Month: July 2008

I confess, I’m a plugin freak. I have at last count, about 500 VSTs and VSTis installed, and have just set up an ubuntu studio version of my desktop so I can try out the LADSPA plugs for linux.

I finally broke down and bought Oli Larkin‘s great dronebox and polycomb VSTs. I’ve been using an old demo version of dronebox for a while, but when I figured out how to run midi notes out of my guitar into the polycomb filter, the results were too cool so I straightened up and bought it. Dronebox is a set of six or seven resonant comb filters with all sorts of tweakable settings. You tune each one to a note, and when the corresponding note gets fed through, it resonates like a sympathetic string. I use it as the wash in these two ambient pieces: “ambient 040328” and “ambient 040428“. The loop is recorded live with the elogoxa Elottronix plugin, which has a great filter section you can hear tweaked in both pieces. A bit more rocking, this song combines the dronebox with another of my favorite plugs, Krakli’s TrAmp, in a song suitably named “dronebox tramp.” This time the looper is loopy llama or mobius, can’t remember which. Both are great…I’ve generally gone with loopy llama lately ‘cuz its simpler and uses less resources. You can hear it a lot in rreplay, where TrAmp, Dronebox, and DK+ drums, all get worked out regularly in plogue bidule. Mobius is a spot-on emulation of the Gibson echoplex. You can use the same manual for most of the controls. Oh, except mobius is like having 8 echoplexes. Oh, and with unlimited loop length. Oh, and its free instead of about a thousand bucks.

And now back to Oli’s plugins. If you want to know what polycomb will do to guitar, check out this freshly recorded piece, polycombatose, where I am just working through all the presets. The looper is loopy llama this time, recording just the bass (the trusty Hohner slammer run through an electri-Q eq and ruby tube tube emulator). Missing Eric on the bass… The drums on both dronebox tramp and polycombatose are from nusofting’s most excellent DK+ drum machine, this time imitating an ancient Acetone rhythm box. In order to get midi notes out of the guitar, I use G-Tune (which besides being a strobe-accurate tuner, converts the signal it reads to a midi note) and then run its midi out to a maple midi port. Of course, everything is played and recorded in one take via the ever-amazing plogue bidule.

Leave a comment if you wish, would love to know if you are listening.

Ahh well, Eric has gone back to Boston, thus ending for now one of the funnest musical projects I’ve had in a while. rreplay recorded our last-for-now session on July 1. It was a bit out there for a number of reasons on my part. First, I had not regularly practiced in a month while I was away in Kolkata and Japan (more on the sounds from there later…), so the ideas were bubbling up but the fingers were a bit sluggish. Second, I had just returned from Tokyo, where Monisha and I stayed a few extra days so I could catch the avant gard Japanese experimental guitar festival (also about which more later). So what’s to listen to? My favorite for weird factor is “squelch.” What is not bass is manipulated guitar echo. “drip grind” has a cool wash thing going that mutates over time. I think my favorite is “nothing to declare,” though “spider camp” and “flow control” are kinda cool in an experimentalist sort of way…all three are in the key of z. That leaves “low town twilight” where I was trying too hard to evoke a particular mood instead of just going with it, and “neither flotsam nor jetsam.” Not bad all in all. I’ll certainly miss rreplay-ing. We’ll put together an album or two more from it…if you find anything in the rrepository particularly compelling, in part or in whole, let us know in the comments here!