One tiny small itsy-bitsy part I can't figure out by ear

Harmony & Theory
#1

My fav band (beside TOOL) dropped new EP. I’ve been to see them live on Thursday and got hyped and decided to learn one of the new songs - by ear obviously as there is literally no tabs. The band is a bit… shall we say, Obscure. Sphinx. Obscure Sphinx. Nevermind.

I am quite close to learning the whole song by ear (that’s new lol) apart from one tiny fragment - and by that I have a general, rough idea of what is being played, just not 100% sure how exactly. This will make sense in a second.

I took the liberty of preparing a sample in two versions - one with guitars slightly forward and one with guitars isolated (my the magic and grace of our AI overlords). There’s still some bass and drums and vocals bleeding in but tiny enough amounts that it can be ignored:

The tiny part in question is the ending of the riff (repeated 2x), the one that sounds as if there were open strings involved.

Luckily, there’s also some vids from the shows (link already with timestamp for your convenience):

Important to note - as far as I know, the tuning is DADADGBE.
I see (and hear) him going to 5th fret on 7th string, picking note there, picking <> with an upstroke, waiting a bit, and then two(?) strokes, while going to 3rd fret and doing something similar again.
I assume the upstroke w/ longer note is either open strings, or:

-0 -0
-0 -0
-5 and then -3

starting with 5th string (does that make sense?) though I could swear there is something else going on in the lower notes that I can’t put my finger on, and to further my confusion, I can’t see him play, except for that another downstroke after the longer upstroke.
I tried to write it all down in Guitar Pro, but honestly could not figure out proper note lenghts at all. All I managed to find out is that the track is probably in 103BPM and that’s it.
I’ve been sitting on this lick for like 2 days now and it’s driving me nuts that I can’t figure out what is going on lol.

#2

That doesn’t seem like the right tuning. FYI I found this easier to hear with the actual song and Amazing Slow Downer’s stereo KA (Karaoke/center remover) function. AI extractors like Moises can be great for certain things (drums & vocals in particular) but tend to mangle distorted guitar in strange ways when the mix is dense enough IME.

Scarcity Hunter riff
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#3

TBH the tuning I got is from the previous albums, but they are known to mess things up a bit, i.e. they would use 3 tunings in the past, including F# standard on 6-strings, but until now they did not go below D on 8.
The bass however is tuned ADADGC… That’s a lot of confusion. It’s very well possible that my tuning is not up to date.

I put your tab in Guitar Pro and it sounds close, I just checked how it would sound if I switched back to DADADGBE just to satisfy my curiosity and adjusted with what I thought I was hearing and came up with this:

obraz
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What do you think? Also I don’t see him playing open 7th string, so maaaaybe there should be 2nd fret there…

Oh, that might be useful, thanks, will need to check it out

Yep, that’s my experience as well, though it’s still better than nothing. To add to your point, with ERG guitars tuned this low it also confuses a lot of guitars with bass, so the tracks bleed into each other. Still nice to have it so I can practice with actual drums / use it to hear what drums and bass are doing so I can program MIDIs when I finally get to recording some covers.

#4

I think it’s pretty much exactly what I posted. The higher open string notes are definitely F#-B, not D-G.

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#5

Ah yes, sorry, wrong strings lol, like so:

obraz

It gives me the right vibe now, the only issue I have is that I am not 100% sure if he did de-tune the G string to F#, I’ve seen him use the same guitar to play other songs that I know for a fact are in DADADGBE, but then again it would be quite easy to quickly downtune one string.

Anyway, variations between tunings sound like this:

In any case, thank you very much for the help, I don’t think I would figure it out without you, I appreciate that a lot.

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#6

To follow up on this, I started programming guitar lines in MIDI over the actual song to see if there are any notes clashing either way. My logic being, if I can’t hear any clashes between midi piano/synth and guitars, that means I got the lines right.

So I programmed both one after the other, and to be honest, I can’t tell for certain lol, I need someone with better ears, but I think the second version sounds better…?

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#7

To me it sounds de tuned from standard?

https://youtube.com/shorts/ZhHZZ0Y-TCE

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#8

By “flattened” do you mean half-step down across the board?

#9

It sounds like B standard to me, but I am not the one to say, I play in E standard always. But I recognise the intervals, so to me it should be what I played just tuned to B standard.

By flattened I mean E standard tuned down by 5 steps I think.

I’m also going by my ear so lol …

#10

Close, as far as I know they tune the 7th string to A, and 8th to D.
He seems to keep his root at 2nd fret which would be B note.
Oddly enough the bass is tuned ADADGC, which I know for a fact as I spoke to the bassist after the show.
BTW, there is a chance I’ll be getting 6-string bass too in few days lol.

I kept working on it by writing piano parts based on what I’m hearing and seeing him play.
I added what I think bass is doing just now (kept original drums for context):

Now, that’s starting to sound much like original.
What I can’t wrap my head around though is the heavy part with that super-ultra-low pedal note at end of each bar.
In my AI-split audio it registers as guitar, but it can’t be, it can’t go low enough - but I think I see him pluck open 8th string. It’s weird because to the best of my knowledge that string should be D, I know it is, I saw him play songs on it that I know to be in D.
But that ultra low note does not sound like D, it sounds like B to me - and I think I can hear the B being played in the same position as the rest of the riff at the same time. So it potentially is not D, but B and he doesn’t even touch the 8th string.
But can’t be bass either, when I programmed the bass to go as low it didn’t even come close, also the isolated bass track clearly plays same B as the rest of the riff too.
It kinda makes me go with midi keyboard chromatically from top to bottom until I find that note lol.

EDIT: Forget it, it’s definitely just “low” B on bass (kinda funny to call it low when this particular bass can go whole 7th lower than that) just played suuuuper hard and articulated in such a way that makes it sound huge.

#11

It totally sounds like the guitar is hitting a low B 8th string note just as I notated earlier, IMO. The bass is mono (or mono enough) to be removed by ASD’s Karaoke setting and that B is still there, and kind of overwhelms the higher octaves with distortion. It seems to be in the intro on the longer held notes also, and it has a pretty dull/sludgy tone unlike the actual bass notes. Shifting things up an octave usually makes super low things easier to hear so maybe you’ll catch what I mean with this new clip. I made one without the karaoke function that’s still shifted up, and the bass is obviously an extra center element there that’s absent in the Ka. clip.

Also I’m not sure why you still have a G in that MIDI render for the higher open string dyads. Those are clearly F#-B.


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#12

Force of habit, really :upside_down_face:

Love the explanation, that’s super into detail and it makes sense to me. I re-watched whatever live footage I could find and I suspect you’re right, with one slight reservation - he used exact same guitar to play older material that is supposed to be in DADADGBE. No way it was re-strung and re-tuned several times during the show - however when I talked to the bassist he mentioned something about .130 strings on the guitar. Might have been a slip of the tongue really, especially since that gauge is not found even in 9-strings, but it’s bass guitar gauge so that may have been just wrong information he gave me. .130 would not fit in there anyway.

Soo… some sort of pitch-shifter only used for that particular note maybe?
On the other hand, .105 string with 29’ scale could potentially be downtuned to B in between songs… if he does really tune it that way for this song then it kinda defeats the purpose of learning it though, no way I am going to be able to tune my own humble 26.5’ that low.

#13

These strings are 10 years old but I’ve only played this guitar for about an hour since then. 8th string is a .072 so pretty floppy at B (28.625" scale) and it doesn’t quite drown out the higher notes like the album track.

I wouldn’t say it sounds impossible for the low B to come from an octave effect but with the high F#-B and no sign of going right into this from another tune in another tuning, I’d stick with the idea he just retuned. Or has an extra identical guitar maybe?

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#14

Can’t, this was the only copy ever made - to the best of my knowledge they received two guitars made by Schecter as their signatures up to their spec, one was Blackjack ATX C-8 and the other was V-8 - the one on the vid. Recogniseable by the specific inlay on 12th fret (did I ever mention I am absolutely obsessed by this band? XD). At least this is what I’ve read from a thread former guitarist created on some Polish guitar forum, I’d share the link but… it’s all in polish.
This is what they looked like:

images
images-1

On a side note, I absolutely adore that white V-8, such a beauty.

I mean, it is not impossible there were more, but unlikely.
I’d rather lean on the guitar being de-tuned every few songs, this can be verified though - I can’t remember if they played any older songs right before/after the newest one that were using 8-strings, but I don’t think so. Would need to check YT if there is such instance. I can easily imagine them writing the setlist so that they switch to oldest material with 6-strings to allow technicians to re-tune it.

Now that I watch the live videos from recent shows I noticed he also had another 8 string he played at least one song on:

obraz

But he also used the white one to play few others.

Maybe it would be worth it to have a look at the two other songs from the new EP so see if the low B reoccurs…

On the topic of scale and strings, I de-tuned mine to low B on the 8th and it is… playable, as long as I hit it very lightly, still there’s some fretbuzz, but otherwise I think I could use it that way.

Also, nice playing there.

EDIT: looking at the level of detail and overthinking I do here, I am beginning to suspect I truly am neurospicy lol

#15

I gave it a go with the guitar de-tuned as per your advice, I need some tidying up in terms of playing but here comes nothing

https://youtube.com/shorts/otcAN0pMXPo

#16

Vid is private, can’t see it

#17

It should be working now, somehow it was set to premiere tomorrow lol
EDIT: definitely works now

#18

'Aight, from this angle it looks like there is no way this is .105 string lol:

obraz
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but here it doesn’t look that beefy:

obraz
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Either the first photo only makes it look as if it was that chonky, or it was re-strung mid-show.

#19

I don’t think it looks much thinner than .100 or so. A typical medium to jumbo fret width is around .090-.110". Taking part of the 5th fret from the second image and rotating/overlaying below the first fret (further from the camera at that angle) does the string look much thinner? I tried to keep a pixel or so of fretboard on each edge of the fret segment so it’s clearly not just cropped to match the string width.

8stringfret

#20

That would be .105 for sure, it’s in line with what I know about their tuning until now.
On the first pic however it kinda seems beefier, might be just light hitting it weird way though.

I practiced the parts we discussed, I’m still kinda sloppy with my playing but slowly getting hang of it:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/01dW6kBRWhs

Kept the original isolated drums, as I did not bother programming them yet, bass is programmed in MIDI - it will be soooo much fun when my new toy arrives on Monday (GAS won, I can’t be trusted with my own money lol).

Turns out low B is playable with .105, I am getting some fretbuzz, but at 29’ scale this should be much more manageable.

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