Guitar Videos Update

Guitar Videos Update

I’ve recently uploaded four new videos up on to my Youtube ‘guitar channel’. They are there just to show some techniques that I hadn’t done anything with before, regarding the video stuff. The playing itself is just ‘noodling’ really, but it’s becoming more fluent ‘noodling’, as I’ve been playing for a while almost every day for a few months now.

Currently I play the guitar for fun really, it’s a world away from my ambient work, but I enjoy playing a ‘real’ instrument. It’s quite ‘grounding’ after all the computer music work I do. I think it’s good for the mind as well – engaging with the ‘abstract’ (if that’s what it is), nature of improvisation.

Using Pitcher with tremolo arm.
Using the ‘Pitcher’ pitch correction plugin, in FLStudio. Shades of the infamous ‘T-pain’ sound, but hopefully in a more unusual manner. Pitcher’s tuning is a bit ropey in places, but I guess that’s because I’m using it in a way that it wasn’t intended:

Pitcher and Slide Guitar:
Something a bit more restrained. Pitcher ‘fills in’ the notes when the slide is used and my less-than-pristine slide technique (regarding intonation) is covered up pretty nicely too !

ADT effect:
ADT type effect using the ‘GSnap’ pitch correction plugin.

http://www.gvst.co.uk/gsnap.htm
Has an interesting effect particularly with vibrato. You have to set the dry / effect level to roughly 50% for this to work.  Note ‘wrong note’ (note outside the pre-defined scale) at 0:57 !

Fake Speed Guitar:
Lastly, here’s some ‘fake-speed-guitar’ with Pitcher and the Slide.
Just for a bit of fun…

 

September News

‘IRIS’ new 2012 Igneous Flame Album:

I have a new album in the pipeline, it’s working title is ‘IRIS’ and I’m planning to have it finished and released by the end of this year. In terms of format and duration it could go any number of ways at the moment. A lot of time has gone into the work-in-progress as it stands and there’s still a lot of work that needs doing yet ! I’m striving for something with a wider tonal sound ‘palette’ and some different (to me) processes and ways of working with this album. More information will be posted nearer the release time.

Independent Artist Musings:

I’ve been giving a bit of thought as to how independent most (ambient) musicians are these days and how this is accepted as the norm, contrasting this with how things were up until relatively recently shows how fast things are changing. We have so much more control over the whole creative process than ever before. In particular, the general demise of the CD has some interesting implications for what is considered to be ‘normal’ album length and the means to get an artists music up on all the download sites for a relatively small outlay is nothing short of revolutionary, when this is compared to the ‘exclusive club’ of artists who were able to release pressed CDs in the past.
These musings may make it into a separate blog post if I can make my ramblings a tad more coherent !

Mini review (Korg microKEY25):

I’d been using a Korg nanoKEY2 as a rough and ready keyboard controller for some time now and some of it’s keys have started to ‘stick’, so I bought the new Korg microKEY25 to replace it with. I’ve already got the original 37 Key microKEY and I like it’s keys and general build quality. The micro25 uses the same nifty mini-keys as the original and has a dual function pitch wheel/modulation wheel, a simple (but useful) arppegiator and a sustain button ! (which the original version lacked). Overall, it’s loads better than the nanoKEY with it’s pretty horrid keys and less than optimal velocity sensitivity. The best thing in it’s favour was that it was compact, but the micro25 isn’t much bigger and is a whole lot better. Much recommended for use with a laptop/I-thingys.

Guitar Videos:

I’ve been upgrading my main guitar recently (again !) and have rewired it a few times to try some things out. I play pretty much every day and I can see some improvements in my playing over time. I’ve done some new videos as a result of this, I sometimes wonder if this is something of a waste of time. Each video is usually the result of lots of takes and if nothing else, it’s good practice for improvising without making too many mistakes !  Anyway, here’s one of the most recent:

Recent Studio Images:

All taken from the studio with my Sony R1 (heavily processed on the whole).

Not a studio shot !

Guitar Videos Update

Ebow #2 ‘String Skipping’

More advanced (and tricky !) use of the ebow.
Neck pickup volume up full (I never use the bridge pickup for ebow – too harsh a sound IMO).
You have to be pretty careful when skipping strings as you can get some unpleasant howls and noises when moving from string to string. I find I’m concentrating as much on the ebow positioning as I am on the fretted notes.

Vibrato 1

Vibrato makes a guitar ‘sing’. I’ve been very influenced by the vibrato techniques used by players such as Mick Ronson, Todd Rundgren and Michael Schenker. I started out learning to play the guitar using a nylon string (classical) instrument, consequently I learnt the ‘side-to-side’ vibrato technique. I later heard Mike Oldfield using this technique on the electric guitar, giving a very distinctive sound. I still use the side-to-side vibrato as well as the more standard electric guitar technique as well as fast/slow string bending vibrato (or changing speed of the vibrato). I was also rather taken with Alex Lifeson’s and David Sylvian’s use of the tremelo arm to create vibrato. In the following two videos, I play each of these techniques.
Played on my heavily modded Yamaha Pacifica 112, using the Seymour Duncan JB bridge pickup.

Vibrato 2

As per ‘Vibrato 1′, but using the JB pickup in conjunction with both Fender Lace Sensor pickups with the tone rolled off. This configuration gives a very ‘sweet’ sound.

ADT effect

ADT type effect using the (free) KeroVee pitch correction plugin http://www.g200kg.com/en/software/kerovee.html in a way I’m sure it wasn’t intended for !. In a funny way, it sounds a tad like Lyle May’s fantastic Oberheim sound he used when working with Pat Metheny.

Pinched Harmonics

Pinched (false) harmonics. Pretty tricky to do consistently, I find I have to look at the picking hand as much as the fretboard. I was always amazed by Eddie Van Halen’s use of pinched harmonics. The ‘Push comes to shove’ solo on the Fair warning album to be particularly excellent.

Volume control

It was only after years of playing that I started to appreciate the value of the volume control – prior to that, it was always on 10 !
This video shows how a heavily over-driven sound can be ‘cleaned up’ by use of the volume controls. This guitar has push-push volume pots to switch in / out a treble bleed circuit (well a capacitor !), which gives a lot of tonal variety when turning down the volume (perhaps particularly so with the neck pickup). The high frequency roll off typical with turning down the volume can be overcome by ‘engaging’ the treble bleed capacitor.

Guitar Videos

Guitar Videos

I’ve just setup a separate Youtube channel to show some of the guitar stuff that I do that isn’t a part of my Igneous Flame work. I’m planning on making a series of videos, not tutorials as such, but hopefully of interest to (guitar interested) people.
Here’s the first two videos:

‘Introducing’

Tokai LS48 made in Korea, Pickups changed to Seymour Duncan ’59s and lots of other mods.
Overdrive patch from a Zoom G2.1u multi-effects pedal, recorded live audio in FLstudio. Speaker cabinet emulator is from the Ownhammer ‘Mills 12K SM571′ Nebula library. Video recorded with a Sony HX5, (crappy) audio from the camera stripped out and edited in Sony Vegas moviestudio 10.
This is the standard recording set-up I’II be using for these guitar videos.

 

Ebow #1 ‘Dynamics’

Neck pickup volume set at about halfway and tone control all the way down.
In this video, I’d like to show the dynamics and tonal variations you can get from the ebow by moving away from the ‘hot-spot’ and turning the guitar volume down. I find that the sound can be rather harsh when playing on the ‘hot-spot’ all the time with the volume up full. Altering the dynamics can make the guitar sound almost clean at one point and then sound like it’s going into feedback the next.

Guitar-isms update:

Guitar-isms update:

As a result of my recent guitar updates see here, I’ve been playing my guitars quite a bit more. It’s something I’m doing for the fun of it really, I don’t have any definite plans as to what I might do regarding recording or making a ‘some kind of a guitar album’.
In fact, I only use the guitar rather sparsely in my ambient work. I used it predominantly on my last album ‘Lyra’ and less so on ‘Satu’, ‘Flicker’ and ‘Jazz-electric’ (which was mostly ‘fake’ guitar).

The playing that I have been doing is pretty much just ‘noodling’ really. When I was younger, I used to play the guitar up to six hours a day – such was my enthusiasm to get good at it. I’m now very rusty, but I’m trying to get a bit of ‘fluidity’ back, by building things up. 99% of what I’m doing is pretty uninspired, but the 1% stuff that is pretty decent encourages me to keep at it. It’s amazing how much repetition I’m finding in my playing – I’m still playing some of the same heavy rock licks that I did twenty years ago !. I think that’s why I decided to play less in the past, I wanted to move on and go more into production and sound-design.

Anyway, the Tokai is sounding very good and I’ve done the last mod that I intend to for the time being (really !). I put some telecaster dome knobs on, I thought they look rather swish (I’m a sucker for anything shiny) and they have a pointer dot which I find to be very useful as I’m altering the pickup volumes much more than I used to.

Telecaster Knobs

My current ‘guitar sound’ starts with an overdriven patch that I programmed into my Zoom G2.1U multi effect unit:

I then load up FL Studio and use Nebula with one of the Ownhammer speaker cabinet libraries (I think these are the best  ‘software cabs’ that I’ve come across and really add to the overall sound. As I said, I’m experimenting more with backing of the pickup volume controls to get a variety of tones.

I’m intending to make some guitar playing videos, to put up on the tube. The idea is to use my Sony HX5 to record the video whilst recording the audio on the computer at the same time, so I can strip out the horrid audio from the Sony and replace it with the recorded audio, synced to the video. I’ve some drafts and they sound good and look decent. I’m planning on doing some ebow playing, vibrato techniques etc.

24/08/2012 Update – more shiny things !

More chromey shiny things now added – chrome pick-up surrounds, Gretsch chrome knobs (actually very functional for a Les Paul type guitar) and a chrome 3 ways elector toggle switch. All cosmetic, but that’s the fun of modding I guess !

 

 

Recent Guitar surgery

I currently (only) have three guitars:

A Tokai Love Rock (Les Paul copy), a Yamaha Pacifica 112 and a Cuenca Model 40 classical guitar. I’ve had lots of guitars in the past, but sold them on to get different ones, being left handed limits things regarding choice of guitars – which probably isn’t a bad thing. The Yamaha is probably the one I’ve had for the longest time (it’s now 17 years old). I can’t justify having loads of instruments that I don’t play, so I’m focusing on the ones I do play.
I decided the Tokai and the Yamaha needed some work doing on them (I’d upgraded the Cuenca last year) for use in upcoming possible projects. This turned out to be a bigger task than I anticipated, but I’m finished now (I think !).
The Tokai is (from memory) the only guitar that I bought new, I got it from Music Ground in Leeds in 2004. It’s a Korean model and even though it was a relatively inexpensive instrument to buy, it’s probably one of the best guitars I’ve owned.
Pretty much everything has been replaced on it, as follows:

Pickups now Seymour Duncans ’59s
Gibson TP-6 Tailpiece and roller bridge
Schaller Machine heads
Electronics – ‘custom rewired’ (treble bleed circuit on / off and tone control bypass) – with push / push minipots and screened properly (lots of copper tape). The treble bleed capacitor when switched in or out makes a big difference to the sound of the pickups when they are turned down.
Various – Graphite nut, new knobs, metal jack plate etc.

Here it is:

Tokai

The Yamaha 112 has also been extensively modded. A Seymour Duncan JB bridge pickup and Fender silver lace sensors replaced the stock pickups. The body has now been sanded to remove the finish (had been sprayed metallic green at one point!), added locking machine heads and various bits and pieces. It is a very resonant guitar and I think this is probably due to the shielding of the pickup, gluing the neck and stripping the body down to the bare wood). Lastly, I scalloped the fingerboard above the 12th fret, to aid string bending – it didn’t !

The Yamaha is a no-thrills workhouse of a guitar and is very versatile, I’ve played it extensively. The lace sensors in particular give a great variety of tones. I call it the ‘Pete-caster’.

Pete-caster

Cuenca Model 40

I’ve had this guitar for 27 years now, my mother bought it for me for my 21st birthday. It was upgraded in 2011 to include a Schatten HFN-C pickup
http://schattendesign.com/HFN-CS-Artist.htm
and Rubner machine heads were added (both of which are recommended). It’s a very nice sounding guitar, which I think is in no small part to the fact that it’s been played a lot over the years.

Cuenca Model 40