"imitate" songs

[shawlie]

Not sure what to call the thread, but was wondering - there are a couple of songs I know where the guitar player "imitates" other instruments or sounds.

Blind Blake does a very cool one, John Hurt does one with his slide version of "Casey Jones" (maybe not the best side player, but it's a very pretty song), and Blind Willie McTell has his "Atlanta Strut" (under "Blind Samuel" I believe) - one of my all time favorite songs.

Are there any other fun ones like those - either imitate instruments (like the Blake/McTell songs) or other noises, like trains, animals, people singing, like the John Hurt tune? Just wondering - the ones I know are a lot of fun to listen to, would like to hear more.

[mr. beaumont]

well, there's the bird chirps at the end of "layla," and the wolf whistle in steve miller's "the joker." (that one's not just guitar, though, right?)

seems like the slide figures into many of these...

being a tele player on the electric side of things, we all have to know the "semi-horn" lick (fret a note a half step below an open string on the adjacent string, prebend the note to match the open string's pitch--strike the dial, pinky swell the volume, and release the bend)

there's that muted "train-chugging" rhythm that's been used on countless songs, too...

[yardism]

Freebird - bird whistles

Whitesnake had a song called Kittens Got Claws that had Steve Vai emulating cats meowing (very effectively)

Steve Stevens has some pretty realistic sounding gunshot sounds

Eddie Van Halen did a bunch of effects.. one I remember as being pretty cool was an elephant trumpeting.

Bad Motor Scooter...

Hot For Teacher has the opening drums emulating a hot rod...

[Dark Eyed Junko]

Ry Cooder imitated a violin with his electric guitar a few times with the Buena Vista Social Club.

Also, I love how Beatle Paul makes his bass sound unusually like a pig snort on Piggies (the bass line, not the actual pig sound effects), not to mention the guitar spliced into a chicken clucking at the end of Good Morning Good Morning.

[bishopdm]

And then there's the song from the Queen album "Night at the Opera" where Brian Mays overdubs a number of guitar lines to create a jazz band sound (his guitar imitates the trombone, clarinet, trumpet, etc.). I think the song is "Keep Good Company" or something like that.

[Doug Young]

Check out a cool old CD by D.R. Auten, Acoustic Paintings, or "GuitarTunes" that he created as kids tunes. Both CDs have some of the same tunes. There's a coloring book that goes with GuitarTunes, and all the songs are about frogs and spiders and so on, with the idea that kids color while they listen to the music. His web site describes it as "with nothing but his hands and guitar, he variously evokes a cat's meow, Scottish bagpipes, a swamp frog's ribbit, a locomotive's rhythmic chuff and lonely whistle, a bass guitar, or a spider's crawl". It's pretty cool stuff.

[ThomasEng]

You should really take a look at chapter nine off of Guthrie Govan's Creative Guitar - Advanced Techniques. The chapter is called "emulating other instruments". He has also recorded some examples for it. Fantastic guitarist!

[shawlie]

Hey, cool - thanks for all he suggestions! Quite a few I should probably have heard already (like the Queen song - I don't mind them, just don't listen to them much).

The Govan book and the D.R. Auten cd sound very cool - I will certainly look them up!

[banjar]

Going in reverse, there's Jim Morrison doing a pretty good guitar imitation at the end of Cars Hiss By my Window...(and I do a pretty good imitation of him doing it. )