MAGIC WAND

by SONIC YOUTH

Tab by Chris Lawrence (silvercircle@shaw.ca)



TUNINGS
-------
Thurston: EADGBE
Lee:      EADGBE


A SECTION				00:00-02:54

Thurston:

E------------------------------
B------------------------------
G---[11]---[9]---[11]---[14]---   trem pick behind the bridge
D-----/-----/------/------/----
A-----/-----/------/------/----
E------------------------------

He plays that beneath everything for quite a while, and around 1:46 while singing "Seventeen"
he stops picking behind the bridge and can be heard strumming a really jagged, junky chord
that is probably just an E of some sort, maybe with some muted strings. It sounds like he 
probably cranked up the treble on his amp to get the chiming behind the bridge stuff to sound
clear, and his guitar during this section just sounds like it's all attack and pitch isn't relevant.

He goes back to the behind-the-bridge figure at 2:09. You can hear him kinda goofing around with the
last note in the riff, then drops out, then is faded back in, bounced back and forth, up and down, etc.

Lee comes in at 0:34 with the drums:

E--------------------
B--------------------
G--------------------
D-------2------2-5---
A---5-2-2------2-5---
E---3-0-0------0-3---
    p p

Around 0:50 his guitar is mixed back in, he's still playing low E power chords:

E------------------------------------
B------------------------------------
G------------------------------------
D------------------------------------  this is barely worth tabbing, just listen to how 
A---2-2-2-2-2-2-------2-2-2-2-2-2----   he does a palm muted rhythm 
E---0-0-0-0-0-0-------0-0-0-0-0-0----

At 1:06 his guitar is faded back in with low E feedback but it bounces back and forth between the 
left and right speaker in the mix.

At 1:18 he's faded in while playing notes:

E-------------------------
B---5-0-0-5-0-0-5-0-0-5--- etc etc
G-------------------------
D-------------------------  the panning gets pretty choppy while Thurston sings "Seventeen..."
A-------------------------
E-------------------------   but basically Lee just stomps out an E chord with the occasional G

At 1:53 he starts doing a trilly little riff:

E---------12-------12-------12---
B---12^14----12^14----12^14------ etc etc     but that falls apart pretty quickly
G--------------------------------
D--------------------------------
A--------------------------------
E--------------------------------

Then he keeps stabbing at an E chord (whether a full 022100 E or 0799xx power chord type) until being 
faded out. I don't hear much of his guitar during the fade-off in the outro.

This is quite a strange arrangement, with a similar "wacky mix" approach as "Come and Smash Me". 
I think the basic elements are: 

- Thurston's guitar, which is mostly untouched in the mix
- Lee's guitar, which is basically just riffin' in E, faded and panned radically in and out 
  through the whole song
- Kim's bass, with heavy fuzz, also faded in an out but not as heavily
- The percussion may be courtesy of the Oberheim again, or it may be a live drum kit with lots of 
  metallic accents like cracked cymbals, perhaps an oil drum lid, and a very rickety tambourine that 
  is heard through most of the song (the Oberheim DMX model had a tambourine sample, and more tom 
  samples, which may be what is heard at the end)
- Thurston's vocal
- After the vocal, there's about 25 seconds of random mixing including toms, droning bass distortion, 
  and T's guitar


last updated: 11/12/24

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