By Kyle Swenson
Guitar Player, January 1999
Swedish popsters the Cardigans dumped an earful of sugar on the world with their 1997 smash hit, "Lovefool." Based on the song''s sparse guitars and bubble-gum chorus, you probably wouldn''t think of the band as raving experimentalists. But the Cardigan''s fourth album, Gran Turismo [Mercury], is a revelation of strange and rather unexpected guitar sounds. For example, you might think you''re hearing a guitar synth, a harpischord, or a pedal synth, a harpischord, or a pedal steel, but you''re not. All of the album''s sounds are production tricks conjured by guitarist Peter Svensson and producer Tore Johansson.
What's more, not one guitar track on Turismo was recorded using an amp. The guitars were either recorded direct or processed through Line 6's Amp Farm plug-in for Digidesign's Pro Tools. (For a full product review on Amp Farm, see "Virtual Vintage" in the Nov. '98 GP.) And although Amp Farm can deliver very impressive simulations of classic amps, the Cardigans didn't always exploit the technology to produce conventional amp sounds. Svensson and Johansson worked diligently to twist, bend, and shape the guitars into absolutely bizarro timbres.
"I was thinking about what kind of album we wanted to make," says Svensson, who wrote and arranged most of Gran Turismo. "I thought, 'I like guitar, I'm an okay guitar player, and I listen to a lot of guitar music.' But I didn't use much guitar on our earlier records. Back then, I was so eager to play the vibraphone or some keyboards or arrange string sections and horn sections -- I like the idea of having people in the studio playing different instruments. But for Gran Turismo, I wanted to play more guitar. Still, I think more about the whole production than about my guitar parts -- the guitars are just a part of the overall arrangement. You always must do what is best for the songs."
After the band's last tour, Svensson sat at home with the sound turned down on his television and guitar in hand. Then, without pressuring himself, he invited his songwriting muse to visit. "I've learned I can never be the master of my writing," he admits. "I just have to be able to set up some time to work at it, then realize that maybe it won't happen. There may be something the next day, of course, and the days that I don't come up with something are necessary for the whole process."
When Svensson walked through the studio door with his basic chords and melodies, none of the final guitar parts or guitar sounds were fleshed out. "I didn't want to have any hang-ups," he says. "For instance, if I'd been playing a guitar part in the rehearsal room that wasn't working out for the record, I'd still want to play it because I'd practiced it that way over and over. I wanted to be totally free from all that."
In the studio, Svensson and Johansson -- aided by Cardigans drummer Bengt Lagerberg, bassist Magnus Sveningsson, keyboardist/guitarist Lasse Johansson, and vocalist Nina Persson -- dressed up Gran Turismo with diverse, peculiar, and deceptive guitar sounds. The drums, bass, and some guitar parts were tracked on a '70s MCI analog 16-track. The tracks were later dumped into Digidesign's Pro Tools hard-disk recording system for looping parts and cutting and pasting song arrangements and other elements. The recording console was a '70s Neve -- a mixer renowned for its warm sound and wonderful EQ.
Despite the often strange guitar sounds, 6-string signal processing was pretty much limited to a Joemeek VC1 compressor, a Boss FZ-3 fuzz pedal, and a Neve EQ module. Many of the strange timbres are a result of producer Johansson's EQ tweaking. "The record is actually produced from very minimal elements," says Svensson. "But we tried to make every single sound heavy and powerful."
To provide an overview of just how heavy and powerful some of those sounds are, we asked Svensson to take us on a tour of Gran Turismo's guitar tones. The tour is arranged song by song, with track times to help you zero in on the specific parts that Svensson discusses. The only track not documented is "Nil" (#11 on the CD) because it's an ambient soundscape with few, if any, guitars. So let's start those engines and zoom through Gran Turismo.
Harpsichord melody (time 0:34). "That's an overdub of two 12-string electric guitars. There were no effects used -- it's just Tore turning the EQ upside down. The part was recorded with a '65 Fender electric 12, but it's not simply the guitar that makes the part sound as if it had been played by a harpsichord. The part itself is very classical -- like Bach or Mozart. We wanted that kind of sound because the song had a very folk-music attitude. It was actually a pretty hard piece to play because the drum part that Bengt was doing had few hits -- he didn't play the hi-hat on every beat. It took me a couple of hours to get the part right, but it always does. I come up with a figure in the studio, and then I sit for an hour and practice it to the music."
Feedback loop (time 1:04). "I wanted to have a fuzzy guitar playing 'beng beng,' and then silence. 'Beng beng.' Silence. But there was too much fuzz, so this feedback was going. And it was so amazing because the feedback started doing rhythms along with the drums. I ended up recording four different feedback rhythms, and we looped them into the next verse because it was impossible to do the same fuzz-and-feedback part twice.
"To get that sound, I plugged my '67 Gibson Les Paul into a Boss FZ-3 fuzz and then directly into the mixing board. I've tried loads of fuzz pedals, and to me, the Boss is the best.
"All the guitar sounds on 'Paralyzed' were recorded direct to 16-track tape. The two guitars I used most were the Les Paul and a mid-'80s Fender Tele. Everything went through the FZ-3 and the Joemeek VC1 -- no amps."
Acoustic guitar (time 0:09). "I used a new Martin for that, a really small-bodied guitar. Playing along with the acoustic -- but panned to the left -- is a fuzz bass. And in the second verse, just before the chorus, the Tele is echoing the acoustic guitar melody. When we layered a lot of guitar parts, Tore's skill at playing with the EQ was essential. He has a really good ear, and makes sure that all the tones are distinct so you can hear every instrument."
Fuzz guitar (time 0:25 and again at solo, 2:27). "I love that figure. When I wrote the song, the chords I was playing sounded really good. But when we recorded the song, we decided not to play the chords in the verses, and I sort of missed them. I tried overdubbing a part that used the chords exactly as I had written them, but it didn't work -- which is probably why we didn't use them in the first place! Finally, I played the chords up an octave, and I think the rhythm is really cool. It's my Les Paul running through the Boss FZ-3."
Guttural thrills (time: 2:43). "That's a part that was originally a vocal melody, but I didn't like it as a vocal, so I used it for an instrumental part instead. I'm playing it really fast -- like a mandolin. In the left speaker, I overdubbed a part that hits one note through the entire chord progression. The guitars ran through the Amp Farm -- I think we used the Vox AC30 model.
"For all the guitars on this song, I used a capo because I wrote the song in Am but Nina needed the sound put in a better key for her voice, so we changed the key to Em. I have to be careful about that. Sometimes I come up with these guitar arrangements, but I can't play them because they aren't right for the singer."
Neal Young-isms (time 0:38). "That's one of my favorite guitar parts. It's the Les Paul again, running through the Amp Farm. I did a lot of different takes with different guitars, but I wasn't really happy with anything. First I wouldn't like the sound, and then I wouldn't like my performance. There wasn't a big difference between each take, but I was being very precious about the part because I wanted it to sound the way I had it in my head from the beginning. Finally, I came up with something I liked.
"The clean part is a half-note bend played on the Tele. The main part was played through one of the Amp Farm Marshall models, and the other parts were through the AC30 model.
"The part is really a big picture of a single melody -- a big harmony thing. The main part is almost the same melody that Nina sings during the verses. In fact, you'll find there's practically one melody throughout the whole song. I liked it a lot, and we didn't really have a chorus on that song, anyway. I thought the vocal line was good enough to use on the instrumental chorus."
Wobbly Uni-Vibe (time 0:04). "That's the Tele running through the t.c. electronic phaser. It's plugged directly into the mixing board and then into the Joemeek VC1. I liked the vocal melody in the verse, so I wanted to repeat it with the guitar part. I'm doing sort of a 'guitar transcription' of what Nina is singing, repeating the lines in between her performances.
"The guitar that's thumping chords underneath is the Tele plugged into the VC1. We used the VC1's enhancer to put this high treble on it, which makes this glittering guitar sound -- it's really amazing. The distortion is from the Amp Farm AC30. The part almost sounds like two different guitars because you hear this shiny part and then a muggy, distorted part -- but it's really just one guitar."
Laser-beam solo (time 2:50). "That's the Tele through one of the Marshalls in the Amp Farm. I wanted to have this crazy solo where I went nuts. The story is this: When the first note of the bass is sounding, I'm picking the strings at the headstock to get this metallic sound. Then I played two takes of the solo. In Pro Tools, Tore cut together the best parts of each take and panned the submixed solo from left to right. It's two different takes, but he made it sound like one guitar is going from left to right all the time.
"On the second take, I went so nuts I found that my guitar was splattered with blood. I think that when I hit the strings above the neck, I hit them so hard that my fingers started to bleed. That's rock and roll!"
Gamelan bells (song intro). "It's the Les Paul straight into the mixing board. Originally, I played the part through the whole song. There were a couple of incidents where I hit other strings by accident, and it made this sound. Those 'mistakes' sounded really crappy and loud -- really weird -- so we looped them and had them going through the whole verse. For these looped parts, I tuned the B string to C. You should also be able to hear two old Fender 6-string electric basses laying down chords in the background."
Plucked melody (time 3:09). "I'm playing an old, hollowbody Gibson ES-350T. The warm, dense tone is probably due to the strings. I always use thick-gauged D'Addario strings -- typically an .011 set."
Spitting horn (time 0:33). "I really like the rhythms underneath the vocal in the verses. I was just fooling around, and I found this great sliding rhythm part. That's the Tele. It's also playing the clanky 'do-do-waahng' part on the second verse."
Kazoo-through-a-megaphone (time 0:09). "I used only the Les Paul on this song. I turned the tone knob to zero, and then Tore did something with the VC-1 compression. The sound is direct -- no Amp Farm. There's also a rhythm guitar in the left speaker, and a weird guitar in the right. The weird guitar is playing fifths, and it's processed in Pro Tools with a synthesizer filter from Digidesign's D-Fi plug-in. It sounds more like a synthesizer than a guitar."
Guitar synth (intro). "Oh, that's the Les Paul again. We overdubbed three tracks of single-note lines. All three parts are running through the FZ-3 fuzz, and for one part, I used a dropped-D tuning. Two of the guitars are doing this bending thing -- the third guitar is not, because it was too much with all three of them bending. I wrote the song in Em, but we dropped it to Dm, which made it a bit heavier, and I like that a lot.
"I played the part as a chord run on a single guitar when I wrote it, but we thought it would sound cooler if we did three different guitar lines instead of just playing rock chords. We tried playing the part as one chord with the fuzz pedal, but it got too messy. The separation of the notes was much better when each part was played by itself."
Acoustic shimmer (time 0:22). "It's a Lowden acoustic tuned down a whole-step. I originally played the song in Em, but the chords didn't sound that good when we transposed the song to Dm. I tuned the whole guitar down so I could still play the same chords, but in a different key."
Guitar-synth solo (time 2:40). "That's very much like a Pantera riff. I'm a huge Dimebag Darrell fan. All the riffing parts on this song are influenced by him. He always has this really cool vibrato when he's playing riffs -- and I used the same trick for the end of the phrases."
Pedal steel (time 0:04). "I wrote the verse seven years ago, and we used it as an instrumental B-side. Bengt was playing the bassoon, and I did some really nice guitar work. I've always thought that piece of music was too good to be a B-side. Then I found this nice, simple chorus, and, finally, I had a song.
"The Tele is playing the melody, and it's continuously panned from right to left. It's actually four different guitar tracks where I'm playing one note at a time -- a cool production idea that just sort of happened in the studio. When it comes to the bending part, all the guitars bend together. I didn't use a slide or anything, so that part is going to be really tricky to pull off onstage.
"I like to repeat the vocal melodies in my guitar work. I wanted to add a country feeling to the song, and I thought all these bending parts would sound like a pedal steel. It's not really obvious what the part is, and that's what I like about our productions: You can never be sure what the sound is."