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.

Skyscapes

Skyscapes

Here’s a selection of images that I took of an unusual light phenomenon directly above me in late 2009. Some of the images were heavily processed, others just colour / contrast enhanced.
I’m a big fan of sky watching – watching birds and clouds in transit. I seem to have spent a lot of time over the years looking out of windows at the sky and I do so now more than ever.

Why I create ambient music

Why I create ambient music

Firstly, because my circumstances allow me to do so – for this I’m extremely grateful to my partner Denise for keeping this artist afloat !

From an early age I have felt compelled to create in differing ways. These days I’m almost exclusively focused on my ambient music and I work on my material all day, every day (pretty much). It’s probably because I’m somewhat obsessional that I can just keep doing it. In fact, I can’t imagine not doing it, such is its importance to me. When I’ve finished a project, I start another (or others), I very rarely listen back to what I’ve done – it’s time to move on. In fact, I can get somewhat dissolute if I don’t have a point of focus to fully concentrate on. I spend a large amount of time experimenting with sounds and ideas (a lot of which never see the light of day), this is one of the reasons that my output isn’t hugely prolific. On the subject of time, I’m of an age where I realise that time is finite, so I’m trying to get as much done as I am able to.

I feel I’ve got a lot I still want to achieve. When I listen to a great piece of music – like Peter Gabriel’s ‘Here comes the Flood’ for example, It becomes apparent to me how little I have achieved in comparison to the work that I consider to be ‘great’. I try to take this in a positive way by striving to improve my own work. The areas I’m currently looking at are: composition (much under-looked in ambient methinks), the avoidance of repetition (by creating ‘new’ sounds and techniques) and various technical matters (mastering, in particular). I want to create something that is as good as I possibly can create and I feel that that work still lies ahead for me.

On the subject of ambient music itself, I feel that it is a subtle yet powerful form of music, which is much needed in these mad days and on a personal note, creating my ambient music calms me down (and I need to !) and acts as an antidote to noise. The abstract and formless nature of ambient appeals to me and my strong sense of imagination. I think the effects of this music are probably more mysterious than perhaps is realised. Sound is such a potent force, and directed sound, even more so.
I believe that any artist’s work contains elements of themselves – known and unknown and in an esoteric sense, that is what I’m trying to achieve.

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 !

 

 

Sony R1 Images

Here’s a small selection of shots I took with my Sony R1:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydscr1/

‘You can’t mix on headphones’ ?

‘You can’t mix on headphones’ ?

Conventional wisdom tells us that you ‘can’t mix on headphones’. While I think this is probably the case for some kinds of music (beat based stuff primarily), I don’t think this is necessarily set in stone for ambient. I create all my ambient material on headphones. I can’t do it with monitors / speakers, I need to be able to hear the subtleties going on as only headphones allow. I’ve used headphones as the primary listening medium pretty much all my ‘musical life’, so I’m very used to them. I use standard phones for day to day (compositional / work-in-progress) use and in-the-ear types for critical listening.

As regards mixing and mastering, I find the in-the-ear phones have considerable benefits:
Being able to hear all sorts of hiss, distortions, clicks etc. much more easily.
Sound isolation – enhances critical listening.
Takes away the problems of poor room acoustics.
Checking the stereo balance / spatial field.

On this last point, the subject of ‘incorrect spatial image’ seems to crop up regarding headphone usage repeatedly, I wonder what is considered to be ‘correct’ anyway ?
I studied surround-sound systems in the past and came to the conclusion that the standard stereo speaker set-up is hardly optimal in some respects – two point sources placed at a certain angle to the listener in a room. If stereo is intended to replicate a live performance environment, from the point of view of realism (specifically recreating natural reverberation), it’s not ideal. As a side note, I find its interesting to observe that sound sources can be ‘omni-directional’, in that they emit sound not just from the ‘front’ (like a speaker), but in many directions and the relationship between the sound, the listener and the (sonic) environment in which the sound is heard is relevant. Listening to the sounds whilst in a city, for example, walking around into shops, by roads, moving from interior to exterior spaces etc. and hearing the acoustic changes is revealing. I’ve gone out and about and have made a large number of binaural recording in differing spaces and I find it’s very interesting to hear these ambient recordings back at home.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the two speaker stereo set-up as such, I’m just contrasting it to the headphone listening experience, which I feel can be more ‘immersive’.
For my ambient music, I try to work with the spatial field as a musical parameter, using techniques I’ve developed over time to create an immersive sound-field.
It’ll sound different over speakers for sure – but it won’t be ‘wrong’.
I would imagine that its not uncommon for a number of listeners of ambient music to listen on headphones in a darkened space in order to drift away…

Technical time:
I currently use the following phones:

Shure E500 – oldies but goodies, great sound

Sennheiser HD280 – considered to be a good, flat response studio phone.

GK Ultraphones (modded for better sound isolation) – they use the drivers from Sony’s MDR-7506 phones, which are considered to be a standard for live / broadcast recording monitoring.

Etymotic ER6i – for when out and about, very good noise isolation and pretty good sound.

Music software – it never ends…

I have lots of music programs, effects, utilities etc. but probably much less than most electronic musicians have.

I’m fortunate to be working on my material full-time, but even so the amount of software I have is staggering and I’m pretty careful not to get too bogged down in huge packages – Native Instrument’s ‘Komplete’ comes to mind, as well as endlessly looking for new things.

I believe time taken to really look into a particular program is time well spent, as opposed to skimming the surface of a lot of things. FLstudio for me is a good example, on the face of things it may seem quite simple, but it’s actually very complex once you get into it.

I’ve spent a lot of time listening and auditioning things, to determine whether they may be some use (or potential use). I don’t think there’s a ‘killer app’ for music, something that will create fantastic material at the click of the mouse, even though marketing would lead us to believe there is. Tools are just that and I find the old adage ‘99% perspiration – 1% inspiration’ still holds true.

Of course, there comes a point where you have to start making music with all this stuff !