We’re happy to present to you the full demo of our new pedal: the Mini Glitch!
Background Info: The original Feral Glitch pedal was created to answer what is easily the most-asked question we’ve received in the six years since starting tKoG: “how do I recreate Jonny Greenwood’s random stutter Max/MSP patch with guitar effects pedals?” Since we finished the Kickstarter run of the Feral Glitch last year, we’ve been tweaking the design both to improve its features and to simplify its design. The original Feral Glitch was great for a small Kickstarter run, but it was much too complicated and expensive to produce at scale. With this new design, we’ve created a version of the pedal that provides even better performance while cutting down on cost and production time. It loses some of the Feral Glitch’s bonus features (such as the high-pass filter), but retains all of the pedal’s essential abilities, and the result is an extremely intuitive glitch device.
Features of the Mini Glitch: The Mini Glitch still features the two original “switched” modes found on the Feral Glitch, but condensed into a single mode without losing any of the functionality (thanks to a secondary knob function). The pedal’s new features include soft-touch switching, two new modes (fully-random and threshold-detect), true latching functionality, and a smaller enclosure. It also features new click-reduction code built into all modes. It’s still fully capable of aggressive glitch sounds, but it can also produce smoother loops more suited textural or ambient applications. All if this is contained in a smaller 1590B enclosure while maintaining top mount jacks.
If you’d like to purchase the pedal, please send us an email at thekingofgear@gmail.com. Our first run of the pedal will be 30 units total. The price for the new unit is $180 shipped within the US, and $200 for those in the rest of the world (to cover international shipping).
We’re happy to present to you the full demo of our new pedal: the Mini Glitch!
Background Info: The original Feral Glitch pedal was created to answer what is easily the most-asked question we’ve received in the six years since starting tKoG: “how do I recreate Jonny Greenwood’s random stutter Max/MSP patch with guitar effects pedals?” Since we finished the Kickstarter run of the Feral Glitch last year, we’ve been tweaking the design both to improve its features and to simplify its design. The original Feral Glitch was great for a small Kickstarter run, but it was much too complicated and expensive to produce at scale. With this new design, we’ve created a version of the pedal that provides even better performance while cutting down on cost and production time. It loses some of the Feral Glitch’s bonus features (such as the high-pass filter), but retains all of the pedal’s essential abilities, and the result is an extremely intuitive glitch device.
Features of the Mini Glitch: The Mini Glitch still features the two original “switched” modes found on the Feral Glitch, but condensed into a single mode without losing any of the functionality (thanks to a secondary knob function). The pedal’s new features include soft-touch switching, two new modes (fully-random and threshold-detect), true latching functionality, and a smaller enclosure. It also features new click-reduction code built into all modes. It’s still fully capable of aggressive glitch sounds, but it can also produce smoother loops more suited textural or ambient applications. All if this is contained in a smaller 1590B enclosure while maintaining top mount jacks.
If you’d like to purchase the pedal, please send us an email at thekingofgear@gmail.com. Our first run of the pedal will be 30 units total. The price for the new unit is $180 shipped within the US, and $200 for those in the rest of the world (to cover international shipping).
There is now a tKoG extension on the chrome store. We’ll admit that it’s always been difficult for readers to find information on a song they’re interested in, and a new startup gave us the opportunity to put that info right in front of you! The extension gives provides concise gear summaries and other useful annotations (lyrics, guitar tunings) for Radiohead videos on youtube, right next to the video itself. The idea is to prevent you from always having to google furiously to find the info you’re looking for!
So far, we’ve added a bunch of info for almost all of Radiohead’s official channel, particularly for the Thumbs Down and Scotch Mist webcast videos. We plan to expand the extension to non-official videos as well, and to add information about where you can buy the gear in the videos.
We’d be happy to get your feedback about the extension, and if you’d like to create a similar extension or have any questions, you can contact the startup that built it for us at developers@manaweb.com.
This post features a description of Jonny, Colin, and Phil’s roles, along with a lengthy discussion of different “drum machine” techniques which Jonny has employed over the years.
Hello! During the 90’s, Thom mainly used electric-acoustic guitars. His favorite at the time was probably his Yairi Dy-88. He switched to using standard acoustic guitars with pickups, when the Lakewood M14 became his favored gigging acoustic. By 2006, he had settled on the Fishman Rare Earth Blend pickup for all of his acoustic guitars. Jonny’s Martin D35 acoustic is fitted with this pickup as well.
A screenshot of Thom with the Yairi DY-88 at the 1998 Tibetan Freedom Concert (youtube). The DY-88 is an acoustic designed primarily for stage use, with no sound-hole whatsoever (in order to prevent feedback).
A screenshot of Thom playing his Martin 00-18 during Desert Island Disk at the 2017 I-Days Festival (radiohead.tv). Note the Fishman Rare Earth Pickup affixed at the sound-hole.
Great find, thank you for writing in! Combined with a crisp slapback delay from a BOSS DD5, the slides which Ed plays on the Conan version are almost certainly responsible for the “dog noise”. Ed had done a good job of replicating studio sounds over the years, but he’s done an even better job of creating sounds which seem to be studio magic, but which are in fact just his guitar. This seems to be the latter case. It’s strange that Ed did a much less accurate job of reproducing the sound on both the From The Basement version (recorded immediately after the Conan version) and on the Scotch Mist version, but to be fair his playing is more obscured by Jonny on both of those performances.
There is now a tKoG extension on the chrome store. We’ll admit that it’s always been difficult for readers to find information on a song they’re interested in, and a new startup gave us the opportunity to put that info right in front of you! The extension gives provides concise gear summaries and other useful annotations (lyrics, guitar tunings) for Radiohead videos on youtube, right next to the video itself. The idea is to prevent you from always having to google furiously to find the info you’re looking for!
So far, we’ve added a bunch of info for almost all of Radiohead’s official channel, particularly for the Thumbs Down and Scotch Mist webcast videos. We plan to expand the extension to non-official videos as well, and to add information about where you can buy the gear in the videos.
We’d be happy to get your feedback about the extension, and if you’d like to create a similar extension or have any questions, you can contact the startup that built it for us at developers@manaweb.com.
We want to thank everyone who’s shared and supported our new pedal! It’s been a resounding success, with more than 2/3 of the first run spoken for in only a few days. Redesigning the Feral took a huge amount of work, so it’s great to see enthusiasm for the result :) Thanks again!
I was just reading through this article http://www.theguitarmagazine.com/interviews/ed-obrien/ and when looking at the last pic, it almost looks like there’s a Strymon Dig on the bottom left of Ed’s board.
Thank you for the submission, Sam! Good call, you are certainly correct about the Strymon DIG.
It looks like Ed made some changes to the TheGigRig pedalboard which Dan build for him back in 2014. It’s somewhat surprising to see this board in an article published in December 2017, since Ed had a new studio pedalboard constructed in November of the same year. However, since the both pedalboard feature Ed’s beloved Deluxe Memory Man (the tape on the unit shows it to be the same), it’s likely that the photoshoot took place before Dan built the new board.
A picture of Dan and Ed with the old “studio” board back in 2014.
Either way, Ed had made a few changes to the board by the time of the photoshoot. The Korg SDD-3000 was replaced by a Strymon DIG, and the Pigtronix Infinity Looper (along with its external footswitch) was replaced by a TC Electronic Ditto X4 (which Ed used in addition to his Line 6 DL4 for looping on the 2016 and 2017 tours). Additionally, Ed has two “floaters” next to his board: a Kingsley Page and a M-Audio EX-P expression pedal. The expression pedal is most likely connected to the Strymon DIG, given Ed’s consistent use since 2011 of expression pedals with delay. Ed may have made changes to the compression and dirt pedals kept underneath the G2, but it’s impossible to tell from the photos.
Below are a couple of cropped photos of Ed’s 2014 board from the article linked by the asker. The Strymon DIG can be seen clearly in the top photo, next to the smartphone which rests against it.
Friend-of-the-site James had the excellent idea to write up an explanation of the tracks on the OKNOTOK White Cassette. The cassette is quite dense, and it’s difficult to parse even if you’re deeply familiar with the recording of OK Computer. As such, this analysis will give even the seasoned fan a greater understanding of and appreciation for the cassette’s contents. After completing the write-up, James asked us to give any additional insights, and after a couple of small changes it is presented here!
Recently, there have been a great many questions about Jonny’s live guitar part on The Present Tense– particularly with reference to the recent performance video. Rather than attempt to answer all of those questions individually, it seemed better to make a single post which would answer all of them. While Jonny’s playing will be discussed in even greater detail than the transcription above provides, let’s first cover the gear used in that video.
Thom sings into one of Nigel’s Soyuz SU-017’s, a tube large-diaphragm condenser microphone which has become a favorite since Nigel obtained one in 2015. He used one each to mic Shye Ben Tzur’s singing and the brass section for Junun, and also used a pair as part of his strings mic’ing setup for AMSP.
The Soyuz microphones can be seen on either side of Hugh Brunt, co-director and principal conductor of the LCO.
Thom is playing his 1963-64 Epiphone Casino into his fawn 1962 JMI Vox AC30/6. Thom’s AC30 is barely visible, but you can see it to Jonny’s left in a few places in the video. Jonny is playing his trusty Fender Telecaster Plus No1, probably into his trusty 90’s Vox AC30 6TB. He is primarily using his BOSS RE20 Space Echo pedal, which he recently referred to as his “one delay pedal”.
One notable difference is that between “Radiohead” live performances and this duo arrangement is that Jonny frequently turns on his reverb pedal for his sparse verse arpeggiations. He turns it off again whenever he does his percussive technique. Jonny stopped using his old BOSS RV-3 this year, switching it out for a BOSS RV-5, which he had started to use with his ondes Martenot a few years ago.
Another difference from “Radiohead” live performances is that Jonny does not use his BOSS OD3 for the duet – at Radiohead concerts he turns it on for the extensive tremolo-picking section.
The drum machine, as mentioned in the title of the video, is a Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm. The CR-78 is also visible in the following photo from the recording of AMSP:
Loop and Percussive Guitar Technique
While delay is present, the most important aspect of the part is playing technique. For this song, Jonny utilized a technique that he developed to perform his piece Loop with the London Contemporary Orchestra.
As the name suggests, Loop is based around a recorded loop which repeats throughout the piece, and over the course of the piece, Jonny and the string ensemble (usually the LCO) harmonically re-interpret it in different ways. Jonny plays the loop on his electric guitar (usually his natural finish Gibson Les Paul), recording it with his Akai Headrush E2. For the loop to function as a solid foundation for all eight musicians (including Jonny) to perform the three minute piece, it can’t be sloppy – the rhythm needs to be extremely solid.
Very likely in order to stay in very good time, Jonny decided to percussively hit the strings of his guitar between each plucked note. He does so with the blade/bottom of his hand, which simultaneously mutes the previous note and produces a percussive sound. He uses the motion of his hand lifting after each of these hits in order to pluck the next note. In this way, he essentially functions as his own metronome.
The Present Tense – Guitar Part
During the verses of The Present Tense, Jonny plays nearly the exact same part as he does at the start of Loop. In order to make the riff fit with the 4/4 time signature of The Present Tense, he eschews its last three notes, but uses the same exact same percussive technique and even begins with a bar chord in the same position (the chord’s quality is changed to major to match Thom’s playing). In The Present Tense, the D# minor of Loop is altered and re-interpreted as Eb Major, but this is mostly contextual: aside from the raised third, the pitches are identical.
For the full duration of The Present Tense live performances, Jonny’s BOSS RE-20 Space Echo delay pedal is active and audible. During the first half of the song, the delay serves mostly to give a spacier or atmospheric sound to his arpeggiations, while during the outro half it thickens Jonny tremolo picking. He uses a single delay time until he starts tremolo picking, when he taps in a new tempo.
During the first half, the delay itself is set to be exactly five sixteenth notes long, so that’s 1-e-and-a 2-e-and-a 3-e-and-a etc… You can watch Jonny tap out this tempo at the start of this video, from Radiohead’s July 26th NYC performance.
While the delay serves a more atmospheric role during much of the verses, it serves a very rhythmic one during the measures when Jonny uses the Loop technique. The following image shows Jonny’s guitar part over four measures, with the notes reproduced by the dleay presented in the ossia staff. Note that the percussive taps are not shown.
Here is the result once they’re condensed into a single part (with the percussive taps removed):
Jonny mostly plays the riff when Thom plays the chords Eb Maj and D min – as he sings the lines “like a weapon”, “against the present”, “keep it light and”, and “I’ll be dancing”. However, we do get new iterations of the riff at the end of the third verse and into the fourth verse. When Thom sings “no harm”, Jonny plays the riff over an F Maj bar chord (same shape and technique, just up two semitones). As Thom sings “As my world comes crashing down”, Jonny plays the riff on G minor and C minor bar chords while Thom plays different fingerings of the same chords. Aside from adjustments for chord quality (major/minor), he’s just moving the basic bar chord shape around the fretboard and then applying his distinctive picking technique.
Edited: Feb 25, 2018
Edited to correct a few mistakes, including a misidentified chord quality (Eb major, not Eb minor) and an old misconception about the color of Jonny’s Les Paul (natural, not goldtop).
From Colin’s Twitter: a photo of Jonny with one of his Ondomo (ondes Martenot)!
This photo was taken during a performance of Desert Island Disk. On 2017 performances of that song, Jonny loops his Ondomo using an Akai Headrush E2, then manipulates the frequencies of the loop using a BOSS GE-7 EQ pedal. In the photo above, Jonny can be seen adjusting the sliders of the BOSS GE-7 (you can also see him adjusting the pedal in this video from Miami in 2017).
Jonny’s Ondomo loop on that song consists of the notes G, A, B, C, D, E, and G – all layered on top of eachother (on the radiohead.tv video of the band’s I-Days performance, you can clearly hear Jonny create the loop from 6:14-6:50). By leaving out the seventh note of the scale, Jonny makes it possible to interpret the scale as either the Major (Ionion) mode or the Mixolydian mode.
Thom’s playing sits squarely in G Mixolydian, so it’s a little odd that Jonny would leave out the note. However, since Thom’s guitar part consists predominantly of an alternation between chords on G and F natural, leaving the F natural out of the loop might make the chords on F stand out more strongly and provide a greater feeling of surprise each time that “modal” note is employed (F# is the expected “tonal” note). It probably also makes Ed’s rising and falling scales, which always end on F natural and never reach the final (G), stand out more strongly as well. By leaving out the F natural, it leaves open the possibility that Ed will play an F# leading tone at the peak of a scale and finally reach the G. The fact that this is possible but never occurs adds a certain “floating” character of the song (as do the delay effects on Ed’s guitar).
On 2016 performances of the song, Jonny similarly manipulated the frequencies of an Akai Headrush loop using a BOSS GE-7, but used his Crumar Multiman-S / Orchestrator as the input instead of an Ondomo (which he had not yet acquired).
As of today, all units from the first run of our Mini Glitch effects pedal are built and shipped! We want to thank everyone who shared or supported the pedal so far - this pedal has been a dream of ours for a long time, and it’s only thanks to your enthusiasm and support that we were able to make it a reality.
Here’s our plans for the future of the Mini Glitch:
We’ll definitely be making more of the pedals, and soon. But first, we’ll be slightly revising the arrangement of the circuit-board to speed up the building process. This won’t involve any changes to the function or sound of pedal itself, just how the components are laid out.
Once, that’s finished, in no more than a month or so, we’ll begin the second run.
We’ve also created a mail list to alert you when the next run is announced. To be added to the list, email us at thekingofgear@gmail.com. We’ll of course post updates here too, but the mail list is the best way to get them right when they’re announced.
Again, many thanks for making this weird glitchy pedal a reality!
In the April 1998 issue of Guitar World, Thom said that band sampled Phil’s playing with their Akai S3200XL sampler, then transferred it onto their Apple Macintosh II computer for processing. The Akai writes its samples to a floppy disk, so they probably just plugged that into the computer (rather than recording it off of the sampler with an ADC). The band used ‘Sound Designer 2′ to manipulate the drum loops on Planet Telex off of The Bends, but on OK Computer they seem to have used ‘Emagic Logic’ and ‘Steinberg Cubase’ for any digital manipulations.
Additionally, the band ran the final drum loops through both Jonny’s pedalboard and through a Moog synthesizer (very likely the Moog Rogue), layering both with the original loops. One can hear the processed drums in isolation on the OKNOTOK White Cassette.
Colin didn’t acquire his MPC60 until 1999, during the band’s work on Kid A and Amnesiac.
In this photo from the band’s 1997 Glastonbury performance, an Akai S3200XL can be seen in the top space of each of Jonny’s two racks. On tour, they were used to reproduce the sounds of Jonny’s Mellotron M400, which he sampled onto the units.
A shot of Jonny with his Moog Rogue during the recording of Man of War. The Rogue offers an audio input, allowing external sources to be run through its filter and VCA.
Today is the first gig of the 2018 tour! And thanks to diegojuica, a piano tuner who posted this photo and undoubtedly tuned the band’s upright piano, we get an early look at what the band are using this year.
Slightly right of center, we can see the band’s Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 08, which has been a key part of their live setup since 2011. It seems likely that Thom associates the Prophet 08′s sound with Radiohead, since he didn’t replace it with the DSI Prophet-6 that he used for last year’s solo performances. Since the band started using it, the Prophet 08 has been used as a synthesizer, a MIDI controller, and even to control a vocoder (on the song Kid A). For shows in support of A Moon Shaped Pool, its uses included Identikit (Thom), Everything In Its Right Place (Thom), Myxomatosis (Jonny), Lotus Flower (Jonny), Daydreaming (Phil!), Climbing Up The Walls (Colin), and Videotape (Colin), amongst others.
Further to the right, we can see the band’s Moog Voyager Performer Edition, which has been used live since 2012 on songs like Myxomatosis (Jonny), Feral (Thom), and Lotus Flower (Jonny), and was used during the recording of A Moon Shaped Pool.
Above the Moog, we can see a pair of Macbook Pro laptops running Native Instruments Kontakt 5. This sampler software has been used by Jonny and Colin since the 2000′s to replicate the many keyboards used on album recordings. Rather than use pre-built sample banks, the band’s techs sampled their original instruments onto the software, including Jonny’s vintage Mellotron M400 (used heavily on OK Computer) and Colin’s Novation Bass Station (used on Climbing Up The Walls). For shows in support of A Moon Shaped Pool, Jonny has triggered the software via a Fatar Keys Sl-161 MIDI controller, while Colin has triggered it via the DSI Prophet 08′s MIDI output.
On the left, we can see the band’s Kemble KC121 with “Silent System”. As on the past two tours, an Akai Headrush E2 is velcro’d to the instrument’s bottom panel. The Kemble’s “Silent System” allows a digital piano module (mounted under the key bed) to be triggered by the piano itself. The digital piano module is connected to the Akai Headrush E2, which is used by Jonny as a delay effect on The Numbers. Interestingly, only the “effect” output of the Headrush is used. This makes it clear that the direct sound of the piano is coming from the microphones placed inside of it, and the digital piano sounds are only used for the delay repeats.
That isn’t correct. Jonny still uses his computer to generate the electronic percussion on performances 15 Step. As he’s done since the mid-2000′s, he uses a Roland FC200 MIDI controller to change the patterns played by the laptop, which keeps his hands free to play guitar. In fact, he even updated his Max/MSP drum machine for Max 7 in February, 2016.
Jonny’s Roland FC200 MIDI controller can be seen to his left in this photo from April, 2006, during rehearsals for Radiohead’s 2006 tour (deadairspace).
Jonny’s laptop setup in 2008, with his Kenton Control Freak SE at the front. The sliders on the Kenton’s left are labeled K, R, HH, HI T, LO T, S – corresponding to the drum samples on his Max patch.
A section of the Max 7 update to the “drum machine” patch which Jonny built in 2016.
That isn’t correct. Jonny still uses his computer to generate the electronic percussion on performances 15 Step. As he’s done since the mid-2000′s, he uses a Roland FC200 MIDI controller to change the patterns played by the laptop, which keeps his hands free to play guitar. In fact, he even updated his Max/MSP drum machine for Max 7 in February, 2016.
Jonny’s Roland FC200 MIDI controller can be seen to his left in this photo from April, 2006, during rehearsals for Radiohead’s 2006 tour (deadairspace).
Jonny’s laptop setup in 2008, with his Kenton Control Freak SE at the front. The sliders on the Kenton’s left are labeled K, R, HH, HI T, LO T, S – corresponding to the drum samples on his Max patch.
A section of the Max 7 update to the “drum machine” patch which Jonny built in 2016.
For those interested, the score which Jonny was seen carrying in Chile recently is G. Henle Verlag’s “clothbound” urtext edition of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I (BWV 846-86). Here’s a link to it on the publisher’s website.
