The Song: What You Hear

“Where Streets Have No Name” is, in this author’s opinion, U2′s most iconic song and probably the best example of their sound.  The song has an interesting structure. It begins in 6/8 time, transitions into 4/4 time, and then transitions back to 6/8 for the ending.  It’s in the key of D and has a tempo of 129 bpm.

We’ll be focusing on the introduction of this 6 minute long masterpiece.

The Gear: What You’ll Need

• A Six String Electric Guitar - In the original studio recording of this song, The Edge used a Gibson Explorer. However, he has played it live on a myriad of different guitars during U2′s performance career, including Gibson Les Pauls, Fender Stratocasters, and Fender Telecasters. Any of these, and many similar instruments, will do nicely.
• An Amp With a Clean Sound - The Edge used the legendary Vox AC30, but you can get the right sound with just about any amp that has a clean (undistorted) channel.
• A Delay Pedal - Nearly any delay pedal will do the trick, so long as you can adjust the Delay Time, Repeats, and Mix.

The Riff: What You’ll Play.

The Riff is an eighth note arpeggio in the key of D. It’s a simple pattern, but control is the name of the game. Your timing needs to be very even, so the effects can do their job. It’s best to accent the first note, so that it rings out a bit louder than the rest of the notes. You can alternate pick or use all down strokes; use whichever gives you more control. You may also consider palm muting the strings ever so slightly, for added control over the ringing. If you can manage all of these things, the effects will do the rest.

The Settings: What Knobs You’ll Twist and Why.

The Guitar

• If you’re on a Gibson-style guitar, choose the Bridge/Treble position on your toggle switch, and turn the volume and tone knobs all the way up. Gibsons are naturally very warm sounding, and the idea is to make it sound as pointy and “treble-y” as you can.

• If you’re on a Fender Stratocaster-style guitar, choose the  position between your bridge and middle pickup on your toggle switch, with volume and tone turned all the way up. Strats are naturally very pointy sounding. Choose the pickup position that blends the middle and bridge pickups to keep it from being too treble-heavy.  This will give it a more bell-like quality.

• If you’re on A Fender Telecaster-style guitar, choose the bridge position and turn the tone knob to about 6 and the volume all the way up. Teles are naturally very twangy, jangly sounding guitars. Rolling the Tone knob back to 6 helps harness the naturally pointy quality, and gives it more of the desired sound.

These settings will all help create that round, glassy, chime-like tone.

The Amp

If you’re using a tube amp, use the clean channel and set the knobs as follows:

Drive/Gain knob at 3, Bass at 5, Mid at 3, Treble at 7. If there’s a presence knob put it between 7 and 8, and set the volume to an appropriate level for the room you’re in.

If you’re using a solid state/non-tube amp, use the clean channel and set the knobs as follows:

Bass at 5, Mid at 2, Treble at 8. If there’s a presence knob put it between 7 and 8, and set the volume to an appropriate level for the room you’re in.

The Delay Pedal

The delay is the trickiest, and most integral part of the tone in this song, so special attention must be paid to make it sound right.

First, you’ll set the Mix(Echo Volume) so that the first echo is even with, or just barely louder than the original sound.

Next, you’ll set the Repeats so that you get 3-4 echoes after the original sound.

Lastly and most importantly, you’ll set the Delay Time(The time between the original sound and the first echo). You’ll want to set it to the length of a dotted eighth note(about 349 milliseconds in this case). What this means is that the delay time is 1.5 times the length of the eighth notes that you play in the riff. As a result, the delayed sound happens in between the eighth notes. This gives the riff the sound of being played with twice as many notes, as depicted in the figure below.

As you can see in the figure above, the delay of any given note sounds just after the next note in the riff. More specifically the delay of the first note plays just after the second note, and the delay of the second note plays just after the third note, and so on. This is the key to The Edge’s rhythmic cascade of sound.

Extras:Attention to detail

The previous steps should be enough to make the correct sound, but if they are quite working for you, here are some additional options that can put a bit more gloss on the sound.

If you are not using a tube amp and you feel that the sound is missing some attitude, you can try putting a clean gain booster pedal between your guitar and the delay pedal. additionally, you could try a very mild overdrive(not distortion) pedal, with the drive knob somewhere between 1 and 2. If you do this and the sound is too distorted, you might try backing the drive off on the pedal and/or turning the volume knob on your guitar down to the neighborhood of 6, or until it sounds right.

If you’re looking to give the sound a bit more of an epic feel, you may consider a reverb pedal with a hall (not spring) setting, between your delay pedal and your amp. This will give the sound a bit more resonance and smooth it out a bit.

If you are playing with a Gibson and have trouble getting it to sound as bright and pointy as the recording, you can try a treble booster pedal between your guitar and the delay pedal. Alternately, you can try a wah pedal in the same spot, turned on and close to all the way forward. Either of these would give your guitar a brighter, more pointy sound.

Conclusion and additional reading

If you have any further questions about get the sound of this song right, feel free to leave them in the comments.

More information on U2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2

More information on Where Streets Have No Name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Streets_Have_No_Name

More information on The Edge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edge

More information on Delay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_(audio_effect)

More information about Reverb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverb

Analog Reverb

Well, back in the day, reverb was primarily created in one of two ways.

Method #1:  A spring contraption located within the head of the amplifier would have sound channeled through it, and the sound would reverberate through the spring. A pickup at the end of the spring would channel that fade-out echo into the amp, because as the sound wave traveled it lost intensity, creating that “echo in an empty room” effect. Thus we have spring reverb.

Method #2: The second primary type of reverb is plate reverb, where the sound wave was run through a plate, a small sheet of metal that would reverberate with the sound. In my opinion, this creates a richer, fuller reverb effect.  However, because of its cost, the spring reverb became the main type of reverb in vintage amps.

Digital Reverb

Fast forward to the modern age: digital reverb. The third and most versatile type of reverb. The sound wave of your guitar is fed through algorithms and an echo pattern is created that mirrors, or reproduces, that of a real reverb. There is no actual reverberation occuring within a spring or a plate of metal, it is a purely digital effect. This type of reverberation has opened the door to such reverbs as “hall” and “room” reverb.

Electro-Harmonix makes the Holy Grail reverb pedal (located at http://www.ehx.com/products/holy-grail) which contains a “flerb” setting, where the reverb sound has a flanger effect on it, causing the reverb sound to become slightly detuned and very space-y. I own a behringer digital reverb that has a “modulate” setting that also detunes the echo and makes the sound more out of this world.

So to sum it all up, spring reverb and plate reverb involve reverberation through their respective metals, and digital reverb imitates them as well as providing its own unique types of reverb.

For some of the most popular reverb pedals, visit http://www.ehx.com/browse/reverb

For the cheapest but still decent-sounding reverb, visit http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/DR600.aspx This pedal will also show you the different types of digital reverb.

1. Your arms slightly higher than parallel with the keyboard.
2. You only have to be in to the key as far as your shortest finger on a black key. Remember that when we refer to “in” on the piano, we are talking how about how far back on the keyboard we are.
3. Lean forward slightly so that your arms hang where they feel heaviest and
   loosest. This is essential for playing using gravity instead of muscling your way through complex passages.
4. Sit tall as though you are pulled up from the center of your head. This allows for you to breathe freely and keeps tension from building up in the lower back.
5. Sit in the center of the hands in order to distribute the arms evenly. This helps to keep the player from overbalancing and playing one hand louder than the other.
6. Keep your wrists level. Don’t break or collapse them and don’t arch
   them too much. This helps to keep the weight of your arms doing the work instead of your muscles.
7. Keep your arms and hands in one line. Tilt your hand VERY slightly towards your thumb. Again, this helps you keep the weight of your arms doing the work, with the added bonus of keeping the carpal tunnel open.
8. When you play, keep your fingers curved, except for your thumb which
   you will keep straight. To play, release the weight of your arm into your hand. Do not contract in your hand or wrist. When your fingers are bent, it is the most efficient way to use gravity to depress the key.
9. Place your feet parallel and shoulder width apart. This allows for proper balance to keep from playing one hand louder than the other

If you need help, you should consider seeking out a qualified piano instructor to aid you in keeping proper posture.  That way, you can get a set of trained eyes watching this entire checklist for you while you play and, in turn, you’ll enjoy playing the piano for longer periods of time with less fatigue.

1. Start with the Lyrics
2. Start with the Melody
3. Start with the Background Part/Accompaniment
4. Start with a catchy Instrumental riff

Note that the old adage holds true: “The journey of a thousand steps begins with one”. In other words, you don’t have to hold yourself to a standard where a song jumps fully formed from inside your head. Write down chunks and put them away, then come back to them. Here’s a little more detail on each of above starting points.

1. Lyrics – You can write the lyrics of the song first and let the meaning of the words set you up to write the music. In other words, the cadence, lilt, length of phrases, etc. can let you know whether to write a fast, slow, poppy, rock-y, or other song. The number of syllables in a line can tell you how many notes are in your musical phrase.
2. Melody – You can write the melody of the song and then fit lyrics to the style and tone of the melody. If you already know the tune, you know approximately how many syllables of lyrics to put to that tune. You can also tell a lot about what mood the song is relating, depending on whether the melody is major or minor, happy or sad, or othewise.
3. Background Part/Accompaniment – You can write a set of interesting chords or a fun groove and then use that to come up with a melody or set the tone for a set of lyrics. A lot of Stevie Wonder’s music used this method.
4. Instrumental Riff – You can write a catchy instrumental riff or a “hook” and build the rest of the song around that. Often the hook can be used as the vocal melody, as well. Check out “Come Together” and “Day Tripper” by the Beatles for examples of this.

Remember, your own personal art is ever-evolving; all of you experiences in the world contribute to what you create in your songs. So, experience and relate it back in your own words. If you are honest and true to yourself, your message will affect someone else who has been in the same situation.

Another tip: if you are interested in songwriting, you can also consider studying with an instructor with a great deal of experience in teaching songwriting and music theory. The real trick to it is no trick at all though, just start a piece and see where it leads.

Quality Over Quantity

Don’t worry about practicing long hours.  Make the your practice time count! As a music student, your job is to improve, master, and remember what you’ve accomplished.

Most students fail in one of two basic ways.

1. They practice in a way that fails to produce improvement.
2. They practice in a way that fails to ensure a lasting memory of the items learned.

Listen to the Music

Music is about listening. Well trained ears help you learn music easily and quickly. If you read music, try to understand how the notation communicates what you are hearing. It should be easy to schedule some listening into your day. If you enjoy music, you will already have listening time built in. Take the song that you want to learn and listen to it. Play it in the background. Listen when you’re in the car. Listen to it while you work out. Listen to each new piece for a few days before you start to practice it. The biggest advantage in listening is that it will help prevent mistakes in rhythm. Rhythm mistakes are the hardest to fix!

Practice Daily.

Daily practice makes for steady progress. I often say in my practice that 5 minutes a day is better than 3 hours all at once in a frantic push to be ready for your lesson. People often underestimate the value of a daily commitment. They don’t prioritize their practice time and skip days with the intention of doubling-up the following day. If they skip a few days, they pledge to catch up with one or more marathon sessions on the weekend.

Unfortunately, these make-up sessions seldom materialize. And when they do, they’re typically counterproductive. Long marathon sessions cause mental, aural, and physical fatigue which leave the student frustrated with little to show for the effort. A regular regiment of marathon sessions may easily take the fun out of music, and lead to a bad attitude toward practice.

Daily practice keeps your physical abilities up to par with your mental understanding. Music practice places many demands on you body. If you don’t warm up and prepare yourself before you practice, you run the risk of developing bad habits and physical tension. If you have trouble practicing every day, try alternating with days of light and heavy practice.

There will come days when you really don’t have time for a full practice session. I realize that there are only so many hours in the day! Things will always come up and some days you’ll honestly feel too tired to practice or you just don’t feel like doing it. On days like these go easy on yourself, but don’t skip practice. Put in five or ten minutes and then call it a day. Consistency is key!

Warm-up First.

Why does everyone want to skip the warm-up? This is true for beginners, advanced students, young students, and adults. The complaint is that the warn-up “it keeps you from getting to the fun part.” A good warm up makes it easier for you to play better during the rest of your practice.

Always start your practice with something familiar. Play some scales. Follow that up with an easy piece or
two. In doing so you’ll establish a baseline for the day. Then continue your warm-up and try to improve on these points before working on new or challenging material.

Strive to Improve from Todays’ Baseline

It’s rare that you pick up right where you left off the day before. This is especially true for beginners. It may take five to twenty minutes to get yourself warmed up and back in touch with yesterday’s best.

With many tasks, you pick up Tuesday right from where you left off on Monday. Unfortunately, this isn’t so with music. There will always be days when your best efforts will fail to surmount yesterday’s accomplishments. You know what? It’s okay. Your improvements aren’t linear. Always set a daily baseline in your warm-ups and try to improve from there.

Technique!

When you learn a piece of music, your attention gets spread over several tasks: reading notes, interpreting rhythm, keeping a steady pace, creating good tone, playing in tune, etc. Because of this multitasking you’ll often lose track of your technique. It is essential that you practice on technique during your warm-up period. Practice technique first and you’ll be more ready to tackle the difficult multi-tasking that goes with learning a new challenging piece of music.

Divide and Conquer

Break tasks into small manageable pieces. If you have a huge hamburger in front of you, do you just shove the whole thing in your mouth? No! Take small bites and you won’t end up with indigestion. There’s no shame in breaking pieces down into a phrase, a measure, or even two consecutive notes. To learn large groups of information efficiently, you must study the material in small sections.

Work on any size piece you want, but make sure that you make steady progress. If you don’t, divide the section it half, and work on the smaller loops. Continue dividing until you reach a size where you can progress quickly. This can be as small as 2 consecutive notes. Learn the piece equally well using this method. It is important that there aren’t any weak sections. This brings us to our next point.

Don’t Obsess

Once you determine an appropriate size section, practice it briefly in a loop, just for a minute or two. Then shift away from this portion of the music to the next section. This approach allows your memory to absorb the experience subconsciously.

Review Frequently

Review is your best practice tool. If you’ve worked on several new sections, review each section occasionally during your practice. When you’ve learned a piece completely, don’t just put it away. Review it occasionally to keep it fresh.

Alternate Between Learning and Reviewing

Don’t spend an entire practice reviewing. Push yourself to learn something new each practice, no matter how small. By the same token, don’t spend an entire practice learning something new. Use review to give your brain a chance to work our the new pieces you are working on. Every practice should contain elements of both new pieces and review pieces.

Get it right the first time!

You’ll learn whatever you practice. Bad habits are learned at the same time as good ones. Be meticulous about your wrist and thumb positions. Make sure you count and practice your rhythms. If you get a piece into your muscle memory the wrong way, it will be more difficult to “un-learn” it. So play it SLOWLY! I often recommend separating the melodic, harmonic, and rhythm aspects of the music into manageable chunks. If you can’t play a piece on time, play it in quarter notes to make sure your hand positions are correct and manageable. Then, when you are ready, count the piece out slowly and play it properly in time. The things to remember is “practice slowly, learn quickly!”

Consistency is Key

Do everything the same way as often as possible. This will help speed memorization and allow your body to relax when you play the piece.

In conclusion, practice is the only way to truly master an instrument. You may see practice as tedious, but it can be challenging and fun, especially if you follow the tips outlined above!

In choosing between electric and acoustics for a first guitar, I contend that the wiser choice would be the acoustic because it lays an excellent foundation for finger strength, ear training, and all types of music.

The strings on an acoustic guitar are, usually, much thicker than those that are on an electric, and in playing thicker strings, a student will develop much more strength than he or she would playing the thin strings of an electric. After developing such finger strength, the player is free to venture where he or she wants within the instrumental world. With proper finger strength, a student can move on to work on an electric guitar and have a much easier time than they
would have switching to an acoustic from an electric.

Volume is also a subtle, yet important attribute of acoustic guitars. If one were to purchase an electric guitar, proper volume would necessitate the investment for an amplifier and not only are they rather expensive, but extracting a decent tone from an amplifier often is sometimes tedious and difficult. With the volume produced by an acoustic guitar, the ear of the student will become much more developed and sensitive which are both imperative qualities of the good musician.

Finally, the possibilities of the acoustic guitar are quite endless. Classical players have always used acoustic guitars, blues first started with the acoustic guitar, and modern rock musicians of today often take ventures into the acoustic realm. The electric guitar, on the other hand, may limit a beginning students repertoire to basic chords and patterns that would otherwise be part of the vast array of techniques that can be used on the acoustic guitar.

Kyle Mendes
Instructor, Under The Sun Studios in Concord, California

EDITOR’S NOTE: The advice of Studio Director, Ron Llenado, can be found at this article, entitled “Choosing your first guitar.” His advice doesn’t necessarily contradict Kyle’s, but it does make various points about choosing between electric and acoustic that Kyle hasn’t addressed.

• A case. A flight case or hard shell case is cumbersome. Cardboard cases and nylon gig bags don’t provide nearly as much protection, but they are much easier to carry around. When you’re carrying your guitar around town, keep it from getting scratched with a gig bag.  When you are going out to the gig with a ton of equipment in the back of the pickup, a hardshell will be much better protection.
• A guitar stand.  If you keep it in the case, you will have a much harder time picking it up to practice.
• A music stand. If you are taking lessons, you’ll need one to read your lessons off of when you practice.
• A metronome. Get that rhythm locked in early and you’ll make it easier on yourself when you start playing with other people.
• A chromatic tuner. Since you are just starting out, this’ll make it easier on your ear. I’d stay away from a pitch pipe.
• Picks. Buy a lot. You’re going to lose them. (I personally think they run back to the factory.)  Try lots of different sizes and
  thicknesses.  I prefer an extra heavy, most of my students can’t stand that width and prefer a medium gauge.
• Strings. The strings that are on the guitar when you buy it have been on it too long already. You need to change them. See if you can get the salesperson to agree to restring your guitar with new strings before you leave the store!
• A strap. Pretty much any strap will do, but it’s a good idea to buy a set of strap locks at the same time.

Picking out a guitar is a lot of fun!  It is also one of the hardest things for a new player to do. When you buy your first guitar, you probably have no idea what kind of music you or perhaps your little students will wind up playing.  Also, you won’t have any idea how to make such an investment pay off right away. I hope you enjoy these practical tips about how to pick what you really need.

Fortunately, guitars are relatively inexpensive compared to most other instruments, and there are a lot of good, reasonably priced models out there.  Here are some important things to keep in mind when you’re buying a new guitar:

Type

One of the first things to decide is whether you want an acoustic or an electric guitar. Many instructors recommend buying an acoustic guitar first, for various reasons. From a professional standpoint, I disagree with this common preconception. I favor choosing a guitar that is well suited to the type of music you will be playing on it. While the notes are in the same place on all types of guitars, certain techniques sound better or work out better on the guitar that the technique was meant for. For example, string bends are much more easily and properly done on an electric guitar.

Some of the reasons given for buying an acoustic guitar are the following:

• Cost
• Ease of play
• Ease of tone
• An fairly standard misconception that the acoustic guitar needs to be learned before the electric

With regards to cost, it is true that if you just buy an acoustic, the cost will likely be less than a guitar and amplifier combined.  However, recent advances have made some very good sounding small practice amplifiers and there are several package deals that make an electric guitar and amplifier combo very affordable.

With regards to ease of play, acoustic guitars tend to be much harder to play than electric guitars. There are many factors, including heavier gauge strings, higher action, and wider necks, but genely this is true. With a proper neck setup, an acoustic can be made to play very easily.

With regards to ease of tone, for a true beginner, generation of tone is secondary to generating a good pitch.  What this means to the uninitiated is simply that if you cannot generate the pitch in the first place, then you cannot work on the tone.  As I have already discussed, acoustics are generally harder to play than electrics (especially if they are “off-the-rack” and not set up by a guitar technician.) Thus, for this argument’s sake, it is relatively untrue that it is easier to generate “good tone” on an acoustic guitar.

The final argument is one of the oldest misconceptions about why one would want to buy an acoustic first.  There is no pedagogical reason to buy an acoustic guitar first. The notes are in the same place on all 3 types of guitar. When working on tone, it is best that the student applies their practice time to the type of instrument that will generate the type of tone they wish to achieve.  For most modern pop and rock, this is an electric guitar, so the student should start on an electric.  However, if the student is interested in classical guitar, they should NOT learn on an electric.  And, of course, if the student is interested in folk and certain styles of acoustic rock and funk, those styles are best played on the instrument they were written for, the steel-stringed acoustic.

Kyle Mendes, one of my interns, has cashed in about why he asserts that a student should get an acoustic first and I think that he makes some valid points, although I disagree.  Here is his article.

You can and should make the decision for yourself! Regardless of the type of guitar you pick, you should consider the accessories that I talk about in this article about Accessories (Necessities?) to your first guitar.