Radiohead – Recreating the sounds of “Paranoid Android”

If you’re a rock fan, then you know Radiohead is. One thing you may not know is how they got the unique sound you hear on the track “Paranoid Android”. I want to take a moment to help you understand how this unique sound was achieved so you can recreate it at home and hopefully get some good ideas for new things you can do with your amp and effects.

The song begins with an acoustic guitar rhythm. Shortly after, we hear a light guitar part that comes together to create an interesting atmosphere. The band’s two guitarists, Jon Greenwood and Ed O’Brien, continue to play dueling guitar effects, drawing the listener in until they finally return to a full rock section beginning around 2:42. This is the tone I want to focus on. To get this sound you will need a vintage or grunge style fuzzbox.

This same fuzzbox will be used to good effect throughout the solo beginning around 3:10. The entire distorted section has a very “lo-fi” sound that is typical of the music being made at the time. Shortly after the solo, there is a bridge where all distortion disappears, followed shortly after by the return of the distorted sound, with a pitch shift effect added. To achieve this, you’ll need a pitch shifter pedal, which isn’t hard to come by.

I want to quickly go back to the beginning to talk about how they got the slight electric sound that went with acoustic guitar. To get the sound they used, you’ll need a tremolo, some reverb, and a compressor. In your amp, you want to get a nice rich sound, with a good amount of lows and mids, and reduced highs. I think 3/4 bass, 2/3 mid, and 1/3 treble is the correct mix (the fractions are of the total amount of each bass, mid, and treble and not how they relate to each other). Turn the reverb knob half way up, keep the tremolo on the slow side, with a bit of gain and as for the compressor, turn the attack and sustain about 3/4 of the way up and the level should go up about 1/2 pathways. This should be fairly easy to accomplish, just use a bit of finesse and it should be there.

Using this guide you should be able to achieve about 75% of the sounds you got in the studio with your home setup. The sounds that Radiohead get from his instruments during this period were largely based on the equipment they were using in the studio at the time, so it’s a bit difficult to pinpoint the exact same thing. However, with a bit of playing around, you can get a very close approximation. Good luck, have fun!