From September 99' issue of Guitar Magazine
Check out their webpage: http://www.guitarmag.com

Hey Man, Nice Tone The Sound and Style of Filter

Filter axemasters Richard Patrick and Geno Lenardo are both Fender guitar purists, but they're also big fans of the Line 6 POD, and of their Amp Farm software, which generates digital models of classic amps. "If you want a Vox AC30 sound or a 1968 Fender Twin, you can dial it up," Lenardo explains. "Some of them sound really good and some of them are like, [heavy sarcasm] 'Yeah, that sounds just like it.' But they're all there. You can mix and match different heads and cabinets." As for Patrick, he's a self described meat-and-potatoes guitarist. He uses a Marshal JMP-1 preamp, a Marshal stack with Celestion Greenback speakers, and a 3200 power amp. He also employs an Eventide DSP4000, which effectively eliminates the need for any other effects. We recently talked shop with the duo about their tuning and playing techniques, and their obsession with feedback.

Were the guitar tracks on Title of Record difficult to lay down?
Lenardo: God, some parts we worked on for a long time: just those arpeggios. I remember one night we sat with one amp and a guitar and we traded the guitar back and forth. There was a song where I actually had to mute the bridge for Richard. He was playing this part, and it needed to be muted, so I sat behind him muting his guitar while he played.
Richard: Our producer was like, "That's a Kodak moment if I've ever seen one."

That won't be something you'll be replicating when you go on tour.
Lenardo: No I don't think we'll be doing a Vaughan Brothers thing with the double neck guitar.

Are you a big fan of octaves?
Lenardo: You hear a lot of octave work in alternative music, but there's a reason why people use it: because it cuts. I mean, it gives you these anthemic melodies that go along with the song. We're not the first band to do that. Look at the Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan's like the Wes Montgomery of rock guitarists because of the way he uses octaves. I told him that once and he laughed his ass off.

Did you use drop tunings much?
Lenardo: Yeah, "Welcome to the Fold" is in dropped A and we normally do dropped D. When you go down to dropped A [the low E is lowered a perfect 5th], obviously it gets pretty flappy. Fortunetly, the newer guitars we're getting from Fender are set for dropped A.

Some of the guitars on the record are almost orchestral
Patrick: Yeah. It's this effect like taking a violin technique and putting it on guitar. I started doing it on "Under" [from Short Bus], and as soon as we figured out that sounded cool, we tried it on "White Like That." Then we did it again on the new record on songs like "Skinny."
Lenardo: There's some audio faking you out. You think it's string but it's not. The majority of everything except for some cello is all guitars. On the pre-chorus of "Skinny" there's a very high melody that's reminiscent of a Hammond B-3 organ, but it's a guitar.

You get some pretty fierce waves of feedback out of your guitars
Patrick: I'm great with feedback. The first thing I learned how to do with my guitar was get feedback and I used to do it for hours. My twin sister, Sherry, was like, "Rich, you're just trying to blow up your amp so Dad buys you a new one." I was into this thing where I was tuning down the strings of the guitar to get this really rumbly sound. And now, many years later, that's what I'm doing for a living: making crazy feedback. It's actually funny, because when I was coming up with "Welcome to the Fold," I hooked up all the amplifiers together, and I went back to this weird moment in my life where I was just mesmerized by the girth of sound that you can create with a big-ass amplifier. It was so visceral and so juvenile, but it was so fucking loud and it was so awesome."

.............................Guitar Staff Writer SM