Guide To Writing A Shoegaze Song The Easy Way

Do you love Shoegaze? Now, with the mighty return of My Bloody Valentine, it seems like the moment is ripe for shoegaze to resurrect. It never went away, really…just got a bit quiet. Not talking about the guitars, though…they always got to be REALLY loud…and here’s our guide  to writing a shoegaze song!

1) Get a Fender Jaguar, Jazzmaster, Mustang or, if you can’t afford that much, a Squier Duo-Sonic

2) Get a fuzz pedal such as Fuzz Face or Big Muff, or a distortion pedal such as the Boss DS-2, and make sure the level and distortion are set to the max. You can also use other pedals fro maximum shoegazing effect such as phaser, flanger, delay or wah

3) Now plug into a amp with good reverb, and set the reverb to the max

4) Strum just one easy chord, A or E will do. Play it slowly,  rhythmically (Like a pioneer of noisy rock once said – “One chord is enough, two is pushing it, three chords is f***** jazz!”) Add some tremolo action if you want to add some variety.

5) Now mumble some lyrics on your mic. Don’t try to sing out loud…just mumble whatever…doesn’t matter, as the guitar will be so loud your vocals will be hardly audible.

And that’s it! You’ve just written a shoegaze song!

More info on shoegaze

~ by dolphinblog on September 9, 2008.

One Response to “Guide To Writing A Shoegaze Song The Easy Way”

  1. Simple as that! Also, if you’d like, you can add some Muppet-like vocalization to the mumbling a la Thom Y.

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