William J. Stokes

William J. Stokes is a British artist and producer. As a member of the avant-pop trio Voka Gentle he has made two critically acclaimed albums and has collaborated with the likes of Wayne Coyne from Flaming Lips, Panda Bear, Sonic Boom and more. Weaving a dialogue between the guitar and modular synthesiser, Stokes’ solo compositions and soundscapes are suspended between noise, ambience, melody, drone and rhythm...

What made you want to add the SubSix to your current setup? 

I’m always looking for new ways to push the guitar into new territories— like most instruments, to be honest. I love preparing pianos, sampling percussion, binaural recording, that kind of thing. I’ve always liked messing around with pedals, but have since moved into running the guitar through a modular synth system and bringing new aspects of it out that way… And not just in terms of audio effects: I can convert string hits to CV gates and trigger drum machines, excite resonators being fed by synth oscillators and so on. Being able to separate guitar strings into different tracks felt like a natural progression for someone with that kind of approach. The notion of being able to dissect the guitar into separate parts and send them all over the place as I please is really exciting

How do you currently use it? 

I first became interested in the SubSix as a studio tool for finger-picked acoustic guitar, specifically for panning different strings all over the place to create this wild ‘inside’ the guitar feeling, but things have expanded quite a bit since then. I recently played my first actual solo set under my own name for Hidden Notes festival; part of that involved a ten minute-or-so electric guitar drone, big and distorted, which I wanted to be lush and pleasurable, not grating and uncomfortable. The SubSix allowed me to send each string to its own distortion chain in Max MSP for a really mammoth sound, but also— since we were working in quad speakers— to move it around the space differently and really immerse the audience in this lush distortion. For that I worked with the sound designer David Sheppard, whose expertise in Max and spatial audio really brought everything to life.

Has it changed your creative process and if so how? 

I wouldn’t say it’s changed my process so much as allow me to further cultivate things that were already there. As I’ve said, it felt really natural to move into using a pickup like this, in that it’s unlocked several avenues of creativity that weren’t previously accessible. In that sense it doesn’t feel like a fad to me, and therefore I’d imagine it’ll live in my setup for a long time to come.

Has there been any surprising discoveries in the time that you've been using it? 

One thing I’ve realised is how much of the character we associate with the electric guitar actually comes from the harmonic relationships between all the strings, and how much they all jostle to get down the monophonic output in quite a claustrophobic way— particularly with any distortion in the picture. When you send different strings down different buses you basically eliminate things like the phase cancellation you’d usually get from intermodulation between strings, and in certain instances it can end up sounding more like some kind of synth. Of course if you do want to dial any of that back in, you can just sum it again at the other end. It’s wild.

Have you used it as part of a group/larger ensemble rather than just solo?

The solo set I mentioned at Hidden Notes Festival involved big piano chords, played by the experimental pianist Sarah Nicolls, and also deep synth drones which it fit perfectly with. The instance of using it with finger-picked guitar was done in the studio with a band I was producing, a lead part of quite a substantial mix.

What is your favourite guitar gear? Software? Hardware? 

I hope you don’t mind me talking about Eurorack in answer to this! I love the Future Sound Systems TG5 Gristleizer modular guitar preamp. It sounds incredible with a three-band EQ and two different boosts, and also allows me to send both audio and control voltage signals all around my system from my guitar by shooting out both triggers and gates. That means I can trigger things like a note from something else, but also I can hold something like a drone while I’m playing and simply stop it when I stop playing. The Expert Sleepers Pandora is also a wild bandpass filter and distortion module and I adore it. It feels like its gain goes up to 15, if you know what I mean. I do love pedals too, though. Red Panda are a great little company. We use their Particle granular delay and their Context reverb in Voka Gentle and they’re incredible.

William J.Stokes, live at Hidden Notes Festival 2024 by James Styler

How has having multiple channel outputs changed how you use these?

With modular, generally the more discrete your different signals are the more you can do with something. So once again, it hasn’t so much changed how I work but unlocked more potential within that. If I wanted to have more control over triggering something with control voltage, for instance, I could parallel one string to the TG5 to be my ‘trigger string’. I could parallel another string to an octave shifter to make a bass component. 

Have you got any tips for other SubSix users?

You don’t need to always use all six outputs. Just like you don’t have to play all the keys ofa keyboard to get what you need from it. They’re there if you need them, which in many ways is part of the fun. The TRRS cables are really light, so if you want to send one string here and another one there just plug it in and don’t use all the connectors at the other end. 

What are you currently working on? 

Soundproofing my studio. It’s consuming me! In terms of actual music, I’m actually working with David Sheppard again to record some of the performance we did together using the SubSIX. He’s keen to incorporate spatial audio into the picture and this’ll be perfect for that. I have absolutely no idea how he makes the sounds he makes, but it’s spectacular. Also the new Voka Gentle album is very nearly done and I’m super excited about that.