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Re: Old Guitar Synths (was Re: Roland gr55)



On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Mark Hamburg <mark@grubmah.com> wrote:
> Blue would presumably mean GR-300.

That's what I as well assumed. In the early eighties I played Matheny
inspired original compositions with another guitar player (+ add
stand-in drummers and bassists) and this band mate picked up the
GR-300 right on the release (Matheny used it in a lovely way on the
White Falcon soundtrack by that time). I had the chance to play it
quite a lot and did not like it so much because of its vibrato
solutions: you press a knob to get that IMHO "ugly and cheesy" LFO
vibrato. No way to work with alternate tempo changes in the vibrato
while playing long notes, which is quite limiting. But the triggering
was great and it sounded just like an analog synth, which might be a
good thing if you fancy that. In a later band, doing industrial goth
metal, I used a normal MIDI pickup (the Casio MG501), and although the
triggering was slow this worked out very well in the band context
since I just layered slow attack synth sounds behind the real
humbucker crunch sound. I tried to record MIDI into computer
sequencers (and an Alesis MMT8) but had to give it up because of the
latency caused by the slow tracking that also got worse by low pitched
notes. Today, if I want to double a monophonic guitar/stick line in a
studio recording I simply record the audio as it is and have the DAW
convert a copy of it into MIDI. Gets the job done with less hassle. If
I want to play "something synth" with a great feel I use an EWI to
play the MIDI synth directly; I don't think any string instrument will
ever be capable of offering the subtle expression control you get with
a 4000s.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com
www.looproom.com internet music hub