Deerhunter Guitar Sounds

Deerhunter, a psychedelic indie-rock band from Atlanta, have released seven albums exploring ambient music, garage rock, and dream pop. Unlike some bands known for their high-end equipment, Deerhunter tend to favour inexpensive guitar pedals and record on Tascam portable eight-track recorders, giving their music a raw, experimental quality. However, one particular effects pedal played a key role in shaping the sound of their 2010 album Halcyon Digest: the Eventide Pitchfactor.

Update: the music notation was updated in April 2025 to include guitar tab.

Eventide Pitchfactor

The Eventide Pitchfactor is a powerful harmonizer pedal, able to process the guitar signal and add additional notes to create harmonies, either in fixed intervals (chromatic) or based on a musical key (diatonic).

It can also apply delays to the harmonized notes, which lets you create small sequences. The two most useful modes are Diatonic, which lets you add two additional notes, and Quadravox, which lets you add four additional notes, but with slightly less control over the delay times.

The signature Deerhunter sound is usually an acoustic guitar played through the Pitchfactor into a big, modulated reverb. Cox actually favours inexpensive reverbs such as the DigiTech DigiVerb and Behringer Reverb Machine (no relation).

Although the Pitchfactor is a powerful pedal, and easily programmable, Cox mostly sticks to a handful of factory presets rather than creating his own custom settings, using the pedal as a tool for songwriting inspiration. He told Pitchfork in 2010 that he “was about to give up writing with a guitar and then this thing came along.”

Deerhunter Eventide Pitchfactor

Earthquake

Earthquake, the opener to Halcyon Digest, starts with a Pitchfactor-effected guitar part that transforms a simple chord-picking pattern into an ethereal landscape. The Pitchfactor is set to the preset 9-2 Chromatic Delayed 5th, which automatically adds a second note to every note you play, shifting the additional up by seven semitones (a musical interval known as a perfect fifth), creating a fuller, harmonized sound.

The harmonized fifth note is delayed, which lets you add some cool rhythmic effects to the harmonies. Using the pedal’s tap tempo function, you can set the delayed note to play in time with what you play. In Earthquake, the extra note is delayed by an eighth note. Then, as you play eighth notes on the guitar, the pedal starts to double these eighth notes a fifth up. This like having a second guitar player playing a higher guitar part!

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  • Earthquake - Dry Guitar Only00:00
  • Earthquake - w/Pitchfactor00:00

He Would Have Laughed

The Halcyon Digest album closer, He Would Have Laughed, relies heavily on the Pitchfactor, and I’d guess the song was written while Bradford Cox was playing around with the Pitchfactor. The opening riff uses the patch 1-2 Teenage Wasteland, which layers additional notes in a descending pattern, creating a cascading effect. Here’s what it sounds like when you play a short, single note:

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  • Teenage Wasteland00:00

As you can see, the Pitchfactor adds a cool descending sequence that repeats notes and adds a chromatic descending fourth (-5 semitones) as well as a lower octave of the played note (-12 semitones).

Things get interesting when multiple notes are played, and the sequence can start overlapping itself, with different note groups creating unique melodic sequences. Check out the intro to He Would Have Laughed, both with and without the effect.

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  • He Would Have Laughed Dry00:00
  • He Would Have Laughed FX00:00

The lead part of He Would Have Laughed also uses the Pitchfactor, starting with the same patch and then switching to another to change the phrase. After the Teenage Wasteland patch, it switches to 1-1 Storyteller. I also used some modulated reverb to create a typical Deerhunter ambient effect. The modulation refers to some of the reverb signal being raised an octave, giving a huge, bright effect.

As previously mentioned, Cox favours inexpensive reverb pedals, such as those by Behringer and Digitech, but any reverb pedal or plugin capable of modulated or shimmer reverbs will work. I used my Boss RV-5 which has a great modulated reverb setting.

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  • Laughed Lead Dry00:00
  • Laughed Lead FX00:00

Te Amo

Bradford Cox also uses the Eventide Pitchfactor in his side-project, Atlas Sound. He uses it in the song Te Amo, where it processes the piano part. Even though the Pitchfactor was designed for guitars, it can be used on anything—including synthesizers and keyboards—making it a versatile tool for sound design. The patch used in Te Amo is 8-2 Good Morning Sunshine, which turns a single note into this:

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  • Good Morning Sunshine00:00

This is a diatonic patch, meaning that the harmony notes will automatically match the key of the song, selected in the Pitchfactor’s settings. This patch adds a third, fifth, sixth and octave to the original note, creating an arpeggiated major sixth chord.

The third and sixth will be either major or minor depending on the note played and the Pitchfactor’s key and scale settings. This makes it ideal for songwriting, as the pedal will produce arpeggios that are all in the same key as each other.

Te Amo is similar to He Would Have Laughed, and as both songs were released within a year, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were written in the same sessions as each other. Here’s the patch processing guitar, although it’s used on a digital piano sound in the original song:

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  • Te Amo Dry00:00
  • Te Amo FX00:00

Helicopter

Helicopter uses my favourite Pitchfactor patch: 9-1 Delayed 3rd and 5th. This effect adds two harmonized notes to each played note: one a perfect fifth above and another an octave plus a third above, creating a lush, triad-like sound. The high note has a slight delay, which makes it sound crystal-clear, even for harmonised chords.

Listen to the Helicopter part played without the Pitchfactor, just a single-note line, and with the Pitchfactor, as fully harmonised chords.

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  • Helicopter Lead Dry00:00
  • Helicopter Lead FX00:00

When you play power chords through this patch, each note is harmonized individually, producing thick, complex chords that feel rich and layered. The root note is harmonized with a third and a fifth, while the fifth of the chord is also harmonized with its own third and fifth.

In the context of a power chord, this results in additional notes that form a full ninth chord, with the extra harmonies effectively introducing the third, seventh and ninth intervals. For a three-note power chord, the resulting chord is a huge eight-note chord that would be impossible to play on a guitar without a harmonizer effect.

Since this patch follows the Pitchfactor’s key and scale settings, the resulting ninth chords will naturally adjust to be major, minor, or dominant depending on the harmony of the piece. This is a great way to come up with huge, ethereal chords, perfect for shoegaze music.

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  • Helicopter Chords Dry00:00
  • Helicopter Chords FX00:00

Thanks for reading! I hope this article has shed more light on the Halcyon Digest-era sounds. Additionally, it highlights how effects pedals like the Pitchfactor can inspire unique approaches to songwriting. Without the Pitchfactor, we may not have some of our favourite Deerhunter songs.

The Pitchfactor isn’t cheap, but if you’re drawn to its unique sound, it could be a worthwhile investment. The Eventide H9 is also a powerful option, as it contains all of the effect algorithms from the Pitchfactor, as well as the TimeFactor, ModFactor and Space pedals.

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Published on December 21, 2017

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