This new Voice Box pedal from Electro-Harmonix looks awesome! Basically you route your mic and guitar through it and you’re able to pitch match harmonies and different vocal effects. It has a vocoder and built in reverb. I pretty much love everything Electro-Harmonix makes but this looks really fun. I’d love to get my hands on one of these. Retails for around $215.

[via Vertical Resonator]

The UI on this is pretty slick, quite apple’ish in fact. $5 seems quite reasonable as well, they have 2 versions, the Hip-Hop Edition and Club Edition.

 
iDrum for iPhone from Art Gillespie on Vimeo.

[via Synthtopia]

I grew up on late 80s and 90s worship music. My father was a worship leader and later pastor at a Vineyard which was cutting edge worship music in those decades. I remember those years fondly and here’s what I miss:

1. Wind instruments – There are a lot of flute and saxophone players out of work in ministry. I mean there has to be a line around the block for those guys collecting worship band unemployment checks. I really do miss those soft flute intros and funky white boy sax solos that just took the songs to a whole new power pop level. I think it was every worship pastor’s holy dream to get Kenny G saved. Can you imagine how powerfully the spirit would have moved? Unfathomable.
2. Streamers and Banners – At its peak churches were removing rows of chairs just to make room for this tornado of twirling silk. They should have been surrounded in caution tape cause they were dangerous. Those wooden dowels were like holy swords waiting to impale you or gouge your eye out in accordance with scripture. I dunno about you guys, but you give me a banner team and a hard core sax solo and that’s heaven on earth. I never could get a beat on the males who joined the banner wavers though…that always gave me cause for concern.
3. Transparencies – Who can forget the giant glowing box sometimes strategically placed smack in the middle of the stage for the backup singers to operate. I honestly miss the feel and even smell of those transparencies, shuffling through the accordion folder to find the songs and get them all lined up. Was there ever a professional way of handling these? I certainly am familiar with the bad way, the blank transparency with dry-erase handwritten words and the operator who seems to always make the slide appear upside down no matter how many times you try to explain mirrors to them.
4. Percussion – Rain sticks, triangles, cowbell, congas…what isn’t appropriate for a worship song? Even the rocks will cry out, and Lord knows we tried to see what beating a rock with different sized sticks would sound like. The big churches share in culpability for this pandemic, but the smaller churches took it to a new level. I mean really, who isn’t qualified to play percussion? As long as you have a heartbeat and 2 hands you can beat things with, you should be on stage right?
5. Constant 3 part Harmonies – Picture with me if you will, vocal arrangements as a mixing board with sliders for each singer. Usually you’d think of these sliders moving up and down as the song progresses through the arrangement, layering nicely in parts, muted in others. Well back in the day this picture was more of a giant switch. Vocals are either all on or all off. Hey those words on the transparency aren’t for looking at, if you got a mic and there are words up, sang those things sister! Oh and you know your part, it’s the same harmony you do on every song, it’s easier that way and we also took the liberty of color coding the windscreens so you know which mic is yours.

I need some help, what’s this list missing?

Took a shot of my live setup with my iPhone this past Sunday. Thought it might be fun to diagram exactly what I play with.

1. Apple MacBook Pro (GR) – this is my workhorse. In addition to running Guitar Rig I use this for most all my personal work. It’s an older MBP but it gets the job done. 2.33 Ghz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD
2. Guitar Rig 3 – After leading worship and playing lead guitar in a lot of worship bands in smaller venues I was sick of dealing with stage volume issues. I was having to turn my amp down so low amp didn’t have the chance to get to the warm part of the tubes. Literally I was having to have my amp down at 1 so the FOH guys would stop complaining. So I was really limited in my tone and sound. All direct options whether software or multi effects had such poor quality and weren’t an option until I found Guitar Rig. I experimented with it on some recording projects, then tried it live and was very happy with the flexibility and sound quality. So this is my rig for small venues and I highly recommend it for congregations 300 or smaller.
3. Behringer FCB 1010 Midi Foot Controller – I don’t particularly like the foot controller that comes with Guitar Rig, so I just got the software edition and got my own midi foot controller. 2 foot pedals is a must, dedicated volume pedal then the other for trem speed, wah, what have you.
4. Presonus FireBox – “2 out of 3 musicians recommend Presonus for their firewire audio interface needs.” I’m one of the 2.
5. Apple Macbook Pro (Reason) -My newer machine. 2.4Ghz Intel Core Duo, 4GB Ram, 150GB HD
6. Reason 4 – I talked a bit about how this came to be in an earlier post. Slowly been integrating more synth tracks, live and recorded.
7. M-Audio Oxygen8 v2 – wanted something small and ultra portable with a decent amount of assignable controls and transport. This fit the bill. Great controller for Reason.

Guitars

1. Fender American Standard Strat 3-tone sunburst – not old enough to say the year yet. Over 10yrs old, less than 30.
2. Gibson Super Jumbo Acoustic, J100 Xtra – I love jumbo acoustics, I like them to sound full, deep and rich. Not a fan of bright acoustics.

Some other time I’ll diagram my amp and stomp box setup. So that’s what I play regularly, comment with your setup.

If this hadn’t happened to my own brother I wouldn’t believe it. Here’s what he managed to score at goodwill with real world value breakdown:

• 4 piece late 60′s Ludwig Blue Oyster Super Classic (acrolite snare)
  • floor tom = $1,000
  • tom = $500
  • kick = $1,000
  • snare = $200
• original cases ($200)
• Paiste Formula 602 cymbals ($600)
• some sweet old school practice pads (vintage value…who knows)
• spare Rogers Super 10 Snare ($200)
• xylophone (do people pay for these?)

The best part is all this was originally $200 at goodwill but my bro just happened to show up on 50% day. Apparently $200 for all of this was just too much, they got to move product after all.

Adding it all up this is $3,700 worth of equipment bought for $100 at goodwill, with no guns involved, no threats of any kind, this was a peaceful transaction. I NEVER find anything good at goodwill much less this kind of treasure. Usually I start feeling sick after 5 minutes smelling the musty old clothes and run out screaming after seeing old men pick out someone else’s dirty underwear from the $0.10 rack. Leave a message on my brother’s facebook congratulating him on this robbery.

This raises a good question, what’s the best thing you ever scored from goodwill/thrift store?

Figure it’s time for some gear talk on here since I’m really excited about my new foot controller purchase. A couple years back I switched to Guitar Rig(GR) for my live rig. I never imagined I would be using a complete software rig ever in my life, but that was until I heard Guitar Rig. I used to be, still am I suppose, a collector of as many classic pedals as I could get my hands on. With my Matchless Hotbox being my pride and joy. All multi-effects pedal boards, amp simulators, software solutions I’d heard up until GR sounded sooo bad, I never even considered them. Then my brother begged me to start using GR on a few recording projects we were doing and I was really impressed. My huge complaint with multi-effects units and software apps has been that the sound is so obviously a digital signal, there’s no cabinet breathing, no warmth, no peaks that you can pick out. It’s just all washed and over compressed and just too cute and nice.

One thing GR lets you control in addition to any combination of amps and cabinets you wish is mic placement. I can’t tell you how important that is for sound and GR really hit it out of the park there. So once I realized that the amp/cabinet selections were actually really good, I then got to enjoy the wide selection of other effects. It’s super handy being able to get such a wide tone swing during a live gig. Not to mention the flexibility afforded by the other effects. But sound quality is of the utmost importance and I can honestly say that GR is the only software/multi-effects unit I’ve heard that makes me say “wow” (yes those are quotes around wow). And GR2 has made me even more pleased, but I’m upset that they continue to release major upgrades at a blistering pace, GR3 already is out. Ever heard of minor FREE updates Native Instruments???

So now onto my purchase. I originally bought GR 1 which came with a 4 button (not really banks) 1 expression pedal foot controller. 2 of those buttons are reserved for switching presets, so really you’re left with 2 buttons. That really made things tough, lots of preparation needed to be done on the presets making sure from song to song you could quickly get to each preset. Not an enjoyable situation. So I needed a bigger foot controller and found a Behringer FCB 1010 Midi Foot controller (actually a lot of them) on ebay for dirt cheap. 10 button, 2 expression pedals AND 2 dedicated preset/amp switches. So now I don’t have to use any of the 10 buttons for switching presets and the 2 expression pedals is huge. You always want volume control but many times I need tremolo speed or wah control or other such timings that can’t be tapped out. I can’t wait for it to arrive and get it all setup.