(For Guitarists) Billy's Siamese Dream Performance Notes

[deathrockboy]

Excuse my mistakes, and yes, these are official. =) Enjoy.

Cherub Rock
"The opening octave figure is based on moving octaves around on the A and G strings, played against the open low E," Billy explains. After picking the open E each time, I bring my thumb over the top of hte neck to mute it. Wile I play the ascending figure, James keeps playing the E octave, so when it breaks into the next lick, it gives the song a feeling of lift. "The chorus chords are played with these voicings. For the A chord, I wrap my thumb around the neck to fret the C# note on the low E string."

"On the bridge, where I sing 'Let me out...,'; I play these voicings. The first chord is an open low E with the G# octave, which I like to call the 'Pumpkin chord', which is the chord that's caused all of the controversy! I got yelled at by Guitar World readers; people wrote in angry letter saying, "Hey, Hendrix did it first, who do you think you are?' I like high voicings like this against me voice, and, because we use this voicing so much, I started to tell everyone, 'I claim this chord,' and it was really just a joke."

"What I like about this series of chords is the voice-leading that happens with the inner voice on the A string: The G# in the first chord, E, moves up one half step to A on the second chord, D5. Then, a G note is played on the A string for both the C5 and the G5/D chords, followed by G# again when the first chord is repeated."

The guitar solo s based primarily on the E major scale (E,F#,G#,A,B,C#,D#) with reference also to E major-pentatonic (E,F#,G#,B,C#), and is treated with natural flanging. "I wanted the solo to have a certain kind of movement, so I used to tape machines to do the flanging," describes Billy. "It's a very melodic solo, and I didn't think that the solo by itself could create the feeling I wanted to achieve. I like hte sound of things moving, so one thing we like to do is pan the vocals, pushing and pulling them back and forth in the sonic picture."

At the end of the solo, two notes feed back-a root and a fifth-that just sit there as the song moves into the next section. Billy explains, "Again, I wanted to create some kind of release coming out of that section, in a way similar to how you would with a string section. I wanted the song to have the feeling of opening up as it moved back into the first part. And E and B, the notes that are feeding back, were the only two notes that worked thru the entire chord progression."

The song ends with a bizarre "torn-speaker" effect. "That's the Micro-Synth again," Billy says, "which, for whatever reason, has a built-in gate. So when you close down the guitar sound, it sort of chokes itself. I love the sound of that thing."

Quiet
A consistant stylistic element on Siamese Dream is the presence of incredibly wacked-out intros and/or outros, a prime example being the "Quiet" into. Says Billy, "This intro has two or three tape loops going at once, but it was kind of a fuck-up. I heard this 'Rrrrrrrr' thing in my head, so I tried tuning the guitar to F#, took a slide and ran it up all of the stings. That didn't sound right, so we sampled it and ran a few samples at once, which gave us this weird, racing track kind of thing. When I was little, I had a record of race car sounds-the guy would say, 'Funny cars,' or, 'Dragsters,' and you'd hear the cars going around the track-and I think that's where the inspiration for the intro comes from."
The opening figure, played on the intro and verse, is made up ascending power chords that follor the F# Phrygian mode (F#,G,A,B,C#,D,E). This is followed by a figure that combines power chords with a two-note voicing-open low E and G#-played on beats 2-4 on bar 2.
During the second verse, at the 1:22 point, Billy plays a descending harmonic row, "Oh, that!," Billy exclaims. "Ok, the song is in F#, and I ran my index finger up and down the low E string while picking-staying over the pickups for the most part-and sounding a whole bunch of different pitches. Butch kept hearing this 'K-k-k-k-k' thing in his head, but he didn't hear it as harmonics. So I played this harmonic thing, which gets that percussive feel but it's got pitches, too. We recorded a bunch of passes, and after we got a good one, we sampled it and then laid it in."

Billy's brutal solo is based primarily on C# minor-pentatonic (C#,E,F#,G#,B), which can also be analyzed as E major-pentatonic (E,F#,G#,B,C#) when played over the E5 chord. Notice that both scales are compromised of the same nots. Billy describes how he achieved this bizarre feedback effect on the solo: "When I record solos, I usually do about thirty passes till I get something I like. When we did that on this song, Butch thought it was fine, but I thought it fcking sucked. WHen we did it again, i found that if I stood about a foot away from the Marshall head-the cabinets were in the studio,but the head was with me in the control room-I could get this squaling sound with my Univibe wah pedal, controlling the pitch of the squeal with the edal. That weird harmonic feedback was heaping thru the amp head, I was trying to play stuff that mimicked the pitches I was getting from the wah pedal."

A similar effect is heard on Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun" from Band of Gypsys. "Yeah, absolutely. And the great thing is that the levels matched, between the volume of the solo and the colume of the feedback, so I could stop playing and the wah note would still be going. Sometimes it would be out of tune and not right, so I did a few takes till I got one that I liked."

I nthe section succeeding the solo, the verse rhythm figure is repeated, this time arranged into three bars of 3/4 and one of 4/4; this 4 bar figure played twice.

The song ends with solo lines, again based on C# minor-pentatonic and E major-pentatonic, that mimic the outro vocal melody.

Today
Today is played in the Key of Eb, as opposed to the key of E, plae don a guitar tuned down one half step. Says Billy, "We use all of the normal 'key of E' chord voicings, but they're all moved down one fret. At one point, I actually was considering playing it in E, tuned down, but there was something about the Eb voicing that I liked. So it's absolutely, intentionally in Eb, not E."

The song opens with a single-note figure that alludes to Eb major-pentatonic (Eb,F,G,Bb,C). After the heavily-distorted chorus chords enter, another single-note line is introduced, also based on Eb major-pentatonic.
Billy continues, "Here's the chorus chord voicings, which are just regular barre chords." This section is a good exaple of how the band overdubs multitudes of rhythm guitars.
There is no bona-fide solo on this tune; just a short figure, at the 2:28-2:33 point, based on C# Mixolydian (C#,D#,E#,F#,G#,A#,B) "The little guitar break over the C chord is actually a forwards sample that we laid in backwards. Then there's a weird vocal effect that moves across the speakers, a 'yan-yan-yan-yan' thing, which was done by using a Roland Space Echo to regenerate on th elast word of the vocal line, 'I wann turn you on."

Hummer
Hummer is another song that begins with a very bizarre tape loop, which subsequently metls into the intro main figure. This song is in "dropped D" tuning; the low E is tuned down one whole step to D. Though it sounds like there is octave box on the intro lick, it was actually tiple-tracked. Figure 9 illustrates the high lick, which is doubled an octave down in Figure 10. "Live, both James and I play the octave lick in unison," says Billy, "and we split at the end where I play the G5 chord and he plays the B octave."

Blly plays a beautiful solo on the song's intro, ending a phrase with a deceptive lick that sounds like he's pulling up on the tremolo bar. He explains, "That was done by ending behind the nut on the low E string, after pulling off." I claim this, too! That's the 'supersonic' sound again, which just explodes up on top of the really fat, rhythmic sound. That squeezed-up frequency that it makes sets it apart from the othe rguitar tones, so when you're mixed, it doesn't mask any of the other guitars."

Billy's compositionally strong and melodic solo is based on the D major scale (D,E,F#,G,A,B,C#). At 4:30, the song shifts to a quiter feel, enhanced by clean-tone, echoed electric guitars, reminiscent of U2. This feel carries through till just before the song's end, which swells up into rude-sounding distortion.

[transluscent]

very cool! where are the from?

[teh b0lly!!1]

that was pretty interesting, thank you
but where are the rest of the songs?

Those notes come from the Siamese Dream tab book. They are indeed very interesting.

[Speed0fPain]

Originally Posted by transluscent

very cool! where are the from?

You think sitting home all day getting bootlegs is cool! This was in guitar world too! asss