Tag: software

Categories
Digital Recording

Logic Pro X:
What’s New for Guitarists & Bassists?

Inside Logic Pro XAs promised: an overview of Apple’s new Logic X Pro, with an emphasis on what’s new and cool for guitarists and bassists. Lots of movies and audio!

It’s here.

This is an exciting post for me, and not just because I get a desperately needed break from Klons and Screamers. I’m thrilled to bits about Logic Pro X and MainStage 3, though I’m still wrapping me head around them. (Yeah, I worked as a developer for both products, but I didn’t get a proper program-wide view until last week’s release.)

Also, it’s my first story for Premier Guitar, whose staff I’ve just joined as a senior editor. I’m stoked because it reunites me with PG editor Shawn Hammond and senior editor Andy Ellis, both of whom I remember fondly from my Guitar Player magazine days.

There’s much talent and coolness on the staff. I’m a happy little guitar nerd. Plus, the schedule is loose enough that I can still record, perform, and continue to work with audio/software clients.

What does the gig mean for this blog? Good things. I have no plans for a major course change — there are too many things I can only cover on a non-commercial site, including some of the topics closest to my heart. Meanwhile, working with PG will keep me more up-to-date on new music, new gear, and scurrilous guitar community gossip. In some cases, though, I may link to a PG article I’ve written rather than duplicate the work here. Today, for example. 🙂

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 Music

NAMM 2013: Digital Discoveries

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.
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.
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.

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Categories
guitar Music

The Best Music Notation Software for Guitarists?

Since New Year resolutions expire at midnight, January 7th, I’m racing to realize my goal of finally becoming fluent with music notation software before the sands run out.

A new way to feign productivity in cafes!

I’d like to share some initial impressions about Notion. This isn’t a full-fledged product review — just a few thoughts about a half-dozen features I dig. (Most also apply to Notion’s sister app, Progression, which compiles all of Notion’s fretted-instrument tools, but omits the orchestral stuff. If you only plan to notate for guitar, the lower-priced Progression is probably all you need.)

1. Appropriate complexity. Two programs, Sibelius and Finale, dominate the music notation field. Both are powerful, deep programs. Most notation pros use them because they’re packed with features essential to “music engraving” (the archaic and pretentious term for the process of preparing music for publication).

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Categories
Digital guitar

Analog Schmanalog

You heard it here first!

Ever notice how most analog vs. digital battles discussions boil down to two basic questions?

1. Can digital sound as good as analog?
2. What are the practical benefits of digital?

They’re good questions, but they tend to overshadow another important (and probably more interesting) topic: What are the musical benefits of digital?

Everyone loves great analog guitar sounds. But there’s lots of cool stuff that you can only do in digital. Here are a few of the ones I enjoy.

A partial list of the strictly digital sounds and techniques heard here:

• looping
• granular synthesis and delay
• pitch-shifted delays and reverbs
• impulse-response reverbs
• subharmonic sysnthesis
• Realtime MIDI control

You heard it here first!

Hey, I’m totally guilty of fostering simplistic analog vs. digital arguments. After all, I launched this blog over a year ago with an Amps vs. Models listening contest. (The prizes have long since been claimed, but you can still take the test.) But maybe we should spend a little less time arguing about how faithfully that amp model mimics the sound of an amp from 1965, and a little more time exploring the cool and meaningful musical applications of post-analog tone production?

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?”