School me on shoegaze/post-rock gear...

[npfrs]

What's some of the gear associated with shoegaze/post-rock? How is it implemented? I'm curious about these genres and also looking for listening suggestions, videos are great too!

Thx!

[warwick.hoy]

Um,...don't know much about shoegayz. Seems like everyone is sprung on Offsets. You could probably play on anything though.

Post Rock? Fender shit. Tele's, Offsets, P-Basses. Rics,

Twins, Bassman, Probably some guys using Oranges and Marshalls as well. I don't know I don't really pay attention to the gear that people use that much. Again use what you got and make it work.

Listening?

Post Rock:
*shels
Mogwai
Giants
Sigur Ros
Explosions in the Sky
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Red Sparrows
Russian Circles

These are probably the most well known ones out there.

Some will probably disagree with me but I listen to Pelican and think to myself. This is really aggressive post-rock. I guess that would be post metal. Or Metal Post.

Shoegaze?

Yeah,...I don't know enough to say. My Bloody Valentine seems to be the most well known but I'm not a student of the genre so post-

post-

[GardenoftheDead]

Shoogays:

Swirlies
Swervedriver
My Bloody Valentine
A Place to Bury Strangers
Screen Vinyl Image
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Lush
Early M83
Airs
Whirr

Gear wise, shoegaze is all about the verb, trem, chorus and either Muffy fuzz or Ratty distortion.

[Seizurema]

Various distortions. That's about all you need. And then you play in shoegazey/post-rock vein with them.

A suitably juicy delay and a reverb may also benefit you.

[kbit]

Guitars with a vibrato system -> reverb -> distortion

[dazedbyday]

Love the verb. Truly love it. Take it home, cuddle with it, talk about your favorite things, what you have in common, and how you had your first kiss behind the school bleachers.

But yeah, a lot of post rock stuff is built around songs building to crescendos and layering sounds through the use of delay and reverb. Amps can be to your taste as people use anything form fenders to marshalls, to verellens to oranges. Usually it is a clean signal and they have some fuzz or distortion pedal to kick it up a notch. Sometimes they steal from shoegaze with the washed out tone through the use of a fully wet verb and a lot of distortion through something like an hm2 for that wall of sound.

But to summarize and repeat myself I think it is mostly about reverb and song structure through layering for post rock stuff.

Edit: I forgot to mention there is no real gear that I can think of that "everyone" uses in the post rock world except for maybe the boss rv3 or something like it. The combo of reverb and delay helps to get the spacey tones. But you can achieve the same by combining your own reverb and delay.

[O Drones]

Guitars with a vibrato system -> reverb -> distortion

QFT

[bigchiefbc]

Post Rock:
Mogwai
Explosions in the Sky
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Red Sparrows
Russian Circles

Shoogays:
Swirlies
Swervedriver
My Bloody Valentine
A Place to Bury Strangers
Screen Vinyl Image
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Lush
Early M83
Airs
Whirr

Good lists, the only bands I'll add is Jakob for post-rock and Medicine for shoegaze. Both pretty much essential to me.

[O Drones]

Astrobrite
Ringo Deathstarr
No Joy
Weekend
Young Prisms
Lovesliescrushing
Loop

[bigchiefbc]

I just realized I didn't answer the question on gear. Most of the post-rock bands I've seen rock pretty standard gear. Amps are mostly of the marshall/fender/standard shit genre. Guitars are all over the place, but I've seen a lot of tele's for some reason (maybe because of how bright they are). Effects are usually fuzzes and distortions, delay is an absolute must, reverb sometimes, and almost always have a ton of volume swells, so a volume pedal is probably a good idea. When I play post-rock stuff, I use my space station a lot, because it has the verb and the volume swells together. Some modulation is probably a good idea too.

For shoegaze, the guitars are almost always offsets, with jazzies and jags being the most common. Amps can be almost anything, because they almost always use thick layers of fuzz and distortion pedals. Reverb is an absolute must, even better if it can do reverse or gated verb. I haven't heard all that much modulation in the gaze I've listened to.

[osbornkt]

Love the verb. Truly love it. Take it home, cuddle with it, talk about your favorite things, what you have in common, and how you had your first kiss behind the school bleachers.

Someone finally summarized my relationship with reverb

[manymanyhaha]

Good lists, the only bands I'll add is Jakob for post-rock and Medicine for shoegaze. Both pretty much essential to me.

Medicine is back with a new album and doing some shows, fyi

[Mudfuzz]

I'm pretty sure what you really need is a PRS and a Line6.

[futuresailors]

I haven't heard all that much modulation in the gaze I've listened to.

tsktsktsk

NSFW: show

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3diz8I0AVVk[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAbL2M7fS3c[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuxbBOA0ooY[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aam9HGmybs4[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYuDBdVj8_k[/youtube]

Shoegaze comes in a couple flavors though.
There's the loud and fuzzy spring verb>fuzz
The loud and backwards reverse verb>distortion
And the dreampoppy Delay>chorus/vibrato

Gearwise, verb/delay first to washes out your attack. Distortion/fuzz to fuck shit up.

Don't knock the line6! m13's dope!

[penelope tree]

Lots of good suggestions in this thread although I would add that Shoegaze and Post-Rock aren't really cognate genres/scenes, or at least not until relatively recently. While bands in both genres often use(d) a lot of effects, they're generally employed in different ways and the approach to underlying song structures differs a lot too. While the early Shoegaze bands were descended from British Indie-Pop (amongst other things), the Post Rock bands often traced their lineage to American Hardcore. I suppose bands like Sigur Ros and Mogwai might bridge the divide somewhat but I think of them as primarily orientated towards Post Rock.