Roll Your Own Software Guitar Effects

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Great Articles on Home Recording

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New Frontiers in Pitch Correction

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Look to the Past For New Sounds

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Concert for the Deaf

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Sansa slotMusic Player, What Are You Thinking?

SanDisk has rolled out a new music player that plays music off of microSD cards. The cards come loaded with music in the same way that a CD is. The player will also play cards that you load yourself so that you may make your own mix tapes.

It seems to me that this is one step backward. I remember being asked years ago what physical media would replace disks, and I replied “Solid state”. You see, with the growing capacity and plummeting price of memory chips I thought that in the future, you would put a cartridge in a box to make the music go. I was so wrong. While, yes, some sort of physical media is needed to store whatever music and video information you want to play, it has become antiquated as a way of distributing that information. It’s all done with wires and radio-waves these days.

The future of personal player?

Slotmusic sounds like any other mp3 player with the exception that instead of plugging in the player to your computer to load it up, you have to plug in a microSD card to your computer… and then plug the card into the player. Somehow I don’t think adding in an intermediary step to the proccess is a feature. Sure, the whole point of having these cards is that you can buy them preloaded with music, or swap out the 1GB worth of music for another GB when you need a change of playlists. But let’s be honest here, say you have an average file size of 5MB per song, a 1GB player would then hold approximately 200 songs. At 3 minutes a song that’s 10 hours of music that you could listen to straight without ever repeating. If the player had a 10 hour battery life I would be impressed. The idea that I would need to switch over 1GB cards is silly. It doesn’t work with how people use their players; which is to cram it full of songs they like, listen to it a few hours a day then change it up every couple of days. For the true music junkies, who have buds grafted into their ears, it’s worth it to shell out for a few extra GB to meet their needs.

Here’s another point. MicroSD cards are tiny. They are appropriately sized for losing. I don’t want to keep track of something that is less than the size of a postage stamp.  Then there is the issue of price. These preload cards are going for around $15. I remember when CD’s first got a toehold in the consumer market. They went for around $14, which was about 50% more than what one used to pay for tapes and records. It was said that the jacked price would come down to the $9 level once CD’s became more ubiquitous. I think you all know how that story ended. Given that album lengths are roughly 10 songs, you would be paying $1.50 a song. Of course you’re paying over the $1 a song model that iTunes has going on, that extra 50 cents per song is going towards paying for the card (or lining the pockets of the fat cats).

Don’t get me started on the enviromental impact. Instead of buying one storage device that lasts the lifetime of the player, you are potentially buying additional storage devices throughout the lifetime of the player. So much wasted energy and materials in production, transportation, packaging.

The only thing they have right is the price of the player.  At $20 one might think of picking it up, but if you wait 3 months I’ll bet you can pick up a typical 1GB player for that price anyway. Save your money, slotMusic is going nowhere.

 

Extreme Instruments

It’s been a while dear readers. I’ve had a lion’s share of my time taken by the arrival of my second offspring. But I’m here now to serve some music goodness.

I’ve found some wonderful examples of instrument making gone amok (much of it having to do with scale, hehe). For instance a real playable tiny grand piano or a giant accordian. If the size of an instrument is important to you, you might be interested to put something that is 36 inches to your mouth. If that’s not enough for you this one is 41 inches and requires two people to blow it. Still want more? Here’s a horn that needs 6 midgets to blow it.

There’s also the freaky instruments contingent. This guy built a giant bass banjo. In fact, for a whole whack of fun and wild instruments check out the gallery of www.oddmusic.com. This one looks like a metal horn of plenty spewing forth musical goodness. Speaking of the horn of plenty, ever wonder what vegetables sound like? Look no further the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. They play instruments carved from all manners of veggy goodness. The Harpejji is apparently what happens when you smoosh a piano and a guitar together. And this is what happens when you mix a Hurdy-Gurdy with Furbies. Maybe some instruments just shouldn’t be made, but how fun would the music world be if no one tried to do weird and wonderful things.

 

DIY Musical Mayhem

For those with a DIY bent, Instructables.com has a group devoted to audio projects. While there are many projects related to iPod speakers, there are some projects more related to music production. Take the Looper for instance. Many a time when I’m diddling on the guitar I come up with a lick I’d like to expand upon. It’s a bit of work getting set up to record, then edit on my computer just to loop a lick so I can jam over it. I don’t want to break the mood, I’d rather just stomp on a button to punch in and out then continue on vamping. Check out the cool Bass stick too. Making your own instrument is an awesome way to bring fresh creativity to your music as you try to find a place for it in the songs you compose.

 

5 Big Steps in Music Technology

Here is a neat little list of 5 important developments in modern music technology brought to you by New Scientist. I never new there existed such a machine as the phonautograph. Cool stuff indeed.

The last two hundred years have seen huge advances in music technology, such as electronic music and even home recording software. Here are five of the key advances, in chronological order.

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Get Your own Edison-Style Phonograph

The fine people at Maker Shed, the storefront for Make magazine, have on offer an Edison-Style Phonograph. All I can say is that this is damn cool. What I would do with it is anyone’s guess. I’m sure it would be great for getting that lo-hi effect into recordings. It also would make a great party accessory. Make silly recordings of your drunk friends with the cups they were drinking from.

 

How to Start Your Own Boutique Pedal Business

Me wanty. dano at beavis audio research has released the Beavis Board. This makes prototyping guitar effects so much easier. I’ve played around with a couple of breadboards, building fuzz circuits here and there, but was always disappointed by having jacks, 9 volts, and switches hanging off umbilicals. It became too much of a bother to get set up, and was certainly something I’d want to be working with for any amount of time. Unless you want to commit to a protoboard, projects look like a handful of rainbow spaghetti. With the Beavis Board, I can see hours of endless fun tweaking pots, and swapping caps without worrying about constantly dislodging dangling devices.

There are so many DIY stompbox sites out there, I’m amazed that this hasn’t been done before. There is an opensource DSP effect prototyper called Coyote-1 which is offered by Howler Audio though I don’t see any actual pictures of the unit anywhere on the site. If anyone has bought one, let me know they exist.

The beavis board is designed to give you a platform for learning and building. If you can follow along with simple instructions, you can start building and modding a classic and new stompbox circuits.

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Ancient Computer Tunes

BBC has a writeup on the oldest known music produced by a computer. My how far we’ve come.

During the session, the temperamental machine managed to work its way through Baa Baa Black Sheep, God Save the King and part of In the Mood.

Following one aborted attempt, a laughing presenter says: “The machine’s obviously not in the mood.”

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Music’s DNA?

Interesting software has emerged to help visualise music as you play. It’s a novel sort of notation system though not the first to incorporate colour. There have also been other attempts to visualise music. I’d like to see what becomes of this.

“It’s essentially a visual translation of the language of music,” said Lemons, 34, who founded the company in 2006.

The hope is that the software will launch a new way of teaching and learning music. Instead of playing notes from sheet music, students could learn — or even compose music — by visualizing the notes on Musical DNA’s colorful grid.

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5 Methods of the Music Snob

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Punk Rock Robots Pogo to the Music

BBC reports on robots that have learned to appreciate punk music. I like this story because it combines two of my favorite subjects. As far as building robots that evaluate music goes it’s an interesting reversal on the usual endeavor to have machines perform or write music. In the sci-fi vision of the future could there be a robot audience to a robot band? I can only see this as furthering the ability of computers to generate songs. If they have an ability to judge the musicality of a piece then by using genetic programming algorithms or even using a Monte Carlo approach there ceases to be a need for human interference guiding the process.

The robots can decide whether a song is punk or not within 30 seconds.

“It depends on the form at the beginning of the song. It flicks between thinking a song is punk and not punk at the start and then becomes convinced,” said Mr Jones Morris.

Professor McOwan added: “If you look at the audio cortex in the brain and the cochlea in the ear you find that’s exactly how the human system does it.

The robot reacts to the level of “punk” in the song.

The more punk it believes the song is, the more it pogos in a “happy and frenzied way”, said Professor McOwan.

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A Distortion Pedal Recommendation

I was recently shopping around for an overdrive pedal at my local music shop. I tried out a T.C. Electronic Classic Booster + Distortion this pedal is nice. Really nice. I have an Epiphone SG running through a Traynor amp, so that’s the setup I had going on in the store just to make sure everything sounds good together.

While this thing costs more than my amplifier you get what you pay for. This was brought into sharp focus when I compared it with some Boss pedals. The Classic Booster + Distortion sound was like a fine cream while the others I tried were coffee whitener. The incorporated noise gate was really nice; it took out all my finger noise. There are enough settings to get a wide range of sounds making it a versatile pedal to have in the chain.

If you’re saving up your hard earned money to buy some distortion for your guitar, then I’d recommend you take this one out for a test drive. You may forgo the the cheaper pedals and save a little longer to get this. I know I’ll be socking away to have it.

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Did Somebody Say Moog?

So the Moog guitar is out. Just as I would expect from Moog there are more than enough jacks, dials, and switches. I’m curious to see who picks this up and what they do with it. The mute function on the strings is interesting and can certainly clean up your sound. But I find that sometimes when I’m playing, the sympathetic ringing of other strings adds harmonically to the music. Sometimes the unexpected striking of the high-E string by my pinky finger while crunching out power chords is a nice contrast to the quick and furious pounding. (That last bit didn’t sound right at all)

Surf on over and read all about it.

http://www.moogmusic.com/

http://www.moogmusic.com/moogguitar/?

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Wire me up!

I went to Seattle recently and while there I took in the Experience Music Project. One of the most interesting exhibits was the history of the guitar. But of particular interest to me was the display of early electric guitars.

Modern music has much to owe the electric guitar. Electric guitars brought with them the opportunity to modify a sound in ways previously unimaginable. Once the sound waves were converted to an electrical signal, that signal could be altered in a manner that would be impractical, or impossible if one were working on the sound waves alone.

If you would like to know more about the history of electric guitars then you can read about them on answers.com as they do a much better job of relating the history than I intend to go into here. My interest lies in how electrification changed the face of music.

Every instrument has an amplifier of sort. Some part of any instrument takes the vibration of the signal generator and amplifies the amount of air it moves so as to make those vibrations more audible. In many stringed instruments it happens to be a box with some sound holes cut into it. Even now, most electric guitars have a solid body and are very quiet when not plugged in as the guitar body make a lousy resonator.

The amplifying element of an instrument is often responsible for the timbre of that instrument. It’s what makes a French horn sound different from a trombone even though both cover roughly the same range of fundamental frequencies.

The configuration and material of the resonator emphasises or attenuates different harmonic frequencies so the final complex waveform produced is of a particular character, distinguishable from one instrument to the next.

Early guitar effects were the result of limitations in the amplifier to faithfully reproduce a sound wave. In the sixties some musicians began boosting the signal from the guitar to the limit of the amplifier. This was accomplished by using pre-amplifiers to overdrive the gain or by simply raising the volume on the amp until it started to distort.

High gain signals would saturate the valves causing the top and bottom of the signal wave to be clipped off. In other words the signal amplitude would actually go higher if it were allowed but limitations of the electronics, or even physical limitations of the speaker being extended or retracted completely, disallowed this. What would normally be a sine-wave ends up looking more like a square-wave (A simplification, I know. Look here and here for a more in depth treatment).

Another way musicians would change the sound coming from the amplifier would be to tear, cut, or punch holes in, the paper cone of the speaker. This would give the guitar a fuzzy quality, a sound that was later packaged up in a stomp box saving countless speakers from such unspeakable horrors.

With the advent of the transistor and its subsequent use in pre-amps and amps, a harder clipping quality was brought to overdrive distortion as the transistor had different saturation characteristics than vacuum tubes. The sharp edge of its clipping meant that the resulting signal contained more of the higher level harmonics than tubes which then translates to a ‘colder’, sound.

In any other application all this would be considered a bad thing. For some reason having an amplifier that doesn’t accurately reproduce the signal it is being fed became a desirable thing. The coloration and tone that was introduced into the signal by the way in which amplifiers distorted the signal represented a shift in what an amplifier’s purpose was to the electric guitar. In effect, the amplifier became part of the instrument in a way that transcended mere soundboard status. Given the nature of the guitar/amplifier relationship you could now change the timbre of the instrument at will just by choosing another amplifier or by turning a dial. This ability was of monumental importance in the history of music. Never before was there such ease and flexibility in choosing the tone of an instrument.

To be sure, distortion in amplifiers was an issue long before it was put to musical use. Seeing as guitars were first electrified in the 30’s and distortion effects were being used in music during the 60’s one may postulate that it was the change in musical styles that informed the listeners as how they should perceive this distortion. Rock-and-Roll emerged in the 50’s at a time when the electric guitar was first mass marketed. Being the musical style that began to capitalise on these effects in the 60’s it only seems fair to place blame on the miscreant youth. The combination of rebellious music, and now a viable instrument that can be made really loud, were the perfect conditions for distortion to be used productively. Rock and electric guitars go hand-in-hand and in part this match is enabled by the effects pedal. Nothing says “I’m rebelling” quite like the harsh tones of an amp that is being used the “wrong” way. It’s certainly nothing that Benny Goodman would approve of.

It seems to me as though the quest for novelty exploded in the 60’s and to stand out above those who employed guitar effects you had to do ever increasingly bizarre things to your sound. It was a blessing that the guitar was electrified as you could now interject devices into the signal flow that could modify the sound in wild ways. The sound of the guitar did not resemble what it was and it was never going back.

New genres of music would rise up as musicians incorporate new effects into their playing. The effect helps define these genres as playing style adapts to maximise or revolutionise the effect and the effect itself becomes part of the signature of that music. Consider the Wah-Wah and its distinctive use by Jimi Hendrix and later adoption by funk and soul musicians, psychedelic rock and funk wouldn’t be the same without it. The variety of musical genres that have emerged out of, and since, Rock-and-Roll are nearly always inextricably tied to the sound the guitarist was trying to produce.

Another form of distortion normally considered detrimental in sound reinforcement has become a staple of Rock musicians. Controlled feedback became a tool in the musician’s repertoire also during the 60’s by such notable bands as: The Beatles, The Monks, The Who, The Kinks, and of course Jimi Hendrix. With feedback another means of playing the guitar was born, one that would have been unobtainable without electric guitars.

There are so many effects nowdays packaged into stompboxes that rarely do we see professional guitarist without them. The cat is out of the bag and you would be hard pressed to put it back in. Once guitarists are given the choice of tweaking their sound they often will not do without. For all the benefits to sculpting your sound there is a downside too: reliance on effects can mask bad playing, preventing you from developing as a player. To that end I wouldn’t recommend starting a kid off with an electric guitar and a pedalboard full of stompboxes. They may not progress past making cool noises.

The next step in sound processing was to take the signal which was modified by electrical components and turn it to digital information. Now sound is unharnessed from the hardware and exists purely as a mathematical construct. As such, the wave may be changed through operations in any way that you could mathematically describe. With the cost of microprocessors having dramatically fallen and a significant history of Digital Signal Processing under our belt, nearly any sort of wave shaping you could possibly want is available. There are limits based on digital to analog conversion hardware, processor speed, and what you can mathematically define, but the plethora of digital effects out today, and those that are possible but as of yet unrealised, we will have no shortage of novel timbres to influence our playing.