Zitat von
Tom Morello (kein User, gemeint ist der echte Tom Morello)
2 Go with that you Know
Morello has used the exact same gear (with subtle variations) practically forever.
In addition to the aforementioned guitars and amp, he sticks an Ibanez flanger, a DOD EQ, a Boss delay, a Digitech Whammy pedal, and a CryBaby wah in the effects loop and that's it. That's pretty much always been it and yet he gets an unreal amount of sonic blood out of that turnip.
His decision to limit his gear choices originally grew out of frustration but ultimately set him free. When asked what guitarists could do if their tone was stuck in a rut in the November 2005 issue of
GP, Morello replied:
"Well, I'll tell you what I did when I encountered that problem—I gave up. For years, I tried to find this perfect tone I had in my head. Then, one day, I spent a few hours fiddling with my gear, and I decided that I didn't particularly love the tone, but it wasn't going to get any better. So I marked those settings and said, 'Now I'm done. This is my sound.' And those settings are the same ones that I used in today's rehearsal—as well as on every record and at every show I've ever played. When I stopped worrying so much about tone and started worrying about music, the problem went away.";
4 Keep it simple, stupid
In addition to being an acronym for one of Morello's favorite bands, this phrase is also a mantra of sorts for his riff creation.
Many of his most famous parts are super simplistic, with some using just one note. The trick then becomes, how do you make a part interesting if it's just one note? Lots of ways. Take a look at Ex. 1. The first bar is a dropped-D version of the crushing octave intro to "Bulls on Parade."; (Tip: Transpose this up to the key of F if you want to jam along with the recording.) The shifting accents create a hypnotic pile-driver effect that makes it feel like it's not in 4/4, but it is. Hit these notes as hard as you possibly can. Bars 3 and 4 approximate the verse in "War Within a Breath,"; but rather than split the riff between a low bass note and a high Whammy pedal screech, we cover that four-octave jump ourselves as notated. If the stark, open quality of these disparate Ds gets old for you, don't resort to playing more notes. Bring these two notes back to life by flanging, phasing, delaying, whammying (bar or pedal), or otherwise mutating them. We all know there's beauty in simplicity. Remember there's power in it too.