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Topic: Questions for Chas Smith |
Drew Howard
From:
48854
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Drew Howard
From:
48854
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Jesse Pearson
From:
San Diego , CA
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Posted 8 May 2006 9:36 pm |
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| Wow, that's something else! Wasn't Chas on Art Bell? Would love to hear samples one of these days. |
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chas smith R.I.P.
From:
Encino, CA, USA
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Posted 16 May 2006 4:11 pm
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| Drew, I'm sorry that I didn't see this, and I'm not ignoring you. At this very moment, I'm learning more than I ever wanted to know about concrete. I'm patching what started out as a small hole in the driveway and has now become 45 square feet. Of course I'm going to do it myself, because I didn't know what was involved. It's a life pattern..... Be back later. |
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chas smith R.I.P.
From:
Encino, CA, USA
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Posted 16 May 2006 9:12 pm
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Drew, the instrument is Guitarzilla. It was originally made around 16 or 17 years ago and it had 3 necks, a short scale, a long scale and a 5 string bass neck. Each neck has pickups on both ends and all of the strings are coplanar. It's primary function was to make complicated sounds that could be fed into a rack of effects, to further extend them. That is, I could make acoustic "textures" that could evolve in real time.
I used to do a bit of playing on film sound tracks and about 20 yrs ago, I was working on The Lost Boys. I had modified my Super Pro with pickups on both ends of the necks and had been "preparing" it with drill rods, and such, woven into the strings and striking them with various things like hammered dulcimer hammers or other drill rods.
So to extend this, I made Guitarzilla. A rod, or multiple rods, could be woven through the strings, across all of the necks, at some "mathematically friendly" place, and when struck, all of the strings will do something and all of the pickups will hear it.
On the bass neck, usually tuned in C's and G's or A's and E's, I can "roll" the bar at a particular fret and blend in the pickup from the "other side" of the bar, to make a more complicated harmony. Or I can just roll very slowly down the neck and one "side" goes up while the other "side" goes down. It's very useful for creating a "sh*t storm."
When I had to do traditional pitches also, I would set up the no-Bud in front of me and then Gtz, in front of it. 5 necks, always a crowd pleaser.
A number of my other instruments use vertically mounted rods on plates, an idea that I got from the artist and composer, Harry Bertoia and this was the first instrument that I made that incorporated that idea, its called Bass Tweed:
Vertically mounted rods have a much more "complicated sound" because of the transverse vibration.
A couple years ago I was asked to play a one-nighter at Podewil, in Berlin. It was too nuts to say no to and I had to do about 52 minutes of music. I had to take "cut-down" rack, that would fit into a briefcase as carry-on, and I had a ticket for one instrument to sit in the seat beside me.
I couldn't take the no-Bud, for the pitched material and the patterns, so I made a 12-string, titanium tube guitar that could bolt onto the side of Gtz when I played it and bolt underneath it, to travel.
The year before, I had done a one-nighter in Albuquerque, with Susan Alcorn, and for the "prep" on the guitar I had brazed some titanium rods onto steel plates (because steel is magnetic, the pickups will "hear" them) that I wove between the strings on the 2 front necks, but the titanium rods broke off too easily.
After experimenting with a bunch of different alloys, I settled on inconel 718 for the vertical rods. There are 66 rods total and there are titanium rods woven between the strings across all of the necks
The top photo was taken at an outdoor concert at the Schindler House here in LA and the bottom photo was take at Podewil. I don't normally play out, my stuff. |
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Loni Specter
From:
West Hills, CA, USA
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Posted 17 May 2006 5:58 pm
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You know what they say Chas, idol hands...  |
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chas smith R.I.P.
From:
Encino, CA, USA
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Posted 18 May 2006 8:01 am
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| Good point, maybe I should get a tv, I heard they go good with a six-pack. The amp show was a lot of fun. |
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