If you like reading about internet memes that have just passed their sell-by date, tonefiend is the place to be!
Witness this brief video on triggering goat sound via guitar, created in a fit of desperation when a planned DIY post was delayed divine inspiration.
It’s based, of course, on the unbelievably popular video of unbelievably weird goats making unbelievably human-like sounds. It’s inspired countless spinoffs, including mine. I made these in my hotel room in Frankfurt during Musikmesse, feeling grateful the entire time that I live in an era when you can do crap like this in a German hotel room at midnight. Because trust me, there weren’t a lot of alternatives.
Tech details: homemade Strat, Fishman TriplePlay, Apple MainStage software hosting NI’s Kontakt sampler, goats.
Okay, I promise: tonefiend is not going to become an all-digital blog. I’ve got two new DIY analog pedal projects in the pipe, plus a piece on that delightfully retro technology, the book.
But while there’s more to life than MIDI, for the last few months my particular life has been all MIDI, all the time. I worked on the documentation for the Fishman TriplePlay MIDI guitar system, then demoed the product at MacWorld and Musikmesse. And now that the smoke has cleared and I’m off the Fishman clock, I’m still obsessed with the musical possibilities here. In fact, I’m just getting to the fun part: bending the technology to taste and making weird-ass music for weird-ass people compelling new sounds.
I’m posting two new pieces spun off from my Musikmesse demos. Technical and musical comments after the videos.
In my first TriplePlay demo, I used simple, recognizable acoustic instrument samples. For the second one, I focused on aggressive/distorted sounds. But now I’m getting into what really interests me: solo guitar arrangements featuring hybrid colors, deployed so that it’s often difficult to tell the guitar sounds from the synths and samples.
No, I had not. And they’re soooo good. All three are from YouTube user MotorGoblin. I don’t know anything about him, beyond the fact that he’s clever, funny, and very musical.
Anyone have any similar techniques to share? (I’ve been meaning to do a post on my “plastic tube Leslie”…)
While responsible guitar journalists like my ol’ pal Art Thompson from Guitar Player and the fine young fellows from Premier Guitar scoured Musikmesse 2013 tirelessly and systematically, I did the opposite, randomly stumbling through the vast exhibition halls in a jet-lagged daze between my performances, aiming my iPhone at anything vaguely cool or weird.
The result: this collection of poorly focused images and poorly researched comments. But since I wasn’t being paid to cover the show, I have nothing to lose except your respect, dear reader.
My headline is charitable — this is more of a quarter-assed Musikmesse report. :poop:
Like the African elephant, Musikmesse is huge but endangered. It’s way larger than NAMM, but participation decreases year by year. Manufacturers resent the high exhibition costs, and both consumers and instrument companies seem to find the event less essential in the internet era.
When it comes to EDM innovation, Europe leads the way. But in the unbelievably loud electric guitar hall, the vibe is strictly 1993. You don’t hear nearly as much bad shred guitar at NAMM these days, but that’s pretty much ALL you hear at Messe.
Did I mention that the electric guitar hall was loud? It makes NAMM sound like a library.
I love the expressionist look of the Caligo model from German luthier Frank Hartung. He’s clearly been watching the same movie as Robert Smith.
The Amathone model from Barcelona’s Weiss-Hügel Guitars looks like a crazy, mad-scientist ax, and it is! I had a blast playing it. That rosette on the upper bout is an adjustable baffle whose setting fine-tunes the high-end content. I don’t quite understand it, but the Weiss-Hügel website explains:
“When in Weisse Hügel we consider to make an instrument of hollow box, we think of creating something that was supporting the indispensable qualities of this type of guitars and that, in turn, had the most common problems completely decisive of these: Feedback problematic Final touch, Definition, Frequencies of cancellation (Notes of shade), Is absent of sustain in many cases, besides a relative versatility. The result has been the Amathone.”
That should clarify matters.
I hope they get these guitars back to South Korea before Kim Jong Un makes his move!
Peavey created this uke for the upcoming FX series Justified Five-O.
At least you could play surf music on this lipstick-tube electric uke, from Germany’s RISA.
Ever notice how much of the shimmery 12-string effect is really all about the high G string? This clever Dutch gizmo from Addventor mimics the effect via a removable seventh-string. You can even temporarily nix the effect by clipping the added string under the soundhole-mounted button. The only needed guitar modification is an extra notch in the nut.
If your Steinberger is feeling too bulky, consider The Bone from Switzerland. These micro-guitars actually sound pretty decent, with more low end than you’d expect. They also make a MIDI guitar and a faux-acoustic with a piezo bridge pickup.
The smallest Bone of all, the Mosquito, weighs in at under three pounds.
T-Rex Effects was offering free haircuts. I would have taken advantage of the offer if I had hair. Those nice Danish boys were kind enough to loan me a power supply after mine fried on Euro-voltage.
Oh man, I’d love to have a nylon-string classical bass like this one from Prudiencio Saez.
I was set up near this Guitar Grip installation. It received far more attention than I did.
You’ll be strumming in style perched in your Mey Chair System, especially if you add the optional guitar and beer holders. They have many styles to choose from . . .
. . . including this special country-and-western edition.
German luthier Georg Beïs specializes in guitars made from nature’s finest tonewood: leather! Shown here: the Samaria Nature model.
Folks smoke more in Europe than in the States. As a result, they’ve developed some highly idiosyncratic tobacco-based practices.
There’s a special breed of bassists for whom six strings simply aren’t enough. Such players require a Marleaux.
This crappy photo doesn’t do justice to the this remarkable damascene finish on this Jens Ritter guitar.
Yeah, I could make some hippie-crystal joke, but Jens Ritter‘s workmanship is too remarkable to mock.
You already knew that Madrid’s José Ramirez workshop crafts some of the world’s finest classical guitars. But did you also know they made the world’s prettiest shopping bag?
Speaking of bags! But now I want a handbag-shaped guitar.
I dig Anthrax’s Scott Ian. Especially when he’s three stories tall!
Rocksmith seems to be the opposite of Guitar Hero: a video game where the ability to play is actually an advantage.
In a perfect world, guitarists wouldn’t need help keeping a steady beat. But we live in this world, so the BodyBeat Sync from Peterson Tuners could be a very helpful tool.
From 30,000 feet up, Greenland seems appealingly quiet.
Prolly the best artist demo I’ve heard at Frankfurt (partly because it has no goddamned soloing).
This is real. They were playing out in the plaza at Musikmesse. I tried to shoot my own footage, but it was just too crowded. (Though I did score a thrilling video of the back of Craig Anderton’s head.)
Gibson Guitars sponsored Compressorhead’s performance. There’s more on the band website.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed a recurring pattern: I attend some interesting event and promise to report on it, only to get subverted by work, crowds, jabbering with old acquaintances, and jetlag. True to form, I’ve spend the first two days either demoing TriplePlay, or staggering to the coffee bar. Yesterday I spent hours staring at these Guitar Grip guitar hangers, which are mounted on the wall right next to the spot where I’m playing. They remind me of the human-hand candelabras from Jean Cocteau’s La belle et la bête.
It’s been fun playing for so many hours, though I’m still not very good at the MIDI guitar/drums thing. I was having a fairly disastrous moment when John McLaughlin came by. Isn’t that always how it is? You’re having an off day, and then you look up and see that frickin’ McLaughlin. Is it just me, or does everyone hate that? :shake:
This is my first time here, but the old hands tell me that the show is relatively dead, and that a lot of manufacturers have either already given up on Messe, or are planning to next year. We’ll see what transpires tomorrow afternoon and Saturday, when the show opens to the public. (So far, it’s industry-only.) And I really will try to scope out some gear!
Howdy from Frankfurt, where I arrived this afternoon to attend Musikmesse. United Airlines was its usual scuzzy self, though a nice flight attendant found a place for me to stow my guitar. And my pedalboard seems to have arrived in fine shape, even though I had to checked it in its soft but reassuringly padded Mono case.
I’m here as a demo artist for Fishman’s TriplePlay, but I should have some downtime to poke around and look for cool stuff. I’ll keep you posted!
This event is gigantic — more than twice the size of NAMM. And even on a setup day like today, you can tell how loud it’s going to be, especially since they don’t enforce volume restrictions is stringently as they do in Anaheim. (I’m told it’s like Saturday afternoon at Guitar Center, squared.) And my demo area just opposite the big, loud Gibson stage. It’ll be an adventure! 🙂
Any of you guys ever been? Got any advice to share?
For the first Fishman TriplePlay demo I posted last month, I featured pretty, naturalistic acoustic sounds. This time around I went for something a little less polite.
I’ve been having a blast — albeit a humbling blast — trying to play real-time drum parts from the guitar. I still suck if it’s much more complicated than what I play here, but I can imagine learning to do it well. It’s also fun using the guitar to access the big keyboard sound libraries I’ve built over the years. Perhaps most exciting of all are the hybrid guitar/synth/sample sounds I’m starting to develop. (There aren’t any in this demo — the sounds are either samples or processed guitar, though I blur the lines with guitar-ish samples and guitars processed to sound like machinery. Next time, though, I’ll try to showcase some of those unholy hybrids.)
Here’s how the setup looks from my perspective. (I’m not trying to be secretive about what’s on the floor — it’s just hard to fit into the frame, even with a wide-angle lens.)
Joe’s looping/MIDI rig.
Homemade strat with Fishman controller/pickup. MIDI transmitted wirelessly.
MacBook Pro running Apple’s MainStage software. I use a ridiculous number of plug-ins and some ridiculously huge sample libraries. My main sampler is NI Kontakt.
Focusrite Scarlett interface. All the prosumer interfaces sound pretty decent to me these days, though I like the fact that this one isn’t made out of cheapo plastic.
Boomerang III looper. I love its ergonomics and smooth looping points. I screw up my loop points constantly, but I have fewer disasters with the Boomerang than with anything else I’ve tried.
Boomerang Sidecar. Basically just extra buttons for the Boomerang so you can access more features without reprogramming it or performing awkward foot moves.
Keith McMillen SoftStep MIDI controller. Powerful, rugged, feather-light, and not too expensive.
Logidy UMI3. A nice, rugged, and inexpensive USB MIDI controller — just to have a few extra switches.
Generic controller pedal. Its role varies from patch to patch. It might be a mod wheel, a pan pot, a fader, a filter cutoff control, etc.
Piles of crap. These magically materialize every time I start messing with this stuff.
Just to be clear — these sounds are from my collection, and are not included with TriplePlay. Also, I used TriplePlay in “simple mode” for this video — in other words, I’m not using the dedicated TriplePlay application, but simply using TriplePlay as a generic MIDI controller to trigger sounds loaded into MainStage.
BTW, I’m about to head out for Musik Messe in Frankfurt, Germany, where I’ll be demoing this contraption. Oddly, I’ve never been to this vast musical instruments show, which has been described as a much larger NAMM show with more sausage, beer, and accordions. I’ll be sure to tell you about any cool stuff I see!
DISCLOSURE: Fishman, Apple, and Keith McMillen are among my clients, but no one paid me to make or post this video.
Rockfinger’s Tommy Lamb graced the cover of Guitar Now! in 1977.
Yet another sad anniversary: Believe it or not, it’s 20 years to the day since Tommy Lamb perished in a brawl at Indiana’s Plainfield Correctional Facility.
Unlike so many rock-and-roll deaths, Tommy’s demise never seemed to inspire a renewed interest in his music. Nor has he attracted one of those morbid death cults that affix themselves to departed musicians like nasty black barnacles. Ironic, given the epic morbidity of Tommy’s tragic tale.
Would it have been any different if Tommy hadn’t been such an understated player? If Rockfinger had managed to finish that second album? Or if the band hadn’t been led by twin brothers who abhorred each other? None can say — though it seems tragically fitting that Tommy’s bad luck streak should extend into the afterlife.
Sadly, I couldn’t locate the 1977 issue of Guitar Now! pictured here, though the magazine re-interviewed the embittered guitarist in 1991 for their 77 Greatest Solos of the ’70s issue. (“Feel It” clocked in at #68.)
