Most recently, Belew has moved into working with
mobile app platforms via his self-designed
iOS apps
FLUX:FX - the professional audio multi-effects app and
FLUX by belew™, which contain over three hundred audio tracks and pieces of artwork that he describes as "never playing the same twice".
[12] FLUX:FX is a realtime audio manipulation app for the
iPad that he has designed to, in his own words: "let me make sounds that i can't get with any other gear.".
[13] Both apps have gathered significant industry recognition, including being honored twice in the
Webby Awards of 2015 and receiving a 'best of the best' 2015
Red Dot design award.
Musical style
Although
he has frequently worked as a lead singer, Belew is best known as a
guitar player with a highly unusual but accessible playing style
(featuring bizarre electronic tones, unorthodox playing techniques and a
wide variety of sonic effects including guitar-based impressions of
animals, birds, insects, vehicles and mechanical noise). Among his
best-known guitar playing is the riff to
Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love", the overdriven solos on
Talking Heads' "The Great Curve", the wild slide melodies on his own Top 10 hit "Oh Daddy" and the careening elephant impressions on
King Crimson's "Elephant Talk".
Part of Belew's sound creation involves physical techniques including
tapping,
pick scrapes, bending the neck, unorthodox use of the guitar slide and
occasionally employment of objects (such as files) to attack the
strings. In his riffs, he generally includes fret intonation work, and
is even known to produce sounds from off the fret board, including the
stringed portion of the nut and bridge. He is widely considered to be a
master of the
tremolo arm (whammy bar), something which he humorously referred to in his song "Twang Bar King" (which itself features a whammy-bar solo).
Belew uses a wide variety of heavily synthesized and electronically
altered guitar tones. Over the years he has become known for playing
various guitars processed through an immense array of electronic effects
devices ("I'm surrounded by guitar pedals though, I can't step out the
ring I'm surrounded in without stepping on a pedal," he told
Adelaide.now in 2008.
[9])
He has also stated that he composes specifically for certain amps and
effects. Lamenting the demise of one specific amplifier made by
now-defunct
Johnson Amplification, he said, "I wrote specific sounds and types of looping and things that I just can't seem to make other amps do."
[14] While he has used many brands of effects pedals,
Electro Harmonix was one of his mainstays.
[15][16]
Belew is a pioneer of guitar synthesizers, having been one of the
first players to bring them to (and consistently use them in) popular
music. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a user of the Roland
GR300 (alongside
Andy Summers,
Pat Metheny and
Robert Fripp). In the late 1980s and the 1990s, he used the Roland GR1. He now favours the
Line 6
Variax digital modelling system. In the early 1980s, Belew was notable
for owning and using a rare Roland GR505 fretless guitar synthesizer.
Belew's first guitar was a
Gibson Firebird that he bought for $170.
[9] Belew now has a signature
Parker Fly guitar, the company's first.
[17]
Belew has also been seen playing an extraordinarily flexible rubber-neck guitar in the
Laurie Anderson film
Home Of The Brave
and in the video clip for his 1989 single "Oh Daddy". In 2007, he
revealed that the guitar's neck was rubber containing "metal vertebrae"
and that it was solely a visual (and unplayable) prop.
[18]
As a singer, Belew is noted for the distinct, nasal, sometimes manic
feel of his vocals. His singing voice is often compared to that of
David Byrne, singer with
Talking Heads, with whom Belew worked between 1979 and 1981.
In addition to his singing and guitar playing talents Belew is an
accomplished drummer and percussionist, and also plays bass guitar,
upright bass, keyboards and cello.
Belew has cited
Jimi Hendrix,
The Beatles,
Jeff Beck,
Igor Stravinsky and
George Gershwin as particular influences. He has also cited
Spike Jones as an influence for the goofy and
absurdist humor that occasionally appears in his lyrics.
Equipment setup
In
2010, Guitar Geek interviewed Belew's guitar technician André
Cholmondeley, creating a list and diagram of Belew's guitar setup at the
time.
[19]
An instructional video from 1984 shows he also used an A/DA Flanger,
an Electro-Harmonix Octave Multiplexer, an Electro-Harmonix 16 Second
Digital Delay, an Electro-Harmonix Frequency Analyzer, 2 Foxx Tone
Machine Fuzzes, a Boss DM-2 Delay, an Electro-Harmonix Micro
Synthesizer, an MXR Dyna Comp, a Pitch-Voltage Synthesizer, 3 Boss
Volume Pedals, 2 MXR 10 band graphic equalizers, a Roland GR-300 Guitar
Synthesizer, a Boss pedal switcher, an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, an
Electro-Harmonix Foot Controller, a tape loop machine and an
Electro-Harmonix Stereo Polychorus.
Belew is always adjusting his live setup, and according to audio
engineer Daniel Rowland he is now running an Axe-FX II, Liquid Foot 12+
controller, Roland VG-99, Kemper profiling amp, a Keeley Compressor
pedal, Ableton Live (running on an Apple Macbook), Soundblox Multi-wave
distortion, DigiTech HarmonyMan, iConnectMidi 4+, MOTU Ultralite 3
hybrid, Keith Mcmillen Instruments Softstep 2 and his own NOIISE FLUX:FX
iPad app, through the Bose L1 and Atomic monitoring wedges.
