Month: March 2011

In the past few weeks, I’ve learned a couple of Silversun Pickups tunes on the guitar. While I generally love the fuzz tones brought forth by the Smashing Pumpkins and Silversun Pickups, I rarely attempt to play them as I have no real effects pedals to my name to make the songs actually sound awesome.

After getting the itch to learn a few new tunes, I started putting some serious thought into getting an ultimate effects board…I’m not talking about piecing together pedal after pedal…I’m talking about the Lord of the Rings pedal…one pedal to rule them all!

A few days later, I stumbled upon a topic that I had read about years ago, but never really explored…guitar amp modeling.

Essentially, you can use a computer as the Gandalfian effects board you’ve been searching for. And that’s what I did. And it’s beautiful.

Here’s what you need to do to set up something like me.

1. Take guitar out of case. Marvel at its beauty.
2. Plug it into your mixing console with the 1/4 to 1/4 cable. I personally have a Fostex MR-8HD which acts as a recording device as well as a mixer.
3. Run another cord (1/4 to 1/8) from the mixer speaker output to the input of your laptop. In my case, I have an older MacBook which allows me to do this. I know newer models do not have a separate input and output at the same time. Not cool!
4. (Read about the magic that the laptop can do later on in the blog posting).
5. Run a cable (1/8 to 1/4…or whatever your PA speaker uses) to the PA speaker. I believe there are some PA speakers that are in stereo. I guess you would need a Y-split for that (or use of two speakers). In my case, I got the one, so all I need is the one cable.

Voila, you essentially have a system that starts from your guitar and outputs it’s sound to the PA speaker.

So what can the laptop do? Well…a lot of things! The laptop acts as a DAW (digital audio workstation) where it processes all the signals going into the laptop and outputs it with whatever effects you have placed onto them. There are TONS of amp modeling software out there, but I chose to use the Guitar Rig 4 software after some research. I also use Logic Pro but have not played around with it too much at this point (with this current setup).

The Guitar Rig 4 software is pretty flippin’ sweet. You can choose what type of amps you want to use, and add whatever effects you want to use as well. Or you can load up presets of some popular combination (think Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rig). There is also an active community creating presets that you can load into the system. Want that U2 effect for ‘Beautiful Day’? Find it, download it, import it into the software and double click. Voila, done. You now have Edge-tone! Fascinating.

This definitely is the best setup for a cheap (I say cheap while also laughing at the fact that I had to buy a laptop and a PA speaker to accomplish this) price and is less expensive than purchasing a bunch of different amps and effects pedals.

I will be honest…I’m quite the novice when it comes to setting up a rig (live or otherwise) so this post is for those of you out there like me who took awhile to understand a few concepts. I will also mention that I loved the fact that Guitar Rig 4 had a LIMIT button for the output…I noticed some crackling on the PA speaker at one point and thought “Hmm…I must be over driving the signal…better check that out.” and I noticed that the software has a LIMIT button to prevent overdrives that can potentially blow your speaker. Hell yes.

The only thing missing from this setup would be some type of MIDI floorboard so if I wanted to play live, I could switch between effects fast. There are also other hardware devices out there that may make my process easier…you can buy a Gio floorboard which eliminates the need for a mixer and plugs through USB instead of the audio input/output. I’m just writing about what worked for me and if there are people out there that are in similar situations, maybe this can help!

Iplaying: Keep on Rocking in the Free World – Pearl Jam (Toronto – 2009)

This reminds me of the days when the Internet started and I couldn’t stop checking my Hotmail account.

This also reminds me of a few weekends ago when Rachel, Carol and I were all sitting in Mike’s living room just doing our own thing on our iPods, laptops and iPads. I guess the art of conversation has taken a hit.

A few weeks ago Vero noticed something in the pantry that looked like black rice. I had never seen mouse poop before but after a quick search on this thing called the “Internet”, we realized that we did in fact have a mouse in the house. Plus we noticed it had nibbled on a few items.

We went and picked up four traps and loaded them with peanut butter. Those sneaky mice managed to take all the peanut butter without setting off the traps! What the heck? I imagined that there were at least three (blind) mice working in tandem to accomplish such a feat.

Over the next few weeks the same thing happened. Mental note: Mouse traps from Canadian Tire sucketh. Even Dad and Mom had a good laugh when they would wake in the morning and see no more peanut butter.

My friend Michael came to my aid and lent me a contraption called the Mouse Inn. The photo seen here is the hilarious photograph on the box. Yes, I’m expecting a mouse to live in the lap of luxury (hello Joe Schmo Show!) inside this trap! Essentially, it’s a cylinder where you put some food in one end and when the mouse enters to get the food, the cylinder tips on it’s pivot point and closes the door and traps them.

I set up one trap and lo and behold, the next morning the trap had been sprung! I picked it up and noted that I didn’t hear any squeaking or any movement so the poor guy must be pretty scared. I packed it into the car and drove 4 kilometers down the road (heard someone say that you have to get rid of the mouse outside a 2km radius or it can find its way back) and opened the trap and dumped the contents out into the snow.

Turns out the contents were a few peanuts I had put in there the night before! What the heck? Somehow the trap had sprung itself! Those crazy mice!

I was not too impressed and I set up two traps that night but nothing had happened in the subsequent nights and I wondered if they were scoffing at the measly peanuts I had placed inside when they were fattening up from some peanut butter.

This morning I checked the traps and one of them had sprung. Not expecting much I shook the trap a little and did not hear any food inside. I was really pissed off at this point…”How can they take the food and get out!?”. I popped the trap door open near my face and had quite the scare when I saw some beady eyes and some whiskers staring back at me! I’ll be honest…I have never seen a mouse before so it was quite the fright this early in the morning. I did feel bad that it was dead though and wondered if it suffocated.

I drove out to deposit the mouse remains and brought a little stick in case it wouldn’t fall out easily. Vero had mentioned before I left that I better watch out in case it’s just playing dead…sure enough she was right! Good thing I gave the trap a whack down into the snow. The mouse hit the snow and then bounded away from me! What a sight! Two frights in one day.

I feel a little victory over this little guy but not much as he got a lot of peanut butter. I am going to set up a few more traps for the next while to see if there is more than one to catch!

iplaying: Where the Hawkwind Kills – Daniel Lanois (Acadie)