Sounds not covered by the manual. No new pedals required — every oddity here comes from pitch, symmetry, harmonics, or hands, with your existing wet rig doing the atmospherics. The premise: weird that resolves is vocabulary; weird that doesn't is a novelty ringtone. We're building vocabulary.
Four ways a guitar can get strange, in ascending order of warranty risk. This pack draws from all four.
Notes between the frets. Quarter-tone curls, unison beating, behind-the-nut bends. The fretboard is a grid; the strings never agreed to it.
Scales with no home. Whole tone and augmented scales repeat identically every few frets — the ear loses the tonic and starts floating. Holdsworth lived here.
Two keys at once. Triad pairs and bitonal superimposition — simple shapes stacked into sounds with no single name. Gamelan by way of Hindemith.
The guitar pretending to be something else. Harp harmonics (a music box), swell bowing (a cello), and one prepared-guitar trick (a broken gamelan). The wet Mesa earns its keep here.
Two symmetric scales and three triad pairs. The symmetric scales are the float; the triad pairs are the slab. Everything is rooted on E so it all sits over one drone — which is the practice method for this entire pack.
| Material | Notes | Structure | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|
| E Whole Tone | E F♯ G♯ A♯ C D | All whole steps — repeats every 2 frets | Weightless. Dream-sequence. No leading tone, no gravity. |
| E Augmented | E G G♯ B C D♯ | Minor 3rd + semitone — repeats every 4 frets | Glassy, sinister, major-and-minor simultaneously. The serious weapon. |
| Pair: B + C over E | B D♯ F♯ + C E G | Two majors a semitone apart | = E harmonic minor hexatonic. Your three-cell system, re-entered through the side door. |
| Pair: E + F♯ over E | E G♯ B + F♯ A♯ C♯ | Two majors a whole step apart | E Lydian hexatonic. The float, harmonised. |
| Slab: F over E | F A C over E drone | Major triad a semitone above the root | Phrygian dread. One shape, instant film score. |
Session 01 gave you a grid, Session 02 gave you a lean — this one gives you a reference pitch to fight with. A sustained drone with a cents-detune control: set it to E, detune ±50 cents, and listen to the beating. This is the calibration tool for exercises 5 and every quarter-tone curl in the pack. It's also just a beautiful thing to improvise over with the whole-tone scale.
At 0 cents the two voices lock. Nudge to ±3 and you get slow chorus-like waves — that's the sound of your unison rub done right. At ±50 cents you're a quarter-tone out: the note between the frets. Learn what each zone feels like here, then reproduce it with your fingers in Exercise 5.
Seven ways in. 1–2 are timbre, 3–4 are harmony and symmetry, 5 is pitch, 6 is the rig, 7 voids the warranty. Notation: ◆12 touch-harmonic 12 frets above the fretted/open note, b¼ quarter-tone curl, ↑nut behind-the-nut bend.
Pick-hand index touches the string exactly 12 frets above the note while the thumb (or thumbpick) plucks behind it; the ring finger plucks ordinary open strings in between. Alternate harmonic–open–harmonic–open and you get a cascading music-box arpeggio twice the width of the actual shape. Over the BigSky this is absurd, in the best way.
(let everything ring into one wash)
◆ = touch harmonic +12 (thumb plucks) o = ring finger plucks open
◆ o ◆ o ◆ o
e|-----------------------------------------------0------|
B|---------------------------------------0---------------|
G|-----------------0-------------------------------------|
D|--◆12---------------------------------------------------|
A|-----------------------◆12-----------------------------|
E|-------------------------------◆12---------------------|
D(8va) G A(8va) B E(8va) E
TARGET · six-note cascade even and unbroken at 60 bpm · zero dead harmonics
Press the string down between the nut and the tuner to raise an already-ringing open note — pedal steel physics for free. Works best on the plain strings with the longest run behind the nut (B and high E on an inline headstock). The move: sound an open chord, then bend the open B up a whole tone to C♯ while everything else rings.
ring the shape... then, behind the nut:
e|--0--------------------|--0----------------|
B|--0--------------------|--0↑nut (B→C♯)-----|
G|--1--------------------|--1----------------| G♯ held (E major)
D|--2--------------------|--2----------------|
A|--2--------------------|--2----------------|
E|--0--------------------|--0----------------|
E major, all ringing the 5th blooms into a 6th — steel gliss
TARGET · smooth B→C♯→B return with no pitch overshoot · then find the G→A gag on the G string yourself
Two major triads a semitone apart, alternated over a droning low E — and the combined pool is E harmonic minor minus one note. You already own this sound from the cell system; this is the same country entered through a different border. Straight 8ths, metronomic, zero swing: the stiffness IS the aesthetic. Gamelan meets John Carpenter.
(drone the low E throughout · rigid straight 8ths)
C C B B C C B B
e|---3--3--2--2--3--3--2--2---|
B|---5--5--4--4--5--5--4--4---|
G|---5--5--4--4--5--5--4--4---|
D|----------------------------|
A|----------------------------|
E|---0------------------------| let ring
TARGET · 2 minutes unbroken, then improvise melody using ONLY the six triad notes over the drone engine
The augmented scale's party trick: any cell repeats identically every 4 frets. One fret-shape (0–3–4), three positions, one string — a descending cascade with no tonal centre until you land the open E and the floor reappears. Played in triplets, obviously: Session 01's engine, Session 03's fuel.
3 3 3 land
E|--12-15-16---8-11-12---4-7-8-----0------|
E G G♯ C D♯ E G♯ B C E
(same shape, sliding down in major 3rds)
TARGET · clean at 76 bpm triplets, ascending AND descending · then transplant the shape to the A string unaided
Fret E on the B string (fret 5) and play it against the open high E — same note, two strings. Now curl the fretted one a few cents sharp and hold: the beating you dialled into the drone engine, made by hand. Push to a full quarter-tone (b¼) and back. This is sitar physics, Hendrix's 12-string shimmer, and ear-training for microtonal control all in one shape.
together, let both ring curl and release, slowly e|--0-------0-------0--------|--0--------0--------| B|--5-------5b¼-----5--------|--5b~(few cents)-----| match the drone engine at +3¢, then +25¢, then +50¢TARGET · reproduce 3¢ / 25¢ / 50¢ by ear against the engine, three for three
Volume-knob swells (or pedal) with the pick attack fully erased: pick silent, swell in, let the wet Mesa bloom the tail. BigSky on a long pad/cloud, TimeLine adding a reverse or dotted-8th underneath if you want the ghost. The etude: play a slow melody — E F♯ G B A G F♯ E — one swell per note, one note per two beats at 60 bpm. The dry Badger stays honest; the wet side does the lying.
one swell per note · 2 beats each · no audible pick attack
e|------------------------------------------------|
B|------------------------------------------------|
G|--------------------4---2------------------------|
D|--2----4----5----------------5----4----2---------|
E F♯ G B A G? ...
(D string: 2=E 4=F♯ 5=G · G string: 4=B 2=A · descend back)
TARGET · eight consecutive swells with zero audible attack · record the wet side only and listen back: if it sounds like a guitar, fail
Weave a paperclip or small piece of card through the strings just in front of the bridge (the Mesa side of good taste). Every note becomes a damped, clanging, bell-metal approximation of itself — instant prepared-guitar gamelan. Play Exercise 3's semitone slab through it and you have a soundtrack cue. Costs nothing, reverses in four seconds, sounds like a research programme. Do not use the good guitar's finish as a percussion surface; the Institute accepts no liability.
TARGET · none. This one is purely for the recording. Some things are measured in vibes.Same contract, third amendment. This pack is a satellite, not a replacement: it runs two days a week alongside whichever main session (01 or 02) you're in, because weird without fundamentals is just an effects demo with fingers.
Engine on, E2, root+5th. Ex 5 unison rub: match 3¢, 25¢, 50¢ by ear. This is the pack's non-negotiable opener — pitch is the fundamental everything else here bends.
Ex 4 augmented cascade in triplets, both directions. Alternate sessions: whole-tone improv over the drone instead — no targets, just float.
Ex 3 semitone slab, rigid 8ths, then melody from the six-note pool only. The constraint is doing the composing.
Odd sessions: Ex 1 harp harmonics. Even sessions: Ex 6 swell bowing. Ex 2 nut bends get folded into either as a garnish.
Five minutes over the drone using at least two techniques from this pack and nothing else. Record it. This is where vocabulary either integrates or exposes itself as a party trick.
Listen to the strange takes alongside the week's normal takes. One question: did anything weird migrate into the normal playing uninvited? That migration is the entire success metric of this pack.
The Novelty Budget: in real playing, one strange sound per phrase, maximum. A weird note resolves into a normal one or it didn't happen. Density is for the recorded études, not the gig.
Weird must land. Every symmetric-scale line in this pack ends on a chord tone or the open E. The float is only a float because the floor exists — no floor, no float, just noise with a delay on it.
Migration is the metric. This pack succeeds the first time a harp harmonic, a quarter-tone curl, or a semitone slab shows up in a Session 01 or 02 take without being planned. Until then it's homework; after that it's yours.