Solo Min L Manjam 3al Marreekh

Woo!! Here i am, sharing with you how we recorded the solo on “Min l manjam 3al marreekh”, the rock version. The original solo by Joco was on a synth but we decided to go for a electric guitar solo.

Elie Akl , my guitarist friend, who is performing the solo on the track, suggested that we record a talkbox solo… And I adored the idea.

A talkbox, as Wikipedia defines it, is an effects device that allows a musician to modify the sound of a musical instrument. The musician controls the modification by lip syncing, or by changing the shape of their mouth. The effect can be used to shape the frequency content of the sound and to apply speech sounds (in the same way as singing) onto a musical instrument.

So mainly, the output of the guitar goes into the input of the talkbox. Then the guitarist takes the pipe, puts it in his mouth, and plays the guitar while controlling the sound as if he was speaking. This sound is then recorded with a mic.

He went to his place, got his talkbox, and we played with it a bit till finally we decided to use the setup I am illustrating in the chart below.

We used a fast autotune, on the solo, with automation, and we applied the effect only on few notes to create an annoying robotic cher effect :)

You can listen to the result here. First I included the clean guitar, with no effects added, then the final solo on the mix.