Van Hallen's Cathedral

E

Elisa

New member
How do I adjust a Line 6 AX212 guitar amp to get the famous sound Edward Van Hallen gets when he plays the song entitled, Cathedral?

According the Guitar Tablature book..."the trick is the cascade effect achieved with the digital delay. Set the feedback to control 1 repeat so that the echoed note is the same volume as the played note. (When I tweak my amp I get multiple repeats with decending volume as each note is repeated.)

In addition, the performance notes state... "pick a tempo and then adjust the time so that the ecchoed note comes back on the fourth 16th note of the beat. (What the heck does this mean?)

Any advise will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Elisa
 
I think they mean to use a sort of "slap back" delay.

Not sure if the TAB mentions using a volume pedal or to use your guitar's volume knob.

Volume swell each note you hammer when you play the song. This, along with the delay should create that cello bowing effect for the song.
 
I don't know the song or the sound your after.

But the delay you need for that would be just a normal delay, with the feedback adjusted so that you only have one repeat. (The feedback regulates the amount of the output that you feed back to the input. If you put it to max, you'll keep repeating the input, whatever comes out of the delay will be put in again and be delayed again. If you put it to minimum, you'll only get one repeat, this is not fed back in. This is what you need, then adjust the efx mix level to get it at the same level. Don't know the efx engine in your amp though, but this is what you'd do on any delay.)

Then adjust the delay time, so that it's 3/4th of a beat.
There's 4 sixteenth note in one quarter note. One quarter note per beat. So there's 4 sixteenth notes each beat.

That's the delay part... Can't help you any more than this without hearing the song.
 
Shagfu is right. Ed uses his volume knob to cut the beginning off of each note and create the "bowed" sound. Its a magnificent piece of work.
 
CMiller said:
Its a magnificent piece of work.
Click to expand...

Whenever I hear early Van Halen I still get chills listening to all the unique and creative ways he's able to produce musical and melodic sounds from a guitar. Tricks and techniques we hear everywhere nowadays in the guitar lexicon, most likely were some little thing he did on his earlier albums.

If I remember corrrectly, you can watch him play cathedral during his extended solo in the live concert video "Live Without a Net".

I just bought the Joe Satriani Live in San Francisco DVD today.
He does some pretty cool stuff with the Digitech Whammy pedal in there. Oh yeah, and Stu Hamm is scary good :)
 
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