Category — Guitar Effects

These days it seems like just about everyone on the planet either has an iPhone, knows someone with an iPhone, is going to get one, or just wants one.  The fact that it’s rapidly becoming the predecessor to the iPod is no secret any longer.  What some of you might not know, however, is that you can turn that handy do-it-all device, or other, similar styled phones, into a sweet air guitar.  Who says you can’t rock ALL THE TIME now?!

That’s right, according to the article I just found, there is a new mobile phone application on the block, and this one looks to take portable rocking to new heights.  According to reports,

“The software, dubbed ZoozBeats and launched this week, monitors a phone’s motion and plays a corresponding sound. For example, you might play a rhythm based on a snare drum by beating the air with the phone as if it’s a drumstick. Or you could strum with it to play a sequence of guitar chords.”

Wow.  I’m sold.  The coolest thing, to me, is that it doesn’t ONLY require a phone with a built in accelerometer.  If your phone lacks that feature, like many popular mobile phones do, the software can also use the phone’s camera lens to base sounds on movement, or even use the built in microphone and tapping to generate beats based on the patterns.  Impressive doesn’t really sum this up.

Bottom line, no iPhone, iPod or any other device will ever replace the feeling of a real 6-string in my hands, or 4 string if you’re of the Bass Persuasion.  If you DO want to get a little rocking in and you don’t happen to have the guitar on hand, I fully recommend this alternative.  Why not keep rocking?

If you polled 1000 serious guitar players, instrumentalists, band members, or just all around guitar enthusiasts what their greatest “guitar” fear is as we progress further into the future, and further away from the music world as we know it, I bet 900 of them would say “That future generations of guitar players will really believe we play the guitar like a Guitar Hero controller.”  I for one, know that scares me quite a bit.  The thought that future musicians will not have to sweat and toil over an old six-string, build painful calluses so they can play longer, or learn the intricatcies of a good solo, but just have to push a series of colored-buttons is terrifying.

Apparently it’s also terrifying to Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, and so he decided to do some designing to show the rest of us the way.  What he did, was design a double-necked guitar that is a fusion of a real, traditional six-string guitar, and a new Guitar Hero controller guitar.  In short…genius.  When asked, well, Why, Coyne said:

“I’ve constructed this great looking Guitar Hero double-necked guitar thing here because there’s a lot of kids out there that think this is actually how you play guitar now — that you just press a series of four or five buttons and and sort of different sort of sequences and it makes every sound that the guitar can make,” says Coyne. “So when you do this stuff, you know (strums actual guitar on the first neck), it’s not as impressive as hitting the right green and red combinations.”

Check out the video here, for further awesomeness and proof of Coyne’s unusual genius.

It has been announced that Radiohead will be scoring Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk’s movie adaptation of his new book “Choke”.

“Palahniuk explained it all came from his love of the band’s music, saying: “Clark Gregg, who directed the movie version of Choke which comes out on September 26 (in the US), he knew that I’d written Choke while listening to Radiohead’s Pablo Honey, with Creep, over and over and over.”

Not only did Radiohead contribute a song to the final credits at the end of the film, but they decided that they would score the entire film, with ambient pieces throughout. Palahniuk is known for including alternative music in film adaptations of his books, such as when he included The Pixies “Where Is My Mind?” at the end of Fight Club.

This seems like a good thing for the film itself and Radiohead fans, although I haven’t seen the film yet, so I cannot comment on it, or whether it is as good as Fight Club or even in the same vein. I’m also guessing most of the bands score work will feature a lot of guitar effects, particularly because it has been mentioned as ambient sounding.

Source.

I don’t think I have done any posts regarding a bassist or bass in general since I started this blog. I am mainly a guitar player but I like playing bass a lot as well and I figured, what better bassist to post about…

Justin Chancellor is the English-born bassist for Tool. I’m not going to really delve into his background or try to do a bio or whatever. He is one of my favorite bassist’s for a few different reasons. He never limits his playing to just keeping the pulse or groove. In Tool, Chancellor and guitarist Adam Jones trade off with parts and assume the roles of each others instruments pretty frequently.

Chancellor also is capable of writing amazingly creative riffs, usually in odd time signatures, sometimes changing time signatures mid-measure, check out “Lateralus” and “Schism.” On Tool’s latest album he displays his ability to flat out attack the bass with crazy distortion as heard on the song “Jambi” which features him destroying his D string to the songs beat in 9/4.

I also appreciate Chancellor’s use of effects, which is not traditional at all by bassist standards. He uses Distortion, Delay, Flanger and the discontinued DigiTech Bass Whammy among others. He uses Wal basses, which were made in England. He also is a cool, down-to-earth guy. He owned a very small record/book shop in Topanga, CA called Lobal Orning and responded back to me when I sent him a copy of my bands 7inch record, saying he thought it was great. I visited the shop and was amazed to see my bands record sitting up on the shelf.

Here are some of the Boss effects pedals used by Justin Chancellor…

-Boss Delay

-Boss Flanger

-Boss Chorus

TC-Helicon has announced the VoiceTone Double, which is a new model in the company’s line of vocal effects pedals.  The pedal allows singers to control vocal effects.  The VoiceTone Double enables performers to produce up to four virtual overdubs of their voice in real time, giving them control of their sound right from the stage.

“Ten effects banks offer a slightly different take on the various natural and effected doubling sounds and include pristine emulations of classic microshift, chorus and detune. The pitch and timing of overdubbed vocals can be customized to be “tight and intimate” or “loose and lively”.

I think this is a great new piece of equipment. I, of course don’t like overproduced albums or live shows, but I think if you were to use this pedal more creatively and not just for a more polished sound, you could produce a lot of cool textures. Also, the fact that the vocalist can control it from the stage themselves is great, because you can change things up on the fly. Although, it seems like if you play guitar and sing, it might be hard, because you will probably already be messing with your own guitar effects.

Source. 

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I am going to be getting some effects pedals probably over the course of a few months as well as a double bass pedal. Now, I just have to decide which ones…I kind of want to try different things and not just get all Boss pedals like most people. For a chorus pedal I’ve been thinking about getting an Electro-Harmonix Nano Clone. It’s sort of like their main chorus pedal, the small clone, but much smaller and compact.

I’m going to be looking into other various pedals as well. I’ll probably post about those here as well.

 
So I’ve finally decided what I’m going to do regarding my choice between getting a double bass pedal or effects. It took me a couple days to come up with this…Buy the effects pedals used, which you can readily find and then buy a double bass pedal new. Now I just have to decide which brand of bass drum pedal.

I’m debating spending money on one of two things right now, Boss pedals for guitar or a double bass pedal for my drum kit. I am mainly a guitarist/songwriter and the GNX3 multi-effects unit I had been using is sort of broken. So I’d need a delay, tremolo, chorus and distortion pedal, which could cost me around $400. I am also playing drums right now with a band and I kind of want to get better with double bass, and my drumming in general. Stay tuned to find out which one I get….exciting right?