Tag: midi

Categories
Digital Effects guitar

My New Live Looping Rig: Total “Faylor”

I haven’t posted any new video in months and months. It’s not just laziness or business, though I suffer from both. I’ve just been locked away in my studio, trying to create a new live looping system.

I still haven’t nailed it down, so I’m not going to get into a complete run-down yet. But here are the basic ideas.

• I’ve moved from a hardware looper to software looping. When I started this godforsaken looping project years ago, I’d just finished a lot of work on Apple’s then-new MainStage software. At the time, the program’s looper simply wasn’t reliable enough for live performance. Also, my intense signal processing was pushing my MacBook Pro to its limits. But since then, the program has gone through many upgrades. Meanwhile, after years of relative stagnation, Apple finally issued a major MacBook Pro upgrade in 2017. Between the more powerful computer and the refined software, I could finally shift looping and signal processing to the computer. Yeah, there are a couple of disadvantages. For one thing, MainStage’s looper lacks a “copy” function, something I’ve come to rely on a great deal in my arrangements. But it sure is nice not having to run the entire mix through the relatively cheap hardware looper convertors — just the snazzy ones in my Apollo interface. (Of course, now that I’ve transitioned, Electro-Harmonix has just announced a compelling-looking 6-track looper. I’ll have to check that out…)

• I’ve put aside for now the Fishman TriplePlay MIDI pickup. I have no complaints about TriplePlay, which is far and away the best MIDI pickup ever created, and a product I recommend without reservation. But I wanted to be free from the hardware setup. This way, I can plug in any guitar, any time. (I’ve been experimenting with acoustic looping — more on that soon.) I’m still using MIDI sounds, but again, it’s all in software via Jam Origin’s brilliant MIDI Guitar plugin. It works incredibly well without a MIDI pickup, but it’s not nearly as fast as TriplePlay. It’s fine for doubling, or for melodic and textural stuff, but it’s just not speedy enough to play MIDI drums at even moderate tempos. Which bring me to the other big departure …

• I confess: I’m playing to a drum machine. I’m triggering and changing patterns using a KMI !2 Step foot controller. I really wrestled with this decision. I loved the idea of using no machine tempos — it all came from the hands. But at some point I realized that the main reason I was committed to that approach was for bragging rights: “No prerecorded tracks, and no machine rhythms” I could boast. But who cares except geeks like me? Anyway, I still have misgivings about the change, but I’m going with it for now. I think that means, though, that I’ll create more arrangements without percussion, just so I’m not locked to the machine for an entire set.

Meanwhile working with a tempo clock lets me do fun stuff with synchronized effects. I’m especially besotted with Sugar Bytes’s Effectrix, a mind-bending multi-effector that lets you activate and edit effects on a note-by-note basis. You hear it a lot in the “solo” in this video.

I’ve played a few shows with the new setup. The first one was flawed but promising. The second was an unmitigated disaster. Then I doubled up on practicing and (not kidding) started meditating again, which helped a lot. Last time I tried this live, it went really well! We’ll see how it goes at my gig this week.

Anyway, it’s still a work in progress. I’ll keep the curious updated.

I played this cover tune with no irony whatsoever. I love the original.

Categories
Digital guitar Music Technique

Less-Boring Looping (“Pumped-Up Kicks” Cover)

For a while I’ve been playing this loop-based cover of Foster the People’s “Pumped-Up Kicks” at solo gigs and with my duo band, Mental 99. At risk of sounding like a pompous dick, I’ve annotated the performance, highlighting techniques I’ve found useful for making loop-based performances livelier and less predictable.

I’ve covered some of this ground before, particularly in this Premier Guitar looping-technique article. But here I call out the techniques mid-performance, and I’ve included a few new ones. I hope you find some of them useful.

Likewise, I’ve already written about my live looping rig, but it’s changed a bit since then, and I’ve recently integrated a Universal Audio Apollo Twin interface (plus the stellar plug-ins it allows me to run). An updated overview:

Pedalboard-Diagram

The arrangement perform nicely, and I dig the individual components. But I dislike the system’s Rube Goldberg complexity—it’s a royal pain to set up and schlep. I’m always looking for ways to simply. (Other than, you know, just plugging the guitar into a frickin’ amp.) I’m open to suggestions for streamlining!

Black Mac
I love Apple products, but I hate having Macs onstage (mainly ’cause they’re so much better looking than me). Covering it in black wrap makes it less obtrusive. The Marshall logo is from one of those “toy” stacks (which, of course, can be far more than toys in the studio).
Categories
Digital guitar Technique

Cue the Drummer Jokes!
Playing Drums with MIDI Guitar

strung_out_121213_small

I’m thrilled to bits about a show I’m playing Thursday eve in San Francisco featuring two guitarists of impeccable skill and taste, plus me.

Teja Gerken and I are co-hosting a monthly solo guitar night at El Rio, my groovy neighborhood dive.Our guest is the amazing Eric Skye who, among other things, plays gorgeous solo guitar versions of classic Miles Davis tunes. If you happen to be in cold, cold San Francisco this week, stop by and say hi!

I’ve been doing the digital looping thing with Mental 99 for a few years now, and man, trying to work out solo arrangements with live-looped MIDI drums has been seriously humbling. You know all those jokes we love about how drummers speed up, slow down, drool, and generally disappoint? I can do all those things and everything else a drummer does, except occasionally play a competent groove. Some of the problems have to do with MIDI tracking in general, and some are simply general suckage. Man, it sure makes me appreciate my brilliant musical partner Dawn Richardson, who never speeds up and drools only rarely.

animal_drums

But those who can’t, teach. So I whipped up a little tutorial on playing drums with MIDI guitar. The first half covers the moves, and the second half features a live improv based on my fave afrobeat pattern. (Tony Allen is my rhythm god.) It also includes some of the hybird synth/guitar sounds I’ve been exploring, like double single-not lines an octave lower, mixing trashy guitar and trashy organ, and of course, space pigeons. (I stole the organ line from my pal Robin Balliger.)

In other news: I’ve been speaking to the ultra-knowledgable Rob Hull from Tube Depot about creating a minimalist DIY amp kit inspired by our conversations here. Lots more details to come. Tube Depot has a track record of making real nice amp kits, and Rob’s documentation/build instruction are the best in the biz. I reviewed their cool tweed Champ clone kit here.

Oh — anyone score any good holiday presents yet?

Categories
Digital Effects guitar Technique

MIDI Guitar Meltdown

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.

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Categories
Digital guitar

Fishman TriplePlay Demo:
Now with More Nasty!

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.
Joe’s looping/MIDI rig.
  1. Homemade strat with Fishman controller/pickup. MIDI transmitted wirelessly.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Boomerang Sidecar. Basically just extra buttons for the Boomerang so you can access more features without reprogramming it or performing awkward foot moves.
  6. Keith McMillen SoftStep MIDI controller. Powerful, rugged, feather-light, and not too expensive.
  7. Logidy UMI3. A nice, rugged, and inexpensive USB MIDI controller — just to have a few extra switches.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.

Categories
Digital guitar Pickups Recording

Demo: Fishman TriplePlay Wireless MIDI Guitar System

I've installed TriplePlay on this homemade strat.
I’ve installed TriplePlay on the homemade strat.

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.

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Categories
Digital guitar

A Good Direction for Digital Guitar?

Is this what your studio will look like in 2023?
Is this what your studio will look like in 2023?

The recent post on Auto-Tune for Guitar generated much interesting discussion, plus a few good Auto-Tune jokes. Thanks, guys!  :beer:

The comments from smgear particularly impressed me, because he managed to assemble a wish list for a future digital guitar with more detail and clarity than I could have managed.

It’s always a good idea for smart, articulate musicians to sound off about the musical tools they desire. But that’s especially true now, as manufacturers grapple with technological change with varying degrees of success. People really are listening!

Anyway, smgear wrote:

Basically, the problem is that the majority of the manufacturers seem locked into old paradigms. The bulk of their new designs are intended to mimic something else (Line 6), combine/integrate technologies (Roland) or make the ‘art’ less rigorous (Antares). Those are all fine pursuits and have resulted in some great tech, but they’re basically locking everyone into a pre-1980 palette of sounds, functions, and expression. Quite honestly, after my momentary enthusiasm has passed, I just pick up one of my no-name beater acoustics or electrics and dig in because every day I find a new sound, attack, approach, or whatever that allows me to express something in a new way. It’s true that I could do that playing through those tools, but I don’t need them and they are specifically designed to conform my sound to specific realms rather than to let me explore new spaces.

So with regards to this batch of hex-based modeling tech, my general requirements are fairly simple. I want clean and discrete signals from each string (check), I want a serious multi-core processor AND a couple programmable on-board control knobs/switches (semi-check), and I want an easily accessible and intuitive interface that gives me full control over how each particular string or any group of strings is processed/routed (no check).

Continue reading “A Good Direction for Digital Guitar?”
Categories
Digital guitar Pickups

Synth Guitar:
Did They Finally Get It Right?

Anyone here ever owned a synth guitar? Not a Keytar, but a guitar fitted with a hexaphonic pickup that transmits MIDI data to external devices? And if so, do you readily admit it?

The synth guitar has had one of the most checkered histories outside of, well, checkers. Since the ’70s, many brilliant minds have tried to bridge the gap between the plucked string and the external tone generator. But despite a few notable exceptions (mostly in the prog/fusion realm), guitarists have been reluctant to embrace the technology.

I’ve had a Yahama synth system (basically a clone of the Roland GK-2) for many years, though I rarely use it. Like a lot of players, I balk at the installation hassle and the ugly, cumbersome hardware. (Plus, I’ve played keys longer than I’ve played guitar, so I don’t really need a guitar to conjure synth sounds.) Also, those systems are expensive! Many players have been disappointed. Many businesses too — the Avatar guitar synth probably killed off the ARP company.

But I’ve been thinking about guitar synth again since last January’s NAMM show, where Fishman previewed their Triple Play system, a new take on MIDI guitar which I mentioned at the time here. (Here’s much more info from the company’s Summer NAMM press release.)

I finally got to play a late-stage prototype this weekend. But before I discuss the experience, I need to confide that a) Larry Fishman is a pal of mine, and b) I may be working with his company on the product’s documentation and marketing. (My words of praise are 100% sincere — but as always, consider the source.)

Continue reading “Synth Guitar:
Did They Finally Get It Right?”