This post brought to you by all the coffee I just had
Just stumbled upon a pretty good review of Guitar Rig 3 (“Guitar Rig 3 Turns a Mac Into an Amp Stack”).
And, you know, it sounds like a pretty cool piece of software to have. If I was rich and had lots of money. And a really super fast Mac computer to make the software actually work. Just to say that I own it, and maybe play around with it every once in a while.
But, what is this thing really for? The review says:
“Guitarists out there know that finding that perfect sound, tone or depth from your electric guitar can be an expensive and painstaking process. With the digital age now in full swing, many manufacturers have tapped into computer emulation as a way to duplicate the sounds of guitar setups and amplifiers through software. There are tons of programs out there that promise to deliver, but almost all of them fall flat on their face.
That’s where Guitar Rig 3 (GR3) comes along. Guitar Rig 3 from Native Instruments (available for Mac and Windows) is a robust guitar emulation program that does more than just emulate sounds.”
So, it “emulates” sounds. And more. And it saves you from the painstaking process of finding the perfect sound.
“Painstaking process.” I wonder what would have happened if the first generation of rock guitarists (say, Hendrix, Townsend, Clapton, Beck, Page, et al) had a tool that saved them from the painstaking process of finding the perfect sound and just duplicated (or, “emulated”) all the guitar set-ups of the blues players that influenced them?
Sure, the digital age is in full swing, but I just think that it often limits our potential. Way too many choices, very little time for focus. I look at Guitar Rig 3, and I see, well, nothing. No potential for guitarists to get to know their sound and sculpt it over time; no potential to allow guitarists to experiment with real sound gear (inside and out) and find NEW sounds; and no potential for pushing guitarists to GET OUT AND PLAY FOR PEOPLE.
The review concludes: “I love this program. It seems not long ago that one needed tons of time and money to get the perfect guitar setup — not only for recording but also just for practicing — and GR3 solves all those problems.”
The perfect guitar set up? An amp. A physical, real, natural, sound-wave pushing amp that you can use to record, practice and play for people in just about every corner of the world that has an electrical outlet.
IG dishes out inspiration and ideas to guitar players everywhere. 
All these guys-Hendrix, Townsend, Clapton, Beck, Page-did they have the “perfect” set up? I mean, when they formulating technique and ideas that are now pursued relentlessly with emulations and plug-ins etc.
I think that a whole lot of what all the guitar “heroes” laid out there, had to do with working it out within the limitations of the gear.
I’d suggest that James Burton, Chuck Berry, Danny Cedrone of Bill Haley and the Comets, Paul Burlison of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio, Ike Turner and Buddy Holly (and dozens more I forgot) were the first generation of rock guitar, and Hendrix, Townshend and the Yardbird boys are the second generation. But I’m that kind of anal.
The first generation got the fuzztone by accidently dropping the amp off the truck on the way to the recording session, by poking pencil holes into the speaker cone or by pulling their tubes halfway out, whatever they heard was the way to emulate their heroes. And, of course, by turning their amps, some of which made today’s Fender Blues Jr seem huge.
The Marshalls of the second generation came because amps that were OK if you were playing the sock hop and maybe a little small to play the theater downtown were just too dinky to handle Shea Stadium or whatever big venue they were building to. That you could turn it up and get that sustain and tone that Jimi and Eric were getting. So, sales of Les Pauls and Marshall stacks went up, as people tried to emulate their idols.
At first, when people plug a computer between their guitar and amp, yes, it’ll be “Can I press a button to get the ‘woman’ tone? How about Brian May’s ‘Rock You’ tone? Awesome!” But if you make it open enough, and it will have to become open enough, you’ll be able to do really weird things very easily.
The amount of actual innovation of any generation of musicians is very small, anyway, because there has to be enough of the old stuff that people know what they’re listening to.
you could turn it up and get that sustain and tone that Jimi and Eric were getting is just a nice side effect.
Going digital may not be the end of music as we know it, but it may go a long way toward stamping out creativity and variety. Take a look at this article by Music Thing’s (musicthing.blogspot.com) Tom Whitwell:
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/why-records-do-all-sound-same
When everybody uses the same tools the same way, is it any wonder that they all sound alike?
The issue of ‘perfect sound’ is obviously marketing-speak, but it’s true that many players seek to sound just like one recording or another that they love. While that’s well and good, the variables that affected that original recording are nearly impossible to recreate, (particularly the most important part– the player’s fingers, and brain controlling them). You can recreate Hendrix’s original rig (or one of them), but you will never sound just like Hendrix, because you AIN’T Hendrix.
Many of the elements of your sound that programs like these alter are just as easily manipulated in the real world, by amp/mic adjustment and placement, and simply by your playing style. Once I first experienced an amp that was actually responsive to my touch, I was blown away by the amount of control I had. Sounds that I had previously attributed to Brand Name or Model No. were suddenly right there at my fingertips. And even my homemade amps can “move more air” than anything I’ve ever connected to my computer…
Which brings me to my last thought. Anyone chooses to use this software, that’s all well and good, I could care less. But if they have the guts to go onstage depending on a windows or mac box, then damn, those are some seat-of-the-pants-flying risk-takers. Neither apple or microsoft has yet made software that I can’t crash. And who would want to deal with the blue-screen-of-death in front of a crowd?
I have AmpliTube 2 Live and I think it is a great piece of software, very similar to Guitar Rig 3, and its a great way to experiment with home recordings on a budget. I don’t think I would be willing to trust a laptop in a live situation (although many electronic musicians rely on them these days) but IK Multimedia are rumoured to be developing a portable computer that is just to power AmpliTube and StompIO, their foot controller which by the way they are giving 1 away on my site!
I personally don’t think that digital is any substitute for a nice fat Tube amp, but then I’m still coming to terms with the 600 redundant pieces of vinyl I own…
I want a tweed laptop!!!
Playing through my Guitar Port into the computer is all well and good, a fun way to pass some time, but if I want to experience the call of the wild, embrace the possibility that the sound coming out of my guitar might actually surprise me, delight me, inspire me further? For that, I have to crank up a real amp. Chain of effects optional.
I have a Line 6 Flextone III that is effectively collecting dust in my garage because I don’t even use it for recording any longer. Ig, I totally agree with you about focusing on getting YOUR OWN sound. And I agree with everyone’s assessment that it limits creativity. Why? Simply because most people are going to try to model their sound using one of these modelers after someone else’s rig.
That said, for doing covers, modeling is a god-send, IMO. You can really can dial in very similar tones as the original artists, so from that perspective, modelers are useful. Frankly though, nothing sounds near as good as a tube amp wailing away on stage. When you’ve got it dialed in, it’s almost a religious experience.
AGREED. Real stuff > Digital
AMEN!!!
Effects are cool, but the real software starts within you and your hands. Learn first to play loud, and how to control the tone of your guitar and amp. When they become one unit, then add an effect here and there. Hendrix interspersed effects and tone blending throughout his playing to enhance riffs, phrases and passages, and to give a tune more personality. Most guitar players sit on a couple sounds only and ride ‘em into the ground like a hobby horse.
The challenge of so many effects is in using them to create tapestries with your playing. That’s a big challenge.
Otherwise, it starts with your hands and controlling the basic sound. Rock was meant to be loud and raw. We often use effects to create artificial loudness and rawness which isn’t always felt by the crowd outside of our own skulls.
You need to make the effects real & believable, because effects won’t make you real and believable.
Approach it like a chef. Preparing spicy dishes isn’t simply about dumping cayenne on everything and calling it ready. The cook blends and balances salty, sweet, tangy, sour, savory, zesty and earthy tones to make things taste naturally good.
Treat effects like your spice rack, and remember that at the end of the day many a chef likes to go home and just grill a plain steak.
That steak is your axe & amp. The protein is the platform and YOU put the meat into motion. Salt and season only to taste.
Sounds like an added level of complexity to me, which would have me twiddling virtual knobs all day as opposed to actually playing guitar. That wouldn’t be a good thing as I need all the practice I can get.
If you want to set up a home recording studio and don’t want to play through an amp because your neighbours have a shotgun collection then great. Isn’t it a bit like being shown a photo of the Grand Canyon rather than travelling there and actually standing on the edge?
…but then I should admit that in my old age I’ve become something of a techno-nazi, in that I only like gadgets if they actually do improve (simplify) life. Most gadgets don’t.
I own Guitar Rig 3. I will probably never use it live. I use it for recording, where it is exceptional. The models are great, but it is the controller that makes it worth buying. You not only get a foot controller (for wah, changing patches, effects settings, etc.) but a USB 2 audio interface. With this and a laptop (and headphones, and a guitar) I have a great portable recording rig. Great for capturing ideas. It is very easy to use. You don’t have to use everything, but if you want to dig in, it offers everything you could imagine. The built-in looper and tape decks are also very cool and useful. I use a Les Paul, a multi-effects and a tube amp live. But for recording, Guitar Rig 3 makes getting great tones easy.
These things don’t hurt creativity. How many people have bought a marshall, strat, whah and fuzz to sound like hendrix? How many of them suck?
If you buy a piece of software, use all the presets to try and sound just like hendrix or korn or the bee gees or nirvana, you probably aren’t being that creative. You might however, be a damn fine guitar player — especially if you can play all of the above convincingly.
Similarly, just because you turn a knob on a tube amp and plug into an analog overdrive and play only originals you also may not be that creative if sounds like the derivate slop of a 10 year old bush record only with out of tune vocals.
I’m even making the mistake most of us make — confusing talent, creativity and artistic merit. The best have all three, but you can do just fine with one or two.
Guitar rig is just another piece of gear — does it sound good? Guitar rig 1 and 2 did, so I’m guessing it sounds pretty good and it’s full of options and potential creative and non-creative uses. There’s plenty of crap with a fender or Marshall logo that sounds like crap and would never sell without the label.
Just because we haven’t really had a big improvement in the electric guitar/tube amp combo in 60 years doesn’t mean we will never have one. The guitar was around for a few centuries before Leo and Les got around to improving it — but I guarantee it’ll happen again.
A good software no doubt, but it’ll take the creativity element out of guitaring… If you can sound like someone else already did before with the help of a comp tool, you really aren’t doing anything yourself… But definitely produces beautiful sound.
Take a look at this site too, nice one:
http://www.guitarheat.com/
I’ll say it again: Bulldada.
Marshall Stack $1400
Fender Stratocaster $1000
Arbiter Fuzz-Face $200
Vox Wah $150
Octavia $200
Getting Jimi’s tone? Not without years on the chitlins circuit, hoss. But Vox, Marshall, Fender, etc., have received quite a bit of money from people trying to emulate the sound of their idol. I can name three or four versions of “All Along The Watchtower” that sound like the Jimi version with another singer. But eventually someone came along with a Marshall stack and a Fender Strat and made “Far Beyond The Sun”, which was a beautiful and creative work. (You won’t see me praising Yngwie much, but I still love his first album.)
Not too many people are actually creative. If I did anything actually inventive and novel on the guitar, I’ve not been informed about it. But Tom Morello has a point: “There are hundreds of songs that go from D to G, but not too many that use a kill switch and the whammy pedal.” If you use emulation, you can sound like your heroes and never progress beyond that. If you get a Marshall stack and a Les Paul, you can sound like Eric Clapton in Cream and never progress beyond that. It could just be me, but it seems like the only difference between Joe Perry and Slash is a top hat, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The first step of all this will be trying to closely emulate existing sounds. That’s a very “This technology works” kind of thing. Eventually, it’s going to be open enough to do something really weird and original. I can’t wait.
The best use of multi-effects gear is to help musicians, in cover bands, quickly approximate the sounds used in the original recordings they’re covering.
As most working musicians out there are playing covers, there is a big market for multi-effects tools.
Beyond covers, any given effect can still inspire a musician differently than it influenced a popular guitarist.
I don’t think effects have to stifle creativity. It’s just depends upon whether you use effects to create with or for mimicry. If you’re doing lots of covers for conservative crowds, it pays to know your tools and be able to mimic.
If you wanna change things up a bit and bring more of yourself to the table, you’re gonna need to approach your rig and your tools in fresh ways– with, without or with some effects.
It’s great to have all these options, and one doesn’t have to be trapped by them. Alternate your sounds a lot so you don’t get stuck in anything.
[...] Maybe not the kind of “ideal” amp I had in mind in the Guitar Rig 3 post. [...]
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As a recording engineer, I can tell you that the pre-amps and stereo mic placement (around a real amp) will have more to do with getting a big realistic recorded electric guitar sound than a plug-in or piece of DSP technology. That said, I have gotten incredible results stereo mic’ing a tiny tube Fender Champ front ended by a Line6 Pod….granted the mics were plugged into $1500 per side tube pre-amps!
The point is pushing air through speakers and getting the room/space to sound the way it does when sound is going through it is impossible to replicate. Think about it, if sound systems were that advanced we’d feel like were were in the physical scene when we went to the movies.
DSPs are great tools….and I play through them live and consistently get compliments on my sound…. but what really makes my sound so good is the $2000 Bose PS/1 and subwoofer sound disbursement system that my Pod is hooked up to. In the studio however, side by side to a real classic Vox AC-30 or early 70’s Marshall stack….there is no comparison….the real deal wins every time. You can really hear in the attack speed and the tail end of the sustain of chords and notes. Probably not noticeable through a mini-system or car stereo…. but certainly noticeable through a pair of decent studio monitors.
I guess it depends on your purpose….are you experimenting with tones/effects for a demo tape or are you putting down a mass distributed CD?
Plus - the best amp simulation device remains the very first (solid state) Sans Amp pedal. I still use that little bugger to record scarily accurate amp tones. So, boo sucks, digital!
I’m a 51 year old guitarist, when I was a young lad playing in bands the majority of amps around were valve driven. ‘Tranny’ amps just didn’t cut the mustard, they sounded flat, clean and lifeless. I used to play through a Selmer 50 Treble & Bass with a huge 2 x 12 cab, everything cranked up full. There was only one tone and it was to die for when playing rock (or so it seemed at the time). These days I have a Flextone II, a selection of guitars (including a couple of Variaxes) that I run through a Line 6 Pod XT Live to DI into my Mac for recording (just for fun and to keep me from under the wifes feet). I find it all mind boggling, the range of combinations of pedals and amps is limitless. Many people are arguing that it is all to easy to dial in your ‘hero tone’ when they had to work so hard to find it. What the hell is wrong with that? What would Hendrix have come up with if he had access to a Pod or Guitar Rig 3? Was he a tone genius as well as a guitar genius? Amp and effects emulation technology has given me access to a range of sounds from a range of equipment that I could never have afforded to buy or had room enough to store. I know I don’t get the ‘feel’ of standing in front of a stack when I’m plugged into my Pod XT Live but I’m happy with the sounds I get and I’m in no doubt that my neighbors are thankful of that fact as well. If anyone wants the real deal well then off you go and spend your money (DSP technology is not going to put the amp manufacturers out of business) but for me this technology has opened up a world of choices that I would otherwise never have had. That surely can’t be a bad thing? You can check out some of my own tunes on my own blog site and see what you think of the tones there (feel free to comment), all courtesy of DSP technology, I love it!
A great site IG, I will be poking around some more - keep up the good work.
Derek - You’re absolutely right. At the end of the day, any type of guitar or gear is just a tool. The end result, the music, is what matters. And you’re right too that digital technology has indeed opened up a ton of possibilities that just didn’t exist before. I mean, recording alone is unbelievably amazing in what it has allowed many of us to do and showcase.
As many folks here have said, the average listener with no knowledge at all about gear or what goes behind making sound really can’t tell the difference. And, if one as a musician knows how to take advantage of all the tools available, well, there’s lots of fun to be had and all kinds of music to be made.
I guess what bugs me at times is that the new technology is marketed from the “get your guitar hero’s sound,” and while I understand the need to do that (to sell to the average guitar player), I just get real sick of it, you know? Sick of hearing the same thing. Because then people go around judging sound by how close you get to the sound of so and so guitar superstar. I guess I am waiting for the marketing to tell a different story. So, couple that feeling with a tone of coffee, and then I go off!
Man, loved your blog and your music. Really, really liked “Blues on a Boat.” Thanks for your comment, and c’mon back and visit whenever you get a chance!
IG
IG - I suppose the sad side to DSP is that it will eventually drive up the price of valve based ‘real’ amps to a level where very few can afford them. I can just see it, the great grandchildren sitting at my feet in awe of my tales of glowing glass and metal tubes like pigmy light-bulbs, the weight of the mains transformers and the herculean strength needed to hoist a valve amp onto the 4 x 12 altar of tone, the blazing heat, the sweet dirty last-gasp tone of an old over cranked valve. Of course, today it would take just one Electro Magnetic Pulse attack and all the digital tone junkies would be literally shocked into silence (along with every single MP3 file on your hard drive/iPod - now there IS a sobering thought - I shan’t sleep tonight now). Don’t worry tho, I’m sure Brian May must have enough Vox AC30’s to go around for everyone.
I agree that when it comes to todays advertising and marketing life gets rather pooey. One of the things that saddens me is the way the level of advertising bullshit continues to rise and rise. I particularly loathe the ’speaking-in-tongues’ ingredients in UK anti-aging cosmetics ad’s. Stupid names for stupid products to impress stupid people.
On the ‘up’ side I think I have been very fortunate in growing up with developing technologies. I wrote on this subject in my own blog, check out ‘Having the life of my time’ which you can find in the archive list (illustrated with the innards of an old valve radio as it happens). I think it explains a bit more about where I’m coming from (in a lighthearted way) with new technologies (sorry, I’m not trying to use your blog to advertise mine (my blog contains new improved peptohydrasplodgerooney extract for added zing!), it IS relevant to the discussion - honest!). While on the subject, thanks for the visit and I’m delighted that you enjoyed my music. “Blues on a Boat” was one of my first recording attempts, I’ve moved on from there, check out “The Spice Trail” for something a bit err… ‘odd’ …lol What about samples of your music, do you have any on-line?