Tag Archives: laptop guitar

AU Lab/POD Farm 2.0/Live Laptop Rig Tutorial Part 3

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Hello again.

If you haven’t read the first or the second posts about setting up POD Farm in AU Lab, you may want to review those first.

Automating Parameters with MIDI Learn:

Now let’s complete the clean guitar setup and then automate some parameters in POD Farm.

First I’m going to delete the delay and add a volume pedal.  You’ll find it under “Dynamics”.

It could just as easily go before the amp, but in this case I want to put it between the amp and the delay, so I’ve deleted the Analog delay and placed a Tube echo after the volume pedal.

Next I’ll add a wah.

And an overdrive pedal.  I’m going to have a full on distortion tone on the other channel – but this gives me another tonal option.

Across the Very top of the Pod Farm Window (labeled Audio 1: POD Farm 2 (1))

You’ll see 4 tabs underneath that window reading from left to right:

Audio1 –> POD Farm 2(1) –> Untitled –> Line:6 POD Farm 2

Select the arrow to the right of Line:6 POD Farm 2 and scroll down to Midi Effect Editor:

You’ll notice that the MIDI Source is None – which in this case means that the shortboard is getting power and sending midi, but it’s not being received by POD Farm/AU Lab.

I’ve selected the POD short board for the MIDI SOURCE, and will keep it on midi channel 1

POD Farm: Midi Learn – Volume

Now that the midi signal from the shortboard will get to POD Farm, I can use the Midi Learn function.

Let’s start with the volume pedal.

If I select the volume pedal in the signal chain a close up of the pedal will open up in the window above the signal chain.

Since I want to control the volume of the pedal  – I want to cntrl – click the level knob on the pedal.

That brings up the following option:

Choose MIDI Control – – > MIDI Learn.  Now if I move the volume pedal with my foot the level on the screen will change as well.

(If you make a mistake you can choose the “Clear” option above MIDI Learn and repeat the process.)

Note:

If you wanted to do this with a distorted amp and roll off the gain, you could select the amp and cntrl – click the Gain knob.  Even better, with the “Set min to current pos/Set max to current position” you could use the volume pedal for subtle variations in gain.

POD Farm: Midi Learn – Volume

Let’s see how this works with the Wah pedal.

First, as opposed to the volume pedal, which is always on, I want to be able to turn the wah pedal on and off.

The “secret” here is to automate the On/Off button under the “Gate” Button.

By selecting the MIDI Learn function and pressing down on the toe switch, that switch now turns the pedal on and off.

Next, with the toe switch on – I’m going to set the volume pedal to control the WAH sweep.  Just cntrl-click the actual wah switch for MIDI Learn and move the pedal.  The pedal will now control the sweep.

I like the Chrome Custom pedal, but don’t like the extreme high end, so I’m going to limit the scope of the sweep.  I’m going to turn the knob to 85% or so and then cntrl- click, but this time instead of selecting MIDI Learn, I’m going to choose “Set max to current position”.

Now when I sweep the wah it only goes from 0-85%.  This is really useful if you only want to filter a specific bandwidth.

I’ll set the Overdrive to an on off setting – the same way that I did with the wah.

That is enough for a general clean tone.  Now onto…

The Dirty Channel:

I’m going to spend a lot less time on this as I’ve already shown how to set up and automate effects on the clean side.

Here’s the default set up:

A brief note on tone:

In distorted models, you can create amps with gain structures that you could never create feasibly in the real world.  One problem I hear a lot is the desire to crank the gain and cut all the mids.  That creates a particular sound – but it’s not one that cuts through very easily.  The overdrive will boost the channel a bit in general, but it’s easier to ADD distortion live than it is to take it away.  Again, louder isn’t always better.

Basically I’m using the same Volume, Wah and delay as the clean channel above.  The only differences are in the amp and overdrive pedal (and that I’ve moved the placement of the volume pedal.)

Here’s the overdrive setttings:

POD Farm: Midi Learn – A/B Switch

The next step is to set up a midi command to be able to switch from the A to B channel.

The secret here is to click on the mixer button so the A/B Box appears in the window above the rig.

All I have to do then is cntrl-click the A/B button and select a button on the shortboard and then it’s all set.

Save your Bacon:

Hopefully you’ve saved your POD Farm patch and your AU Lab settings, but if not saving them both are very self explanatory.

Let’s start with POD Farm:

Click to the left of Default and save as

In this stage, you can also make whatever notes you want as well for later reference which is a nice feature.

Another really cool thing about AU Lab is that when you save AU lab – it saves the settings on all of the effects in AU Lab.  So save OFTEN.

That’s it for this post.  In the next post, I’ll add Sooperlooper into the rig.

You can find all of the laptop guitar rig posts on the Blueprints tab on the top of the page.  Once on the blueprints page – just scroll down to the Laptop Guitar Rig section.

Thanks for reading!

AU Lab/POD Farm 2.0/Live Laptop Rig Tutorial Part 2

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In the previous post, an AU Lab session (or document) was established and an A/B POD Farm patch was created.  In this post, I’m going to start modifying the patch to make it more useable.

Building the rig:

Okay first I’m going to swap out the amp. I like the Double Verb instead.

You can drag and drop amps into the signal chain, but if I click on the down arrow to the right of the AMP field – I can just scroll down to the Double Verb amp.

Here are the settings I’m using.

If you look in the left hand corner underneath the input knob on POD Farm, you’ll notice the global gate is on.  I tend to use the global gate at a low setting.  This came from a ruined session where I switched to a distorted sound that DIDN’T have a gate on it and squealed between each phrase.  Now I keep the master gate on to not worry about that scenario.

Compression:

Louder isn’t always better.

Compression has it’s place – but I try to play dynamically, so the compression is the first thing to leave the POD farm signal chain.

If you click on the compressor in the signal chain and then ctrl-click on the compressor you’ll get the following options.

Just select Delete.  If you change your mind you can drag and drop another compressor from the menu into the signal chain.

Another point to bring up, is that when I use an amp and effects – I try to use the same signal chain for all of them.  (This comes from years of playing gigs and having a bunch of effects pedals going through the same amp and reverb).

Looking at this set up, the mic pre (currently between the amp and the reverb) would be something that I would want in the channel signal chain in AU LAB instead of POD Farm – so that it was the same mic pre for any amp I’m using.

The first step is to delete the mic-pre from the POD Farm signal chain (using the same method as the compressor above).

Next (in AU LAB) in the Audio 1 channel – click on the arrow in the next available Effects field below PODfarm .

If you scroll down to Line 6, you’ll see that in addition to PODFarm, that each individual component of a PODfarm rig has been broken down into components (aka POD Elements).  This is so you can use individual effects or amps as an AU plug in which much less of a CPU hit than loading in another instance of POD Farm.

In this case choose: POD Farm Element – Preamp.  I’ve chosen Vintage UK.

Reverb:

The reverb would also be something that I would want in the channel signal chain – so that it was the same reverb for any amp I’m using.  (The other advantage is that by placing the reverb outside of POD Farm, when I change amp settings the reverb doesn’t cut off with the amp change.)

Delete the Reverb from the signal chain in POD Farm (using the same method as the compressor and the mic-pre above).

Next, (in AU LAB) in the Audio 1 channel – click on the arrow in the next available Effects field below POD Farm Element – Preamp.

If you scroll down to Line 6, choose: POD Farm Elements – Reverbs.  I’ve chosen Standard Spring.  Here are the settings I’m using.

Impulse Responses:

I use impulse responses rather than the speaker sims in Pod farm.  So the next thing I’m going to do is get rid of the speaker cabinet/microphone on Podfarm.  If I click on the CAB button – I’ll get a list of speaker cabinets and microphones used.  If I scroll to the top of the list – I’ll get “No Cabinet” which deactivates both the cabinet and the microphone.

Next, (in AU LAB) in the Audio 1 channel – click on the arrow in the next available Effects field belowPOD Farm Element – Reverbs.

Scroll down to Lernvall Audio and select LA Convolver.

Now I’m going to select to impulse responses to act as a speaker simulator.  I’ve experimented with putting multiple instances of LAConvolver  on buses and running multiple cabs, but since I want to run SooperLooper in the bus (Where I can loop guitar and any other incoming audio source), I’m going to just stick with a stereo set.

Select a channel and hit “choose” under file. In this case I’m using the free RedWirez cabinet I got as part of their birthday giveaway.

I want to use a high sample rate to get better definition so I’ve chosen 88.2 K. (or 2 times 44.1k)

I’ve chosen an SM57 on the grill and a KM84 about 3 inches behind the back of the amp.  I tend to start with the Wet gain in the center position and adjust as necessary.

A brief note:

I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but since I want to use the same speaker cab for all the amplifiers, I’m going with a 4×12 for familiarity.  Normally,  I wouldn’t match a double verb up with a 4×12, but since I’m going to be running a Marshall on the other channel, I’m going to just have to adjust the clean amp signals accordingly.

Fixing the Sample Rate:

If you notice, the plug in sample rate and the Impulse response sample rates are different.  It will work like this – but I want to use the highest sample rate I can for the most clarity.  There is a delicate balancing act that comes between high sample rates, stability and useable latency, so everything here is a compromise.

I’ll fix this with Audio Midi Set up :

First: click on AU Lab and look under Preferences.

When the preferences window opens, click on the tab marked Devices.

If you click on the expert setting arrow you’ll see something like the following:

Another  brief note:

I’ve set the CPU to 100% to avoid glitches.  I’ve also set the latency really high to attempt to keep the system stable.  Depending on the system and interface that you’re using, you’ll probably have to lower the setting to the point that you get glitching (or max out the memory) and then bring it up a little bit from there.  With the headphone out of the Duet – even with these settings the latency is suprisingly tolerable.

If I click Edit Device – that opens up the Audio-Midi Setup application (or you could find it in the Application – –  > Utilities folder)

Note:  I’ve changed the output format to 88.2.

Going back to the Audio-midi sample rate window – it shows:

An Important note about sample rates:

I’ll mention this again – but if you’re going to be incorporating other audio into the session (including looping in SooperLooper) – you’re probably going to have to set the sample rate back to 44.1 (and set the Impulse responses back to 44.1).  If I’m not looping –  I try to set the rate as high as I can, but know that it’s going to have to get bounced down to 44.1 for recording, etc.

While I’m on the preferences Tab I might as well set up recording to the external drive.  Click on the tab marked “Recording”.

Now if I click on the “Rec” button at the bottom of OUTPUT 1 in AU LAB, it will record whatever I do to the Lacie as the default location, in a 24 Bit AIFF format.

With the changes in this part of the tutorial, the AU Lab Input looks like this with some sample input:

You’ll notice that the output is a little off balance.

If you pan it to the left you’ll balance the signal out a little more. Here’s the setting with all the global FX so far.

You may want to save the AU LAB session now, if you haven’t done so already.

In the next session, I’m going to complete the clean channel effects and automate some parameters with the Midi Learn function to be able to make changes to the sounds with the Line 6 Shortboard.

You can find all of the laptop guitar rig posts on the Blueprints tab on the top of the page.  Once on the blueprints page – just scroll down to the Laptop Guitar Rig section.

Thanks for reading!

AU Lab/POD Farm 2.0/Live Laptop Rig Tutorial part 1

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I’ve received a couple of pm’s regarding AU lab and setting it up for live use (largely from this post).  With an upcoming film accompaniment and a need to re-tool the setup a little I thought I would build a rig from scratch and explain how I’m doing everything.

About this tutorial:

What I am doing here is documenting the specific process for building a working rig for myself.  If you don’t have this specific hardware/software set up, you could adapt the process to whatever you’re using.

AU LAB

First a bit about AU Lab.  If you have a Mac Laptop with an OSX operating system, you have access to one of the greatest FREE music applications imaginable.  AU Lab is a program that was designed for AU (Audio Unit – The Mac proprietary plug in standard – much in concept like a VST) developers to test plug ins – but since it can accept audio and midi, has buses and can record audio – this makes it a great tool.  The fact that it does it with a fraction of the CPU of something like Logic makes it essential.

AU Lab can be installed as part of the SDK package that is on your OSX install discs.  If for whatever reason you can’t find your discs – you can go to the Apple Developer site and sign up for a free account.  You can then download the SDK package.  Once it’s installed it should be in folder called “Developer” but if you just search for “AU Lab” on your computer it will come up.

3/10/11 NOTE:

The UA LAB Version used in all of these examples is AU LAB Version 2.1.  Version 2.2 has not been stable on my system with the Apogee Duet.  You can read about the current version here – but in the meantime – you may want to download X code 3.2.2 Developer’s Tools – which has version 2.1 of AU Lab, if it isn’t installed on your system already.

Before getting into the setup – here are the tools I’m using for this particular rig:

Hardware:

FNH custom guitar:  You can find a full review of this guitar here.

Macbook Pro- 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo.  This is actually a 2008 version I got with a killer educational discount.  15” with firewire 400 and 800.  This Macbook has had 4 gigs of memory that I got from OWC (although the first slot can take 6 gigs so I’ll probably upgrade that before the end of the year) and a  Seagate 500 gig 7200 rpm drive.  I underestimated just how important the internal drive was to performance but it made a very big difference.

Lacie Rugged Drive – This is the 320 gig bus powered version.  Also 7200 rpm.  I run it on the firewire 800 port and use it to record to.  It’s a little overkill – but I can use it for larger sessions as well.

Apogee Duet – Firewire interface.  No other A/D converter near this quality in this price range –  No question about it.

Line 6 FBV shortboard Mark II – Line 6 got it 100% right with this product.  Smaller than the old shortboard, but can be USB powered.

Ilok key – This is required for the Ilok version of POD Farm.

Korg nanokey – The keyboard for this is a little toylike – but I’m not a keybaordist.  It is velocity sensitive and kits in a laptop bag – and I can use it to trigger patches, samples, etc.  I think all the Korg nano products are really cool.  Very useful item.

Apiotek USB 2.0 Quad – This is an express card adaptor that opens up 4 usb slots on the computer.  Since the Macbook only has 2 USB ports and I have at least 3 usb devices – this is REALLY helpful.

Software:

I’m not going to go into any real depth on the software – As I’ve already covered it in other posts.  (Look under LAPTOP GUITAR RIG)

AU Lab

POD Farm 2 Platinum (And POD Farm Elements)

La Convolver

RedWirez

SooperLooper

Absynth

Optional Software:

If using this hardware you will probably have to use one or all of these at some point.

Audio Midi Setup (Mac application – part of the OS install)

Apogee Maestro (Comes with the Duet)

Line 6 FBV Control (Free download from Line 6)

This will be a VERY indepth tutorial – but I want to make sure I cover everything I can.

AU LAB Set up

Go ahead and launch AU Lab

You’ll come to a screen that looks like this:

I want to run a stereo channel out so this is fine.

Click Next.

Notice that the default setting has no input – you can change this later – but it helps to set it up now.

Click Add Input.

Now you have an input source.

Click Next

In this case I’m using the Duet – so it came up as the default in the Audio Device field.  If you’re not seeing the audio device you want to use open Audio Midi Setup (in the Applications – –  > Utilities folder) and make sure you see it there.

You can check the input channels if you’d like:

This shows that the Left/Right 1/4” ins are both available.  I’ll only be using Instrument 1 for the guitar – but I could run another instrument if I wanted to.

Click Done:

Here’s the screen that you’ll get.  If you have your guitar plugged in and strum a chord – you should hear it.  But this is going to get a lot better.

POD Farm set up

The first step is to set up PodFarm:  Click on The Effects tab in Audio 1 and scroll down until you get to Podfarm 2.

Here is the default screen in Pod Farm:

What I’m going to do here is set up a clean and distorted channel that I can switch back and forth between and automate some of the parameters so I can change them with my shortboard.

The First thing to do is get the input sorted out – since I’ve selected a stereo input in AUlab – the default in Pod farm will be a stereo in.

I only need  the left channel in as I’m only using 1 guitar for right now.

If I click on the arrow to the right of input: Stereo and scroll down to left – I now have the Instrument 1 Input on the Duet (left) as the input for this channel.

Before setting everything up – I’ll take a second to get in tune:

If I click on the tuning fork to the right of the Line 6 logo – that opens the Tuner.

If I click on the tuning fork to the right of the Line 6 logo – that opens the Tuner.

The next step is to create a Dual Tone.   In this case I’ll just copy the current tone.

Click the dual button and select Copy Tone.

And you’ll get this:

Note that the input has stayed the same as well.  Now my single guitar input can be used on both channels.

In general, I haven’t had a lot of success with 2 channel sounds – particularly distortion – which tends to overload in unpredictable ways.  I’ve clicked on the A+B Switch to turn it off.

A brief note:

The first time I did this – the guitar tone was digitally distorting (unpleasantly) so I brought the output of PodFarm down and it was still an issue.  Once I opened Apogee Maestro – the utility that came with the Apogee Duet – I realized that the signal coming out of the Duet was too hot.

It’s important to realize that the more items you add, the more things you’ll have to check when it goes wrong.

You may want to save the AU LAB session and save the POD Farm patch as well.    AU Lab saves all the settings of all the effects in the session, but you need to save the patch in POD Farm to load it again.

In future sessions, I’m going to create an A/B rig with a dirty and clean guitar amps and use the midi learn functions to change effects with the Line 6 Shortboard.

You can find all of the laptop guitar rig posts on the Blueprints tab on the top of the page.  Once on the blueprints page – just scroll down to the Laptop Guitar Rig section. 

Thanks for reading!

Setting Up “Testing Environments” Or Multi Layered Tones In AU Lab

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One site that I always forget to link to and need to do so now is the Guitar Amp Modeling Blog,  which is just a really tremendous resource.  It’s really inspiring to me to see so many people working on pushing more and more into alternate live and studio approaches to guitar.

A couple of days ago I went to the Speaker Cabinet Impulse section of the forum and found that RedWirez, a company that sells a high end collection of speaker impulses is giving away their impulses from a Marshall 1960A with Celestion G12M 25-watt Greenbacks to celebrate their birthday!  The folder is about 107 MB of impulses that go from 44.1 KhZ – 16 bit to 96 KhZ – 24 bit.

There are 17 different types of mikes used for each IR set AND there are ambient mics to capture the back of the cab at various distances, room and wall mics as well. You can go to the link for that here.

I still have the recabinet set – which at $15 for something like 2000 irs is an amazing bargain as well.

But one thing that comes up in something like this is how do you sort through all those speaker sounds?

My solution is to set up a bunch of instances of LA convolver on multiple busses in AU LAB.

In this way I can set up one bus at a time and mute the other channels to be able to a/b/c everything.

Additionally, you can set up more complex sounds by combining different IR’s.

For example here are the IR’s used in bus 1:

and bus1 is the tone.

Here are the IR’s used in bus 2:

and bus2 is the tone.

Here are the IR’s used in bus 3:

and bus3 is the tone.

And the final tone of all 3 together:

To my ears, this creates a more full bodied sound than any one channel.  Each plug in takes up more processing power – so it may be a balancing act based on resources – but since AU LAB uses so much less CPU than something like Logic, it’s easier to pull off here.

In case you’re interested – here’s the patch the sound is based on:

Thanks for dropping by!

An observation from a session

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Last night I had an improv session with Warr Guitarist Chris Lavender and Drummer Craig Bunch.

We had originally planned on using amps – but with a limitation on the bass amp as a DI – we ended up going direct.

I ran out the FX send of my atomic to the laptop for cab sims (IR’s) and  looping – Chris went direct out of his Guitar Rig control.  With the Atomic – I don’t know if the signal hits the FX send Pre or post poweramp – but it sounded really good.

Craig ran both signals to mic pres (i didn’t get the make) before going into Pro-tools.

Headphone mixes were a little iffy -but everyone was listening through the mains nodding their head with an – “oh yeah”!

Next time we’re bypassing the amps entirely.  We figure we can use them live but the recording sounds were strong enough that we’re willing to go direct.

I can’t tell you how many years I’ve waited to have a feasible laptop guitar rig.   Pretty amazing to actually have it here.

No ringing in my ears today also was a nice touch as well…

Building Blocks – or more examinations of a laptop guitar setup.

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If you’ve ever seen the American dubbed version of Mad Max (the whole movie plays very differently with the original voices – I’m just so used to the original American release’s versions of Night Rider, Toecutter and the Goose –  that that’s the only one I can watch), there’s a moment where The Goose realizes that the person they’re about to arrest is an associate of ToeCutter, and the camera closes in on his face as he says,

“Well well well…”


I wanted to go a little more in depth with the laptop guitar rig I’ve been toying around with.  I’ve posted a couple of things about this but I realized that it may be more beneficial to examine each component and see how it fits in the puzzle.  I tend to focus these on distorted sounds as those to me are the most difficult to replicate.  Even Logic has some decent sounding clean amps built in – getting a useable dirty sound is still the challenge at least for me.

So what I did was improvise a little idea in a C# minor tonality and then played a series of versions of it through different versions of the laptop set up – to show the evolution of where I have things now.

There’s still a great deal more work to do in this area, but at least these are some starting points and may at least shed a light on the process I’m using.

As a starting point you may want to look at the gear page or my previous entries on this topic here or here.

The (salt) lick


To begin with, here’s an mp3 of the first thing I improvised:  C# min improv .

* Note:

occasionally mp3’s don’t load properly when I check them in Safari.  When I refesh the page they come up.  If you have this problem – it may work for you.  If you still can’t hear the mp3 just leave a comment and I’ll re-post it.

And here’s the notation

The first part of the lick is somewhere between a scale passage and an arpeggio which makes it a little interesting to me.  This approach is something I use a lot in my soloing to get away from the temptation to go on autopilot and just run scales up and down the whole time.

Visually, I’m initially thinking “G#min arpeggio”, and then dropping the lowest notes by alternating 3rds to extend the tonality.  This is an arpeggio trick I use all the time to get new sounds out of old shapes.  I’ll detail this process here:

Here’s a G# minor arpeggio:

When I look at the distance between the G# and the B – that’s a minor 3rd.  By alternating 3rds ( either major-minor or minor-major) I can extend the tonality.  A major 3rd down from G# would be E.

If I drop the lowest note to the “E” on the A string – I’d have an E maj 7 arpeggio. (E G#, B, D#).

If I drop the lowest note to the “C#” on the E string – I’d have a C# minor 9 arpeggio. (C#, E, G#, B, D#).

(If you wanted to go further you could continue the process to A, F#, etc.)

The next thing I do is to add the F# on the A and G string.

This makes G# min7 / E maj 9 / C# min 11 depending on the chord it’s being played over or how you’re visualizing it.

Now that I have the larger shape – I fill in some 3 note per string patterns on the G and high E strings.

There’s a slight 2 string variation on the A string that’s hammered instead of picked, but otherwise the picking pattern discussed on the swept pentatonic lesson is the same approach that’s used here.

This is very similar to the 3 note per string / 1 note per string pentatonic patterns that I’ve been exploring in the online lessons area of the blog (you can see a pdf here).

The process that I’m detailing is how I began to practice these things and then develop them into more complex ideas.  I tend to see sounds like this as one large pattern now ( note:  the GuitArchitecture process is all about sonic visualization – i.e. associating shapes with sounds so that sounds can be created and manipulated in real time) .  So when I improvise, I’m not really too conscious of exactly what’s happening theoretically – only sonically.

This ends in a pretty pedestrian B major (C# Phrygian) scale run.  In soloing I would typically try to develop it into something else – but for the purposes of a sound demo – it makes sense to have a short lick with a definitive ending.

The sounds

First I’ll play the lick with the sound used at the ending point of the process.  Here are some screen shots of the set up.

The FNH guitar on the neck pickup goes into the Apogee duet into AU LAB:

I run PSP Vintage Warmer

into Pod farm 2.01 Ilok version

I’m using the Marshall side of this rather than the Soldano – so I’ll show the signal chain there (it’s the same for both setups shown).

I’m going to start with the mixer and then go from there:

Since I’m only running a single line in- I’ve set both inputs to left.

There’s a little tonal secret hiding in plain sight here as well.  If you look carefully – you’ll see that the DI is set to about 18%.  This allows some of the dry guitar signal to come through as well.  This give the tone a little body and clarity that’s lacking from just the straight signal.

You might find that to completely not be the case – and again – this is just one person’s process detailed here.

Here’s the gate.  I tend to keep the levels low so it doesn’t kick in when I’m playing – but kills the noise when the volume is off.

The gain on the Marshall is set around 22%.  I tend to crank the mids a little to help make sure the sound cuts through in a live mix (note the use of the term “help”.  In reality – sound at any live gig is only as good as the sound person.  I just do what I can on my end to make sure I can hear myself on stage.).

Before the Marshall for the “lead” sound I’ve put in a tube screamer.  Here are the settings for that:

Here’s the lick with the tube screamer (same as above): with tube screamer

Here’s the lick without the tube screamer:  without tube screamer .

To give you a sense of how important the amp gain is to the overall sound – here’s a variation of the lick above with the amp gain set around half:

Here’s the lick with the tube screamer (same as above): TS_ON_50%_gain .

Here’s the lick without the tube screamer:  NO_TS_50%_gain .

I actually like this amount of saturation for lead lines – but the reason I’ve gone with the lower gain is that chords (outside or Root-5th diads) – tends to just crap out and turn to sonic mush with higher gain settings.  So to balance the 2 I’ve been working on lower tweaks.


WHY THE CABINET IS TRANSLUCENT.

Oh that’s easy.  It’s because I’m not using it.

Instead I’m using Impulse Responses from Recabinet in LA Convolver (See the links above for more info).

Here are the settings:

The IR’s are from the Recabinet Modern 2.02 Mac and PC-> 1960 4×12 cabinet settings.  You’ll notice that I don’t have anything fancy in terms of mikes set up on the cabinet,

Here is a major component of this process.  Recabinet comes with something like 2000 IRs.  I could spend weeks doing nothing but checking tonal variations on all the different cabs mikes.  Someday when I need to get really deep into this – I will.

In the meantime – to cut down on the number of parameters and just get to a tone – I went with the KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach.  I thought about what cabinet could be a constant for all my sounds clean and dirty – and the 4 x 12 came to me.  I’ve heard a DeVille through one and it sounded good so I decided to use that as the standard and tweak the amp around the cabinet.  Live, a 57 on the grill sounds good to me.  I tried 2 different variations of the same thing and went from there.

To contrast this:  here is the sound of just PodFarm – with the PodFarm cabinets but with the PSP and post preamp off.

Here’s the lick with the tube screamer (same as above): NO_IR_YES_TS .

Here’s the lick without the tube screamer:  NO_IR_NO_TS .

Some of you may prefer these sounds.  I happen to think that “initial” mp3 – has a bit more character than these.

Here’s the rest of the signal chain:

Here’s the pre-amp (post amp! – this is a very useful tweak!):

Here’s the delay:

Here’s the reverb:

So to quote the Goose, “Well well well…”

It’s still a work in progress.  I’d like to work on tweaking the preamp after the cab to carve the tone a bit more and experiment with using an outside delay later in the AULAB signal chain – but for now this is where it is.

I hope this helps!  If you have any questions or comments please fell free to leave them on the blog – or e-mail me at guitar.blueprint@gmail.com .

Thanks for dropping by.

-SC

A quick lick – and a rig du jour update from Ho Chi Minh City

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Greetings from the former/current Saigon. (Technically Ho Chi Minh City but many of the locals call it Saigon).  I had hoped to post a couple of blog updates up before I left, but instead was running around checking things for the trip. Now a jet lagged – iced coffee and soon to be bahn mi –  fueled post:

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1 lick or 2?

So first – here is a lick that works off of the swept pentatonic idea (alternating 3 and 1 note per string ideas) that I explored in the last online lesson (you can find a pdf of that lesson here).  While the online lessons have focused a lot on pentatonics – I wanted to add the tritone to make “the blues scale” and show how this approach could be adapted.  Here is the idea ascending:

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It’s very scalar – but I added  a couple of points of interest:

1. the little descending turn around allows you to play the basic ascending idea starting on both up and down strokes.

2.  I started on the tritone (if played over E minor) or the b3 (if played over G major) instead of the root.  If you’re playing this over G – think Bluegrass metal ; )

3.  The motion is more diagonally oriented than the strict pentatonic example but is the same basic approach.  I start the lick with my first finger and then shift positions for the D on the 12th fret of the D string and the D on the HighE.

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Here is an mp3: Lick1

As variation – I took the same concept and applied it in a more positional approach.  Be careful with this stretch!  If it hurts stop immediately!!!

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Here is an mp3: Lick 2

And finally here are the 2 licks played back to back:  backtoback 1

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Laptop Rig

So I bit the bullet and got an apogee duet.  WOW!  It really has made a stunning difference in resolution and I suspect will help a lot with future mixes I’m working on. With that in mind I wanted to share with the rig I used for the mp3s above.

Here was the basic amp setting I used in Pod Farm 2.0.  This was based on a customtone forum patch called Electric Gypsy.  I just swapped in a tube screamer and bypassed the cab (using the Recabinet impulse responses instead).  One of the big revelations that I found in pod farm is that I could put preamps AFTER the power amp.  Adding that in to the signal chain opened it up a lot.

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I blogged about using impulse responses over the cabs before.  The lie 6 cabs sound good – but to my ears the IR’s add a whole other area of depth.  Here are the IR’s I used – these were from the Modern 1960 4×12 set.  The screen shot is from LA convolver.

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Finally – a screenshot of how it all lays out in AULab.  I just hit the record button in au lab and edited out the noise before and after the take in fission.

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FNH Guitar –> Apogee Duet–>AULAB–>PSP Vintage Warmer–>Pod Farm 2.0–>La Convolver (w. Recabinet IRs)–>Sooperlooper

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I’m still tweaking things – but I think that soundwise everything is improving a lot from where it was even a month ago.  Once I get an A/B set with the floorboard – I think that the laptop is going to be the rig du jour.

One last note – the macbook has is using 4 gigs of ram and was updated with a 7200 rpm Seagte internal drive. (500 gig from OWC).  My computer accepts a 4gig chip in 1 slot – so I may go up to 6 gigs – but the faster internal drive made a big performance difference in the machine. I’d say you’d really need to have that if you’re going to try to go this route.

* Note – I’ve recently posted more on this topic here which may be of interest to you.

Tech Limbo (Neither Heaven nor Hell R.I.P. Ronnie James Dio)

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So I’m packing, moving and simultaneously trying to get some stuff ready for the Cha’ak’ab Paaxil Festival in Yucatán, México June 3-5th.  My plan is to leave the amp here and to use a combination of Line 6 gear and a guitar to play the shows.

After playing with Wael Kakish and the Middle Eastern ensemble last night, I was able to open the package I got from Sweetwater and check out my new Line 6 FBV Shortboard Mk II.

The new board is REALLY cool.  It’s solid in it’s construction and small enough to fit in my laptop bag.  After I downloaded the FBV Control software from Line 6.   I tried to set up a SooperLooper session in AU lab.  The concept was to run the AU of SooperLooper in AU Lab and use a midi patchbay to make sure the signal was going from the FBV to the Sooperlooper session.  Here are the patchbay settings.

Had some trouble initially  but once I went into FBV control and reset some of the switches everything worked.

This probably isn’t the smartest series of codes to get everything to work – but it’s working.

The only gripe that I have is that I wish that some additional parameters in SL could be controlled via midi (i.e. 1/2 or double speed or main monitor volume for fades).  It’s easy enough to lean over and hit the keyboard – but it does defeat the purpose of ordering a 15′ USB cable.  The board itself though works like a charm.

I’m in the process of working on sounds on the X3 Live for the show – and tweak PA vs. amp sounds.  One thing I’ve noticed with modeling is that there are at least 4 different scenarios for setting up sounds:

1.  Headphone patches – i.e. practicing or recording

2.  Playing through an amp at low volumes

3.  Playing through an amp at high volumes

4.  Playing through a PA.

You might think that there wasn’t a lot of variance – but the differences between these parameters are huge.  I have patches that sound mediocre at low volumes and sound really good when the volume gets goosed a bit.  Headphone patches that work well at home and fall apart live – and vice versa.

As a result of all of these constant parameters I’ve been experimenting with Impulse Responses in Logic’s Space Designer (and LA Convoluter) and getting some encouraging results.

Impulse Responses (IRs)

In a simplified definition:  Impulse Responses (IRs) are measurements of acoustic spaces that can be loaded into applications (Like Altiverb or Space Designer) to create different types of reverberations.

I read an article about beefing up Logic 8’s guitar amp pro by replacing the speaker sims with IR’s.  That article is here.  This got me looking for all kinds of IR’s.  For those of you who want to see how this works on guitar tracks – check out the recabinet site.  There’s a really cool pdf that talks about the different IRs and the mics used to capture them.  As of this writing they’re selling a download of something like 2000 IR’s for $15 bucks.

Now I’ve been testing these at home – the difference is night and day!

It’s late while I’m posting this – but let me give you 2 simple examples.  First here is a simple rock rhythm with a plexi type setting.  This is just the AU recording of the pod with a plexi setting and the 4×12 cabinets selected.

DirtyrhythmnoIR

Now here is a another take of the same pattern and settings but with a 4×12 IR added. It’s a little brighter but the response is different as well.

DirthrhythmIR

To my ears – the second is a little more natural sounding particularly on the ascending chords.  Here’s one more example with a clean tone.  It’s subtle but noticable.  First with no IR

BluevelvetnoIR

And with the same IR as above added:

BlueVelvetIR

The non traditional guitar sounds have various degrees of success, some sound better some sound worse.  But this made a HUGE difference on the headphones.  I’ll try them through speakers later.

For those of you looking for free links here are a couple of them.  I’m in the process of downloading these myself – so no guarantees for the sounds themselves.

First some very cool non-guitar specific responses here:

Then some more guitar and bass specific IRs here. But I’m digging the redcabi.net IRs so far…

I found an AU ( LAConvolver ) that supports IRs and runs in AU lab – if I keep the wet gain at 50% it works well.

The advantages of AU lab are several (including low CPU use and that you can route audio OR midi through it) but the main advantage is that when you save the session all of the parameters in all associated plug-in’s applications are saved.  In other words – when I get it set up for use with a PA – it’s done.  No more re-inventing the wheel.  This is particularly helpful when you’ve set up a series of midi commands for Sooper Looper.

Here’s the laptop setup:

FNH Guitar -> Radial Dragster ->Pod x3 Live -> (Stereo out) ->Behringer FCA 202 (I hope to sub this out with an Apogee Duet eventually) -> Macbook Pro (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz – older model) ->Aulab running LAConvolver and Sooperlooper->(Stereo out) ->Behringer.

Here’s the AuLab set up – I’ve put SL on a Bus – but I since I can mix wet and Dry in SL I could have just left it on channel 1.


Here are some sample LA Convolver settings (these are both from the 4×12 greenback IR’s in redcabi.net):

And finally 4 instances of SL.

I’m still experimenting but this is the current plan.  Now to apply all of this to mainstage to get synths and percussion in the mix….

This may not make any sense.  The goal to to fit everything into 1 bag – except for a guitar and a gig bag.  Hopefully I’ll have photos soon.

Also the title of this references the passing of Ronnie James Dio.  I enjoyed his work with Rainbow and while he and Vivian Campbell had a pretty miserable falling out – their 1st 2 cds had some great moments vocal and guitar (particularly Last in Line with perhaps the quintessential heavy metal guitar solo).  Dio was 67 on hitting the stage with Black Sabbath (ok fine – Heaven and Hell) at an age many people are bed ridden.  It reminds me of my favorite quote on retirement ever:

“All I do is play music and golf.  What do you want me to retire from?” – Willie Nelson

Rest in peace Ronnie.

Line 6 Pod Farm 2.0 Overview

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I’ve taken advantage of Line 6’s free 14 day download of POD Farm Platinum 2.0 ilok version and have been working on formulating somethings for a review.  I won’t be able to post a full review now, but I wanted to post a couple of brief observations.

1.  The demo version was a little glitchy in standalone version, so I’ve been using it with AU LAB.  For those of you who don’t know about it (I had to find out about it on the super looper forum) – AU Lab is a free app that comes with the OSX Xcode Tools.  It was designed to test AU plug ins with but its a stand alone app with a fully configurable mixer ( inputs, outputs, effects busses) .  It records output and even generates midi clock!  Also it makes a very small cpu impact – so it’s perfect for hosting something like Pod Farm and say SooperLooper.

2.  2.0 supports midi – which means you can control it with a foot controller like the FBV shortboard MKII or the Behringer FCB1010.  I didn’t get to work with this yet – but this brings the live laptop rig very feasible for me.

3.  Stereo rigs which you can A/B/Y!!!  which alone would have been really cool – but you can use multiple effects in the same rig – something you can’t do on the POD for example.

Here’s a screen shot of a modification I made on the Outer Space preset.  I just added a preamp in the beginning of the chain.

So here is an mp3 of a guitar track I improvised with this setting:

Outerspace II

This was made with a FNH ultrasonic guitar, Behringer FCA202,  Macbook Pro (2007), and AU Lab.  No post processing.

So this particular sample doesn’t sound very guitarish – but that’s part of the reason I really like this approach.  You can create things that you never could create with pedals without a ton of gear and/or a ton of noise.

As with many other sims – getting usable clean tones is pretty easy and getting dirty tones that respond the way an amp would is a little trickier.  But the presets on all of these models are light years away from older line 6 presets that I’ve heard.  It’s pretty easy to get a tone in the ball park and tweak it from there.

Line 6 has some great audio/video demos on their site, so I wont go into too much here for demos as they’ve done it really well.   Also the May lesson uses the same signal chain for all the mp3s that will be posted there.

I need to also give kudos in that all of the sounds on the sites are included in the presets and they have also noted processed vs unprocessed sounds.  Yes there is a big difference between the two, and it’s important to note those differences so that when you dial up a preset you know what to expect.

The only thing I wish it had was a dedicated looper, but that’s not a deal breaker.

If you have an I-LOK I’d say to definitely check it out.  It’s more flexible than the POD and does some very cool things.

For further applications of this set up you can also  go here or here.