SHARPEN YOUR AXE
Jan 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Doug Eisengrein
In the world of recording, a sharp divide still exists between the recording engineers and the many traditional musicians (guitar and bass players among them) who are analog purists. Many in this camp loathe the idea of using computers at all, much less for recording. I speak from experience. I have a résumé that includes a few years of selling (or attempting to sell) pro recording gear to a largely old-school guitar-, drums- and bass-playing audience. Although I am not going to try to convince anyone in the brutal, endless digital-versus-analog debate, I would like to present evidence that taking a laptop to your next gig — in addition to or even instead of your pedalboard — might actually be a good idea. And the evidence is that the power of recording guitars has been virtually redefined through software.
DISCO SUCKS?
If recording is your game, software does present a colorful palette of opportunities. For starters, no amount of tracks on tape and no amount of skill with a razor blade could ever match the cut-and-paste arrangement possibilities inherent in any DAW. As a guitarist, you can do as many different takes of a rhythm or lead line as you please, then splice different portions of the various takes together — instantly. The tools themselves can yield creativity in their own right. Have you ever built a song out of your own original guitar loops? Try taking a cue from dance-music producers and recording a nice, long raw rhythm-guitar track. Find a 16- or 32-bar segment that is especially good, splice it out, time-stretch it to a specific tempo (try experimenting with much slower and faster tempos — remember that digital audio is fairly elastic) and then use that segment as a rhythm line in a song. Hey, if sequencing is good enough for Radiohead, then it's good enough for you, too.
FX-R-US
The next influential factor of recording with software is the availability of effects. Many bread-and-butter effects, which are often favored by guitarists, are found in no short supply in just about all DAWs. Reverbs, choruses, complex stereo delays, flangers and digital distortions abound, and those that aren't built in are available as third-party plug-ins. Perhaps just as important, however, are the effects you can easily create naturally, on the fly. For example, try detuning your guitar — without touching your tuning machines. Just about all DAWs allow you to radically alter the pitch of a recording without changing the recording's length. You can do this in octaves, half notes or even just the slightest amount. Although the sound quality of such experiments can vary from good to awful (depending upon the quality of the DAW's algorithms and the extremities of the tuning), some interesting things can happen, such as your regular six-string sounding like a baritone guitar. For a natural chorus or delay, try duplicating a recorded guitar track and then slightly offset the cloned track's audio a few milliseconds for a natural chorus effect. The more you offset, the more the result becomes a delay instead of a chorus. How about a delayed chorus?
AMP ON A CHIP
If gigging or jamming is your thing, plenty of software rigs, created especially for you shredders, are avail — able. Before you raise that one eyebrow, try taking one for a test spin. Native Instruments' Guitar Rig is a software emulation of various classic guitar amplifiers, speakers and effects, and it even includes a footpedal software controller that doubles as a DI box. So far, three renditions of classic amps are included, and more are coming down the pipeline as the program develops. And if the thought of three classics in one (that collectively weigh zero) doesn't catch your attention, with NI's wonder child, you can configure a rig with a multitude of different sequential and parallel signal paths. This opens up the possibilities of playing through multiple custom rigs simultaneously or crossfading between two of your favorites.
IK Multimedia's AmpliTube is a similar beast with a different but similarly impressive assortment of classic amps, plus the addition of seven preamps and a variety of EQs to boot. In all, a whopping 1,260 amp combinations are possible with IK's dream machine. Line 6's Guitar Port is yet another example; this soft — ware stack-in-the-box includes a basic USB audio interface with a single ¼-inch input that accepts a high-impedance guitar signal. Guitar Port provides a ton of preset combinations of famous musicians' rigs, so if you want to sound like Jimmy Page playing “Black Dog,” that preset just might be available for download. Some of the highlights of the Line 6 box are 10 classic amp models and a built-in chromatic tuner. All three of these soft amp simulators emulate real amps, cabinets, mics and even mic placement quite well, and their modular capabilities provide guitarists with a huge range of mix-and-match gear possibilities that only the wealthiest of musicians with the largest of garage spaces could ever dream of.
Although the tools described here may not be real tube amps, they are quite good translators. Imagine the thought of switching between your choice of a Fender, a Vox, a Marshall or a Mesa, all on a whim. Or imagine playing through several of them simultaneously at your next gig. How about playing through one of these rigs and then powering the end result through a real cabinet? The software-based tools that exist now for both recording and jamming represent more than just the cloning of classic amps and pedals. Used creatively, they also represent a whole new range of tone possibilities, especially if you're willing to tweak and customize them to your liking. Traditional analog purists, are you ready?
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