Welcome to another installment of This Thing Rules! Today’s track is going to feature a lot of feedback and distortion, because I’m taking a look at Guitar Feedback, a new loop collection from Uebershall. This is my first time getting to check out one of their libraries, so it will also be my first time talking about their own sample player, Elastik. Lets dive in by listening to the demo, “Falling.”
As you can hear, there’s a lot of elements in this song that have feedback on them. I’ll dig through what I’m using one by one in a moment, but first I should tell you a little about the library itself. Guitar Feedback is a collection of nearly 140 loops that are organized into themed categories based on the style and tempo of the original performance. The categories include single note runs, chord sequences, slide chords, e-bow sequences, wah-wah, and of course, just straight up feedback. Everything is expertly sampled, and the Elastik Loop Player lets you adjust the loops so they fit your project. Those of you who follow my music know I’m not a big loop guy.
While I’m not the most skilled player in the world, I do like to play everything that you hear in most of my songs (even if it takes me a while to get a particular melody down, or even some mouse & keyboard editing to get it perfect). However, the right loop can really help add just the right sound to a composition, and as I continue to grow as a composer, I’ve really started to embrace loops for their power. You’re still not going to hear songs from me that are just a bunch of loops stacked on top of each other… But definitely, if I need to punch up a chorus section, or give the ending of a song a little extra variation, there’s nothing wrong with adding some loops, and since I love feedback, this is a great library to find something that will work great.
In “Falling,” I’m using five instances of Ueberschall’s Elastik sampler, and then adding some of my own additions by playing some sounds from other sources (Omnisphere, Shreddage 2 and UVI Workstation to be exact). The first beat you hear is actually from an included demo of some of Ueberschall’s other libraries. I figured as long as it’s my first time playing with Elastik, I might as well include another sound outside of Guitar Feedback, and when I heard that beat, I just had to use it. The second thing you hear is an almost U2 style guitar with a big reverb that leads into a nice little bit of feedback and then loops. That is from the “Chords” category, and was accomplished with just two notes (I’m basically switching between two loops at just the right time to create my own loop).
As the bass and other guitars start to come in, you’ll hear a bunch of cool wah-wah guitars that are panned to the right. These are a variety of the loops from the “Wah-Wah” category all mixed together to create some background chaos. They come in and out throughout the song. As we get into the end of the song, you’ll start hearing little backwards notes that add to the live feeling nature of the track. These notes are coming from the “Reverse FX” category of Guitar Feedback. They make it seem like someone is just noodling around on a guitar in the background, and add a realness quality that would be very hard to capture for one man playing music on a keyboard. Finally, in the closing 20 seconds or so, a ton of feedback is unleashed on the song from the “Amp Feedback” category of loops. These sounds are just straight up feedback and distortion and to someone like me, or anyone who loves alternative music, are beautiful. It’s hard to just load up a feedback/distortion sound in other programs and “play” it, so these loops really allow real-sounding feedback to make their way into your compositions.
It’s important to note, for a composer like me, I wouldn’t be using these loops a lot. It’s just not my style to layer loop over loop (although if that’s your thing, then go for it, because these sound perfect when layered like that). But as I stated previously, adding one or two of these loops to a composition would add a beautiful layer of realness, and for that, Guitar Feedback – and I’m sure a lot of Ueberschall’s other libraries as well – is excellent.
Guitar Feedback is available now from Ueberschall for 49.00 Euro. It’s a great price for all the content you’re getting. I’m currently considering bundling up on some more of their libraries so I can really dig into the power of Elastik and Ueberschall, and see what I can do with their kind of loops. They have tons of packages available, and I’m really excited to try more.
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David Rosen is an award-winning music composer. He composes original music for films, commercials, jingles, video-games and all other kinds of media projects. He has a vast music library of original tracks available for licensing and is also available for custom compositions. Contact him on the ABOUT page for pricing and availability for your next project.