Can modelling amps create the future ?

Drew_TNBD

Jesus.... why did I even bother listening to that?!

It's probably not even a real guitar. Probably a Sampletank patch going through GuitarRig!

monquixote

ICBM said:

There's a particularly nasty guitar sound on a current(ish) chart record that drives me nuts every time I hear it… it's *almost* clean, but there's some sort of nasty digital hash all over it.

Or is it just that only people like us notice that?

(And yes, I really do listen to this sort of stuff, so it does matter to me! )

I'm pretty sure it's deliberate isn't it?

Daft Punk use a similar effect on the percussion in Tron Legacy.

ICBM

monquixote said:

I'm pretty sure it's deliberate isn't it?

Daft Punk use a similar effect on the percussion in Tron Legacy.

Yes - that's the point I was trying to make. It's clearly a deliberate effect - since the producers of this sort of record aren't deaf and will be mixing it on superb monitors - but to traditional guitarists it sounds oddly hashy and digital. The question is, do non-guitarists hear it like that and as 'irritating' (in other words, is it inherently so), or just as a sound which does not matter whether it sounds like an actual clean electric guitar sound or not?

jpfamps

ICBM said:

monquixote said:

I'm pretty sure it's deliberate isn't it?

Daft Punk use a similar effect on the percussion in Tron Legacy.

Yes - that's the point I was trying to make. It's clearly a deliberate effect - since the producers of this sort of record aren't deaf 

and will be mixing it on superb monitors - but to traditional guitarists it sounds oddly hashy and digital. The question is, do non-guitarists hear it like that and as 'irritating' (in other words, is it inherently so), or just as a sound which does not matter whether it sounds like an actual clean electric guitar sound or not?

To be honest I find that type of production very fatiguing to listen to; in fact it sounds to me like industrial noise (and yes I have worked in a factory).

The "drums" are particularly irritating. It's just not a nice sound.

It's also compressed to within an inch of its life.

Production goes through fashions, and I think the problem is that producers feel that what the do has to sound "contemporary" so if a recent hit uses a particular effect then it appears on a load of records, although to be fair the record companies are always keen to get the opinions in.

It's a shame that being "innovative" seems now to be using an effect on something rather then creating an interesting piece of music or new drum beat for example.

dindude

Fretwired;372106" said:

dindude said:



darcym said:

 modelling amps are getting a lot better

Problem is this statement is largely untrue in my book. You have the Axe Fx and the Kemper, but the mainstream modelling market is stuck in 2005 and really hasn't advanced much at all.










Sorry but it has ...



And a guy in a local rock covers band used to gig with a Line 6 POD II HD and cab and got some excellent classic rock tones .. punters really don't care what you're playing through .. there are modellers that are good enough to gig with. The problem is pure snobbery on the part of guitarists .. by the time you add bass, drums, a vocalist and maybe keyboards plus a bunch of punters the average Joe won't know if you have a valve amp, a modelling amp or a laptop and some software [which is where I think we'll end up].

We'll have to disagree then because I couldn't disagree more. This argument staggers me. I don't care what camera a photographer brings to my wedding but I sure as hell can tell a good photo from a bad one, an if you think music punters are any different then you are under estimating them. I'm sorry but most modelling still sounds shit. Only the weekend just gone when I sat down to record the fretboard challenge no. 5, I thought I would use modelling for a change but I couldn't get it near the sound with just an SM57 stuck in front of my amp.

Fretwired

dindude said:

We'll have to disagree then because I couldn't disagree more. This argument staggers me. I don't care what camera a photographer brings to my wedding but I sure as hell can tell a good photo from a bad one, an if you think music punters are any different then you are under estimating them. I'm sorry but most modelling still sounds shit. Only the weekend just gone when I sat down to record the fretboard challenge no. 5, I thought I would use modelling for a change but I couldn't get it near the sound with just an SM57 stuck in front of my amp.

Why should it stagger you .. in a pub many valve amps sound shit and noisy. Anyway's here's Bill Nelson ... the crowd enjoy his performance and he's playing through a Line 6 POD II bean .... disproves your statement somewhat .. you may not like his tone but the paying punters do and the sound is pretty close to his 1970s Be Bop Deluxe sound.

dindude

Can't view the clip right now bit will have a listen later.

What staggers me is that some people simply don't seem to care about their tone. It's not the only aspect of being a guitar player by far but it's a very important one in my book. I just can't imagine being so easily satisfied with mediocrity on the basis of "no one will notice", since when has that led to any form of greatness.

Kebabkid

Removed

Fretwired

dindude said:

Can't view the clip right now bit will have a listen later.

What staggers me is that some people simply don't seem to care about their tone. It's not the only aspect of being a guitar player by far but it's a very important one in my book. I just can't imagine being so easily satisfied with mediocrity on the basis of "no one will notice", since when has that led to any form of greatness.

Now I agree with you there. It's a bigger problem with modelling amps - what sounds great in your bedroom sounds crap at a gig. Valve amps win hands down on ease of use but I've heard some shocking tones from valve amps at live gigs.

If a band sounds good then the punters won't care what gear a guitarist is using, or do local pubs these days put out adverts for bands with guitarists that must have 'a Gibson Les Paul, Marshall half-stack and boutique effects pedals - no modelling amps allowed in this pub' ....

And here's Steve Howe who uses an Line 6 HD500 and a Line 6 DT50 amp .. go to 30 minutes .. he used Line 6 Vetta modelling amps for year.

Drew_TNBD

dindude said:

Can't view the clip right now bit will have a listen later.

What staggers me is that some people simply don't seem to care about their tone. It's not the only aspect of being a guitar player by far but it's a very important one in my book. I just can't imagine being so easily satisfied with mediocrity on the basis of "no one will notice", since when has that led to any form of greatness.

Well... some people are playing jazz chords or barre chords in a band with a 12 piece brass section, drummer, and some shite soul vocalist. I can see how I'd be suicidal enough in that situation to not put tone at the forefront of my concerns

ThePrettyDamned

ICBM said:

Drew_fx said:

p90fool said:

The technology for guitars to make pretty well any noise you can imagine has already existed for decades, but most people don't care, they want itto sound like a guitar and to leave the experimental stuff to keyboards or studio software .

Do you not think this is predominantly because there are not many sounds that actually sound very good on guitar? I can't wait for Shimmer reverb to die a painful death!

There's a particularly nasty guitar sound on a current(ish) chart record that drives me nuts every time I hear it… it's *almost* clean, but there's some sort of nasty digital hash all over it.

Or is it just that only people like us notice that?

(And yes, I really do listen to this sort of stuff, so it does matter to me! )

It's almost tiring to hear. 

It actually doesn't sound like a guitar - every note is SO FRICKING EVEN, it's like it's got an incredibly powerful compressor and limiter on it, and it's that that's clipping.

I don't listen to this sort of shite music. I should, it would teach me that 4 chords is enough (something I'm forcing myself to learn!). 

I'm instead going through another John Fru obsession phase. He can be incredibly innovative, yet always musical. 

IT MAKES ME WANT MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG

guitarfishbay

It sounds like a bit reduction type plugin on that Rita Ora track.

With regards to the even dynamics - so many people do a large portion of their music listening on headphones on the bus/train/at the gym etc where there is a lot of background noise. A lot of pop is mixed so you can hear every key element all the time, which suits those listening environments. I think lots of vocal automation is common these days, not just compression (but plenty of that gets used too). Same goes for other key elements.

ICBM

ThePrettyDamned said:

It's almost tiring to hear. 

It actually doesn't sound like a guitar - every note is SO FRICKING EVEN, it's like it's got an incredibly powerful compressor and limiter on it, and it's that that's clipping.

I don't listen to this sort of shite music. I should, it would teach me that 4 chords is enough (something I'm forcing myself to learn!).

I do find it tiring to listen to as well - not just the 'guitar' (which I agree with Drew may actually be entirely synthetic anyway), the whole production. I generally don't listen to stuff like this for the sounds, I listen for the song and sometimes the arrangement. This is not a great example because the song is not great either! But that's beside the point, I was just using it as an illustration of a guitar sound which is not like a 'good' traditional amp tone… so is this an example of a non-amp tone which will become 'the future'? I hope not - not because it's not amp-like or sounds non-traditional, but because - to me - it sounds irritatingly unnatural and actually like it was just recorded wrong.

But is that because I'm a 47-year-old trying to be 'with it' by listening to music intended for 12-year-olds? Did fuzz sound equally awful to jazz players who heard Hendrix? Fuzz doesn't sound natural either, although to me it sounds great. Even amp distortion didn't sound right to a lot of players of that generation - that's why the 70s Fender amps with pull-distortion circuits sound so bad, their designers - who were properly-trained electronics engineers who had been told by the marketing department that they needed to make amps with distortion, to compete with Marshall and the early Boogies - thought all distortion was bad, so they couldn't tell the difference between good distortion and bad distortion. They delivered amps with distortion, job done.

So maybe, if players of my generation who grew up with real amps listen to a totally digital sound, can we tell what it's supposed to sound like or not? I really don't know...

Drew_TNBD

The thing is... the digital amp solutions we have, sound remarkably close to real amplifiers. I don't think the Kemper or Axe FX sound particularly "digital" and I actually think you could get killer results from the Pod HD500 - I've heard lots and lots of impressive recordings.

It's at volume where most of them fall down; in band practices and in a gig situation.

Fretwired

Drew_fx said:

The thing is... the digital amp solutions we have, sound remarkably close to real amplifiers. I don't think the Kemper or Axe FX sound particularly "digital" and I actually think you could get killer results from the Pod HD500 - I've heard lots and lots of impressive recordings.

It's at volume where most of them fall down; in band practices and in a gig situation.

I'll buy that with low cost amps like a Spider 150 but Steve Howe uses a HD500 and Steve Vai has admitted using an Axe Fx live [I think he only uses it for effects these days] and both have had amazing results ... I can see amps becoming a thing of the past. There's a generation of kids using cheap Line 6 modelling amps who like the convenience and flexibility who won't want a valve amp and pedals. Processors are getting more powerful and Line 6 now has the might of Yamaha behind it so expect the modelling gear to get better and better.

I also see a future for gear like this .. guitar modelling matched with amp and synth modelling. Give it a few years and you'll find a new guitar hero will arrive sounding like nothing you've heard before using digital synthesis .. here's Steve Stephens from 2011 ..

monquixote

I don't really see that Steve Stephen's clip as the future of guitar it's more a mechanism for triggering a synth. 

Fretwired

monquixote said:

I don't really see that Steve Stephen's clip as the future of guitar it's more a mechanism for triggering a synth. 

It's early days although that unit does much more than trigger a synth . It has amp and guitar modelling... the unit's over four years old .. think of something with Axe Fx amp processing, synthesis, sound modelling, guitar modelling, midi and you'll be able to create unique sounds. We're not there yet but give it ten years and there'll be a revolution. We're all old farts who want to use amps ... kids in the future will turn their backs on a Marshall stack and a Les Paul ... the guitar will evolve.

Drew_TNBD

I did say "most of them". I think an Axe or Kemper with a valve power amp can sound great. Not convinced SS poweramps are there yet.

guitarfishbay

Fretwired;373034" said:

monquixote said:

I don't really see that Steve Stephen's clip as the future of guitar it's more a mechanism for triggering a synth. 





It's early days although that unit does much more than trigger a synth . It has amp and guitar modelling... the unit's over four years old .. think of something with Axe Fx amp processing, synthesis, sound modelling, guitar modelling, midi and you'll be able to create unique sounds. We're not there yet but give it ten years and there'll be a revolution. We're all old farts who want to use amps ... kids in the future will turn their backs on a Marshall stack and a Les Paul ... the guitar will evolve.

You can design those sounds already in a DAW if you want.

Keyboard players have explored synths and samplers for years. The only evolution would be in a new controller type (guitar instead of keys).

Personally I think keyboards are much more useful than guitars for controlling sythns. You need both hands to play a monophonic melody line on guitar but on a keyboard you can have a hand free to control various filters (which can be key for live performance).

Nomad

monquixote said:

I don't really see that Steve Stephen's clip as the future of guitar it's more a mechanism for triggering a synth. 

I would say that a guitar, effects, and an amplifier with a particular sound or voice, are little more than a form of analogue synthesiser.

Dirt boxes generally seek to emulate overdriven and distorted amplifiers, and reverbs and delays emulate physical spaces with particular reflective characteristics. Wah, flange, chorus, phase, are filters that wouldn't be out of place on a traditional keyboard analogue synth (which is little more than a bunch of oscillators and filters patched together in various ways). The valve amps we all cherish are a form of filter or sound modifier - the last thing we want from such a thing is clean, clear, hi fidelity reproduction of the waveforms coming from the guitar.

When it gets down to it, we already are synthesiser players.