Filling a hole in the video catalogue.
I Talk To The Trees
Man Of Arun – The Streaming Suite
Seemed apt.
From the EP of a different name…
Man Of Arun – Wait A Minute
Still knocking out the videos to have something to put on YouTube.
As seen on…
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.
Man Of Arun – Bandcamp (Slight Return)
In the olden days, 2019, I did a tune bemoaning people using Bandcamp as a shop window and selling elsewhere. Doesn’t happen so much now, can’t think why. I did dull video for it recently just to have something to put on YouTube and Bandcamp No Fee Friday seemed an apt time to publish it.
A Little Light Music No. 3
Clippy. Clippy. Clippy The Small Microphone
Some early tests of the Micbooster Clippy EM172 microphone matched pair wearing a fetching set of Rycote wind shields and recorded onto a Olympus LS-P2.
You may prefer furry rather than fury windjammers for a less aggressive sound.
Oldies But Oldies
A stand-alone track from a few years ago I stuck on the ‘Happy Fun Tunes’ EP for the sake of tidiness. Just got round to reuploading the video .
Whilst signed in to YouTube I was also rearranging playlists as I wouldn’t want to face the coming fall of civilisation with videos miscategorised – or that was the intention – I mainly just watched them.
One of my better mixes perhaps.
Many of my recent efforts have views well into single figures such as this one continuing the theme.
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.