The issue of digital vs analogue and the pursuit of great guitar tone is a debate without end, but maybe we should take note from Steven Wilson who argues that the technology allows us to have it both ways.
Why choose at all when it is effectively a false choice? Wilson’s favourite guitar plugin, which was used across most of the electric and acoustic guitars on his audaciously epic prog album, The Overview, is a tape emulation that applies lo-fi cassette textures, and while it might be digital, it is analogue-inspired, and Wilson says it is ideal for adding character to his sound.
Speaking to Guitarist, Wilson said Aberrant DSP’s SketchCassette was on “almost all” of the guitars on the album – and he has used it on some of the keyboards, too.
“You can choose the brand of tape, you can choose Ferric, Chrome, or Metal, how much wow and flutter, how much saturation, how much hiss, how old the tape is,” said Wilson. “I love it because sometimes the problem with digital sounds is they just lack a little bit of character, and a little bit of what you would think of as an imperfection can make things have character.”
Wilson is not the only high-profile artist/producer to declare his love for SketchCassette. Finneas used it on Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For?, from the Barbie soundtrack.
Aberrant DSP describes SketchCassette as “cassette inspired degradation” and now in its second version (priced $36) it offers users a dozen different tape types, which effectively apply filters to your tone, with four different qualities of tape – Cheap, Value, Standard, and Master – each adding its own flavour to the mix, with the higher quality options typically giving you more high-frequencies.
You can also bypass these filters altogether and just use the wow/flutter, saturation and NR compression. Also, there’s a handy mix control so you can dial in just how pronounced you want it. Wilson says he is looking for that rerecorded tape vibe.
“Very often, I just load up this cassette plugin and add a little bit of flutter or warble or saturation, or just make it sound like it’s coming off a tape that’s been recorded over three or four times, and suddenly it gives the sound character,” said Wilson. “It gives the sound just a little bit more grain and that organic quality that you associate with analogue tape.
“This is what I mean when I’m talking about using the best of both worlds: using the best of digital technology, but then also bringing in some of the characteristics of analog that we love so much. On a lot of the guitars I do, I used that plug-in just to give them a little bit more grain and character.”
And you can hear this all over The Overview. The album’s title is taken from the disorientated effects astronauts feel upon their return to Earth. Its arrangements are Wilson at his most ambitious.
Speaking to the NME in February, he described it as an “old-fashioned piece of conceptual rock, in the tradition of The Dark Side Of The Moon and Tubular Bells”, on which he put lead guitarist Randy McStine to work on reinventing the “extended classic rock solo”.
“I told Randy: ‘This is going to be the not ‘Comfortably Numb’ solo,” said Wilson. “I wanted something with the same feeling of drama, but which is a million light years away from it. What Randy did is one of the highlights of the record.”
The Overview is out now via Fiction. If you like the sound of SketchCassette, v2 is available now for $36, and definitely check out Aberrant DSP's Lofi Oddity, which is a free plugin it describes as a "degradation toy box".
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