Deco and blueSky go to Death Valley
This March I had a short trip planned to go to Death Valley. While preparing for my trip—charging batteries, checking SD cards, making sure I
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Hey everyone… You may know me as the Strymon marketing guy, but i’m also a guy that spends way too much time writing songs and making videos. Here’s a piece I put together the other day that starts out with an old Univox drum machine running into both blueSky and El Capistan. The knobs slowly get cranked up all the way to create a wash of drippy shimmery drum machine echos.
I decided to turn this drum machine effects noise fest into a more involved piece, so I added piano, guitar, drums, vocals and some synths. El Capistan is also used heavily on the Roland Juno-6 and Yamaha DX21 synth parts. Hope you dig it.
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Ethan Tufts
Ethan Tufts left Strymon in early 2021.
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15 Responses
That’s some awesome stuff! Cool drum machine! Great promotional video for your products. Yeah! Man the last third of the song really picks up. Sweet! (runs off to find out what I can sell to buy an El Capistan)
That was quite an experience! Very cool to see what you guys behind the scenes can do with this gear after being so familiar with it. Definitely love that BSR and Cap combo.
Ethan,
That’s fantastic! I own a Blue Sky (and an Orbit!), and UPS says my El Capistan will arrive tomorrow.
P.S. So what’s going in the empty space under the Ola on the products page? A Strymon phaser/univibe? (I hope!)
Thanks a lot! It was a ton of fun to put together.
Keep checking our blog, we’ll have updates on new products over the coming weeks!
Dude, you’re a beast! Awesome work on this, everything flows together so well and the effects sound amazing. I’m still trying to scrounge together some funds for the Blue Sky, were you using the same reverb settings on the guitar as the ones seen on the Univox shot? I love love love the reverb tone, and I’d want to know how to nail that when I get the Blue Sky. And I just had to comment on the superb choice of beer… they don’t call Newcastle “the one and only” for nothin’ 🙂
@Nathan thanks very much!! Actually I only used blueSky on the drum machine! Towards the middle there I had most of the controls cranked, which allowed for those infinite shimmery repeats.
Yep Newcastle is usually my studio beer of choice!!
Thanks for the reply! I just had one last question – any chance you’re using a 5DII or 7D for the video? I shoot video a lot on the 5DII and it just looked like it could be so I wanted to ask 😉 thanks!
@Nathan it’s actually neither, it’s a Canon HV40 with a Twoneil lens adapter and a 50mm Nikon lens. I like it but may try something new in the future.
We use a 5DMkII for the Strymon videos.
Thanks!!
Ethan
Love the sounds, clearly aided by a large amount of Newkie Brown…(-;
I’m going to have to flog a kidney to afford both of these pedals…
I usually don’t take the time to tell people if they put out a good video, but I just wanted to say as a musician that plays a lot of instruments, I want to say AMAZING job. Also, this video truly makes me want both of those pedals REALLY bad. I was considering them both before I saw this but now I’m dead set on owning them both soon. Thanks!
How much are the pedals? I can’t find prices on them anywhere.
@Nate – thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it!!
blueSky and El Capistan are $299 each:
http://store.strymon.net
Very cool. What is the drum machine module? Almost reminds of those insert drum machines on old electric organs.
Doh, I found the answer in the description… old Univox drum machine!
very nice sounds and also very nice “john newkie” bottles for good effect as well.
this delay has me up at night now.
pretty much the best,
j