Did a STRANGE Effect Make THIS Guitar Solo Timeless? (What I Am) 

@TheArtofGuitar Thanks for making this video, Interesting takes! My solo you transcribed is the video single edited version of the solo. The full solo makes a little more sense. The pedal I used was a Boss T-Wah. It's an envelope filter. Jerry Garcia is most famous for using this pedal, in fact, many people to this day, think that's Jerry. Auto Wha pedals Peak automatically and can't be controlled with your hands. These days I use a mu-Tron Micro. For the main guitar part, try using the Andy Summers spread ninth chord voicing with your pinky extended. That's the sound. Again, thanks for making the video. I finally made a video going over my parts and solo to be published soon. 🙏🏼❤️

LOL just the contrast of Hetfield shouting lyrics and this soft alt rock band lightly singing. Thank you Mike for putting in the One edits.

It's wild to think this song came out in 1988. So ahead of it's time.

Interesting. In the mid to late 1980s the Grateful Dead had a marked increase in their fan base, and anyone familiar with the Dead were way familiar with the envelope filter, so people just thought Edie/nNew Bohemians were hippies/ Deadheads.

Phil Keaggy made great use of this on the song “Time”, both on the “love broke through” album, and on the live album, “how the West was won” with the Second Chapter of Acts.

I think the effect gives the solo a “bubble” sound that fits in with the “water” lyric and makes it work......simple, but effective.

I suppose it could be asked, what other effect could have been used instead? Maybe it could have been recorded and kept clean? I feel like a deliberate choice was made here and it served the part and the song well. It's a great line even clean, but the Boss T-Wah added something positive to Withrow's contribution. (And yes, I agree it definitely puts it in the territory of sounding like Jerry Garcia -- like maybe they could play "Estimated Prophet" just after this.)

I’m guessing you haven’t listened to any Grateful Dead from the late 70’s through 1995. Jerry Garcia used an envelope filter on a lot of songs. I had heard that the guitar player from the New Bohemians performed the solo as a tribute to Jerry

I was the same way in the late 80s/early 90s, a total metal snob that didn't want to hear anything else.

I remember that song, envelope filter is probably correct. Song has a great relaxing groove

A Fantastically underrated guitar solo (and song really). It is awesome with or without the effect honestly, but I don't think it would have been a hot without it.

Still a good solo in my opinion. Thanks for sharing!

I'm 99% positive it was the Boss FT-2 Dynamic Filter because I only know of that pedal from this song, and the one that's on my floor. They're great.

I loved this song as much as i loved the metal I was listening to, and this solo has great feel to it. It's an extension of the song, & thus doing what it should. Haven't looked at the T-Wah effect on my Katana Artist in a while: now i have a reason!

I absolutely love this song.

Great video! An interesting solo to say the least. Robbie Blunt from Robert Plants solo band in the 80's also played guitar on this track, possibly could be him on the guitar solo.

With or without the filter, excellent solo.

Love is on the way! Chord progression 🤫

Hey Mike, beautiful tone for the non-effect version! As for using that effect on One, well I think the producer would step in to keep you on track...

Envelope filter or not 👍🏻 What I Am is a great song,

edie brickell's cover of a hard rains gonna fall is the balls

I was always into Metal and Punk and still - I like this song a lot. Just went into my old mags and saw the tab and the chords - Jazzy stuff, but catchy as hell. Great vid as usual, thanks

Guess what? This video is interesting for those who dont know the song either! I was not familiar with this band or song. It's not typically the kind of thing I'd listen to, but the guitar is fantastic!

Nice ! Joey is great

That is a sweet Les Paul!!

Yo that would have been a pretty dope wacky version of One!!! Auto Wah would be nice too...

Bro! They Live!! Longest best fight scene ever recoded on film. Roddy Piper was epic in that. I cam to chew bubble gum and kick ass.....and I'm all out of bubble gum. Best line in a movie ever. It's Arnold epic!!

Yes, I also switched between Metallica and Edie Brickell. I still do! You should also check Tuck & Patti. Tuck Andress is a crazy talented guitar player!

1988-89 was my senior year of high school and this song was a complete oasis on the pop charts. I often listen to the VJ Big 40 countdowns on Sirius XM's 80's station and each week they do the top 40 from a different year of that decade. When they play the 1989 stuff it's shocking how dreadful it was. The early/mid 80's were super for pop music, but then at the end of the decade it went off a cliff. If it's not hair metal and power ballads, it was the aforementioned Paula Abdul/Bobby Brown stuff that all had the exact same mid-tempo, processed beat. It was like one never ending medly. When a song like "What I Am" came on the radio, it was a chance to really cleanse your musical palette.

What I Am is Popeye's favorite song.

Jerry used the Mu-Tron with the sickest results

R.I.P. Brad Houser... the bassline is amazing.

Pretty sure he heard his fair share of Jerry Garcia prior to composing that. He just nailed it on every level.

When I first heard this song, my thoughts were that the guitarist was trying to be Jerry Garcia. Specifically on the song Shakedown Street.

I’ve seen videos of them playing this live, and the guitar player is most definitely using a Wah pedal.

This was one of the few songs I actually liked when I was forced to listen to bad music all day working at rite aid

His sound came straight from a factory preset on the Roland GT-6

The problem is, if he hadn't used the autowah he wouldn't have used such a clean tone for the solo, a bit of distortion and a couple of pinch harmonics may have made it a different classic solo

Uh...let me introduce you to Jerry Garcia.

It sounds synth-like because one of the classic, bread and butter synth tones is a low pass filter being “opened” up by an envelope.

I was 18 when this came out. They played the crap out if it.

Mu-tron III Envolope Filter

every time I hear this song I think of Beavis & Butthead watching it and saying "shes pinching a loaf"

That solo sounds great with or without the filter! It has a beginning, middle and end as they all should!

That lead guitar envelope filter sound…dialed in as it is…was made famous by Jerry Garcia on songs like Shakedown St, Fire On the Mt and Estimated Prophet. When I first heard the song on the radio back in ‘88 I thought Jer had added his touch to this song.

I'm 95% sure it was a Mu-Tron envelope filter. I remember when this song came out. It was 1988 and I was (And Still Am) a Deadhead. I'd been seeing them since '84 and I had a respectable tape collection at the time. When I heard this I said "He's Trying To Sound Like Jerry". Jerry Garcia used this Mu-Tron 3 envelope filter steadily in the songs "Shakedown Street" and "Estimated Prophet". If you're going to check those songs out listen to live versions. The fact is compared to how they sounded live, the studio albums were terrible. It's like comparing the songs from the first 3 Kiss studio albums to the versions on "Alive !"

I lived in very rural Louisiana and my dad got a 10ft C-band satellite dish in 1982. Everything was on there including MTV. It was so incredible because I had just started playing drums and was in a band. Everything on cable and much MUCH more was on satellite and we went from two network channels and a PBS station to EVERYTHING! I bought And Justice For All. A cop pulled me over and threw the book at me when he saw the cassette. He said I was a sinner and going to you-know-where. He didn`t realize that album was about people like him. But my hometown turned on me for becoming a drummer, singer and musician. I finally joined a gigging band and escaped. I quit the band once when they booked a festival in my hometown but it was great because a young local drummer got to play his first public show. So that was awesome.

My ear still hears the effect when you played it the second time. It's been melted in my brain after all these years.

We were all uptight hardasses when we were younger with our music; that's part of being young and trying to find our identity as a human. Doesn't matter as we get older. And Edie Brickell sure hit the marriage lottery-still married to Paul Simon after 30+ years.

Kenny Withrow, I used to see him with the great GD cover band Forgotten Space. Any Deadhead instantly recognized he was using Garcia's tone.

The melodic line of the solo sounds much better without that awful effect in my opinion.

I'll never get sick of looking at that guitar

The solo has beautiful musical lines, it sounds terrific with or without the effect. The intro riff is classic too!

I think both Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead used envelope filters. I think the solo totally went with this song. Just fit perfectly. That's what made it catchy

When I saw "envelope filter" I immediately thought of this song. I adore this song!! Jerry Garcia used an envelope filter quite a bit. "What I Am" is one of the most bohemian songs I've ever heard. And I think the effect helped the song to become a hit. Really good video, Mike.🙂👍

This isn't the guitar solo and effect I was hoping you'd cover, but I love a good envelope filter and the solo on the Edie Brickell song does that well. There is a lot more "diction" or "articulation" of each note, popping off like popcorn, and it's all due to that effect. Playing it clean just doesn't "pop" with any staccato. The solo and effect that really blew my mind was Steve Stevens' solo on Billy Idol's song Rebel Yell, particularly the "laser gun" effect that he uses in that solo. Is that one you'd be interested in doing a video about?

Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians....great stuff! Fun Fact: Edie and Paul Simon have been married for over 30 years now. They have a really nice love story for anyone interested.

What I like about this channel is that a lot of the time you reflect the same thoughts or opinions I had about music at a young age and also how some of this music grew on me. Im not a very good guitar player anymore since I had to choose between music and art, I chose visual art. However a quote I heard from my art school days applies to music. "Art isn't about choosing between this or that, it's a love affair" I think the same applies to music. You CAN like Metal, Pop, Indie etc you dont have to choose between those. All of it can be good to you, in fact if you listen to interviews from Metal and Blues musicians they often draw from many different genres, they're just in love with music. Great video here btw! PS the envelope filter thematically reinforces the idea of water, it has a liquid sound to it. So when she says "chuck me in the shallow water" I think it's a very smart filter to use.

I always felt like this song was ahead of its time and for some reason I always think it's a 90s song instead of late 80s.

Everything you said about your reminiscence of watching MTV, getting into Metallica, and ignoring Eddie Brickell echo my own experiences. It’s as if you knew what my teenage years were like. Then again, the musical tastes of teenage boys in the late 1980s were certainly heavily influenced by MTV.

That whole album is one of my favorites. Her voice is enchanting, and there’s some great, clean guitar work on several of the tracks. Most of the guitar stuff isn’t super flashy, but it’s solidly executed. Check out the intro to “Nothing”; it’s just clean and right.

One of my fav super weird solos that I could never quite figure out was Stevie Miller's 'Abracadabra'

Hmm.. You must've not listened to much Grateful Dead then. 😅 Good ol' Mutron envelope filter for days

I don’t think it works in the Metallica song but Alice In Chains used that effect on jar of flies and it works really well even though it is a serious song

Your first impression of that song was correct...it sucks. Lol

I was in the same exact place with this song. I remember that when it was out i was wearing a Levi's jean jacket with a Megadeth back patch on it. Kids were FAR more tribal when it came to music back then. Especially if you were a metal head.

Used to cover this song, and would use the opening 50 or so seconds of 'One' to fake the audience out. You'd be shocked how smooth the transition is. Interesting to see all of these years later both songs mentioned in the same breath.

If you like that I recommend the Grateful Dead song "Estimated Prophet" or "Shakedown Street". Those are big envelope filter songs, Jerry Garcia...

Also want to add "Feel Like a Stranger" and "Fire on the Mountain" as other GD songs with the MuTron being prominent.

"Uptight hard-ass." You just described my entire high school from 1988.

Dude. "And Justice For All" and this Edie Brickell song came out in 1988. I was 27. (I'm 63 now). 36 years ago. You don't look like you would have been old enough to even remember these songs. At 46 that would have made you 10 years old. If you're that old or older, Man....I wish I could age as well. LOL. More power to ya!

Hi Mike. That solo have always intrigued me. Thank you for solving the mistery about the effect he used. I 've always thought though that if he played that solo with a regular distortion or overdrive pedal, it would be so much better. I never really like that effect. It reminds me the solo from Radio Gaga, they sound similar. It's a silly sound for my taste.

Great solo with or without the effect.🤘🏻

Give the Brecker brothers Heavy Metal BeBop a spin

I was knee-deep into South of Heaven and other Thrash gems at the time... but when I heard this is fell in love with that jazzy guitar riff and the Autowah solo... but mostly, that sick bassline! Of course I had to learn that guitar riff (cuz learning jazz guitar, to me back then was like the cream of the crop of guitar -- and this "pop" tune was an easy starter)... but man, after I learned that basic riff... I picked up the bass and learned the hell out of that bassline! I wore out my tapes of Slayer and Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars by the end of that year!

When I heard it I thought, oh yeah, the Grateful Dead effect.

Thanks Mike. That effect........ i now have a vicious circle of old WEEN songs bouncing around in my mind.

Dude, i loved that album. I think the phrasing is what makes that solo, not the effect, though the effect does stick out... a cool effect without a melody is just an effect, but the melody makes it stick. And the Andy Summers style sus 2 chords. 😊

Hey, Art of Guitar. Ready to have your mind blown ? It’s actually *"choke me in the shallow water, before I get too deep."* Once you hear it, even though it screws with you, you’ll wonder how you never caught it before.

It's a well-written solo with or without the filter.

He used a Boss T Wah

Your my favorite guitar channel man. I might not be taking your course as of yet but I love all of these more fun casual videos discussing songs or certain player techniques it's so fun to drop by every now and then. You're the most "real" kinda guy I guess, most people put themselves or the lesson first but you're so great at doing both which makes these enjoyable and informative. Your childhood videos might be why I'm still playing guitar lol. PS Could you do a video on Rory Gallagher or the guys from Sonic Youth?

very "Shakedown Street" like!

Mike do you think a tape biasing method could be used to avoid copyright? I keep thinking I should see if I can use it to trick Shazam but I’m not sure how I can generate the frequencies and play a song on my computer so i can try to Shazam with my phone. I’ll report back if I ever get to it!

From hating the song and turning off the TV or the radio, to posting a YT vid all about the song; and recreating the solo! What a crazy ride it's been?? Cool content! 🤘🎶

You ever listen to "Voodoo Six?" their first album "Feed My Soul" truly kicks ass. Richie Faulkner" created that band but left the band shortly after that album released. He's done an amazing job on the latest "Judas Priest" album. That said, I never liked this tune in the video. That said, cool solo concept. Keep rocking. Peace.. Joe

Need to combine the envelope filter with a voice box. That would be trippy.

I actually like it better without the Envelope effect

very Jerry Garcia-sounding, must've even used the same gear ie Mu-Tron pedal or something

This song cemented my love for sus2/4 chords in my head for many years to come. Stuff like Everlong and Take a Picture... IYKYK

When we gigged it, back in '02, 03ish, I forget, I used a voice pedal that I also used on some The Cure stuff. It was close enough, played a Wurlitzer 4770 '64 (Rare as hen's teeth) through a Marshal.

You should talk about the band "black tide" Started in 2008 They were just a metal band of high schoolers They kinda quiet after like 2013 ish I just wonder what happened Well anywho, i like their first two albums

My understanding is that it's a Roland GP-8 rackmount using the auto-wah setting. This was actually the first time I ever heard the term "auto-wah," and it was both in conjunction with this song, and the GP-8. So... I'm just a tiny bit older than Mike here, which means at that time I was still a few years away from earning the kind of money to buy this sort of equipment, but I had seen the GP-8 (which had come out the year before), but had not yet been able to play through it. The area where I grew up in Northern CA was home to a lot of musicians from popular bands, as well as some studio guys, etc., plus a lot of rich folks and people in the electronics and computing industries, which means the guys at the much-loved local music store were quite well-connected. They also really were good to us youngsters. Anyway, my memory is a little fuzzy now on the exact details, but one day we came in and they were all listening (again) to the song, and it seems one of them had won a bet because he rightly guessed it was the GP-8. Somebody, either a studio guy or a Roland rep, or some such, had just been on the phone with them, and as they explained it, the producer of the song had talked the guitarist into using it (it was debated at the time whether it was really Kenny Withrow or if it was Robbie Blunt who played it), but the band didn't like it at first because they thought it would come across as "gimmicky sounding." Anyway, as we watched, the guys at the store plugged into their display model and dialed in the exact - and I mean EXACT effect and sound. That sparked a whole argument amongst my friends as to how "real" the guitar sound was, since these guys had basically been able to duplicate it through this processor (but then, some of my friends at the time were really ignorant about this stuff).

The solo from "I want to break free" by Queen is another known example of solos with filter. Brian uses a Maxon/Ibanez AF9 Autofilter.

Don't forget that fretless bass! The thing to remember is this song/album is with the New Bohemians, they deserve the credit for the amazing sounds and playing on this and all their albums! Great video, as always!!!

Auto wah Canada.

Dude.. I'm 54 I was 18 when this song was a hit. You sir look to be 36...? How can you remember all this? And yes. we had BUBBLE GUM 99% of the time. I got most of my music info from the back columns of skater magazines.. like SoundGarden or white Zombie..

But the solo wasn't even played by Kenny, it was Robbie Blunt from Robert Plant's band.

Newsflash: 'water' has two syllables in English... North Americans butcher the language, and struggle with the intervocalic T, omitting it. So, they say 'innernational', 'long winner' and 'drink waer'.

One of the best tunes of all time.