Guitars

DIY Boost Pedal

Alan — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:44:07 +0100

I've been looking for a nice small electronics project so I took some time out to build a new guitar fx pedal. I've never really seen the point of a fuzz pedal, always seemed to deteriorate the signal too much for my liking. I do like boost pedals, especially nice clean ones that push the preamp just to the point where it starts to distort the signal nicely.

Triboost

The Triboost from Build-Your-Own-Clone looked to be a good way to have a boost and go part way towards fuzz. It's not described as a beginner's kit although is suitable for beginners. I can testify to that. I am a beginner and although I can solder audio jack-sockets and cables together, it's generally messy.

This pedal took me three hours to put all the electronics and hardware together from start to finish. That included some time to find some tools that I'd forgotten I'd need (e.g. spanners and wire-stripper).

From the website:

A germanium boost that uses an NOS European made germanium transistor
A Silicon boost based on the Linear Power Boost for a full frequency kick with tight punchy low end
A MosFET based boost for sparkle and chime

The toggle switch also allows for switching between treble, full range and mid-range boost on the germanium setting.

The Sound

I've no calibrated measurements for this, just my own ears and plugging the guitar into a 50W valve amp.

Well, it's clean in bypass. No additional hum there.

In clean boost, it's very nice. Just a pure gain (or reduction if you turn the knob down). I couldn't detect any noticeable tonal differences, although it does allow you to push the clipping the signal at the pre-amp stage.

The MosFet boost is useful, almost as an overdrive. I had some fun with this one, especially with the bridge humbuckers.

The Germanium setting is quieter. Could be that this was the part I messed up. It's currently held onto the board with red

insulation tape. I'd cut the legs too short. It's a rookie mistake and I'm actually happy with that. That was the only mistake I made and even so it still manages to work as long as I don't shake the pedal.

The 3-way toggle switch is only active on the germanium setting and makes a vast difference. Unfortunately, I found I had to change the boost level for each setting of the toggle switch. As it's a single button pedal, that's not really a problem, unless you want to use different settings throughout a live set.

The Board

The main part of the build is the PCB. And the one thing I noticed was that the layout was really well thought out. Everything fitted in nicely. Look around elsewhere and you'll find PCBs that look a lot worse than these.

What's left to do?

Now for the fun part: the painting. Haven't got a clue where to start. Well, actually, I'll probably start on the forum and go from there.

Hints

Take some time to read the notes on the forum for your pedal. The advice on how to put the pedals together is spot on.

Download the manual. The order in which to install and some of the advice in the manuals is invaluable.

Using an Octaver for Easy Funk - Musical Creativity 43

Alan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:23:43 +0100

Mention an octaver to a musician, especially a guitarist, and you're heading for a conversation about Hendrix.

It can be used for other styles. So here's a quick trick for writing funk. Forget the bass when you start. I half-expected to get lynched, but bear with me, at least until the end.

Background

I like the old P-funk of Funkadelic and Parliament. I think what made me hear it more was the inclusion of a distorted guitar in a funk show. This was often played in sync with the bass guitar.

Setting the groove

Find a sparse drum track. You want big drums (not 80s soft rock big though). Make sure it's a tight loop. Set it to loop as your background track. Now remove the click track if you've got one. You'll play better this way.

Setting up the guitar

We'll get the distorted guitar set-up first. That'll be a distorted guitar from the 70s, maybe even a distorted DI from the 80s. Keep the speaker simulation to a minimum. We're not looking for a modern hi-gain sound here so go for a raw guitar sound.

Next add an octaver effect. I've had better results recently with it placed after the amplifier/amplifier plug-in, but normally I'd place pitch effects before the pre-amp.

Set the octaver so it adds a note one octave (12 notes) below the signal.

Roll the tape

Now play and record. Use an extended pentatonic scale (i.e. blues scale with a few additional notes) to get started. The p-funk guitars had lots of semi-tone intervals.

Fill it Out

Add a second guitar with a modulation effect, most commonly a subtle phaser playing rhythmic, strummed part-chords.

Finish it off

I've added a club-type reverb to bond the 3 instruments tracks together, aiming for a live club feel.

Make it more complex

You could add the octaver as a send instead of a insert, allowing to mix the levels better and potentially (depending on the quality of the octaver effect) retain the character of the original signal with more clarity.

Make it more authentic

Put on the star-shaped shades, pick up the bass and record the part properly. The octaver gives you an easy way gets you started in the groove, but it really should be done with a bass.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Use of Tremolo - Musical Creativity 42

Alan — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:27:29 +0100

I've talked about tremolo as a musical feature before, this time I want to go into more detail.

First things first, let's sort out the guitarists: I don't mean using the tremolo arm/whammy bar or whatever you want to call it ("handle" as my girlfriend called it - and no she won't be picking up my guitars for a while). The whammy bar creates a vibrato feature, not a tremolo. Vibrato alters pitch.

Amplitude

Tremolo is the act of altering the volume of a note or set of notes. For an electric instrument, the simplest to hear is by regularly turning the volume knob up and down. The notes fade in, fade out, fade in, fade out and so on.

It's a great tool for livening up a piece of music. The previous article on the subject covered some more ways of using it.

Recordings

Tremolo features on a lot of famous recordings. Three extreme examples are:

How Soon Is Now - The Smiths

Crush with Eyeliner - REM

What's the Frequency Kenneth - REM

But it's used more subtlely on many, many more recordings. Think of any country song and listen to the guitar. Many of the 1950s and 1960s guitar recordings had tremolo on them. Think Duane Eddy (although he mixed it with vibrato by using the whammy bar a lot). Lots of Elvis recordings featuring Scotty Moore had tremolo. This situation was accentuated and facilitated by the inclusion of tremolo circuits in the guitar amps, e.g. Vox

Types of effect

The common tremolo effect alters the amplitude or volume of the incoming signal apply a regularly repeating pattern before output. The most common pattern is the sine wave, although some FX units also allow square and sawtooth. The output signal increases, decreases, increases, decreases, etc.

The waveform applied changes how fast the signal reaches the extremes and how long it stays there before beginning the journey to the other extreme.

Depth

If the signal is applied completely at 100% depth, then the output will have no signal at the points when the applied FX is at its lowest point, conversely it will have the maximum volume when the FX is at its highest point.

Lowering the depth introduces a less radical effect, to the point that if the depth were at 0%, then there would theoretically be no difference between the input and output. As with most effects, the most appropriate depth is usually somewhere between the two extremes.

Symmetry

The waveform applied so far has been the same on both sides, i.e. going up and coming down. Altering the phase allows more time for the signal to climb and a quicker fall or vice versa. This is great for imparting a slower or a rushed feeling to the track.

Phase

For a stereo tremolo, the default set-up is to have the signal applied equally, but alternately to each channel. Changing the phase control alters the timing displacement of the second channel compared to the first, which can be used to create panning echoes or dotted note rhythms.

No Depth?

I'd usually use a tremolo inline with the signal, either at the recording stage (e.g. between guitar and amp) or at the mixing stage (as an insert). If there's no depth control, then patch the tremolo into a send and emulate the depth by the relative values of the signal and send faders.

For guitarists, if there's no depth control, then you maybe able to use it in the amp's FX loop if you've got a variable dry/wet mix. This may not work well, since the FX would be placed after the pre-amp. Depends what equipment you're using.

Playing with fingers

A classical guitar tremolo technique involves repeatedly plucking the same string with the first, second and third fingers. This is often a bass and/or melody note plucked with the thumb followed by the three fingers or sometimes a fourth is employed but the fingering changes.

The most famous example is probably Recuerdos De La Alhambra by Francisco Tárrega, although I think Agustin Barrios Mangore's Una Limosna por el Amor de Dios (Alms for the Peace of God) shows the technique more.

Various forms of flamenco use a similar technique, sometimes using the thumb plus four finger notes (not necessarily four fingers, often three fingers with one repeated) to get a 5-tuplet pattern.

Pick

For electric guitar, rapidly repeated picking of the same note gives a tremolo effect that can be used in solos. Do it too often and you'll sound you can't move your fret-hand fingers. Best to intersperse it with other techniques. Check out the Ozzy Osbourne recordings with Randy Rhoads, e.g. Tribute, to get an idea of how to fit it into a solo. He doesn't use it that often, but when he does, it works well. Nowadays, watch Matt Bellamy of Muse. There are plenty of others, but they're not coming to mind right now.

In other forms of music, e.g. drag, it can be the main feature. This is more likely to happen on the lower strings of the guitar, with a springy/slap-back reverb. Think Dick Dale. Although perhaps not part of drag, Miserlou (as featured in Pulp Fiction) is a great example of how a simple riff can lead the track. The repeated picking comes from his experience with an oud (or ud).

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

My composing workflows

Alan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:52:56 +0100

I said in the previous article that I'd provide details of my most common composing workflows.

Sync to video Soundtrack

I'll get the video into a format ready for Logic Pro, mainly I'm looking for a QuickTime movie.
Import the movie into Logic, check the frame rate. Very important.
Set Logic to find the scene change markpoints. I'm having second thoughts about this process. I may revert to adding them manually. I like how some features are more obvious in Logic Studio 8, than in LP 7.2, so I'm going to play with these a bit more.
Read through the director's notes and play the movie. Start to get a feel of what I want to put in there while it's playing.
Set the tempo track up for the obvious places, hitting the markpoints at the right times.
Decide if it's an effect or musical soundtrack, then choose the correct instruments and play along. I'll probably want the clicktrack off when I'm not sure of what the timing should be. In that case, I'll figure out the time signature after I've played along to it a few times.
Tighten up the recording as I go along and improve the fit to the movie

Creating a library track

I'll usually start with a drum track
Add guitar riff and extend this
Add another guitar
Add bass
Add synth if necessary
Process the sounds, adding effects as appropriate
Mix
Create shorter edits and stings

Creating a bespoke track

Well, it depends what's been asked for. Difficult to say what I do until I agree the brief, but I may be more structured and layout a rough structure on drums, even if it's only marginally more interesting than just a click track. Usually there's a length of time to fill so that constrains it. Often I'll split it into three; the start, the theme and the end. I'll build up from there.

Creating a track in a new style

Get a reference track
Play the reference track and listen carefully.
Start to deconstruct what makes the reference track belong to its genre
Build up a track from that

In these cases, I'm more likely to have the idea in my head and then have to transcribe and/or record the sounds that I hear.

Extending a previous idea

If only a small extension is required, I'll try looping a few bars, missing out an instrument, introducing more percussion for a bigger ending, playing the main theme on another instrument. Quite typical tricks that work well for small extensions. For longer extensions and more complex pieces, I'm more likely to play it through on guitar (no matter what it was originally recorded/played in) and go from there. Sometimes I approach it logically, working out what notes should work next, other times, I'll just play and see what notes fit best. I discussed a few variations on this in an earlier article.

Challenge

Anybody's guess is good here. It really depends what the challenge is. Often I'll set a challenge for myself after hearing a piece of music and wondering if I could do that. The challenge is to create something similar but not the same. It's similar to creating a track in a new style, but the constraints of the challenge could be a lot more severe. Look at Jeff Yates' Norman Bates with a Briefcase. Fortunately he only had the title for his challenge, good job he wasn't told to do it Polka stye or something like that.

The usual

Throughout all of this, my standard route for composing is to have written most of what I want to play before I get to the recording stage. Sometimes I play with dice and figure it out as I record, aiming for a very live, spontaneous feel - something very similar to jamming. The difference is that I'll have played all the parts so far, so I've a good idea where the music's going. Often I'll have the majority created and just record the last few parts as spontaneous. I find that this way I end up with a mix of structured foundations and varied melody.

I can always re-record the added part if it needs to be more polished. Sometimes it works better that way, sometimes not.

I'm interested to hear if your workflow differs.

Arranging Multiple Parts for a Guitar - Musical Creativity 37

Alan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:49:34 +0100

As well as composing and recording, I play guitar in a band, playing a mixture of covers and our own originals. We don't stick too closely to the originals when we cover them, realising that we only have four members (guitar, bass, drums and vocals) so many songs have to be stripped down to work.

Going from a song that has many parts to a cover version with only four instruments can leave you feeling a bit naked when playing live. It doesn't help that as guitarist, I often have to play several parts at the same time.

It's just arranging

You've got 6 strings. So if you're adding in a piano part and a guitar part, then it's time to pick the most important notes. After all, you can only play a maximum of 6 at a time.

Listen

Listen to the music and pick out what makes the tune. A lot of notes are filler. The music sounds different without it, but that's ok.

Listen to other listeners

Not only listen to the track yourself, but ask the other band members what elements of the song stick out to them. Singers pick out different notes to bass players and so on. So there's me as a guitarist saying that some notes are missing from our arrangement, but no-one else has noticed. And it happens the other way around, where one of the other members will ask where a certain part is.

Who's the arranger?

If you are, then don't be afraid to ask the other musicians to try playing parts that they wouldn't have considered. I'm fortunate to be in a band with an accomplished and adventurous bassist. That's good because it allows us to swap when it comes to supporting the melody or the rhythm. The drummer's also open to new ideas. They, in turn, ask me to play other parts I hadn't considered.

The tone of the guitar

For notes played at the same time (e.g. chords), we've a limited tonal range. Each note in the chord has to be nearly the same tone and volume. There's some flexibility if you pluck with your fingers, but it's still pretty restricted.

If you look across the length of the song, then guitarists have access to a massive range of tone since we can vary it as we go along. The trick there is to tie the tone to a musical part, e.g. the piano lead.

Two at once

The guitarist can support the rhythm by striking staccato chords, but then there's an empty space for pads to ring. My way around this is to play the ringing chord and then play the rhythm on the low 6th string, sometimes with the 5th depending on what the chords are and how much I need to reinforce the rhythm. This works well clean or crunch sounds, not quite as well with hi-gain tone, but it can still work. Just depends on the chords being played and the rhythm that it needs to fit into.

Swapping between instruments on the same tone

To differentiate between two instrument parts, I've used upstrokes on one and downstrokes on another. Swapping between primarily plucked and primarily legato/glissando can help differentiate.

Try alternate strokes.

Similar to the ringing chords plus staccato rhythm above, the root notes can be played on the downstroke, then the ringing chords on the upstroke. Even more useful is the downstroke on the root, then several staccato chords using upstrokes. Not exactly special, but can be very useful for syncopated rhythms.

Let the bass play

If the bassist is playing the root notes, then the guitarist doesn't need to. Frees the guitarist up to play other parts.

Too much to do

Guitarists only use one pick at a time, but can use several fingers. So think about whether some finger picking would help. In addition, I use a combination, playing some notes with pick, then treble notes with fingers, often alternating, but sometimes together. Works well at emulating piano parts.

It's also the only way I've found to keeping the strength of the normal guitar notes while playing a melody on the higher strings. It takes practice but is well worth it since it opens up a whole new area of complexity.

Stretch

Bassists usually only play one note at a time. That's an overstatement, but stretch your bass player. For instance, if they play chords or at least octaves, they can free up the guitarist from chordal duties. Also the bass is a great instrument for filling in string parts. It doesn't sound like a string section, but fits in a live mix well enough, especially when played around the 5-9th frets on the A and D strings.

Composing

Why is this in the composition section? The more techniques a player has, then less restricted the music will be. By thinking how to deconstruct a song to a minimum of instruments, then you get to realise how much of a a song is superfluous. Look on youtube and you can watch any number of acoustic covers of songs, not all good mind you. The better versions have been arranged by musicians who have thought about which notes matter most and have fitted them into the composition.

Any other ideas

I'm interested to hear of other ideas or your experiences with this.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Changing some tracks - Musical Creativity 36

Alan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:39:32 +0100

I wrote the bulk of this text a couple of months ago after a day of not producing as much as I'd liked to. There are no real suggestions of how to improve or learn, but I thought I'd describe my thought processes so others may learn from my experiences.

Yesterday

I had one of those days yesterday where inspiration was lacking. Partly it may have been the brief I'd been given since it didn't have the depth of information I'd have liked. Mainly, though I think it was just me, I couldn't really find much to do, not that sounded right anyway. But I still managed to deliver something of sufficient standard.

How?

I tried creating music for the part from scratch. I wrote some interesting ideas. But they didn't really fit the brief as far as I was concerned. They're now exported to mp3 and the relevant project files archived for future reference. You never know what may be useful later on - I revisit unfinished files on a regular basis and often manage to complete them another time.

I then reviewed my collection of part-finished works hoping there was something nearly finished in there. Unfortunately there wasn't anything near finished. So I took two that really needed a lot of work and moved them forwards. One was almost finished from a composition point of view, but required a lot of mixing and processing, the other required more composition and almost no mixing.

Both featured a repeating rhythmic phrase and some background drums; one had a few bits of melody as well. The originals were rough versions of ideas that I thought worth keeping but didn't have the inspiration to finish when I first recorded them. They were a mixture of midi-triggered samples and audio recordings.

First Track

The first track was a sad and slow bluesy-jazz and had the following tracks:

drum loops
electric rhythm guitar
electric bass
electric lead guitar

For this one, it was mainly a case of arranging and mixing rather than composing. The original idea was over 3 minutes, the brief was for 1 min 50 seconds. So I worked at taking the best bits and arranging them into something musically attractive.

Before Arranging

Before I could arrange the work, I had to sort out the audio. It just didn't sound right. The original was recorded in one take per track, i.e. place some drums out, record the rhythm guitar in one go, then record the bass, then the lead guitar. Any of the audio processing was done very roughly just to convey the idea.

Rather than tweak and tweak and tweak some more, I removed all the processing and started again. After having listened to the track a few times, I knew where I wanted to go with it.

Clear some space
Guitar tone and amp selection
Set up a delay for the lead guitar
Compression for the drums
Correct reverb for drums
Mixbuss reverb, eq and compression

Clear some space

First of all I had to clear some space, the instruments were overlapping way too much. This involved some careful eq mainly focussed around making room for the bass guitar to be heard. Rolling off the low-end on the guitars and nudging the drums down in the same area helped bring the bass through considerably.

Guitar Tone and Amp Placement

I actually liked the tone I'd originally recorded with but it didn't fit in my vision of the mix. I changed the speaker emulation for a more familiar British 2x12 and turned the gain down to reduce the distortion. I also removed the reverb from the plug-in so I could add a different one later to fit in with the rest of the instruments. I'd considered re-recording with guitar amp and microphones but decided against this since the tone was sufficient for the background rhythm guitar.

Delay for lead

The lead guitar sings and needs to be heard above and beyond its accompaniment. I used a stereo delay on a aux bus for this and set the send so that it was audible. I did think about backing it off as I would do for a reverb, but I liked the extra character the delay gave the guitar.

Compression for drums

The drum loops were from BetaMonkey. They're good quality loops and are usually very dry or, in the case of the early ones, in a good-sounding room. In this particular song, the drums didn't cut through as I'd like. I could hear the snare too loud in the mix compared to the other drums. So I used a multiband compression on the drums with the gain mainly in the lower two bands and stepped down in the higher two respectively. Although setting the compressor up in this way is probably the opposite of what I'm more used to (i.e. heavier treble, lighter bass), this changed the character nicely.

Reverb for drums

To make the snare and cymbals live more in the mix, I used a reverb on an aux channel with a high-end pass. This added a nice, but barely audible quality to the drum track. The compression used in the previous step had brought the other drums up to a good level so this action balanced that out.

Mixbuss

Although nicely balanced, the instruments almost sounded like they were recorded in different rooms and the overall recording was slightly flat. A small eq alteration helped. I added the slightest amount of reverb to bond it together. I'm usually happy with a convolution reverb of a nice-sounding studio to get the feel for a track and then choose from there when I've got an idea of where I want it to be. For this particular track, I used a jazz club reverb for a more live sound. It fitted the bluesy-jazz feel of the whole track.

The final element in the chain was a limiter. I usually have two exports, one with the compressor in the chain and one with out. Then I've got the flexibility to hear what it would sound like compressed like many other tracks but still give clients the more dynamically accurate version without the compression.

The second track

This was a lot simpler in scope, but I spent a lot more time on it due to having to compose more parts and phrases to glue it together. The original idea was 50 seconds long and consisted of a midi-triggered samples of a piano, acoustic double-bass and an acoustic drum-kit. That's not that long.

Timing

I'd originally played all the parts on a midi keyboard. So the first step was to ensure all the notes were on time. This was a combination of quantising and manually adjusting the placement of notes. Some of the notes were also wrong, just not fitting in with the key. I manually adjusted these as well, rather than relying on any logical processing.

Drums

Oddly for me, the drums were samples rather than loops. I tend to find that loops fit in a lot better than any samples ever can. For this song I'd only used 4 drum sounds. I'd envisaged a drummer with an older style kick, snare and hihat, rather than the mammoth rock kits of the 80s. This simplicity, specifically the lack of cymbals, helped make the sound more realistic.

To add further realism, I patched in a light drum room reverb, just light enough to hear.

Piano

The piano sample sounded too artificial when solo'ed. I auditioned a few other piano samples, including some that were sampled from much better pianos and with much better recording. Yet I decided on the original but with two major changes:

Decreased the low-end of the piano by about 6dB below 300 Hz. Although the piano is mainly providing a bass rhythm for this track, it still comes through with the low-end reduced.
Reduced the velocity of the piano notes. Most were in the upper quartile which had a harsh sample layer. By reducing the velocity, I got to use a combination of different layers.

Structure

The original was 50 seconds long. I needed an extra minute. By thinking through the structure I wanted to introduce, I was able to create the 1 minute 50 required. It was just on the edge of having to introduce a different chord progression, theme or motif. Any longer and I would have had to. As it is, the different instruments coming in and out make it interesting enough for the short time. I looped the piano, bass and drum parts. Cutting out a few loops to bring attention to other instruments. I then added the guitar over the top and then the jazz organ.

Guitar

The guitar was troublesome. I knew it needed another instrument or two to keep it going to 1 minutes 50 seconds, but every time I played along to the song, I was left short of ideas and just had a tangled mess. I also sat down with the chords and tried working out a melody. Again nothing worked. It was accurate harmonically, just not interesting. I tried changing guitar sounds a few times - I find the inspiration from that can help a lot, even from a totally inappropriate guitar tone. In the end, I switched on the cycle function and hit record. About 45 minutes, later I had enough pieces I could use. These were pasted into the arrangement and unused pieces deleted.

The tone was deliberately kept mellow.

Jazz Organ

Again another instrument to fill in the gap from the guitar and bring the listener out of the emptier phrase in which it starts. I played this, then quantised/shifted notes manually. I was careful to use the correct quantisation for each phrase (mainly 16ths and 24ths, i.e, triplet 16ths).

Finally

There was almost no eq of the individual tracks, they sat well enough together without much alteration. I added a simple jazz reverb on the mix buss and compression similar to the first track. That worked well.

Results

I'm happy that I finished two pieces both of the required length meeting the brief.

Was it a good day though?

Probably not.

I wouldn't call either piece usual for me. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It wasn't so much that it was a different type of music to what I'm used to (they're not, I'm quite happy with that style). Instead it was more than I felt uncomfortable with the end results. They're good enough for background music which is what they're intended to be, but don't have the same melodic focus I'd usually want.

I was nowhere near as creative in the whole day as I was in the first hour of the following day. On that day, I wrote three good ideas in less than an hour. I spent an hour tidying up one of the tracks, bear in mind it was 7 minutes long. Like the above tracks, they'll take longer to finish, but that can wait for another day when I need to progress them further.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Budget compressor that works way beyond expectations

Alan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:39:30 +0000

Budget or not

I subscribe to the view that you almost always get what you pay for at the lower end of the market. So it's nice to come across something cheap that works well.

The compressor

I bought a compressor the other day, but not for use as a studio compressor. I bought it as an effect for my guitar rig.

I'm using it to push the preamp a little bit for a fat round sound. There are some of the standard compression knobs such as Attack and Release. There's also a Ratio switch for high or low. The Emphasis knob controls how much of the high frequency signal is passed through without compression, allowing for the rattle of strings to come through. This is a great feature if you're thinking of using it on bass.

The pedal is easy to use if you don't think of the knobs on the top row as having much to do with traditional compressors. I'm still trying to figure out the compressor knob. I know what I think it should do, but it doesn't seem to. It seems to be a mixture of ratio (relating to the hi or low levels from the switch) and threshold. One way to find out is to do record an A-B comparison and look at the audio file properties. I'm curious what it actually does do so I'll do this at some point.

The Output

The sound out of the compressor isn't crystal clear. It's not that noisy either, to the point that you can't hear any added noise when the amplifier is on a clean setting. I haven't measured it more accurately than listening by ear.

The resulting sound has a nice warm quality with the guitar's tone being slightly subdued. Feels like a more rounded tone. I guess some of the higher frequencies have been removed. For an all-purpose compressor, that's a problem. For putting in front of a guitar or bass amp, I see that as a positive. I wouldn't use it on every song either, but I can see it getting a lot of use.

With the amplifier on a high gain setting, there is more hiss and hum with the compressor switched on. That's not necessarily being introduced by the compressor other than the fact that the make-up gain is increasing the floor level.

Snake Charmer

It's the Vox Cooltron Snake Charmer Compressor pedal and I bought mine for £39, a big reduction from the RRP of £149. That's a great price for a compressor pedal and fits into the budget pedal price, undercutting a lot of more "pro" models. The Cooltron pedals are marketed as having tube technology. They do indeed have a tube inside. I have no idea if the tube is adding to the tone, to me it was just a gimmick, but I'm glad I tried the pedal despite that.

Bass

After trying this in the shop using a guitar, I couldn't wait to get it back and try on a bass. It has a nice tone on that as well, although there are some issues. Two things to bear in mind:

It's a compressor that isn't configured as a limiter, so a sudden loud signal will still get through to your amp.
I think it's designed for use with guitar frequencies, but rolling the emphasis knob to the extreme will let more of the bass' higher frequencies through.

I've found that I had to keep the attack on the left-side of 12 o'clock otherwise it outputs a click if you hit strings hard. The click isn't anything in the source and is still in the output despite the amplifier's limiter being on full. My guess is that the pedal introduces it into the signal chain. I want to check that before I confirm it. I'll see if I can get the same sound using a different bass amp, a DI and also using a guitar into the same amp. Either way, I'm a bit wary about introducing that click to any sensitive equipment until I can find out where it's coming from. The compressor pedal is still useable and a joy to play with on bass, but keep the attack knob down.

Edit - I've tried the compressor on the same settings with a (passive) electric guitar into a guitar amp. I didn't hear the click.

Vocals

I wouldn't put this in the signal chain for recording clean vocals. It's not designed for that and I really doubt whether it's clean enough although, again, I haven't measured it. From what it's done to the guitar, I can imagine it working well as a nice effect on vocals, perhaps on a send mixed in parallel with the original or on an insert for much rougher sound.

Conclusion

In all fairness, I didn't expect that much from the pedal before I tried it. I was dubious about the valve gimmick. But for using the pedal as something that cleanly adds tone, wow, it's got to be heard. It also has the bonus of having the usual compressor feature of adding sustain to notes. Great. Unlike most effects that I just use in one or two places, I'm looking forward to trying this in a variety of applications. It can never be my go-to compressor, in the end it is just a guitar effect pedal, but it definitely has a place for changing the sound of a signal in a positive way.

At this price, it's a steal. Almost a no-brainer.

If it were more expensive, I may still buy it but only if I wanted the exact sounds it produces and I couldn't get them from a more versatile compressor.

Use a compressor to break-up the signal - Musical Creativity 30

Alan — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:27:43 +0000

The main function of a compressor is to reduce dynamic range. They're not just used to increase perceived volume so you can achieve the loudest CD on the planet. That's in itself is worth remembering.

Most have a make-up gain/volume knob. The most common setting is to have the compressor set to reduce the volume above the threshold, resulting in the peaks being levelled out. That reduces the overall volume of the signal, so the make-up gain is increased to "make-up" the difference.

You can also increase the make-up gain beyond that to end up with an even louder signal.

Turn it Down

But it works the other way around as well. Turn the make-up gain down below the level of the incoming signal.

Now for mixing, turning it down isn't that useful. You can always use a gain plug-in or better still ride/automate the faders. Actually, that's a general rule: if you just want to change the volume of a channel, use the faders, not a compressor.

But for live use or for recording a guitarist, the compressor's volume/gain knob is useful for reducing the output signal from a guitar as well as increasing it. It does have other characteristics though, although they add a good quality to the sound.

From a guitarist's perspective

It starts with the setting of the clean channel on a valve amp. You mileage may vary with solid-state/hybrid amps, some are better at tube emulation than others. At least try one that uses a tube preamp.

1) To move into distortion

Set the amplifier's clean control just under the below where it starts to breaks up. It should have a nice clean sound when the compressor is bypassed.
Set the compressor's gain to increase the level marginally above the input signal.
Turn on the compressor and it drives the amplifier into a creamy distortion.
You may have to adjust the make-up gain to get that distortion. We're not talking about 6 dB of difference here, probably just 1-2dB.
The sustain introduced by the compressor gives more potential for holding notes longer.  Set just right, there's little noise introduced.

2) To clean up the sound

Set the amplifier's clean control just above the level where it breaks up.
At this point there's that distortion again, but without the sustain and sonic characteristics of the compressor.
Set the compressor's gain to just below the input level
Turn on the compressor to reduce the overall signal level of the guitar, resulting in a cleaner tone.
The compression element of the compressor introduces a fatter, jazzier tone to the clean channel.

It's not just a question of volume

The compressor is not being used solely as a boost/cut for the volume. If I wanted just a volume change, then I'd use a boost pedal or a volume pedal. If I've set the output signal closely enough to the input level, then the guitar's signal still comes through, in a reduced dynamic range, but close to the original volume of the guitar. By doing it that way, I can get a nice and usable variety in the tone, either moving into or out of the break-up range of the amplifier.

Why not use the guitar's volume knob?

This depends on the guitar. On most of mine, reducing the volume knob even by a fraction cuts the treble output from the guitar more than the middle or lower frequencies. I do use it to regulate volume and tone but I'm aware of the skewed effect it has on eq.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Focus on the Rhythm - Musical Creativity 29

Alan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:19:03 +0000

Which is louder, the hard-struck ringing chord or the palm-mute?

I answer both to that question. Let's look in some more detail.

The open, ringing sound starts with a short attack, with the low frequencies marginally occurring before the treble (due to the stroke across the strings). After the initial attack, there follows a very quick decay, a short period of sustain and a longer release. The length of the sustain depends on a number of variables, including the guitar materials, the diameter, materials and freshness guitar strings, amplifier gain, microphone technique and above all, the player. A lot of the time, there may be no sustain at all, just a prolonged release.

The palm-muted chugg is a very short attack mainy in the mid and low frequencies. The treble is more often missing because of the palm-mute which absorbs the ringing of the strings, plus it's mainly effective only on the lower strings. The attack is followed by a quick release. There's a quick decay, hardly any sustain if any at all and no release. It's almost an on-off sound and appears as a spike in the recording.

The comparison

Assuming that the guitarist uses the same sounds, the single ringing chord is louder than the single palm-mute. Both in the peak reached at the attack and the sustain and release.

Let's take a typical situation where the ringing chord plays on 1 and rings through to 8, to start again on the next bar's 1 and so on.

Ringing: 1....... 1....... 1....... 1.......

The chugg would start on 1, repeat on 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 and continue on each 8th note.

Mute: 12345678 12345678 12345678 12345678

The palm-muted chugg works out apparently louder than the ringing chord because the following attacks of 2-8 are louder than the sustain and decay of the ringing chord. In addition, the palm-mute focusses on the lower frequencies reinforcing the 8th rhythm. Assuming that other instruments (e.g. bass and drums) are also playing to the same rhythm, then the guitar starts to take on more percussive effect.

The diagram below is a simplified view of what I was describing above.

How can we use it?

I've always found it odd that a chords played with a palm mute sound louder than chords played ringing. They're a lower volume in isolation, but add volume by repetition.

Change an instrument from following the sequence of chords as they progress across bars/meters to following the rhythm. This works well if palm mute is a regular beat such as eighths. But also works well when there are staccato, off-beat rhythms.

It's a technique I use on a couple of the tracks in my band's live set to liven up an ending. Used correctly and it's a good way to introduce energy to a song. I also use it occasionally at the end of rock track if I want it to end with more energy than it started.

This was brought to back mind when I heard Blind by Breed 77 again and I was dissecting the ending of the track. As well as having multi-tracked and syncopated vocals, the guitars change focus from long-sustained chords to percussive strokes.

Not just guitars

It doesn't have to be guitars, other instruments can do the same, synth patches can be used in the same way, so can changing the arrangement of orchestral instruments as you resort to double-basses and cellos of a string section to provide the staccato notes. In these cases, the amplitude envelope will not be the same as for a guitar, so the sustain may well as be infinite (e.g. in the case of continually-bowed strings or synth pads).

Compression

When I've patched a compressor into the guitar track, I watch out for the continued signal reduction if the compressor's hold value merges into the next note, e.g. above 200ms and it's likely to be continually reducing the signal.

If I've patched a compressor/limiter into the stereo output bus, then again I'm watching out for the continued signal reduction. Yet I'm also listening for pumping if I've got more drastic compressor settings since the guitar may start trigger that effect.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

Guitars in parallel - Musical Creativity 1

Alan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:26:47 +0100

Guitars in Parallel

Send a guitar through a parallel bus and put a noise gate followed by effects on the bus.

Why? If you set it up properly, you can have the sound change based on the input volume, e.g. pick the strings harder and it will bring in the effects, play quieter and leave the tone clean. Depending on how the noise gate is set, you can have this fading in and out or cutting in and out, almost stuttering. This is a more drastic change than what you'd get out of a valve amp set just on the edge.

Steps

Using a DI input, setup a guitar channel to record

Create a bus

Add a noisegate to the bus

Create a send on the input channel to the bus

Set the noise gate while playing the guitar, make sure that its threshold is activated when you play the guitar at middle-high volume when plucking or strumming and that the signal is off when plucking quietly

Add your chosen effect (e.g. a distortion)

Set the volume output of the bus so that the clean and distorted sounds have similar volumes

Play your guitar and record

Variations

Change the noisegate to be listening to a lower frequency

Change the effects

Use a compressor on the bus with sidechain to the clean signal

Use a sidechain on the noisegate keyed to a drum or bass track (can bring in the effect with the beat)
I've attached a sample and a screenshot of how it works in Logic Pro. I actually used a few more effects than just a distortion to make it work better for me.

Try it and let me know how you get on.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.