Recently, I came across a video by music YouTuber Michael Banfield on turning guitar pedals into oscillators/synthesisers:

I’d never heard of this technique before, and as a guitarist with an abundance of pedals, I had to try it out.

To make this work, one has to either find an amplifier with two inputs, or use a signal splitter to plug it into one input. Plug one cable into one input, and then run the other end into the input socket of the first pedal in your chain. Then, take the output from the last pedal in your chain and run it into the other input going back into the amplifier. This creates a feedback loop where the sounds come from – the technique is called no-input, but is commonly made with mixing desks and I didn’t realise that guitar pedals achieve a similar result.

Here’s my first experiment with this technique:

I’ve used the distortion pedal as the main oscillator, which I am then running through my other pedals. I find the effect the pitch shift pedal has particularly interesting – it has a very warped, distorted sound that is very aggressive. I also tried experimenting with using the tremolo pedal to modulate the rhythm of the note being produced, making the circuit sound almost like a sequenced synth:

Here’s an example of me trying to make a noisy drone sound:

I find this technique very engaging to experiment with – as a guitarist I use pedals day-in and day-out for my work, but using them in this new format is helpful for discovering new sounds I might not have made otherwise. I would like to attempt to use this technique in my piece somehow.