David Arnold is one of our leading screen composers, having created the memorable scores to several James Bond films, Independence Day, A Life Less Ordinary and Godzilla, as well as TV series like Little Britain and Sherlock, and has recently been chosen to oversee the music for the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. You can follow him on Twitter here.
I love the sound of fuzz guitar: proper fuzz, that is, not ‘overdrive’. I used to hate it – its big, square, brick wall of noise felt really crude – but I grew to love it, probably because I noticed it appearing on my favourite records. Initially, this was on soul tracks I would hear on the radio and then later in the film collaborations of Leone and Morricone.
I don’t particularly like the sound of ‘rock’ guitars; their music all sounds too ‘thought about’. A fuzz sound, meanwhile, needs the player and what he or she is playing to be as musically affecting as the sound is unforgiving.
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