She’s played alongside Jeff Beck and Morrissey, and evolved into one of rock’s leading tonal experimentalists – here’s how Carmen Vandenberg’s signature approaches can elevate your riffs and solos

We know that Carmen Vandenberg’s pedalboard is quite substantial, and that, tone-wise, the band’s latest release Soft is highly experimental. Having taken a look at Carmen’s ’board already, this gives us a head start in recreating her tones – though unless your setup mirrors Carmen’s, it’s best to aim for a ballpark sound.

But what of playing techniques? We’d argue that some of the secret sauce is directly tied to the pair’s tonal set-up. For example, vibrato is vibrato, right? Well, yes – but played through a pitch-shifter its signature warble takes on a new life, and you may find yourself employing subtly different finger movements.

And that goes double if you’re playing bends and divebombs with a treadle-operated pedal like DigiTech’s Whammy. Add a raucous fuzz tone (near omnipresent on Soft) and one of Carmen’s boost pedals into the mix and you may find yourself needing to control a fair whack of feedback. Again, a finer point of technique.

For now, we’re looking at a handful of simple ways to get into some of the approaches on the album. Like any lesson of this kind, focus on the individual techniques without worrying too much about mastering every example from beginning to end.

Example 1. Heavy fuzz-tone riffing

Fuzz appears throughout Soft – and we’re taking our inspiration here from the songs Won’t Settle and Fix Me. In most cases on the record, the raw fuzz tones are processed through other effects such as pitch shifters and synth pedals, so we’re following suit with an octave-down effect for extra weight and growl.

Example 2. Expressive lead

Bones UK are not shy of big, Hendrix-style lead guitar wig-outs – Jimi is, after all, one of Carmen’s biggest, earliest influences.

Our example takes inspiration from tracks Knee Deep, Blood and Dopamine, and features a heavy fuzz lead tone with plenty of sustain. Wring those string bends with vibrato where notated.

Example 3. ’80s-style baritone register melodies

Low-register melodies are a key feature of bands like New Order and The Cure, and Bones UK have put their own twist on it. Inspired by tracks Us and Won’t Settle and with the assumption that you won’t have a baritone guitar to hand, we’ve written our example in the low register of a standard-tuned guitar.

If you do own a baritone, try playing the riff as tabbed. Most likely, that’ll be a 4th lower than standard tuning. Add chorus and spring reverb for an authentic delivery.

Example 4. Pitch-shifted lead

With a DigiTech Whammy and a Pigtronix Octava on her ’board, Carmen is well equipped with pitch-shifting options. Taking inspiration from Fix Me, we’ve set a Whammy pedal to a fixed one-octave-up mode here in our example.

We’ve played it quite straight, but if you apply wide vibrato on the fretted E notes you can achieve some dissonant, almost ring modulator-like sounds as the third string rings against the open E string.

Example 5. Open-string cleans

With its sumptuous Telecaster cleans, album closer What If I Died? evokes Jeff Buckley. We’re combining open strings and simple lead lines to recreate some of the magic – though, it must be said, with its partial chord work, the original is far more complex than we can really tackle here. Note that we’ve down-tuned to Eb standard for a darker, moodier tone.