I’ve been going back and listening to my recordings of Harmonium and Beau Dommage this last couple of weeks, and it has prompted me to post this…
Sometimes you listen to someone and you just say to yourself “That’s why there are 12 string guitars in this world.” Entirely subjective, blatantly partisan, here is my by no means complete list.
Well, since we’re doing prog rock Steve Hackett must be here. The twelve string was an important component of the early Genesis sound. Supper’s Ready. Can-utility and the Coastliners…
Well, clearly **Roger McGuinn of The Byrds **and **George Harrison of The Beatles **both of whom put Rickenbacker 12-string guitars on the map as the only official electric 12-string that matters…
Jimmy Page with his double-neck for the 12-string parts of Stairway??
Oh, absolutely! Not just Steve Hackett in Genesis, but also Mike Rutherford and that double-necked bass + twelve-string combo. (Damn, that thing musta been heavy!)
Haven’t heard any Can-utility and the Coastliners, to this one’s shame. Some research for later on today…
Interestingly, for the studio version of Stairway to Heaven Jimmy Page used a Fender electric 12 - I don’t think he owned the double neck EDS at the time.
Major second to McGuinn, Harrison and Tom Petty. I’ll see you and raise you a Steve Howe for ‘And You And I’ from the second side of ‘Close to the Edge’, and throw in a Mahavishnu John McLaughlin to boot.
A thread from last week made me go back and listen again to Mahavishnu Orchestras ‘Visions of the Emerald Beyond’ - holy crap, that boy could play fast. (And the sound - ‘On the Way Home to Earth’, with the guitar run through a ring modulator is just astounding!) It made me think, though - did anyone ever try stringing a 12 with the lower strings in fifths instead of octaves? I know lots of shredders play in a drop-D or play a seven-string with the low string tuned to an A to get an easy power chord on the bottom, but imagine how fast you could do power lines if every ‘string’ (‘course’ to us pedantic folk) were root and fifth…
That sounds right - just like he used a Tele + Supro amp in the studio on the first album and transitioned to a Les Paul + Marshall because of the live sound. The doubleneck was simply practical - one of few legit reasons to actually play one of those things (i.e., to make playing a song easier onstage) - otherwise you are playing it for the wank factor…
I just revisited Inner Mounting Flame and actually gave it a hard listen. He has a real Coltrane quality - playing in opposition to the melody, sheets of sound and his use of distortion is clearly targeted at emulating a horn. I was also struck by how that album is completely *made *by the drum work of Billy Cobham. Fusion isn’t my cuppa, but on some of those songs that guy is just smokin’
As for weird tunings on 12-strings - oh yeah, there are guys out there who do stuff like that. I never dug into John Zorn, Arto Lindsay and the like, but I am pretty sure they’ve tried alternate tunings…
I haven’t heard it applied to heavy guitar, but I get your logic - heck, have the courses in fourths and you can play Smoke on the Water a bazillion times over!
::leans back in his chair, his inner rock dude thinkin’ “cooooooool” ;)::
Page uses a 12 string really cleverly in The Song Remains the Same I have a transcription of it and the lots of the chord shapes and patterns he uses just don’t work on a six string, dunno how he comes up with that stuff. He also used the 12 String on When the Levee Breaks I think that’s in a straight open tuning.
Anyone mention Leo Kottke yet? “This one starts like a lot of my songs. . . with a lot of tuning”.
All I can say about Leo Kottke is iTunes oughtta be giving some kinda tithe to the people of the Straight Dope. My own damn fault - don’t start threads like this unless you want to hear someone really stunning that you hadn’t heard before.
As to why I’ve never heard him before, I cannot say - I’ve heard the name, but that’s about it.
Yeah, I’ve unfortunately become a bit blazé of late, and he doesn’t play in a genre I’m terribly into right now, but, damn, he’s good.
By the way, I get where you user name comes from and so I’m not surprised you know Harmonium, but how well known are they outside of Québec? Did anyone else in here already know of them?