For the last few months I’ve been working with Fishman on the documentation for TriplePlay, their long-awaited wireless MIDI guitar system, which will finally ship this quarter. I had a blast demoing TriplePlay at MacWorld a few weeks ago, and I’m looking forward to doing so again at Musikmesse in Frankfurt in April.
But at times, it’s been frustrating. I power up TriplePlay to study some feature, get all excited, and then have to turn it off and write about it instead of going off and playing it for six hours. This little demo was my first real chance to just fool around with the thing. Thoughts and details after the video.
This first installment of my 2013 NAMM report focuses on products for the digital guitarist. In the coming days I’ll be doing posts on analog amps, guitar, stompboxes, and accessories. (But maybe not as quickly as I’d like, because I’ve also got to cover MacWorld in San Francisco this weekend.) This is cross-posted from Create Digital Music, one of the few music sites I visit every frickin’ day.
Source Audio’s Hot Hand USB wireless controller.
We guitarists tend to be a technologically conservative bunch, yet there was no shortage of forward-looking products at NAMM 2013.
Not that everyone was looking in the same direction. Guitar processors are getting smarter, but they’re doing so in different ways. Are we entering an era when every guitar, amp, and pedal in our effect chain will boast powerful processors and a dedicated editing environment? Or will we just simply centralize everything in some future i-device? (I suspect that latter, and tend to think that smart pedals and smart amps represent an evolutionary cul-de-sac. But that cul-de-sac might be a real nice place to hang out for a couple of years.)
Eventide’s H9 can play all the sounds from the company’s software-intensive stompboxes, and you can edit and control them wirelessly.
One release I found particularly telling was Eventide’s H9, the latest addition to the company’s software-intensive stompbox line. The H9 has few new sounds, but can run all the DSP algorithms from Eventide’s other guitar stompboxes. The $499 box will ship late this quarter, preloaded with 9 of Eventide’s 43 current algorithms. Players hungry for more will be able to purchase them а la carte from an online store. (Eventide hasn’t yet finalized the add-on pricing.) The H9 also includes a handsome and full-featured iOS app for editing and managing patches via Bluetooth. There are no current plans to release an editor for OSX or Windows.
Last winter I tried an odd experiment: a website where players were encouraged to post their best tone secrets — the kinds of tricks and techniques that are almost too good to share. But in order to get, you had to give: The site was password-protected, and the password was only sent to those who contributed secrets.
Musicians responded, no doubt encouraged by the cool prizes awarded to the top secrets, as judged by user ratings. I also asked some cool musician friends to contribute the first round of secrets, yielding tips from the likes of composer/virtuoso Lyle Workman, metallurgist-turned jazzbo Alex Skolnick, original Chili Peppers guitarist Jack Sherman, boy genius Blake Mills, and other great players.
Once the contest ended, traffic slowed, but the site has slowly but surely grown. And now, as an experiment, I’ve removed the password protection. Now anyone can visit the Secret Room, AKA tonesecret.com, even if they haven’t coughed up a secret. So please do!
It’s a fascinating document. Naturally, the quality of secrets varies, as does the level of expertise needed to make the most of them. I exerted a light editorial hand — only silly or flat-out-wrong tips were vetoed, and I didn’t do much in the way of spelling and grammar repair. Sometimes the contents are a little repetitious — but trust me, there is much wisdom and originality throughout.
I hope you find something helpful — and I hope you’re moved to contribute some secrets yourself using the site’s submission form. And who knows? There may be more tawdry bribes fabulous prizes lurking around the corner…
No question about it: Amps are awesome, and guitarists will be plugging into them for a long time to come. But as threatened in this post from last week, I’ve been experimenting with direct- recorded guitar sounds. I’m not talking amp simulators, but the sound of electric guitar recorded straight into a mixing board with no attempt to replicate the tone of an amp. After all, some of the most iconic guitar riffs of all time — including Zep’s “Black Dog,” the Byrds “Mister Tambourine Man,” Chic’s “Le Freak,” and most ’60s Motown hits — were tracked not through amps, but through great old analog preamps, compressors, and mixing boards.
Not that I own any great old ’60s and ’70s analog recording gear. But I wanted to see how close I could get using modern preamps and compressors, plus plug-ins that simulate vintage gear.
And how close did I get? Um…kinda close, and I could have gotten closer if I had an attention span longer than five minutes dedicated sufficient time to the pursuit.
Hi folks — I’m experimenting with a switch to the SoundCloud audio player. I’ve been eyeing it for a long time, but until now it’s been entirely Flash-based, which meant you couldn’t access SoundCloud clips from mobile devices. But they’ve just introduced HTML5 support, so I’m ready to make the plunge.
The clip is an accompaniment to the post below about using unspotted Seth Lover pickups with the expanded Phase 2 version of the Jimmy Page wiring scheme.
One of the coolest things about SoundCloud (beside the nifty waveform view) is the fact that it supports notes. Just click on the little icons beneath the waveform to read a description of which pickup settings are being heard at a particular point. Sweet.
Work for you? Computer? Phone? Tablet? Any comments or questions? (Thanks in advance for for your unpaid beta testing!)
