Prepared guitar ideas?

[marqueemoon]

So, I stumbled into an odd gig where I’ll be emulating bird/insect noises on an acoustic guitar along with 9 other folks doing the same.

Dan Phelps has a good video on this topic and I’ll probably borrow pretty heavily from that.

I’ll get the “score” in advance at which point I’ll have a better idea of what sounds will be called for. I don’t want my contribution to be strictly percussive, so alternative ways to produce pitches would be cool.

[countertext]

Tiny alligator clips. Violin bow. I once threaded a silk ribbon under my b string at the first fret, pulled it away from the fingerboard and obliquely toward the bridge, and it made chirping sounds as it “jumped” along the string.

[Shadoweclipse13]

Are you doing Songs From A New World? I have a friend who did that for a local play, and he was on a keyboard making all kinds of weird sounds that neither of us had ever heard of. I missed the chance to see the play, but it sounded neat.

I wonder if you could get a sound similar to a frog croak with a pick scrape down the low/wound strings. A E-bow on acoustic can make some cool sounds too.

If you were really desperate, you could lose a shit-ton of picks (or rice/beans, etc.) to get the sound of a rattlesnake... ?

[BoringPostcards]

Tie a horse hair from a violin bow onto one of the wound strings and put rosin on the hair and pull away. It makes a crazy sound that would work well.
Look up the Romanian Folk band Taraf de Haidouks for clips of this technique. Their late violinist Nicolae Neacscu used that technique and it’s crazy the sound it makes. It does sound different on an electric, but it still gives off haunting sounds.

[fibreman]

Knurled knobs work great on strings.

[countertext]

Tie a horse hair from a violin bow onto one of the wound strings and put rosin on the hair and pull away. It makes a crazy sound that would work well.
Look up the Romanian Folk band Taraf de Haidouks for clips of this technique. Their late violinist Nicolae Neacscu used that technique and it’s crazy the sound it makes. It does sound different on an electric, but it still gives off haunting sounds.

This. I remember this.

[fuzzjunkie]

I've experimented with alligator clips, aluminum foil, and guitar string run over around and through various points on the neck, but only on electric. I've also added a second bridge, wedging a pencil under the strings between the pickups and bounced different things off them while using various slides and held toy robots and ray guns over the pickups.

I've gotten various lion roars, elephant trumpets, whales and seagulls out of the guitar, but never insects. Will have to try that.

The only thing I ever thought to do with acoustic was play one into a toy megaphone for distortion.

[marqueemoon]

Thanks for the suggestions, y’all.

So far I’ve had good luck with a rubber ball as a a string striking device and a velcro strap for bowing/dangling between the strings.

A binder clip on the low E centered over the soundhole makes a cool gong sound. Not sure how useful that will be, but I think having a small vocabulary of known sounds will be nice.

My brass slide is a bit too much. I’ve always been clumsy with slides, but this just makes too much noise of its own. I’ve got some plastic pill bottles to try.