FUN Challenge: Free Fallin with 1 guitar & KPA

  • So, my cover band is now a trio (gtr, bass, drums, all sing) and we are going to cover free fallin' by the late great Tom Petty.


    Using just 1 guitar, free profiles, a KPA, and foot controller, how would you set this performance up for live use? Looking to use morphing, parallel path, the looper, etc.


    I'll post what I come up with by Sunday night!

  • Use a guitar with a piezo bridge pickup for the acoustic part, use a delay or loop to create that fuller multilayered sound. Obviously the bassist will kick in to fill things out further here, Open the song. with synth for the chords rather than guitar (keep your part simpler), at the solo again let the synth do the lead as it’s just a couple of straight notes, then on the middle 8/bridge to outro switch to a nice crunch time and your coil pickups. The outro is where I’d really start to make use of a looper and it’ll get a bit of a tap dance, first taking that crunch and loop it, switch back to the acoustic do a single additive loop of that (combining the two) then switch to a lead tone and start riffing over the combination. To exit just switch off the looper and play the last three chords or root notes of the main riff in your lead tone.


    Anyhow that’s how I’d do it, but there are lots of ways of arranging it. You don’t have to make it sound exactly like the single, you can make it your own and just keep to acoustic guitar and minimal arrangement.

  • Another route if you don't want to get your bassist a synth, and want to make it feel less of a foot tap battle and more of a cohesive band. Keep acoustic all the way through till the very end, have the bass do the solo at the solo section, but for the outro chords have an octave parallel path that you can enable/disable on stomp and a stereo widener on the output. So when it kicks back in basically make your sound fuller enabling those effects and it'll also fill in the bass frequencies so the bassist can do a little more soloing over the outro, with some artful arrangement or tuning you should find enough room to add a few notes of your own with your pinky while holding the open chords in place. No acoustic guitar at that point forward, but electric guitar is very good at filling in the sound, think of it like a replacement for a horns section (as was the original intent with the electric) and it starts to make sense as an arrangement option.

    The important part is preserving the sense of dynamics in the song, not making it all sound too samey/flat, that outro needs to ramp it up and be louder, the bridge needs to be quieter, everything needs to be pretty reserved and just about the vocal till the end.

  • I like it, but alas, I don’t have a piezo.


    Going to try a few shimmer verbs to subtly fill in the synth, and investigate the parallel paths. I’m running mono for this next gig.


    Minimalist!

  • Well you can also swap and let the bass do the outro rhythm part with a bit of crunch on it, just keep your guitar in a jangly chorus based tone. There are a few profiles that try to make electric guitar sound like an acoustic on the rig exchange.