Musical Expressivity and Body Motion in Electric Guitar Playing – Pre- and post-processing in recording electric guitar

Abstract

Abstract A lot of guitarists entering a studio bring their own guitar, effects pedals, picks, strings and cables—sometimes their amp(s)—to sound like themselves when recording, or to create the sound they are familiar with and have spent years developing and master. If the producer or studio technician decides to re-amp the guitar signal, and plug the guitar straight into the recording desk (or a DI-box) sonic outcome can be tweaked beyond recognition. Both in studio and in the clubs, electric guitarists try to re-create the sound they have been used to perceiving, to play their best, and in this interdisciplinary study I will show that the monitoring situation affects a guitarist’s playing. By designing an experiment where I simultaneously record the guitarists dry and wet signal, and control which signal they monitor, and using camera for recording their body motion, I can conclude that dependent on their monitoring, the guitarists alter their playing to a measurable degree, thus also changing the sonic outcome to some degree.