Mike Gordon (bass), and Page McConnell (keyboards) have built a massive underground following.

In fact, Phish is a phenomenon: Virtually ignored by mainstream radio, they headline festivals and fill arenas, supported by legions of loyal fans who often crisscross the country to catch the band's long, improvised shows.

Not only does Phish pack festivals, they organize them--big ones. The band's most recent undertaking was a four-day gathering at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in the Florida Everglades. Created to usher in the new millennium, Phish's party attracted over 75,000 campers who enjoyed Fireworks, a Ferris wheel, light shows, and several evenings of dancing to live music. The event culminated with a marathon eight-hour Phish performance. "We hired 10,000 staff members for that one--10,000 maniacs who were willing to work on New Year's Eve, 1999," laughs Anastasio.

Phish's new release, Farmhouse [Elektra], is their first studio album in two years. Packed with vibrant guitar, intriguing lyrics, compelling melodies, and slippery chord progressions, Farmhouse finds Phish in peak form. We asked Anastasio to explain how the songs were written and tracked, detail his gear and newfound passion for looping, and share his thoughts on mp3, the Internet, and the impact of technology on the music biz. As you'll see, years of gigs and miles of highway haven't dampened Anastasio's enthusiasm for guitar and "getting people dancing to the groove."

Why did you choose to record your new album in a 150-year-old barn?

As a band, we've learned that we're most comfortable in our own space. Recording studios have a cold atmosphere. You're paying by the hour, and you have to deal with this strange staff and their command hierarchy. In your space, you make the decisions.

This barn is where we practice, so we were really relaxed when it came time to record. It's a vibey place that was originally built out of salvage. Some of the doors are from India, handcarved by monks 400 years ago. I had in the back of my mind that someday the band would bring our recording in-house, so a lot of thought went into turning the barn into a space where we could successfully make music. For example, it's fully insulated--a necessity, given that we recorded Farmhouse during the winter in Vermont.

Who selected the recording gear?

We decided some basic concepts, such as recording to 2" analog tape. Beyond that, most of those decisions were made by John Siket, our engineer, and Bryce Goggin, who co-produced the record with me. John engineered Billy Breathes and The Siket Disc, co-engineered The Story of the Ghost, and he has mixed a bunch of live material for us. We like his aesthetic--he's part of the gang now.

Did you supplement the analog tape with any digital recording gear?

Yes. After recording the basic tracks to 2" tape, we transferred everything to an Otari Radar hard-disk workstation for overdubs.

Why do you start with analog tape?

Tape has a great low end. Bass and kick drum still don't sound that great on digital. Also, analog compression mushes everything up in a good way.

The Band were one of the first groups to record in barns and houses. Did they inspire you?

Oh yes. I love Music from Big Pink and that whole concept. If you listen to the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street, which was recorded in a basement, you get such a clear picture of what was going on in their world then. It's all there. Something about your space gets encoded into the music, and we wanted this album to be a reflection of who we are at this given time.

We started recording the day after the last show of our fall '99 tour. When Phish is on the road, there's this celebratory, party energy that just goes from town to town like a big circus. We wanted to record while we still had that tour vibe, so we rolled right into the barn, and the crew set up the gear like it was another gig. A lot of our friends were hanging around, so we just started playing. Some of the tracks on Farmhouse--"First Tube," for example--were first takes from the first night.

In the middle of recording the album, we went back out to play the New Year's show in Florida. Two days later, flying on the energy of that show, we went right back to recording in the barn.

When did you write this material?

These songs were mostly written in 1998, in a farmhouse that I rented with my lyric-writing partner, Tom Marshall. It took a year or two to introduce the songs to the band, and once I did, they began a whole musical evolution.

Did you demo the songs before bringing them to the band?

I made 8-track demos on a Tascam DA-88. I played all the instruments--drums, bass, keyboards, and guitar. A lot of the songs were arranged at the farmhouse. If you listen to the demos for "Bug" or "Farmhouse," you'd recognize the parts from the record. In "Twist," for example, all those cycling background vocals were already laid out.

Some musicians claim that it's difficult--if not impossible--to recapture the spirit of a demo on an album. How did you get around that?

At first it was a little odd, because we were trying to recreate the demo. After we got a song down, each musician tried to add his own flavor, and gradually, the music would start to sound fresh again. But we know from experience that once we start to learn a song, it will peak at a certain point, so we introduce these songs into the list slowly. The idea was to have all the grooves feeling comfortable by the time we got into the studio.

How many new songs did you bring to the barn?

A lot more than ended up on the album. We started with about 35 songs, and played everything in two days. One by one, songs got axed, until we wound up with what you hear. You keep working on all the songs, but certain ones rise to the surface. The album starts to take on a personality, and you begin to see which songs are fitting in thematically. The album reveals itself to you--very much like a living thing. It's a pretty cool process.

Who arranged the horns and strings?

I write out the charts and give them to the musicians. It's really fun. We used four horns and a string quartet.

That's impressive. It's a challenge to get the correct registers for each instrument and create playable parts. With the strings, for example, did you work out performance details in advance of the sessions?

They rehearsed at my house, so I could make adjustments along the way. I discovered that you can write parts that are too smart. That happened a lot. You come up with this complicated passage that sounds so cool by itself, but when you put it in the song you go, "Well, we don't need that." So you simplify.

Also, string players will give you phrasing options. For instance, on a violin you can play a different number of notes with one bow stroke. You can bow three notes with one stroke or use a different stroke for each note. It's a different sound. Beyond that, you can interpret a phrase in a baroque style or use a more dramatic vibrato.

How did you sort these things out?

We would get to a section and the string players would ask, "Do you want three notes on a bow or six?" And I'd say, "Play them both." One would sound better, so they'd write that onto their parts. That's how the arrangement comes together. I wasn't even aware of some of these subtleties until they asked me.

These considerations apply to guitar as well. People don't think about it much, but you can usually find the same notes in two or three places on the fretboard. I've found that the same melodic passage can sound completely different, depending on where you play it.

Did you track the strings and horns on the Radar?

Yeah, that's the beauty of a digital system. There are 48 tracks, so you can experiment. You can double a melody, or try it with trombone. But you don't want to give yourself too many options.

Do you get lost in the choices?

Definitely. That's why it's good to be comfortable with your producer. You want to be a team. Somebody has to be listening from a detached point of view. Say you're doing acoustic guitar overdubs, and you try the part with both heavy and light picks. The producer can say, "You know, I like the light pick." When you're doing an overdub, you're not hearing it in the context of the track.

Let's detail your gear, starting with your custom guitar. What's the story behind it?

It's a small archtop built by Paul Languedoc, our soundman. It's totally hollow--no wood block--and very resonant. It has a handcarved koa body, two hot-rodded Schaller pickups, 24 frets, and a Strat string scale.

That's unusual. Archtops generally have the Gibson 24 3/4" scale, as opposed to the Strat's 25 1/2" scale.

Yes, and that affects the sound and feel. Paul is making me a new one that I'm excited about. It's going to be an inch thicker than my current guitar, and it will have one humbucker and a 24 3/4" scale. It's going to be more like a jazz guitar, but still not as big as a full-size archtop.

How do you expect the scale difference to affect you?

Well, a shorter scale is easier to play. I asked Paul if I'd be giving up a little twang, and he said the shorter scale sounds a little warmer and less twangy, and I'll get a bit more low-midrange beef. He's got a vision, so I'm not going to get in the way.

So night after night, he gets to hear the instrument he built through a sound

system that he operates. Talk about dialing in a tone.

It's incredible to have the same guy start the origin of the signal, and then mix it at the other end. Because he's listening to it through the sound system, he'll notice if it's not getting a full note. He'll adjust the neck occasionally. It's funny--a few times I've said, "Can you lower the action? It's a little hard to play." And he'll say, "Nope." He'll shut me down! My tech will restring the guitar, but Paul is the only one who works on it.

What is it about the Languedoc that keeps you playing it exclusively?

From the day I played it, I've just loved this guitar. It stays in tune incredibly well. I tune it once before the show and once between sets. I haven't broken a string--knock on wood--in years. I wanted a little more bite, so we put a piece of metal below the strings in the wooden bridge. The bridge is set, so I can't adjust the intonation, which is good--I don't like options. [Laughs.] That's the real benefit of playing one guitar.

Nonetheless, you get a lot of tonal variety throughout the album. The sonic contrast is dramatic between, say, the fat, juicy lead lines in "Farmhouse" and the biting snarl of "Twist."

On "Twist," I'm playing off the bridge pickup, whereas on "Farmhouse," I'm using the neck pickup the whole time. Other than that, it's the same setup. You can do a heck of a lot with your hands. Like on "Twist," I was digging in for a Keith Richards kind of vibe.

What about amps?

I'm using a '67 Fender Deluxe Reverb that I've been using since Billy Breathes.

That amp sounds quite throaty. Does it have a stock speaker?

Yes, but a friend tweaked the electronics. We took out the chassis and tried different capacitors and resistors until the amp settled in the way I like it.

What about effects?

For years, I've been using a pair of Ibanez Tube Screamers and an old Ross compressor.

How do you have them configured?

I start with the distortion and go into the compressor, which everybody tells me is wrong. But it sounds good to me--nice and noisy. [Laughs.]

I hear wah in several places.

That's a CryBaby--nothing special about it. On some tunes, I use a Leslie blended with the amp signal.

The real deal, as opposed to a simulator?

It's a real Leslie, but it's sawed in half, so my whole signal is going through the horn. It's still a pretty big box.

Do you get enough bottom without the Leslie speaker?

The horn picks up the lowest note on the guitar--at least that's what techs tell me. Maybe they just don't want to carry around a full-size cabinet. [Laughs.]

How did you mic your Deluxe for Farmhouse?

With the same mics I use on gigs--a Shure SM57 and an AKG CA14. Paul has come up with this weird thing where both mics are kind of distant and panned in the sound system. The closest mic is two or three inches from the speaker, and other one is about five inches away.

That makes sense in the studio, but it's unusual not to have the mic kissing the grillecloth onstage.

Our volume is quiet enough that we can do that, especially since we moved Mike to the other side of the stage. Bass is a big problem up there when it bleeds into my mics. Mike and I used to be in the middle with the drams and piano on either side. Lo and behold, after 15 years, we went, "Hey, let's put the drams in the middle. Then we can all hear them." [Laughs.] It was so much better. Suddenly, we started to groove.

[cactuskeeb]

Let's discuss specific songs and sounds on Farmhouse. How did you get that deep, growling tone on "Back on the Train"?

I'm using a DigiTech Whammy pedal as an octave divider, along with the Leslie, and maybe a Uni-Vibe. That Whammy pedal is cool--I use it for all my harmonized lines. You tap through the intervals--a fifth or a fourth, an octave up or down, even two octaves up or down.

So you also use the Whammy pedal for those high, Octavia-like sounds?

Yeah. I use the upper octave a lot, especially with loops--something I've really gotten into on this album.

Please elaborate.

You wouldn't notice some of the loops, but others are more obvious. Like the way the jam starts in "Gotta Jiboo." You know that cycling whistle sound? Those are loops that are coming right through my amp--they're not overdubs.

I figured those were keyboard sounds.

Most people don't realize these sounds are coming from the guitar. I like that.

What are you using as a looping device?

For guitar, I use an old rackmount Ibanez delay and a Boomerang pedalboard. Then I have a keyboard synthesizer that's going into its own looper. So I've got three potential loops at any time. I'm doing a lot with that now--it's all over the album. Even that thing at the end of "The Inlaw Josie Wales" with the wha-choo-choo. That's my guitar going through the delay loop and into my amp. Another example would be on "First Tube," where it goes down to the V chord the first time and then back to the melody--that be-wah-ooh. And there's that boop, boop--that's all guitar stuff coming through my amp.

The same Deluxe? Why not a second amp?

This way I can exactly control the volume of the looping sound. If I had it going through a different amp, it would be up to the soundman to decide how loud it should be. Also, I want the sounds mushed right in with my guitar. The speaker starts overdriving with all these different vibrations that are rhythmically out of sync with each other.

So you get the speaker cone wrestling with the various overtones.

Yup. That's what I'm looking for.

Do you use volume pedals to set the levels for these loops?

No. Here's how I do it: My main looper is the Ibanez delay. When I grab a sound with the Ibanez, the loop makes its entrance at full volume and then starts to decay. As it decays, I listen to [drummer] Fish and Mike grooving, and when it sounds like the loop is at a perfect level with the band, I hit the hold button and the loop just stays there. Then I start playing.

In some cases, it sounds like you fade in. How do you do that?

I'm giving away all my secrets! [Laughs.] I've figured out ways to do sounds that have no attack. "Gotta Jiboo" is an obvious example. The jam starts with this wheew, wheew that's not in sync with the song. With the volume knob on my guitar rolled off, I pick a high note. As I roll up the volume and lower the Whammy pedal, I turn on the delay and record the wheew. I let it loop and decay until it reaches the volume I want, and then I hit the hold button.

What other loops can you describe?

In "Heavy Things" that door, doot is a harmonic that I palm mute and play into the Boomerang. I just tap my foot to the song's beat to trigger the harmonic while I'm playing my other parts against it. The loop is coming through my amp with the guitar notes. I tried overdubbing the harmonic at one point, and it sounded falsified in some way, whereas when I do it live, it just melds right in with the band.

I use another loop in the outro guitar solo for "Heavy Things." After the hand claps come in, there's a moment where you hear two versions of the same note talking to each other--bup, ba-dup. My solo goes up to the same note that I recorded in the Boomerang. So I'm tapping out one note with my foot on the Boomerang, while picking the same note on guitar. This gives me two different rhythms. You could probably do this manually on the guitar, but it wouldn't sound the same.

You can do a million things with loops. Sometimes you'll solo up to a certain note, and you like that note, so you just loop it and keep playing. Or you can harmonize with yourself. I've been doing that a lot. You can come up with some weird sound on the spot and--boom--load it in. You can bring it back later, or even make it last throughout the gig.

And when the gig is over?

Then it's gone. That's the beauty of improvisation.

It must take time to develop looping consciousness. You're running a three-ring circus.

Yeah, but it's cool. You can get a lot of really demented things going on when the loops start intersecting at three different rates, and the song is at a fourth tempo. It is like you've got four different pulses to work with.

What's with the synthesizer?

That's for really low sounds that don't have a lot of attack and have a slow decay. Because they fade in and fade out, they'll blend with whatever rhythm we're playing. I got the idea from house music I heard at clubs and raves. To me, it's really hypnotic to have these textures cycling in and out.

How did you discover looping?

Years ago, I saw Robert Fripp do a solo tour with his Frippertronics. He did tape loops right up onstage. It was so inspiring. Ever hear the album No Pussyfooting by Fripp and Eno? It's all tape loops. You've got to get it--you'll vomit!

Who else has influenced your guitar playing?

I have genuinely soaked up as much guitar as possible from everyone. I have to, because Phish does lots of covers. We'll cover entire albums. On Halloween, we'll play a set of Phish and then come out in musical costumes. The first year we did this, we played the Beatles' White Album from start to finish. Other years we've played the Who's Quadrophenia, Remain in Light by the Talking Heads, and Loaded by the Velvet Underground. As far as guitarists who've influenced me, Adrian Belew is the sound master. He also has an amazing voice, which people don't always appreciate.

"The Inlaw Josie Wales" has some beautiful Dobro playing. What's the story behind that tune?

That's Jerry Douglas with Bela Fleck playing banjo. We'd recorded the acoustic guitar, bass, and piano, but I didn't know where to go next. When Jerry and Bela were in town to do a show, they came by to see the barn, and I asked them to play on that tune. They probably did four takes, and there was something great about each one. It was really cool to see musicians of that caliber, and how with each take they would dig in a little bit deeper and get their hands a little bit more around the heart and soul of the song.

Phish is releasing The White Tape, a collection of mid-'80s 4-track recordings, as an Internet-only mp3 download. How do you feel about the Web, mp3s, and the current state of the music business?

There is a lot of worry in the music industry right now with Napster [software that allows people to trade mp3s directly from designated folders on their private hard drives]. At the same time, I'm really excited by the possibilities. The scary part is that artists ... [long pause] aren't going to get paid.

It takes money to mount musical expeditions.

That's the thing that makes it rough. This is going to be talked about at length by everyone over the next year. But I'm still struck by the possibilities that the Internet has to offer. A band that you never heard of can come out of some tiny town with something great, and instantly people all over the world will hear it. In the past, that band would have to get a record label behind them--which might never happen.

People will be able to collaborate in ways they never could before, and you'll have instant access to music from all over the world. We're seeing the breakup of old ways. There are a lot of things about record companies that are ...

Pretty evil.

Pretty evil. Unfortunately, not paying artists isn't the answer. Especially, as in the case of Napster, when other people are getting paid by advertisers, but the artists aren't. You don't want to see some corporation selling advertising off young musicians who work and save their money, go into a recording studio, put their heart and soul and sweat into a project, and don't get paid.

I've read Phish's liberal taping policy [available at phish.com]. It's clear that you encourage folks to record your shows and freely trade Phish music for Phish music, but no monetary exchange is permitted.

That's it. If people want to trade--great. Your music spreads all over the globe. But you have to keep the philosophy that nobody is benefiting commercially.

Having said that, music is supposed to be in the world for celebration, ritual, and healing--that's the point for me. To this end, there are some real possibilities with the Internet. Maybe you could have a huge, worldwide party. Imagine if everybody got into the same groove at the same time. At one moment, you'd have this central, pulsating groove that everyone could get involved with in some way. That's what happens at concerts, right? When everybody dances, they feel bonded in a certain way, and that's the reason playing live is such a rush. You can't get enough of it. Night after night, you want to play because of that feeling. You get out there and start a groove, and that groove brings people together. The Internet puts that power into the hands of the people, and that's too good to ignore.