Monday, August 28, 2006

Whirwind of Activity

Been holding off for a certain post I'm anxious to make, but like all watched pots, this one is taking longer to boil than I expected... but it's getting there.

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Major progress in the perfomance department, as I've integrated the Murray with the Carlos CP-1 High End with the Godin Multiac into my set now. As it stands now, I play the Murray for the A minor and C major suites, and then I switch to the Godin for the E minor, and G major suites (The E minor and G major suites end with tap-technique pieces, which are easier to play on the Godin, with its lower action). Then I return to the Murray for the D major suite, in which all of the pieces use a dropped-D tuning. By lowering the E down to D when I switch guitars the previous time, with one further tweak, the tuning stays much more stable. I raise the D back to E when I move to the Multiac for the F-sharp minor suite, and stay with the Godin until the break at the end of the A major suite. I've tried this out at a couple of gigs, and my students and regualrs really love the Murray's sound, and the guitar exchanges are quite smooth.

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The key to getting the CP-1 integrated tuned out to be using the EQ effect section in the Lexicon, and matching the levels between the two guitars using a combination of the internal input gain, and the EQ's gain as well. The problem I was having with the Murray turned out to be feedback on the C, B, and B-flat on the low A string. Fortunately, all of the original sounds for the Godin Multiac used no EQ because the RMC Polydrive doesn't need any, so I had that entire block free. The only problem I ran into is that some of the more complex programs were too large, and there wasn't any memory space for the EQ. In those instances, I simply deleated the pitch-shift doubler, which gave the needed space for the EQ.

Keeping in mind that I tune to Philosophical Pitch (A= 432), and that the open A string is therefore at 108 Hz, by using a single band EQ and reducing 127 Hz to -27 (Out of a silly range of 72 for that parameter: Why Lexicon used such a dizzying array of parameter ranges in the MPX-G2 and MPX-1 I just don't understand) with a Q set at 1.8, I was able to eliminate the hump in that range and ended up with a woodier sound to boot.

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Once I figured this out for the Murray, of course, I started in on the Glissentar/CP-1A sound programs, and am going through those right now. It too wants a tad cut at 127Hz.

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Cool timewaster site: That Image Site.

A couple of grabs:



I'm not sure who this is. Anybody know? I'd like to hear the guy play it.



This guy, however, I do know: Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick. Too funny.

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Now that's a glamorous babe.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The individual with the quadra necked guitar is Michael Angelo Batio.

-A

7:15 PM  

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