Extended Techniques For Electric Guitar: The Pickup As A Microphone

Welcome to the first installment of Brooklyn Guitar Lessons' Extended Techniques For Electric Guitar mini-series!

"Extended technique" is defined as unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional methods of singing or of playing musical instruments employed to obtain unusual sounds or timbres.

My aim with this series is to introduce some easy electric-guitar-specific extended techniques that will help you explore new and creative ways to use your instrument.

For today's post, let's start with a quick backstory....

THE WALKIE-TALKIE TRICK

A walkie-talkie, one of my original inspirations for exploring extended technique.

Nearly 20 years ago, when I was first beginning my adventures as a guitarist, my high school threw a "Spring Fling" event. My friends and I were especially excited about the inky copy-shopped DIY fliers announcing a lineup of live rock bands. The night came, and dressed in our 90's alt-rock finery, we made our way to the school.

As a young guitarist, this was a very formative night for me in many ways. It marked the first time I heard peers of my age group playing great guitar.

It was also the first time I saw someone take a guitar beyond the realms of conventional technique.

The evening's headliner was a now-defunct band from Ithaca, NY called Nothing Doll. Their music, as I remember it, was grungy and riffy and melodic, and they sounded great.

In the middle of one of their songs, the lead singer/guitarist pulled out a pair of walkie talkies...

While singing into one, he held the other to his guitar's pickups and the most amazing thing happened: His vocals left the speaker of the walkie, traveled through guitar pickups and cables and effects pedals, and came out of the amplifier! The sound was warm and distorted and very different from the voice coming through the P.A. system.

I spent a good part of the next day scouring my parents' house for sound-making things that would, by way of the same magical formula, travel through the pickups of my own guitar.

Though I didn't know anything about the terminology at the time, my eyes and ears had suddenly been opened to the possibilities of extended technique!
 

TINY MUSIC

A music box movement from my personal collection.

At the end of the day, the pickups of an electric guitar are essentially a crude sort of microphone. Their output is low, and pickup pattern very specific, but if you get the positioning just right they'll transmit nearly any sound you put in front of them!

One of my favorite "pickups-as-mic" techniques involves the use of a wind-up music box. They're easy to come by, the frequencies are in the right range to be transferred well, and they sound especially beautiful through effects pedals and guitar amps.

Getting the sound of a music box to come through your guitar's pickups is easy:

1. Wind the music box, and make sure it's playing back. (Sometimes they have a go/stop switch)
2. Put your guitar's pickup selector in the bridge position, making sure that the volume is all the way up. (Amp should be set to normal playing volume)
3. Hold the music box movement directly over the bridge pickup, and you'll hear the melody coming through your amplifier

You can also experiment with using the neck (or middle) pickup for a different sound, and activate effects pedals (delay/reverb/overdrive/etc) to see how the music box sound can be manipulated!

If you'd like to try working with your own music box compositions, Kikkerland offers a Make Your Own Music Box Kit. It comes with a hand-cranked music box movement in a major key, plus "piano roll" strips that you can use to make your own songs. (They also happen to rest very conveniently on the strings of an electric guitar...)

 

SPEAKERBOXXX/THE IPHONE ABOVE

An iPod with mini-speaker, perfect for playing samples through your guitar pickups!

Another easy trick for getting non-guitar sounds coming through your pickups is to use something with a small speaker. Much like Nothing Doll's walkie-talkie, you can use a pair of open-ear headphones, a small inexpensive portable speaker, or even the built-in speaker on your iPhone.

The process for using any of these devices is identical to that of the music box above:

1. Max out the volume on your device and make sure it's playing back some sort of audio. (mp3, YouTube video of bacon frying, or even a voicemail from mom, who you keep forgetting to call back)
2. Put your guitar's pickup selector in the bridge position, making sure that the volume is all the way up. (Amp should be set to normal playing volume)
3. Hold the device directly over the bridge pickup, and you'll hear the sound coming through your amplifier!

I use this trick with an old iPod + a plug-in speaker to play various samples through my guitar's pickups and effects. Some of my favorite sample choices are audio versions of old science textbooks, NOAA weather and tide forecasts, but you can be creative and use any sound you like!

FURTHER EXPLORATION

The techniques above are just the tip of the iceberg, and will hopefully inspire you to find your own experimental guitar-pickup-as-microphone tricks!

If you have any questions about the techniques listed in this post, feel free to comment on this post or message me directly via the Brooklyn Music Lessons contact page.

Thanks for reading, and happy shredding!

- Chris