G UITARSTUDI O
Channeling the Guitar Hero – Doug Doppler
Favored Nations’ artist Doug Doppler is cut with my Digi001, which has since been
now a certified guitar hero through his upgraded to 002. I do a lot of session work
involvement with the PlayStation 2 video these days, and have become a bit of a mad
game Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the ‘80s. scientist in the edit window,” Doug says.
Doppler became part of the WaveGroup A good thing to point out is that guitar-Sound production house family in 2007, ists have become much more proficient at
contributing six tracks to the Eighties ver- recording their own tracks and editing them
sion of the multimillion-unit selling Guitar together through the convenience of cut,
Hero franchise. His remake of Extreme’s copy, and paste functions. This is especially
“Play with Me” serves as the game’s Furious true with the editing procedures of Pro Tools.
Fretwork Encore – a difficult track to play, Doug goes on the recall, “Oddly enough, on
and a perfect showcase for Doppler’s amaz- this song, I didn’t edit the guitar tracks at all.
ing guitar skills. In fact, on
You Tube, videos of people
playing to Doppler’s cut
have already generated
over 100,000 hits. A former
student of Joe Satriani,
Doug was chosen by his
former teacher to preside
over teaching duties at the
Berkeley, California studio.
It’s no wonder why Ibanez
endorsed Doug, asking him
to write a promotional song
for the Zero Resistance tremolo from their new S Series
guitars, which Doug entitled,
“Zero Gravity.”
The Doppler Effect
For the song “Zero Gravity,” Doug used an
Ibanez S470 into an M-Audio Black Box set
on a Dual Rectifier model. The Black Box
is a creative tool for the guitarist, combining amp modeling, drum machine features
and an audio interface for computer-based
recording. It boasts some of the greatest guitar amps of all time – including the Fender
Bassman, Fender Deluxe, Fender Twin,
Vox AC30, Marshall JTM45, Marshall Plexi,
Marshall JCM 2000, Hiwatt DR- 103, Soldano
SLO- 100, Mesa Boogie Maverick, Mesa
Boogie Dual Rectifier and Bogner Uberschall
– and programmable drive and tone controls,
not to mention 99 built-in drum patterns.
Doug adds, “At various points on the track I
introduce various effects like delay and chorus, all of which originated in the Black Box
as opposed to using plug-ins. The Black Box,
like many modeling devices, shines in its plug
and play nature.”
Digital Domain
It was written and recorded in one day, with
the exception of the bass track, which was
added a few days later.”
“One of the track’s cool incidentals was the
drum loops – most loopheads would recognize them from Garage Band. What was fun
was how I used them in the track. I cut the
track to a drum machine beat and then took
the BPM into Garage Band to grab some
loops and set them up along the timeline
in a linear array. Then I imported them into
Pro Tools and sliced and diced and did some
stacking as well. What’s cool about this
approach is that you get an instantaneous
palette to work from instead of loading a
bunch of samples and trying them over a
section, one at a time.”
This is an important tip to remember when
working with drum programming; always have
enough samples to access while programming, so you don’t have to stop and load
samples and break the creative flow. Nothing
is as bad as stopping and looking for a certain
drum fill through hundreds of samples and the
subsequent loss of concentration.
Gravity at Work
Rob Nishida, head of artist relations at
Ibanez, sent Doug a new S470 guitar to try
out during the recording of “Zero Gravity.”
“The funny thing is that the fine tuner accidentally broke, and it took the low E down
to B while the rest of the guitar stayed
almost perfectly in tune. The point being, if
you play a power chord shape on the low E
with that tuning, you end up with
octaves, and that’s how that track
came about – me fiddling around
in the studio. In terms of the sound
design, once I had the composition in place, I picked the effect
treatments I wanted to use for
each section. This song is really a
tremolo demonstration and some
effects sound better for certain
types of bar work than others. I did
a little experimenting and found
what seemed to work. The track is
an interesting blend of the creative
and experimental, which for me is
one of the greatest pleasures in the
digital domain.”
A great characteristic of the digital
domain is the endless creative possibilities it
affords. Inspired by the S470 and the Black
Box, Doug was able to call up any desired
amp tone combined with Pro Tools to perfect
“Zero Gravity.” This is a perfect marriage of
the digital domain and the devastating riffs
of the Guitar Hero.
Check out “Zero Gravity” on the guitar
compilation, Guitar Masters, Vol. 1 from BHP
MUSIC, available in music stores. You can
also check out his killer chops on the upcoming instrumental CD, GET THE LED OUT! A
Led Zeppelin Salute, due out next month.
Brian Tarquin
Emmy Award winning guitarist Brian Tarquin scored a
Top 20 hit in the nineties with “ The Best of Acid Jazz,
vol. 2 ” on Instinct Records and enjoyed several top 10
hits on the R&R charts. Founder of the rock/electronica
band, Asphalt Jungle and has scored TV music for
such shows as CSI, Smallville, MTV, Alias, 24, All My
Children and many others.
bohemianproductions.net
jungleroom@optonline.net
myspace.com/bohemianproductionsmusic
