As preparation for the next session, I was asked to find examples of songs where the sound of the ‘medium’ has affected the composition.

Thorn – My Bloody Valentine  

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is well known for his signature guitar playing technique where he bends the tremolo arm of his guitar while he strums, often bending the arm with the same rhythm as his guitar. He achieves this by placing tape on the tremolo arm, so it doesn’t fully slot into the bridge and in turn raises the arm and allows him to bend the arm while he plays. He said he discovered this by accident simply because a guitar he was playing had its tremolo arm too high while he was playing. He was impressed by the sound this created and in the same afternoon wrote the song ‘Thorn’. This was his first song where he used his signature technique. He also said that the studio he was in had a reverse reverb unit that he used on the track, again something that would later become a core element of the band’s sound.  

Terminator – Goldie and Rufige Kru  

Goldie is often credited as being a pioneer of early Drum and Bass and Jungle. His track ‘Terminator’ with Rufige Kru was revolutionary in dance music. It is a common misconception that Goldie invented time stretching on this track, where around halfway through the drums change as they start to sound somewhat squashed. This isn’t time stretching, its pitch modulation. Goldie has said in interviews that he was in a studio that had a HF Harmonizer, a piece of guitar equipment that enables you to change the pitch of a guitar. Goldie is supposedly the first person to play breakbeat through one of these bits of kit, resulting in the iconic section in the middle of Terminator.