Conference napalm::guitar

Gee I've got a MG510 and a roland D110, and I constantly
had people ask me 'what the hell is that thing!?!!?!?'

I guess it's all in how you have your sound run...

I don't use it much in the current band, but in the last
band, that was our keyboard!  different perpesctive
I guess..

I use it now more for recording than anything else..

sure would like to find a way to get a sustain pedal
cheap for it....  long string pads are a trick...

/r

    The MT32 sounds aren't particularly strong and at loud volumes they
    aren't clear enough to be discernable.
    
    Re sustain.
    
    I control mine through a Yamaha MFC-1 foot pedal (cost me 50 UK pounds
    second hand) which has an input for a foot switch which I map to the
    MIDI sustain on the MT32.  Just a cheap Yamaha non-latching footpedal
    does the trick.
    
    It can look quite neat if you play the last chord of the song a long
    time before everyone else finishes.  I can just stand on the sustain
    pedal and stop playing :-)  What would be nice is a sustain pedal that
    sustains and stops any note on/note off information getting through. 
    I'll be working on that if and when my Philip Rees MIDI pedal comes
    back from Mr Rees in a working state!
    
    
    tmp

    I don't think string sounds are terribly difficult to do with just your
    basic guitar, cable and amplifier provided you use some well known
    techniques.  After all, you've got strings!

    All you need to do is dial up some smooth sounding distortion* and use
    the volume knob on your guitar.  Just pluck the note with the volume
    off and with your right hand pinky, turn the volume knob up.  Add some
    violin-like vibrato and you're there -- the chorus shouldn't be
    necessary (can't remember when I've heard a chorus'd violin -- Ponty
    maybe?).  As you get better with the volume knob pinky you can play
    faster lines.  You can also cheat with a decent volume pedal, which
    (sigh) I usually do since my hands are small and the volume pinky
    doesn't quite reach.  A volume pedal is also especially useful when
    violining chords or multiple lines since then the right hand is much
    too busy plucking strings to allow the volume pinky to work correctly.

    * You get a different sort of violin sound with clean tones.  Sometimes
    they are better -- try both.
    
    I have also had some luck imitating certain organ sounds without
    outboard effects. The techniques are similar to the above, plus I think
    you'll want to roll off the tone knob a bit (maybe all the way off). 
    However, the range of organ sounds you can imitate are limited.
    Depending on the exact sounds you're going after, you might need some
    signal processing gear.  Many moons ago I used a Yamaha SPX90-II (which
    has a pitch shifter) to get a decent rock/blues organ sound -- I'm not
    sure extactly how it was set up, though.
    
    steve

    And if you really want to sound less like a guitar and more like
    strings or brass, use the volume knob trick with a fairly long
    delay (700-1000 ms) and feedback set "to taste".
    
    With a clean chorused sound, you get a string section.   Distort
    it a bit with bright distortion (the kind you might never use for
    solos) and it becomes like a brass section.
    
    When I used to do this, most people found it very hard to believe that
    I was not using a synthesizer.  It truly does not sound very guitar
    like.
    
    	db

   You can accomplish the same thing (volume swell) in a number of ways with
many of the signal processors currently on the market; no pinky manipulation
required!

   On my Quadraverb 2, for instance, I wrote a couple of Programs to do this.
One uses Reverse Reverb with some pre-delay; the other uses a Local Generator,
set to trigger at a particular input signal, to ramp-modulate (from off to on)
the signal going to the output.  Both techniques provide a volume-swell that can
be tailored for attack, and can produce a violinsh tone.  Of course, a smooth
sustain is needed to really pull it off.

            Andr�

    ...or you can use an E-Bow like Keaggy to get some strings sounds.  

    Thanks for the advice.  
    
    The reverse reverb was a great idea.  It nearly works, but isn't quite
    good enough for me (on my SE50).  I'll go and try an E-bow again.
    
    I tried one before but it didn't work until it was directly over the
    string, and even then it made a horribly rasping noise.  Maybe the
    battery was low, what didn't help was that no-one there knew how to use
    it either.
    
    Time to go shopping  :-)
    
    tmp

The trick I've found with the ebow is to turn the tone on the guitar all
the way down.  Also, I usually use the neck position pickup.  

You will produce different sounds and harmonics with this combination by
positioning the ebow anywhere from above the neck position pickup down
towards the bridge.

Good effects to use with this are pitch transposing (an octave lower) and
delay/reverb.

/marc