Synth Up Your Sound part 1: Making Waves

The Minimoog's Oscillators

Electro-Harmonix' Microsynth is a great synth-in-a-box

Today there are several ways to control a synthesiser, virtual or the real deal, with your guitar.  But what if you just want to add some “synthy” sounds  to your rig without using special pick ups or a guitar-shaped controller thingy?  I’ll break down some ways to add  some Moog to your Marshall.

What is a “synthy” sound?  With today’s software and hardware synthesisers the answer is, Anything.  I’m gonna focus on classic analog subtractive synthesis and the most classic of all synths the mighty Minimoog.  Bear in mind that a series of “standard” guitar pedals hooked up to an amp is synthesis so you’ve had your toes wet this whole time.  The ways I’ll talk about are just “synthier” sounding.  There are some great pedals on the market that are one-stop-synth boxes but let’s now look at how we can get synthish tones with simpler pedals.

Let’s talk about oscillators and some ideas on how you can “ape” them with pedals:

Multiple Voices
The origin of an analog synth’s sound lies in it’s oscillators.  In a Minimoog there are three oscillators.  This means that when a note is played it can play up to 3 “voices” simultaneously.  Each oscillator can be set to a different octave in either direction creating a a three part tripled harmony.
How to get them
There are now so many pedals that can can add octaves and harmonies to your sound that the choice is yours.  Let’s use the example of simple octave up and octave down pedals.

The EHX Micro POG is your tone x 3

Varied Wave Forms
Guitar for the most part is a sine wave.  Each oscilators of the Mini Moog can produce either sine, square, triangle, saw or pulse waves.   

A ColecoVision fighting a Speak & Spell to the death

The Zvex Fuzz Probe turns your movements into splattey waves

How to get them
Clip them peaks!  You can’t produce a true square wave out of a standard electric guitar to my knowledge but you can sure hack up a sine wave til it sounds like one.  Don’t go for a smooth overdrive here.  Big, brittle fuzzes and crackly distortion can do the job nicely.  To push it even further, try a bit reduction pedal to get that wave jagged.  A pulse wave can be created with a vibrato or tremolo pedal.



To get into synth territory, try running an octave down pedal then fast vibrato pedal in paralel with an octave up plus a jagged fuzz.  Adjust the blend of each signal to get a three octave voice with varied waveforms.

That’s just a simple example.  There are pedals that provide several voices all on there own. It’s up to you to find out what you want/don’t want.

Guitar Synth: What is it?

Ergonomic Alien Shred

Soooo Yeah, Guitar Synth.  What goes through your head when you hear that.  Do you think of an insane guitar like device played in an 80’s electropop band?  Or lounge singer who needs his guitar to sound like a flute for the intro to the Titanic theme?

 That’s what a lot of players think of synth guitar.  The fact is it can really be anything you want it to be. You can use real sound synthesis to give your playing a new vocabulary without ever sounding like a penny whistle if you don’t want to.  Synthesizer players have been creating tones from the ground up for years on their keyboards.  Why should you miss out?

Today I’ll talk about what I consider to be the three main categories of things that people mean when they say “Synth Guitar”:

Electro-Harmonix Hog Guitar Synth

Serious Sound Design

Pigtronix MothershipSynth Effects Pedals:   These are usually effects pedals that take your normal guitar signal and add synth-like characteristics such as multiple octaves, pitch gliding, square-like distortion and filtering effects.  Many players like these because they can blend these into their existing effects without the use of a special pick up.  Analog lovers will most likely prefer these for retaining purity and feel.

Wait, what?

  Data-Converting Guitar Synths:  Systems like these sense action in your strings, usually pitch, and convert that into digital information, usually midi, into synthesizers and samplers.  These usually require that you plug into a converter box or use a special pick-up to “talk” to the synth.  There are systems that have their own synthesizer and others that allow you to control external synths as well as software VSTs.



Guitarish Looking Controllers:  These things definitely get the hardest beating from players.  First of all, they are not really guitars at all.  The “fretboards” are typically made of sensors, often buttons, that for the most part follow the typical guitar layout.  The “plucking” area can be everything from mock string sensors to a touchscreen interface.  There are usually an array of controls on the “body” of these things.  Drum pads, fake trems and levers.  Maybe the hardest to love but I’d like to mess around with one.

This dude is sooo getting laid post show.

Wireless Synth Guitar!!!

Wow!  Now this appears to be some progress in the realm of synth guitar.  Fishman has teamed up with András Szalay, who designed Axon’s legendary guitar midi technology, to bring us Triple Play Wireless Guitar Controller.
   
Like the Roland’s GK line of divided pick ups, the Triple Play uses the similar design of a hexaphonic pick up and controller that attach to your guitar.  Instead of a midi cable, your signal is transmited by wireless usb to a small usb recier that looks sort of like a memory stick.
Axon was known for there Superior tracking and this compact unit is said to provide it.  Now a guitarist can control software and hardware synths as well as ios apps.  It comes with software that works with most major daws and devices and can perform some great “Hold” functions such as looping, sustain and arpeggiators.  The attached video is pretty corny but the tracking is pretty spot on!
The controller itself is very thin and comes with a rechargeable lithium ion battery. 

Fishman Triple Play

The Triple Play is said to be released June 2012 and is rumored to be under $300.  The price could put in in the hands of many guitar synth newbies.  Roland needs a little competition.

Shredder Guitar Synth for ios

It was only a matter of time until somebody made a stab at a guitar synth for ios.  Enter
Yonac Software’s Shredder synth for guitar.
The first thing that makes this cool is the fact that it does not use samples but FM/Subtractive  synthesis to create tones from “scratch”.

The second plus is that it works from you magnetic guitar pick ups and not some special pick up that you have to attach to your guitar.  To help the tracking along, you can dial in the sweet spot on your guitar with the Input Sensitivity and Decay Threshold sliders.   It is however, monophonic but let’s cut it some slack for only being $14.99.  Besides, some of the greatest analog synths ever made were monophonic as well.  

This thing speaks midi!  Ins and outs.  You can control the parameters with an external midi device or control a virtual or hardware synth with your guitar.  Hmm...Guitar +Shredder+ Dave Smith Mopho= Analog guitar synth on the cheap!  

Although it’s monophonic, each note can be assigned chords to each note that can be changed on the fly using the Chordmaker feature.  You can even send this data to external synths.  

It even comes with virtual stompboxes to warp your sound even more.
You can also mix your “normal” guitar signal with Shredder to create huge, complex tones.  
Also included is a “Hold” feature that will sustain a note or chord that you can then play over similar to Electroharmonix Freeze pedal.

• No synth pickup needed: works via guitar adapter or mic (best in quiet settings w/ amplified electric or regular acoustic guitar, if using mic)
• FM/Subtractive fully programmable hybrid synth engine w/ dedicated FM envelope
• Dual individually configurable LFOs with 7 waveforms each
• 3-Pass custom resonant filter
• Dedicated filter, amp and FM ADSR envelopes
• Built in oscilloscope
• 16 channel virtual MIDI out
• MIDI in for playing w/ external controller
• Configurable MIDI CC map
• Glide and Noise
• Ring Modulation
• Virtual Pedalboard
• Audio Recording and Sharing (Audio Paste, WiFi, or Email)
• 100+ awesome presets
• Save any number of your own synth presets
• On-screen keyboard
• Built-in tuner

Available at the iTunes store for $14.99.

Namm 2012 Picks!

So if you’re geek like me you spent a good portion of this past weekend immersed in blogs and forums showing all the new toys at Winter Namm 2012 to see if some company finally that one piece of gear that will allow you to easily and affordable take over the world.  Unfortunately for me, nobody made a 3rd eye-controlled, polyphonic, analog guitar synth this year.

 
I could sit and tell you about all the things that didn’t come out but I’d rather talk about the few really cool things that did.

The Wahoo™ Dual Filter Pedal by Sonuus
This may be the best filter pedal design I’ve ever seen.  A digitally controlled analog filter pedal!  It’s midi friendly!  It stores 99 presets!   There are 2 filters to mess with!  You can create your own custom wah and beyond presets and store them.  Synth-like sweeps, classic and modern wahs, vocal effects and way more!  Sonuus also claims that their new position sensor design eliminates normal wah scratch and wear out.  Can’t wait to try this out!

Red Witch Synthotron
I really can’t tire of seeing new synth pedals.  Red Witch is a really badass company that makes pedals that take some chances.  The Synthotron is almost set up like a modular synth and offers unique control over the two analog voices.  There are footswitches for both the filter and “synth” giving you some great options on-the -fly.  If it held presets it would be a must-have for me.
JHS Pedals New Panther Analog Tap Tempo Delay
This is a rare combo.  An analog delay that accepts external tap tempo.  Great for those who like to keep their rig synched but still want the “real” thing.  Perfect dotted 8th note repeats while keeping that analog warmth.  There is even a switch to voice the repeats from “chirp” to “dark”.  This pedal may have that “bridge” factor that many players are looking for.

Stomp Racks: The Brain

Rainbow your pedals for fancier tone.

The idea i had when I was 15 of owning every Boss pedal to create the ultimate rig is stupid on more levels than we have time to list.  Besides having ab-normal stepping accuracy I would also have to be able to do it near instantly.  Going from verse to a bridge i might have to step a dozen times.
Welcome to the future!  We’re here right now.  Sort of.

Now there are systems that you can throw in stompboxes, midi modules, rack units and powerbooks in it and out the other side spits out your take on well controlled tone and puts it all on the floor.  It’s kind of great.
It also seems like a pros have gone to this set up from the opposite ends of gear philosophy.

A tight "Floor Rack" from Mike Vegas of Nice Racks NYC

You’ve got the guys with the monster racks that they have to pay to transport and only their tech knows how to run, wanting to get it all on the floor.  Then there are the guys that kept adding stomboxes to their board and have been dealing with “tap-dancing” between parts and learning to live with noise issues.  

Stomp-Racks

The “brain” of these set ups are in the midi foot-controller itself.  The brain sends commands to either the units themselves or to loops that engage the stompbox itself.  The foot-controller holds presets that can simultaneously several effects at once.  It’s similar to using presets in a multi-fx processor except you’re using any gear you want.


The RJM mastermind is a great little board.  It’s very straight forward to set up and a good deal.  
There are several companies that make units like this now.

The Softstep's sensor switches can change parameters six different ways.

If you want an absurd level of control the Keith McMillen Instruments Softstep will keep you real busy.  We’ll talk more about that another time.

Let’s just say that you had 2 combo amps, 4 stompboxes and midi-module pedal like the Eventide Timefactor.
You stomp on the RJM Mastermind and:
a signal is sent to the Effects Gizmo, RJM pedal looper device, to switch on your distortion and flanger pedals,

RJM Amp Gizmo

Eventide Timefactor

RJM Mastermind

A signal is sent to the Amp Gizmo, yep, these are the real names, to switch from the Blues Deluxe to the mesa or switch channels on the amps themselves. Finally a signal is sent to the Timefactor to change to a short slap-back delay.  If you decide later that you want to a huge, psychedelic delay, just hit the switch on the Timefactor itself.

This one is real nice

It’s huge freedom to decide what you want to play through and the level of control that you dig.  Another way I look at it is that it’s a work in progress.  It’s a real workbench that you can keep adding, subtracting and rerouting to always make it work for you no matter what new, “game-changing” effect comes out next month.

Players will always argue digital vs analog as far as sound goes but when it comes to control you can’t deny.  Digi rules.

-Jay Bois

Stomp Racks: Effects Modules

My idea of the ultimate rig @ 15

I remember, in high school, staring at that Boss pedal display at the guitar center thinking, "If I slowly save up for each one,
my rig will be unstoppable!"  I also figured that after buying each
pedal, Guitar Center would probably just give me the multi-tiered
display itself.  Yep, I was pretty much a huge dork.

All hail, Lord of the Dance!

I managed to get my hands on some pedals and they were great but soon
I grew both bored and frustrated.  I wanted more options.  I wanted to be able to switch smoothly between sounds without having to Riverdance on 5 switches.  Not to mention, all those  pedals seemed to weaken my overall tone even when they weren't on.  I eventually switched to a multi-effects pedal board.  Boom!  Now I
had effects that I never had before.  A tuner, less tone suck, and the the ability to change multiple effects with one-button by using presets.  Was I satisfied?  For a bit I guess.  It was very convenient for recalling parts of songs in bands, but seemed restrictive when it came to spontaneously creating new sounds.  Sure I could create a preset with the perfect fuzz, flanger, and delay but what if I wanted to change from a flanger to a chorus?  I would have to create a whole new patch.  Scrolling through menus while trying to be creative is a great way to kill whatever "vibe" you might have found.  Sure, I could make a few changes within a given patch but then it got to be huge memory game of which function button in which patch changed which effect which way.  In other words, I was lacking real control over what you would call "global changes".

I then resigned myself to the fact that I would have to construct a "rack".  I knew it would take me a long time to save up for each component.  Living in NYC with a lousy back, makes transporting gear a
nightmare with subways and buses. I already started to have anxiety about carrying both the rack and the footpedals around, but I was willing to do it to have the level of control that I wanted.  Besides the size and price, a rack-based system would give me all of the flexibility I wanted but it just

Mike Vegas of Nice Rack NYC built this amazing board

seemed like a bit much.


Enter the midi floor rig. 
It seems like a lot of players getting to a
similar place from two directions.  Getting their rack on the floor or adding midi control to their stompboxes.  Either way the benefits are clear.


Eventide Factor pedals are a good example of these new specialty
multi-effects pedals.  Each of the 4 pedals control an
effect type.
The Time Factor is a dual delay unit.  The Mod Factor has a boatloadof modulation and filter effects effects.  The Pitch Factor features the Eventide pitch shifting that I grew up hearing only world famous players have.   Finally the Space pedal produces classic reverbs and massive

Eventide Pitch Factor

atmospheric and ambient effects.Each pedal can be used as a section of your effects chain.  Much like a modular synthesizer has sections consisting of oscillators, modulations, voltage-controlled amps and filters, guitarist  signal chain can be looked at the same way. Each of these Factor pedals can hold midi presets that can be changed
with the units footswitches or a midi controller.  With certain midi
floor controllers you cansimultaneously send midi signals to each of

Eventide Time Factor

the units with one switch.  No more Ben Vereen when changing tones.
You can then change the settings on each of the Factors foot switches
to give you what you want at that moment.
The effects on the factor pedals are often a blend of effects typessometimes covering the ground of two or three simple effect types. There are pitch mods with delays, reverbs with filters, and delays with
modulations.  It's clear Eventide cares more about dynamic, modern effects than aping classic tones.  That's probably why I dig them.

A few other companies are making pedals that work in a similar way.

Strymon Timelin

Strymon has just released the Timeline Delay  which is

Nova Drive

similar to the Time Factor and are set to release a competitor to the Mod Factor in 2012.  TC Electronics has the Nova Drive which is an all-analog

Line 6 M13 and M9

dual-clip pedal that uses midi presets, and Line 6 has the
M5, M9 and M13 pedals with midi control over 100 different effects.
Extremely useful and agreat way to experiment with a huge number of new effects before you shell out for specialty units.

Next time we'll talk about how to reign all of that in with midi.

-Jay Bois