Here’s a rhythm guitar tone for playing “Ballerina 12/24” by Steve Vai.
Vai created the original track using an Eventide harmonizer dialed in to create delayed harmonies along with his playing. He described the song as sounding like a ballerina dancing on Christmas Eve. The primary ingredients are a stereo signal with one side delayed a 16th note and pitched up a 6th while the other side is delayed an 8th note and pitched up a fourth. I used the Whammy pedal model in HD500 to do the pitch shifting. The delays are done using the digital delay so there would be no coloration of the sound. The amp model is a Fender Twin Reverb dialed in to keep a very clean, ringing sound. A touch of plate reverb adds some body. The youTube video embedded above has a little bit of the acoustic sound of the electric guitar mixed in. This is done by miking the strings of the electric guitar while recording which also means you can’t have any background noise. Mixing in the sound of the strings can often liven up a track quite a bit. The direct sound file linked below does not have the strings mixed in so you can compare and see the difference it makes on this tone.
Ballerina 12/24 – original track
HD500 without backing track
Download HD500 Tone file
Ibanez Universe UV777 (used on this track)
DiMarzio Blaze 7-String Pickup (used on this track)
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