Nice article for engineers to understand something that most guitar players will intuitively know.
One of the great things about a hi-gain setup like Hendrix's is how the feedback loop will inject an element of controlled chaos into the sound. It allows for emergent fluctuations in timbre that Hendrix can wrangle, but never fully control. It's the squealing, chaotic element in something like his 'Star Spangled Banner'. It's a positive feedback loop that can run away from the player and create all kinds of unexpected elements.
The art of Hendrix's playing, then, is partly in how he harnessed that sound and integrated it into his voice. And of course, he's a force of nature when he does so.
A great place to hear artful feedback would be the intro to Prince's 'Computer Blue'. It's the squealing "birdsong" at the beginning and ending of the record. You can hear it particularly well if you search for 'Computer Blue - Hallway Speech Version' with the extended intro.
> The way you can hear the machine guns, choppers, sirens, screaming in agony…
You know, I've heard that performance so many times over so many decades that I don't have to hit a play button or even close my eyes in order to hear it. It's there inside my head when I want it to be.
And somehow I never interpreted it in that way (sirens, screaming, etc) until just a moment ago. I thought it was just a quirky little early-morning break in the familiar tune from someone who had been up way too long by that point.
And now instead of just being the quirky sounds of an impromptu guitar solo that I can recall whenever I wish, it now has unpleasant pictures to go with it.
The imagery of 1969, I remember it well. The Vietnam war was the first war that was televised. Everyone would watch the nightly news at 6:30 pm (take my word for it) and hear the choppers, gunfire and real life screams of people.
I thought it was sheer genius that Hendrix was able to subtly bring that into the national anthem which made it resonate so well with those purchasing his music. But without that background reference I never supposed that younger generations would hear it entirely differently.
> "The imagery of 1969, I remember it well. The Vietnam war was the first war that was televised. Everyone would watch the nightly news at 6:30 pm (take my word for it) and hear the choppers, gunfire and real life screams of people."
Slightly off-topic--
Before my time, but my professor* recalled to our class his experience watching a _live_ news report from Vietnam. Something shocking happened during the broadcast. As a visual-media scholar he contacted the station to obtain a copy. No go. He remarked how he never saw that footage ever again (at that time it would have been over 15 years ago). In our modern digital age it's difficult to imagine anything going live to the nation, and then disappearing.
* (Charles Chess, Introduction to Film, SJSU, c1992)
He might want to search the Marion Stokes collection once the Internet Archive has it all digitized. She recorded thirty years of TV for most of the major networks.
The thing which blows my mind is that the NIC handle database is simply gone. This was the database of everyone who was responsible for some internet asset (typically a domain name) in some fashion such that it was recorded for operators' use. You could look it up, it was public. Now it's simply gone. (I'm FWM6)
Recently, the movie "Cleopatra" was on TV. I was watching it with the sound off while I did other things.
There was one scene where Rich Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were arguing with each other. I watched their lips move, and somehow I heard Burton speaking his lines in his voice, and Taylor her lines in her voice. I had to do a double take to see that the sound was actually muted, but my mind re-created it anyway.
Going way way off topic - when those two were a couple they had a house in Puerto Vallerta, casa Kimberly thats now a hotel. I stayed there once in the late 90s and from their website it hasn't really changed since I was there. The whole time I could just imagine them being there living the hollywood getaway lifestyle. Definitely a cool place to stay - in the old town not in the resort area, and very much worth it if you get the chance. (although it does look more expensive than it was then, even adjusting for inflation).
I read your comment and immediately wondered how much of my braincells are permanently occupied with remembering music. Probably quite a lot in an absolute sense but I wonder about the percentage of storage and whether or not that could have been used in other ways. And of course then I wonder if they are stored compressed, and whether that is lossy compression or not ;)
Thousands of songs reside quite comfortably in my brain. It's rather amazing.
I can tell when a musician is lip syncing their hit song, because nobody sings a song the same way twice, and the performance exactly matched the CD version of the song.
It's all tradeoffs. I can't remember names or faces even if doing so is worth money.
Instead, I can recall the complete works of Roger Waters or Nine Inch Nails, but not the names of the songs unless I really studied that part. I can recall themes from TV shows from decades ago, but be unable to place the name of the show.
At any given time, anywhere at all, I can listen to any of at least five different covers of Fat Bottomed Girls -- and have no idea who performed any of them, and therefore no ability to share them with others.
It's an interesting way to be and it is the only way I know, but there's reasons that I'm terrible at being a DJ.
If you listen to the Woodstock soundtrack it is clear that Hendrix was on a completely different musical level than anyone else in that scene. Ravi Shankar was probably the only person there above him from a chops perspective and possibly in the expressivity department as well. But when it came to sheer inventiveness no one was close to Hendrix. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to see and hear him. It must have felt like an alien was performing.
The Who followed him, and famously destroyed their entire set in a vain attempt to be noticed.
Like a jealous plumber, worried that Kim Kardashian's "Break the Internet" photo series will take away from his appeal, hurriedly posting photos of his plumber's crack online...
I've not listened to that song much at all. I am however obsessed with Machine Gun which has all those elements and more. Maybe I'll have a re-listen to SSB.
Do it; I think the political subtext of weaving an anti-war statement into the national anthem makes it both very obvious and very elegant at the same time.
I wonder if tube harmonics modeled by solid state settings has shaped music. Of course it has; music from that era is instrument-oriented.
The discovery of feedback tones and the resulting incorporation in the musical experience — a three hour warm bank of tubes turned up to the limit with a maxxed out savant unlocking new realms of sound.
It's quite likely that when Hendrix went to London the first time, he was the first person ever to play a Stratocaster through a Marshall full stack at full volume.
Also maybe not until the night of his first big gig there.
Townshend had Marshall build 100 watters so he could play louder clean, Clapton had already been cranking it with a Gibson SG which is a characteristic sound all its own, he was in the audience at the gig and was blown away watching Hendrix.
Every year from at least 1964 to 1984, more advanced amps were made than ever existed before.
> The art of Hendrix's playing, then, is partly in how he harnessed that sound and integrated it into his voice. And of course, he's a force of nature when he does so.
One thing for me to notice is his playing does not require a rhythm guitarist. I discovered that what worked well is Mitch Mitchell as a Jazz drummer his playing was heavily influenced by classics. In a way it complemented Jimi's guitar tone so well.
While I love Mitch's drumming and Noel's bass, can you imagine if Hendrix had worked with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce - both much more confident and strident players than the Experience's rythym section.
That would have blown the doors off of everything.
I don't think there was another as "out there" guitar player as Jimi until EVH came along - a little more controlled, but just as confident and chaotic. EVH was quite the systems engineer himself (variac, Floyd Rose later on etc)
Miles always impressed me with his ability to pick the best to back him up, and /then/ let them take the front. Some tracks he barely plays on, waiting minutes for his entry.
Jimmy wanted the best to back him up. But I agree with you; I'm just pointing out why I think he didn't.
Agreed! Like Pharaoh's Dance on Bitch's Brew, Davis doesn't come in for like 4 minutes. Same with In A Silent Way. He just lets the band groove for a while, THEN takes the lead.
In Davis' autobiography, he mentions trying to work with Jimi. I don't think it would have worked really, but who knows. Jimi was completely self taught, while Miles went to Juliard, I don't see how they would have communicated musically, literally. Like, if Miles tells Jimi to try a diminished chord here, or some modal scale there, Miles would have ended up doing a LOT of teaching along the way. And I say this as a guitarist of 30+ years who loves both of them.
Considering that Miles was firmly in a modal music phase at that point, I don't see Jimi's lack of formal training as a hindrance at all. I think he'd be able to hang just fine with Mile's band. Even if Jimi couldn't read changes on a chart, I'm sure he'd have no problem working it out by ear.
I'd like to think that, I love this period from Davis, and love Hendrix, so it would have been great to see a collab.
In terms of communication, I am thinking of something like the musical equivalent to software design patterns, etc. I.e. imagine two devs are pair coding, one of whom has a CS degree from 2002 and one is skilled but self-taught. While working together, the first starts talking about observer or singleton patterns, which the 2nd has never heard of but has coded something 90% of the way there on intuition. There could be some friction as they establish a common language. (Yes, this is based on experience, with myself more or less on both sides of the exchange at one point or another).
I think I recall reading about Hendrix that he tried to emulate the sounds of cartoons with his guitar, and then when he was in the army he did the same with trying to reproduce the sounds of fighter jets. Not sure if urban legend, but cool origin story.
I agree but when you’re dealing with celebrities people sometimes lie and exaggerate, and third parties sometimes extrapolate beyond any semblance of grounded facts. So most people subject to that level of scrutiny and fame are likely to have some allegations against them whether true or not.
Hendrix’s girlfriend Kathy Etchingham claims he never abused her. Some third parties dispute her claims about her relationship.
His arrest record suggests at least some type of altercation with a previous girlfriend but it’s far from clear cut to me.
People are complex and reality is complex. I myself was subject to false accusations about abuse from a disgruntled ex girlfriend (who actually WAS in fact physically and mentally abusive to me and I have the scars to prove it).
But regardless, I have zero issues reflecting on a person’s accomplishments and talents even in the context of them being a horrible person. In fact, I find that part of the intrigue of really talented people. Reality and people are quite multi-dimensional. The only general rule I know is that nobody is perfect and holding up ANYone as some example of moral perfection is almost certainly wrong.
This leaves me wondering what would happen if you attached a coupling to a trumpet and ran the sound through an effects/feedback box. Why should electric guitars have all the fun?
Well,i remember a performance of Jorge Lima Barreto (Portuguese electronic/free jazz) playing with a saxophonist with 2 microphones, one normal and the other with a brutal delay. He would play on the normal microphone and sometimes he directed the instrument output to the delayed microphone and it sounded monumental. Not sure what musician he was, i think is Tomas Stanko, but not sure. The performance sounded like you went through a big storm. :D
I like the thought, but trumpets require a lot of energy to excite them (i.e. you have to blow a LOT of air into a horn just to get a note. Getting an instrument like that to feedback would require a pretty radical system.
The difference with electric guitars is that guitar pickups are relatively sensitive and then go through multiple stages of amplification, which makes the system ripe for feedback loops.
Some saxophone players have been known to generate feedback through on-board microphones. Strictly speaking, this isn't exciting the horn, but it does introduce feedback that's excited BY the instrument.
People do! But you have to sit there and buzz your lips to make a trumpet make sound, but for a guitar you just have to shake the strings. And the sound coming from the amp will do this shaking, completing the feedback loop. So it's mostly portable stringed instruments that get this treatment. There are some violin players that play with feedback effects. I hear Jon Rose is one but I am not familiar with his music. Folks like Jean Luc Ponty and Jerry Goodman make ample use of guitar pedal effects in their violin. And there's a YouTuber out there who plays with them on her harp.
One of the great things about a hi-gain setup like Hendrix's is how the feedback loop will inject an element of controlled chaos into the sound. It allows for emergent fluctuations in timbre that Hendrix can wrangle, but never fully control. It's the squealing, chaotic element in something like his 'Star Spangled Banner'. It's a positive feedback loop that can run away from the player and create all kinds of unexpected elements.
The art of Hendrix's playing, then, is partly in how he harnessed that sound and integrated it into his voice. And of course, he's a force of nature when he does so.
A great place to hear artful feedback would be the intro to Prince's 'Computer Blue'. It's the squealing "birdsong" at the beginning and ending of the record. You can hear it particularly well if you search for 'Computer Blue - Hallway Speech Version' with the extended intro.