There are a lot of guitar simulation plug-ins available for digital musicians these days. Included with Logic 9 is Amp Designer and Pedal Board – a welcome departure from the older Guitar Amp Pro plug-in. They stack up very well against the competition and are versatile in tone, emulation and layout. In my opinion, the clean amps achieve impressive results when compared to their hardware cousins.
Beyond the presets, there’s a lot more you can do with Amp Designer that is apparent. Toby Pitman goes much deeper in his excellent tutorial, ‘Logic 402 – Logic’s Guitar Recording Toolbox’. Packed with tips and tricks and practical step-by-step approaches to using both Amp Designer and Pedal Board.
In this Quick Tip I’m going to highlight 3 useful tips for guitar tone sculpting glory built-in to Amp Designer.
When recording a traditional guitar amp there are a two important considerations: what type of mic to use and where to position the mic. The resulting tone can be vastly different if the mic is placed dead-center or to the side of the speaker cone.
In Amp Designer you can choose between using a Condenser, Ribbon or Dynamic microphone emulation from the Mic pop-up menu.
Hover your mouse over the cabinet on the right of the interface (above the Mic pop-up menu) and the Speaker Adjustment graphic is displayed. Drag the white dot to adjust the placement of the mic. Generally, for Rock and brighter guitar tones place it to the side as shown below.
There are plenty of Amp types and presets. If you still can’t create quite the guitar sound you’re looking for you can mix and match the Model, Amp and Cabinet to build your own custom amp! This incredible… but one lesser known tip is you can choose different EQ types per amp.
Mouse over the word ‘EQ’ and click to display the EQ pop-up menu. From here you can choose between Bright British, Vintage, U.S. Classic, Modern and Boutique.
I find myself tending towards the Vintage and U.S. Classic more often than not.
Rather than insert an instance of Space Designer (or other reverb plug-in) on your guitar channel strip to add space to your sound, you can set the reverb levels directly on the Amp Designer interface. Like the EQ, Amp Designer comes with more than one Reverb type.
Click on the Reverb label (top, middle of the amp) to display this Reverb type pop-up menu.
You can choose between Vintage Spring, Simple Spring, Mellow Spring, Bright Spring, Dark Spring, Resonant Spring, Boutique Spring, Sweet Reverb, Rich Reverb and Warm Reverb.
It’s well worth checking these types out on your guitar sounds. The change to your sound can be dramatic and save you from using a separate reverb plug-in!
Check out Toby Pitman’s Logic 402 – Logic’s Guitar Recording Toolbox to learn much, much more about how to get the best out of Amp Designer, Pedal Board and Logic’s other built-in tools for guitarists.
Check this out, Dunlop have made a 25 minute documentary about one of the most greatest effect pedals ever invented the Cry Baby Wah!
Cry Baby: The Pedal That Rocks The World tells the story of the wah wah effect pedal, from its invention in 1966 to the present day. Musicians, engineers, and historians discuss the impact of the pedal on popular music and demonstrate the various ways it has been used, as well as how its evolution has improved the ability of artists to express themselves musically. The film features interviews with Brad Plunkett, the inventor of the pedal, plus many other musical luminaries such as Ben Fong-Torres, Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Buddy Guy, Art Thompson, Eddie Kramer, Kirk Hammett, Dweezil Zappa, and Jim Dunlop. These professionals explain how a musical novelty transcended convention and has become timelessly woven into the fabric of modern pop-culture.
For more info keep an eye on www.crybabydoc.com
AmpliTube 2 arrives today with new effects, recording, bounce to audio, export/import, practice tools, and in-app purchase of extra stomp modules. I’ve been playing with a pre-release version for the last few days. Combined with an audio interface like IK Multimedia’s own iRig, AmpliTube 2 turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a handheld, pocket-able workstation.
If you’re already have a strong interest in playing the guitar and happen to own an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone (or all three), then the iRig might make for a prudent investment. What, another purchase in these economically trying times? Well, the iRig guitar accessory from IK Multimedia alongside the accompanying AmpliTube iPad and iPhone software will help you make music in a new way. You will have to hook the iRig adapter up to an iDevice and guitar, where the output of the iRig will be connected to a pair of headphones or an amp, where you can then launch the AmpliTube software to play around with a range of effects, amps, mics, pedals, and cabinets right from the comfort of your fingertips. Layer effects and amplifier change can be done with but a touch. Meant to work with an electric guitar, it will also play nice with just about any 6-string with a decent pickup. If you’re interested in expanding your musical repertoire, the iRig can be yours for $39.99 a pop. We don’t think a professionally cut album will feature this anytime soon though, but that’s a nice thought if it happens.
(Via Ubergizmo.)
Recently, I started taking guitar lessons. One of the benefits of learning how to play the guitar is that you finally have something to do to entertain people when they visit. The downside of playing guitar is that you have to maintain the thing, which most of the time just means learning how to tune it. Luckily, there are numerous websites that offer the guitar tuning tones you need to get your guitar sounding perfect again.
In my search for the best sites, I came across some pretty simple ones and some that are fairly unique. Ultimately, the function is really simple – you press a button and the computer should play the right note for that string. What I discovered is that a majority of the sites that offer guitar tuning tones play tones that aren’t quite ‘right’ or at least they aren’t very clear.
So, if you want a quick tool to tune your guitar as quickly as possible, and you left your convenient electronic tuner at home, here are 5 awesome websites that will do the trick.
The premise of these five sites is very simple. They just play the guitar tuning tone for that string. While the tone is playing, you just play the string and turn the tuning key until the sound of the string matches the computer tone.
The first online tool I’d like to cover is the Gieson tuner, because it appears to be the most popular. This is probably because the tool also offers an embed code where people can place the guitar tuner right on their website or blog.
The front panel is creative. The little device features the five guitar strings, but you can choose to hear the sound as a tone instead (the tone option didn’t work on my computer though.) You can manually flip each switch by clicking on it, and the sound of the guitar string for that note will repeat. When you’re done, turn off that switch and flip the next.
If you’re very fast at tuning, you can flip the ‘Auto Advance’ switch, and the device will play the sound for each string a few times before moving on to the next note automatically. This allows for hands-free operation so you can focus on tuning your guitar.
The next guitar tuner is offered by ChordBook. This well-designed guitar tuner provides a variety of options to customize the tuner depending on the type of guitar you’re working with.
There are a lot of features here. You can turn the tuning keys to adjust each note depending on how you want to tune your guitar, like turning D into D Minor, or E into E minor. Or, select one of the common alternative tunings from the list if you want to use something other than the standard. When you’re ready to tune, click on the ‘R’ next to each key and the tone for that key will repeat until you’re done.
HotFrets offers a stylish little online guitar tuner app that isn’t quite as feature-filled as the first two listed above, but it does have some entertaining animation.
Just click on each string and the note will play. Alternately, you can just press the number for that string and it’ll play as well. There aren’t any nifty features with this one, it’s just the standard tuning and what you see is what you get.
The next site with guitar tuning tones is actually one of the favorites, only because the designers used a unique style for the thing. It’s offered by Tune My Bass.
The presets tab lets you choose what type of guitar you’re tuning, such as a 5 string bass or a 7 string guitar, and custom tuning lets you choose your sound types and also save your presets to a file on your PC. When you’re ready to tune, just hover the mouse over the string and as the tone plays it also displays the note. While you’re busy tuning, the app plays all sorts of animation for you. Yes, those are underpants flying in from the right side of the screen.
The last site that I’d like to cover is aptly called Online Guitar Tuner. At this website, the first thing you’ll want to do is select the type of tuning that you require from the menu list on the right side of the main page.
In my case, I’m going to go for the Open G Tuning. Once you click on the tuner type, the next screen opens up with the strings and the tuner keys displayed graphically.
Just click on the note, and the tone plays in clear, crisp audio from your computer speakers. The only drawback with this tool is that the sound doesn’t keep playing automatically. You have to keep clicking on the button to hear the tone. If you are somewhat slow at tuning your guitar, this could become annoying – so you might want to consider using one of the online tuners above that offers a more hands-free approach.
(Via MakeUseOf.com.)
Music and technology aren’t unfamiliar bedfellows, but the i-Tab offers a unique method for enhancing your guitar with gadgetry: clamp it on. Like a TomTom for tunes, the electronic songbook prompts players with chords and lyrics for thousands of songs.
For hundreds of years guitarists have mastered their instrument with patience and practice. But this is 2010—who has time to practice? The i-Tab accelerates the learning process by offering thousands of dynamic tabs, scrolling chords at any tempo while you stumble your way through the song.
The device has a 5′ touch screen—using your guitar pick as stylus is encouraged—and 4GB of memory to hold the songs, which can be downloaded through a tab store. The company claims there will be 5000 tunes available at launch.
On some songs you can accompany your noodling with backing tracks that can be played over speakers or headphones. And youll probably need them—having the i-Tab clamped to your guitar isnt likely to win you many bandmates. Sure itll fast-track your fingerpicking, but at what price.
Well, the price of $199 and looking like a dweeb, as it turns out. Pre-orders are slated to be filled first week in March. [i-Tab via Oh Gizmo]
(Via Gizmodo.)
When used with the upcoming Planet Waves® Rig Remote™ application for Apple® iPhone™ and iPod® touch, the MIDI Mobilizer™ gives guitarists the freedom to control Line 6 Variax® digital modeling guitar
Seven Sexton sent us a link to this awesome 1992 video of Queen‘s Brian May talking about “The Fireplace,” his famous electric guitar that he and his dad built from scrap bits such as a mantle from a 100-year old fireplace (hence the name), a chunk of a table, a spring from a motorcycle, a piece from his mother’s knitting needle, etc. Amazingly, this is not some fragile relic he keeps in the closet, but a working guitar, one you’ve heard on many Queen songs. His family was poor and his dad built most of their home electronics, including their television and radio. Wonderful, inspiring little piece. I love the opening quote from him:
I’m still a kid. Basically, I LOVE the sound of the guitar. I love making it. I love standing there and making that noise.
(via MakeOnline)
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