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Interview

Cliffdiver p4

Ambient musician Andrew Jernigan, who records as Cliffdiver, talks about effects pedals on his guitar…

READERSVOICE.COM: You said that for A Familiar Place with Nobody I Know, you used things like a Morley volume pedal for swells, a Line 6 DL 4 on loop station setting, a TC electronic Ditto x 4 loop station, BOSS DD-7 digital delay, BOSS RV-6 digital reverb and TC Electronic Hall of Fame reverb, for this guitar based song. How did learn all of these effects and technologies?

CLIFFDIVER: This process is fun and simple really. You just collect the effects pedals over time and play around with them. Set them up in different sequences, spin their knobs around and see what happens. See what it sounds like when you max all the knobs to 10 and then what happens as you start to dial the settings back. Eventually you get to a place where the effects pedals are just extensions of the instruments. You just know how to manipulate them and how the sound will come out based on their configurations.

RV: You took a nice vapor trail photo in Colorado in 2017. Do you spend a lot of time taking photographs and is photography or scenes you’ve witnessed a big part of your music creation?

CD: Thank you! It’s cool you noticed that one. If you look closely in that photo you can see a guy standing on a rock. That’s actually my older brother and the shot was completely un-posed and candid. Just one of those right-place-right-time photos. I don’t call myself a photographer really…but I try to remember that when you have a smartphone in your pocket you have a really high quality camera on you at all times. So take advantage of it!

RV: I think I hear a hint of rain effects on You will never grow dim, but are you always looking for other sounds and effects to throw into the mix in your music?

CD: I’ve learned how powerful field recordings can be for ambient music. So I will look to incorporate more audio from the world around us whenever I can capture a decent recording of it.

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