80's Post-Punk/Indie Guitar HACKS You NEED To Know! (The Cure, Joy Division etc)

Alternative

guitar

music can be segmented into many different subgenres, but perhaps where it really came from was the

punk

movement of the late '70s. Post Punk, as it was eventually labeled, in my opinion, deviated from Punk by being more DIY. I guess

punk

was at first and more introspective lyrically and I think it took a lot of influences from Crut Rock and art rock of the 1960s, it's a genre I've been inspired by for years, but I really wanted to. To dig deeper and see if there are some characteristics that appear over and over again in

guitar

playing and who would have guessed.

I think there are, so in today's video we're going to go over three different features that I see coming. over and over again within this genre and then we'll also look at some of the effects that were being used and hopefully after watching this video you'll be able to take some of these elements and add them to your own music. I think one of the things that's wonderful about music is the impact it can have on your life. I remember I was like 16 and my music technology teacher at the time took me to heaven here with Eko and the bunny and I remember listening to that and being absolutely blown away by the sound of Mullock's voice and Sergeant's guitar, it was incredible.

I guess that was the real start of my exploration into the Post Punk genre and then I listened to bands like Joy Division and the Cure and the Birthday Party etc. and so on, but one of the bands that when I was younger I had heard of but never properly explored until recently was Gang of Four and after exploring them I realized that they were one of the pioneers of this

post

movement -pump. The first album Entertainment came out in 1979, which was the same year as Joy Division Un

know

n Pleasures and I can hear so many bands that have clearly taken influence from Gang of Four in their music.

Obviously there are a lot of different elements that explain why they were so good and why they were so influential to so many bands after them, but one thing I really noticed with their guitar and this applies to other bands as well as the party of birthday and television, it's those really angular riffs and in fact most of the time the guitar is It doesn't really do a lot of melody, it's almost like acting as a rhythm instrument and to play this kind of thing I think you'll

need

something with single coils so it can really cut through.

I'm going to use this Telly. but you could also use the Jazz master or the Jaguar that I have or the Stratocaster and then it will be about selecting part of the chords and not playing them in full, mainly looking at these upper strings, there is this minor shape here and that basically comes from a full chord, if you play the C bar chord like this, it's just your last three notes and then we use this type of time signature on the GB and E strings on the same fret, these shapes really remind me of That, like in mid-Indian 2000s, I guess it was like a throwback to that kind of Post Punk era, like you

know

, Francia Ferdinand and stuff you actually heard, that kind of thing here.

I've played something similar to what I think a gang of four would be like. Doing so sounds a bit like Damage Goods, but considering I'm not very good with bass and a lot of the melody would come from the bass, in terms of effects it was basically distorted guitars with a bit of reverb and Like I said, in You actually want this guitar sound to be pretty gnarly so you want some kind of distortion that's bright and in your face I actually chose the Bleach pedal because I love this right now. Distortion sounds great, but I think you can get something to sound really good through a DS1 or a Rat pedal, so as I mentioned before, about not playing the whole chord, obviously that was in an angular rhythmic way, but basically There is a lot in this

post

punk style. of the lead lines they just pick out chord parts instead of playing like big solos and stuff, and I think someone known for that within this genre is Johnny mAh.

I mean, his arpeggios are so beautiful and his lead lines sound absolutely incredible. but I guess I just wanted to give a little more credit to Will Sergeant from Mecho and the Bunnyman. This is where I think the post-punk genre gets a little complicated because you have bands like The Birthday Party that are super super dark, but then you also have bands like The Smiths or Eko and the Bunnyman that I think are a little more pop and I think that a lot of what Sergeant will do is select those types of arpeggios and chord shapes, but most of the time.

Just using two nodes is fine, so what we're looking at here is playing these little arpeggio shapes on the G and B strings and they're basically all within a couple frets of each other, so you have this shape here where you're a fret up on the B string and that sounds a little like that and then you have the way where you're one fret down it sounds like that and then you have the flat way where you play them both on the same fret and I think what's happening here is that you're using inversions or part of Triads when you move up and down and what I do when I write my own riffs using these shapes is I just kind of switch them up and down the fretboard until they sound right.

I don't necessarily know exactly which ones I'm touching and where, but they'll just touch you. I mean, you'll just listen to it and know what's in the key. of the song and you'll know which ones to play, so here I'm going to play these two note arpedio forms in the style of Echo and the bunnyman and in terms of effects every time I listen to Eko and the Bunnymen, particularly their early stuff I always listen to that kind of slapback delay and a bit of reverb and I think it sounds cool so that's what I've gone for here, that style of guitar really reminds me of newer bands like Interpo and National sometimes I think.

Obviously they've taken influences from Eko and the Bunny Men and stuff, but you can really hear that in modern music and there's actually a mwai song on their latest album called Richie Sacramento and I think they're playing similar stuff but with a a little bit longer delay and I think even that makes it sound a little more modern, so maybe take that into account, but the next characteristic that is detected actually appears in all alternative guitar music. I made a video about 90's ult Rock which you can watch here and one of the things I said was using open strings like the Smashing Pumpkins do, but when I was listening to a lot of Post Punk music to make this video I noticed that The Cure also uses a lot of open strings.

You can create really cool melodies by moving up and down the fretboard of one string while playing another open string in the same key, so for this we basically have one open note that runs through all the other notes, but what I think sets this apart from let's say alternative rock like Smashing Pumpkins who also have open notes in Post Punk when you have these openings like with Cure or Joy Division. I think they always tend to be when they play in minor scales, so if you have like a minor, for example, with the a, to me it instantly sounds like Cure or Joy Division and then you can do the same thing on the top string and, to demonstrate This, I'm going to do a cheap faux forest version, but I really just wanted to explain to you how you can play with that open string and then the bass or you could have other guitars too doing the fundamental chords and it will just form these really cool melodies as things come and go, which is probably actually an added element.

To this, in this style of music you often hear many competing melodies at once, whereas perhaps in other forms of rock you would have everything following the power chords and then you would have like a solo on top and in terms of effects for this, there's one effect that I think of when I think of The Cure and it's the chorus, so I've got a little bit of grit, a chorus and a reverb on this and that's what it sounds like, like I mentioned before. I didn't really want to delve too deeply into the tone of the guitars in Post Punk because I don't want to make everything here on this channel about yeah, go and buy this effect so you can sound like this person.

I think it's equally important to study the style of what these people are doing and you can take those elements and even if you don't exactly want to make post-pump music, you can take this and put it in other genres, but we'll do a quick rundown on pedals. that I was using and what I hear a lot in this music, I basically only used three pedals for all of these demos, well actually maybe you could say it was four because a bleach pedal is technically two pedals in one, but of all modes I use the bleach pedal because I think the distortion sounds amazing and the chorus sounds amazing.

I only used the chorus on that cura style sound you heard at the end, but I think this is really cool, it makes great distortion and a great chorus, however, I mentioned that I think if you don't have that pedal, it's okay, you can get some cool stuff like a DS1 and a little clone or a neoc clone or to be honest any chorus in terms of reverb. I was using the stman blue sky but it was a pretty small reverb on this, I think I had it in the modulation settings but that's not really important again, you'll get something cool with any kind of medium sized reverb and then in terms of delay, I was using the old dd7 boss.

I don't actually use this setting much but I had it on in the delays because I normally have it on modulation or the reverse setting but I like it on this delay setting and then I would basically hold it down and get the tap tempo like I mentioned that slap backy style fast delay type. I hear it in all Post Punk music and I don't know if I'm making it up and it's like one of those sounds that I heard in my head and wish I had. I could get it, but I remember listening to a memory man once and something about how the delay broke makes me think of Post Punk, so I'll take a guess to Hazard and tell him that a lot of the guitarists from this era were Using Memory Man, I took a look at it and it came out in 1976, so it would make a lot of sense, but anyway, it's that time again.

Let me know in the comments what you thought of this video and if there are other genres you like. I wish I would cover it, let me know too and then watch this video here next and until next time keep making noises.