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what on earth????!!!!

 
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dave...



Joined: 25 Oct 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 10:48 am    Post subject: what on earth????!!!! Reply with quote

Having been rather busy lately i thought that i had earned a night off and decided i'd pop down to the Bassment for some relaxation, which was a stupid idea, considering i then spent the whole night grabbing the edges of my seat in the usual manner.

mr govan had a new toy in the form of a strat plugged into some midi device which gave him god knows how many crazy synthesized tones and meant that he could still play the lines of the absent (has he quit? he wasn't in america either???.....) keyboard player. What on earth was that???? It was seriously the most facinating visit i've had there... you have to hear this thing. Mr Ed, have you information on this matter? Please enlighten us.
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alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
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Location: Chino, CA

PostPosted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 11:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow, this is news to me as well. I know he had a Strat equipped with Graph Tech Piezo saddles that also work as a pitch-to-MIDI converter (or Roland's 13-pin compatible stuff). I think he told me it was something given to him by Graph Tech for him to mess with. He didn't seem too enthusiastic about it but seemed willing to give it a go. I guess he was giving it a go in a live environment. For him, it needs to perform well in a live setting for him to give it a thumbs-up or down.

It's cool that Guthrie is giving it a go and seeing how the guitar synth thing could work for him. As long as it tracks well, I think it's a valid tool. I think it's especially useful when used in conjunction with the guitar. Guthrie is a very open-minded guy when it comes to textures and musical styles, so I'm sure he'll give anything that's cool a shot as long as it enhances what he's doing.

Nobody has done anything super cool with the guitar synth and it's always been one of those out-on-the-fringes kind of a thing. But I still think it has a future and if there's one guy who could really take it to the next step, it'd be Guthrie. I used to own a Brian Moore MC/1 with the RMC piezos that also worked as a Roland synth/VG driver with a 13-pin out and I thought it was really cool, but it was just too much technology to deal with.

I used to have a ridiculous high-tech rig and had the GR-30 and the VG-8 going to a mixer, the piezo output going to an acoustic amp, and the regular guitar output going to a Hughes & Kettner zenTera modeling amp all controlled via MIDI and running concurrently. Rolling Eyes It was kind of cool to hit a G chord and sound like a mega orchestra, but the novelty would wear off rather fast and I realized that it'd take an awful lot of work tinkering around with the stuff to come up with something original and musically useful.

The possibilities are endless but I think the technology is still not there for guitar synth. You still have to modify your technique to adapt to the way it tracks your picking, which isn't very fun. But in Guthrie's hands, I could imagine it being very useful in a variety of contexts. Would be really useful tool in the studio as well.
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alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
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Location: Chino, CA

PostPosted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, besides the two Suhr Standards that are now his main all-around axes, let's list some other new axes he could use:

Suhr Classic - straight-ahead 3 single-coil high quality Strat
Suhr Set-Neck - 24.75" scale, single-cut LP-style axe
Suhr Classic T - the ideal trad Tele for Guthrie's country exploits
Suhr Standard MIDI - a less fancy Standard with piezo and pitch-to-MIDI convertor electronics for guitar synth use

7-string axe for modern heavy stuff, perhaps a Baritone guitar?
Archtop jazz box for Guthrie's jazz tendencies
335-style semi-hollow to replace his Gibson ES-335 and make frankus happy
A nice all-around steel-string acoustic-electric
A nice nylon-string acoustic-electric for playing with pick
A nice 12-string acoustic-electric

And for some exotic kind of colors and techniques:

Electric sitar
Chapman Stick
Electric banjo
Electric mandolin
Electric 12-string

Any other suggestions?
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Carlo



Joined: 13 Sep 2004
Posts: 408

PostPosted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

how about a double neck guitar....12 string + 6 or some other weird combination.......strange possibilities there...hehe Twisted Evil
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dave...



Joined: 25 Oct 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 6:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

thank you! yes that sounds exactly what i was watching. I saw him set up his minidisc recorder so i can only assume he is very much considering its live possibilities. Honestly, the hammond and piano stuff was very convincing indeed, apart from when he started shredding that is.... not sure pianos can do that Very Happy , but yes... this was facinating.

I would LOVE to see guthrie on a stick. That and the 7 string seem to have the most fruitful experimental possibilties. Ahhhh what a world the guy must live in with all these things being his lifestyle day to day. Confused
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alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 8:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dave... wrote:
thank you! yes that sounds exactly what i was watching. I saw him set up his minidisc recorder so i can only assume he is very much considering its live possibilities. Honestly, the hammond and piano stuff was very convincing indeed, apart from when he started shredding that is.... not sure pianos can do that Very Happy , but yes... this was facinating.

I would LOVE to see guthrie on a stick. That and the 7 string seem to have the most fruitful experimental possibilties. Ahhhh what a world the guy must live in with all these things being his lifestyle day to day. Confused


How long did he use the thing? For the whole night? He was using piano patches for soloing? Was he mixing in the regular guitar tone with the synth sounds? What other sounds did he use? Sorry for all the questions, but I'm very intrigued by this development as well.

Forgot to mention that he has a Vigier Surfreter fretless guitar coming. It's really fun watching him play that thing. The Stick and a 7-string would indeed be most fun and intriguing as well to see Guthrie experiment on.

Well, considering the kind of talent Guthrie has, this kind of stuff should be a day-to-day lifestyle for him. Wink Yeah, no one said life was fair...
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dave...



Joined: 25 Oct 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 10:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

he started using it a couple of songs into the first set... initially just as a 'piano' but then started soloing and switching back to regular tone. Incidently i saw him last night at hot house, just him and one of his mates pissing about and he was using that again, exclusively. Switching from his rootsy fender tone (he had a valve amp thayng, don't know what they are called....bassman?) to piano and synth almost randomly. It was quite amusing, he was throwing in all sorts of references (neighbours theme tune at one point) and playing the national anthem (if i remember correctly) with a banjo sound.

looks like the thing is here to stay, at least in some capacity!
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carnflab



Joined: 26 Dec 2004
Posts: 63

PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 12:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I want to see Guthrie play so bad, how do you keep turning up at his gigs? When is he next playing?
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dave...



Joined: 25 Oct 2004
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 9:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Zak Barrett teaches at my school so i always find out what they're up to when i chat with him, that's how i found out about guthrie. On monday nights the two of them play the Hot House in chelmsford, which is a tiny little pub underground. The one week i turn up zak isn't there... have no idea why Very Happy . On thursday nights the fellowship play a different underground club close to hot house called the bassment. You can find all the locations of these by typing them into google.

During the rest of the week zak freelances and plays with his quartet, not sure what guthrie does but i know he's head of guitar at brighton institute... effectively the two guthrie days of the week for us chelmsfordians is monday and thursday.
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alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 2:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Guthrie advised me that he's just in the experimental stage with the GR-33 he recently got and doesn't feel he has done anything remotely musical with it in a live setting yet. Perhaps he's being overly modest as usual, but he felt that what he was doing certainly wouldn't turn heads if the sounds had been coming from a keyboard.

So apparently, this old Am Std Strat of his was outfitted with the Graph Tech Ghost pickup system that the GT staff gave him a while back and he finally got the guitar back from a repair guy. That gave him the incentive to go out and get the GR-33. He seems fairly pleased with the internal sounds and how they track his playing, but was rather put down when trying to use the MIDI function hooked up to the computer triggering plug-in synth modules in his PowerBook. I guess he wanted to use this aspect of it for his sequencing and transcribing duties but says the tracking and things like dynamics went right out the window when he tried using it in such a manner. That isn't surprising...

I looked quite a bit into guitar synths and MIDI, etc., and I think the technology is still ways off for it to work like a guitar. Or it may not even be possible if pitch-to-MIDI type of conversion is necessary to trigger the synths. I think modeling technology like that used in modeling amps is still the only viable option for the future. Now Line6 and other companies use the technology to mimic other amps, but they could eventually take the normal guitar signal and make it behave like other instruments. The VG-88 has what they call harmonic restructuring modeling that takes the signal and bends it to sound like something totally different, but it'd take an awful lot of processing power to make the guitar signal sound like pianos, trumpets and whatnot. As far as MIDI triggering, I don't know what the perfect solution would be.

Let's hope that Guthrie can take this thing somewhere, but I think it'll just be a sideline tool and toy for him to experiment with. Roland is really the only company dabbling in guitar synth technology, so we'll just have to wait and see what else they come up with in the future.
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shredrulez
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 8:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

overall, i think guitar synth is pretty lame. seriously, the stuff you do on the guitar to sound like a piano or organ would be considered lame if a keyboardist was playing it.
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alexkhan



Joined: 10 Sep 2004
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Location: Chino, CA

PostPosted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think it's a valid tool in the right hands. It'd be very useful in the studio and for composing and making arrangements. As for the guitar synth being an entity of its own, the key would be in not sounding like an average keyboard player.

I like what Pat Metheny does with the old GR-303 analog synth. I know that some people don't like that sound, but I like it and feel that it's another distinctive voice of his. I sure like it better than him messing with regular amp distortion.
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