I shall now probably only play acoustic instruments for the next decade.
And what has now become traditional the accompanying backing track version.
A Little Night Music No. 9
A Little Night Music
Not to be confused with It’s About That Time Of Night.
A Little Night Music No. 8
When I say music…
The usual suspects are joined by a Source Audio Super Collider delaying and reverbing at the end of the signal chain. Or not quite the end as there be a Digitech JamMan Solo XT recording the outcome. Continuing the Digitech theme a Polara provides the reverse reverb.
The Poly Effects Bebo is mainly for delay in quantity at the following lengths: 31, 32, 96 and 128 seconds. Some chorus and phasing is included for good measure. (Patch photo at the end of the video).
The Zoia is running ‘Parts’ by who else but Christopher H. M. Jacques: ’10 … loopers probabilistically record and play back … depending on a “Density” control. The loops are randomly panned throughout the stereo field, and can be set to different pitches and reversed.’ It is that very Density control I can be seen twiddling.
Today’s guitar is a new old stock DBZ Royale ST as knocked out by Scan Computers in the UK at very reasonable rates (if you can still be bothered to fight your way past Cloudfront Captchas). It’s thin and lightweight but a gnats neck heavy. I got is specifically to set up with very thin strings and ludicrously low action to be easy to play when my shoulder and wrists aren’t in the mood for anything with more resistance.
Speaking of heavy it comes with high output humbuckers – fine for energetic styles but replaced on mine with the more mellow Warman Retro Rockers.
There is also a longer, and though it’s hard to believe, duller version of this on the channel as I had uploaded it before realising the folly of my ways.
A Little Light Music No. 6
Playing with the modules on the Poly Effects Beebo / Digit I came up with this ditty and it’s the effects that do the heavy lifting as I’m a bit restricted in what I can play by the return of an old shoulder injury. An Empress Zoia helps out with a tremoloed reverb and a ping-pong delay which is a bit lost as I’m just recording the sound of my computer speakers – hence a certain amount of ‘acoustic’ guitar.
As this series grows it becomes increasingly obvious that I have too many guitars, in the is case a Fret-King JDD, the Jerry Donahue signature model to which I’ve added a kill switch, moved the various controls and replaced the tone potentiometer with a TBX one with Premier Guitar modifications.
A Little Light Music No. 5
A bit of a cock-up on the recording front as I deleted the lead guitar and had to use the camera microphone which means a certain amount of room noise and backing track spill but it’s near enough for light opera.
The guitar I’m using is a Revelation RLR based on the Les Paul ‘Recording’ model and has pickups that can switch between humbucker and two single coil modes. There’s a phase switch and a variable impedance control to change from modern to vintage tones and I’ve added a bass cut which adds a couple of options to thin out the sound which is particularly useful with a lot of effects.
In this instance I’m using the humbuckers which are out of phase when I move to both on. The strings are a little unusual these days being Thomastik-Infield flatwounds, 12 and up.
For the backing track the Poly Effects Beebo / Digit is running the Leon Todd preset where eight delays are arrayed like one configuration of the Yamaha UD Stomp. I’ve just changed the routing a little to follow it with an Empress Zoia in the second set of ins and outs. The Zoia is running an old standby from the industrious Christopher H. M. Jacques, ‘Fading Dream’ – in diffuse mode. As seen on Patchstorage.
The melodic part is the Chordelayverb on Beebo, again by Leon Todd.
And the ‘amp’ is the Neunaber Neuron which I like because it doesn’t set out to be a copy of any other guitar amplifier.
A Little Light Music No. 3
A Little Night Music No.2
During which which I finally succeed in recreating the sound of a cheap children’s ‘mooing’ toy using hundreds of pounds worth of equipment.
On an interesting Sound On Sound podcast interviewing a developer of Yamaha’s FM synths they mentioned the FS1R module, one of which I bought around the turn of the century when they were going cheap having not proved popular. On that prompt I looked up what they were being sold for these days and after getting over the shock I dragged mine out for a noodle.
Backing comes courtesy of an Argon 8M and Arturia Microfreak (C’est chic).
Made up on the spot – hard to believe I know.
What I’d forgotten was that the FS1R has the elusive MIDI Mode 4 allowing each string to have its own channel meaning amongst other things better tracking and independent pitch bend. A bit like MIDI Polyphonic Expression does today and allowing you to play in a more guitar like manner. (I may go wild and do a video at some point that demonstrates that rather more obviously than the one here.)
Perhaps of note is that the Yamaha synthesizer and Roland GR33 I’m using to convert the signal from the hexaphonic pickup on the guitar to MIDI are twenty year old technology. (Hexaphonic means it picks up each of the six strings individually for later processing. Some very clever modern pedals and software can work out individual notes from a standard guitar output but there are still some things that can’t be deduced using that method).
The Cyclone II is of similar vintage with some modern accoutrements, most recently Wilkinson WLS130 locking saddles which are a great aid to tuning stability on an old fashioned Fender type of tremolo unit if you’re attempting extreme wobbles. It also has a LSR roller nut, Graphtec string tree and locking tuners I stuck on over a decade ago and can’t remember what they are.
The Cyclone shouldn’t be confused with the Squier reissue which has Stratocaster rather than Jaguar pickups and most importantly lacks the go faster stripes of the original.
A Little Night Music No.1
Combining mucking about with toys and trying to get back to playing things all the way through I’ve knocked out a tune and a video which may become part of a series.
Made up on the night.
Made in the edit was the mistake of including the recording of the backup loop which even by the standards of this series is a bit on the dull side so you may want to skip to 2.20 in.
Features the strangely underrated AdrenaLinn which was doing many of the things recent effects pedals major in getting on for twenty years ago. Not much to note other than perhaps the pedal board splitting part way into two audio paths with the ability to loop either separately which in turn can be captured by the Boss RC50 tacked on the end.