Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
How Would You Get That Tone (which amp sim/fx would get close to this sound)?
I thought I'd get a thread going to discuss particular guitar tones/sounds people want to emulate and get people's thoughts (and maybe examples) of what combination of amps sims and fx people think would get into the ballpark.
I'll start things off asking for thoughts about how to get two guitar tones that have eluded me over the years (never mind the fact that I'll never be able to play these lines): Allan Holdsworth's mid to late 70's sound and Robben Ford's Yellowjackets era tone (which he apparently didn't like)
Here are some YouTube clips:
Holdsworth on the Gong "Expresso" album. Listen starting at 1:13
Robben Ford, Yellow Jackets tone (the arrangement and instrumentation is kind of corny but the guitar solo great)
Rush Hour starting at 1:10 (this is where the solo starts which is the only point where you can hear the guitar distinctly as it is doubled by keyboard and/or a second guitar for the first 1:10). The distortion is smooth and sweet:
Imperial Strut starting at 1:01 (like Rush Hour, you can't hear the tone well till this point)
Comments
You aren't going to make this hard at all, are you? Seriously though, Holdsworth around this time period is way up there with my favorite playing. He's supposed to have used a strat converted to humbuckers (PAF) pulled out of his SG. played mostly on the bridge. So, kinda like a Les Paul, but brighter. The strat bridge/tremolo system would make it a bit janglier. Probably used Marshalls or Vox at the time. The hard part is the legato attack he has.
Ford was supposed to use 335's around then. So again kinda brighter than a Les Paul. With the second Yellowjackets piece, it sounds like he may have a distortion pedal on. There's a hard bite to the attack. Sounds kinda like a distortion+ to me, but is probably something better than that, but the MXR has that sort of hard attack with smoother tail.
They both sound like they are pushing the power amp section of the amplifiers hard. So, turned up really loud to get the power tube compression.
This assessment is spot-on! Sounds like taking full advantage of the amp’s headroom to the point of pleasant tube growl. Judiciously adding a compressor pedal to the front, or a soft overdrive or tube screamer type, could add more sustain and legato and that attack. This is kind of the “mirepoix” of great guitar tone.
I had to Google it:
Carrots, celery, onions. It’s the cooking base holy grail! AKA compressor, overdrive, loud clean tube amp. The butter is in the fingers.
Is Delay the garlic 🧄?
Re the equipment originally used.
Holdsworth (yeah, I am not going to nail the legato at speed -- but that tone also rings through on slow lines - see Shadows of Below). I think these Gong sessions might be the first recordings with that humbuckered strat (http://threadoflunacy.blogspot.com/2017/06/7-gong.html)
The thing about this era's tone is that violin-like quality. Some people use an ultrashort delay (like 20 ms) with a fair amount of regenration to try to get the character. I haven't been able to find info about his amp setup at the time. I know that a couple of years prior (on the first Tony Williams tour) he was using a Marshall and no pedals except POSSIBLY a clean boost (but not sure if he was using those). I have found a few places where he talks about people thinking he used distortion pedals when he was using one or more clean boosts in order to drive the preamp and amp harder -- he said he hated the highs in distortion pedals. I don't know when he started using Carvin
Ford : That Yellowjackets record apparently came at a time when he was searching for the tone he heard in his head. He played a Boogie Mark 1 on his previous record -- and was seen with it on the tour for the Yellowjackets record -- but apparently for the recording he used Yamaha's new solid state amp (Yamaha G100-212) with some non-stock speakers. He clearly is playing loud on both tunes because there are a couple of places where he holds notes that start feeding back (he kind of masterfully lets that feedback 'swell' happen and moves or something so that it doesn't feed all the way back). But since the amp is solid state it seems like there might possibly be an overdrive pedal or distortion circuit in play. My guess has been that he was playing his 335. But I remember reading that he was using a number of different guitars during that period -- including a Yamaha solid body and even a strat -- and Ford mentioning that people often think he is playing a 335 on tunes where he wasn't.
Anyway, any thoughts about what combination of iOS virtual amps/pedals would get close? Any takers on mocking something up?
According to this, he was using Marshall 50 heads for his leads around that time:
http://threadoflunacy.blogspot.com/p/material-real-gear.html
Some more info on that gear and time:
http://ofeuillerat.free.fr/documents/articles/Beat Instrumental Article 79.html
He was known to have used a boost pedal because he preferred the sound of saturated power tubes to the preamp drive sound, and an EQ pedal to remove what he called "unwanted hair" from the tone. No idea from the above resources what boost or EQ he was using, if any, in front of those Marshalls.
[...]
What sims do you use? I have the Bias stuff. I think I would try it with two amps in parallel with one cleaner and one pretty saturated. Both driving the master volume pretty hard. Then mix them together to get closer to the sound you are looking for.
For the Ford part, you could run one as a clean amp setting and then put a Rat simulation in front of it with the distortion pretty maxed and then use the filter on the Rat to get the tone of that section where you want it. Then mix the two amps together again to try and get the sound you want.
Using the two amp setup with the Holdsworth sound might help with the legato too. You could run a delay and a compressor in front of one amp and leave the other without effects. Mixing the two paths at different levels might help get the right attack and still allow for the effects to add some slur to the notes.
[...]
Nicely put!
Here’s a rig rundown from premier guitar.
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20572-rig-rundown-robben-ford
I would try the Nembrini sound master tu get that tone.
The sound he gets on the Yellowjackets tracks is very different from the sound from the period documented in that article.
Are you able to approximate that tone with the Soundmaster? Could you post an example?
I'd love to hear something in the ballpark. I've struck out with the Nembrini amps, the BIAS amps I've tried and the TH-U amps I have BUT the parameter space is so large that maybe I just haven't found the righg combination of settings.
I guess I wax hoping someone might hear the examples and have a go at getting close.
@flo26 : any chance you might take a stab at these tones?
Had a quick go at Rush Hour with the Cali Reverb, sounds fairly close - I don't have a guitar with humbuckers so could be better.
Thanks for taking a stab at it. Nice playing.
To my ears, the Cali Reverb’s distortion doesn’t have the smoothness found in the Ford clip. I can’t think of a better word for it than smoothness. There is an edge in the distortion on the Cali that the Ford clip doesn’t have and it is that particular character (which I never quite figured out how to get even back when I had a good tube amp). No sim I’ve tried: MRH810, the Nembrini Soldano, a few TH-U options that I’ve tried can get that distortion without any raggedness that I find unique in the Yellowjackets clip.
The closest I’ve come on the Rush Hour tone (which isn’t very close) is something like
I don’t know if this is helpful but to my ears the Holdsworth sound is not a million miles away from Lamb-era (1974-5) or even Selling England-era (1973) Steve Hackett.
Having previously been a Hiwatt DR-103 user, at this time he had switched to a solid state HH IC100 but still played through his Fane-equipped Hiwatt quad boxes.
His tone (from what I’ve heard him say in interviews) was produced by driving one fuzz pedal into another (a Marshall SuperFuzz and a Shaftesbury Duofuzz). You can see his very simple rig in the pic. I’m surprised there is no gate involved for some of it but even live it sounded pretty much like the studio sound (there are plenty of bootlegs around!). Must all be in the hands.
I’m thinking the solo in Firth of Fifth (from Selling) is in the same ballpark (but obviously a completely different style of music) but closer in style would be Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist (on the Lamb). Not the same sound but might be a good way to get there.
Maybe you need to trying wearing flares when you play..?
Thanks @espiegel123. You're absolutely right - I had the gain low as well, around 2. I'll experiment. I think it can be done, although, as already mentioned, a lot of the sound comes from playing very loud and his amazing picking technique.
Sorry I am not a jazz player.