… with equally interesting responses. I’ve always had an obsession with pure sound. Music, environmental sound, electronics … That’s led me down the path from bass & guitar, through the universality of keyboards and synthesizers, drums & percussion, and dabbling in anything that produces a sound. Recording engineering, FOH work, and synth preset expansion packs were all part of the natural progression.
My current pedalboard / rack combination is an outgrowth of synthesizer programming. I’m still most comfortable with guitar as ‘controller’. My system needs to be relatively portable (home in studio; break off for live gigs). It has always been stereo, and heavily incorporated MIDI, expression pedals, aux switches, and more. I won’t bore you with the sordid details, but it’s taken years to consolidate all of those complexities.
The system approach borrows from modular synthesizers (which has helped immensely with an ability to program most any kind of sound). “Waveshaping” [tube, pre, models, digital distortion], amplitude shaping [compressor, ADSR, freeze], pitch modulation [whammy, ring mod], filters, delay-based FX … you get the idea. As for Eventide effects, I can’t seem to let go of my PitchFactor; it’s essential. Two H9’s finish up my pedalboard – switchable in series / parallel – then out to the rack mixer.
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally feel that I can reproduce most any sound that (in the past) I would’ve turned to a synthesizer for. As for the music itself, I don’t enjoy playing covers as much any more. As a ‘hired gun’, I have to maintain a facility with many styles of music. “Jack-of-all-trades; master of none.” It’s an edgy, creative approach that never fails to keep me on my toes. And current technology makes that all possible.
