Volitions Advocate
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I've learned a lot the last 3 years in university. I'll be graduating with my B.Mus by next Christmas with my major in Digital Audio, and I've amassed a great deal of technical know-how that I think will serve me well in the future.
I've spent SO much money on my gear that I'm starting to get mad at the injustice that we suffer as guitar players at the hands of the big companies that have been taking us for fools the last several decades.
A computer motherboard on the bleeding edge of technology, containing thousands of resistors, transistors, capacitors, integrated circuits, etc. will cost anywhere from 60 - 300 dollars. And we are paying 150 to 200 dollars on a collection of a dozen or so of each, and maybe one integrated circuit. That and we're stuck with what other people want to feed us as the right sound, without much option to tweak. If you've got a 3 band parametric EQ on your distortion pedal, you've got a powerhouse of options, apparently....
So I'm fed up. I've got enough of a grasp on signal processing and acoustics to build every pedal I own, digitally. Even the multi-effects stuff and the midi/synth guitar junk.
Setting aside the analog vs. digital debate, (trust me there is nothing wrong with digital, just the way it's usually implemented, that and crappy converters in guitar pedals) I think what I would like to do is sell all my gear except for guitars, amps, and maybe a wah pedal, and work at rebuilding everything I would actually use, and build it the way i want it.
Using Max/MSP i could get the jist of each effect and build it into its own patch, then use those patches for a base for each effect that I could build on, and revise. Then I could put all the patches together into one big master program.
I could control it using a mixture of a control board of some sort. Like a midi controller or something I make on my own, and mutli-touch display.
Arduino is an interesting tool that i could use to build things that require a little more thinking "out of the box". Like I an idea I had to ditch the pitch to midi converter and build a pitch to OSC converter that will allow me to use a guitar synth that doesn't resort to midi (ugh), and to use it wirelessly using wifi rather than radio.
Mind you, you can do anything with Arduino.
Other interesting things come out of this as well, like the ability to use an Ipad or other such things in your performances. Or wiimote or Kinect.. etc.
And using a high quality recording interface to patch your guitar into the computer gives the ability to run digital at an impressive sample rate like 96KHz or even higher for really high fidelity digital effects. Time stretches and pitch shifting would be child's play and sound so much better at these sample rates, compared to what we would normally get in a boss pedal.
It's amazing really, how much stuff costs and how simple it is to DIY everything you do for so much less money.
I guess my question is 3-fold.
1. would anybody here be interested in a pursuit like this and want to help out or have the ability to help out?
2. would anybody here be interested in the results of this endeavor and want to try it out for themselves when i'm "done" ?
3. despite all I've said, would anybody be interested in some 2nd hand gear?
thoughts, please.
ps. When did the forum go all white? Where have I been anyway?
I've spent SO much money on my gear that I'm starting to get mad at the injustice that we suffer as guitar players at the hands of the big companies that have been taking us for fools the last several decades.
A computer motherboard on the bleeding edge of technology, containing thousands of resistors, transistors, capacitors, integrated circuits, etc. will cost anywhere from 60 - 300 dollars. And we are paying 150 to 200 dollars on a collection of a dozen or so of each, and maybe one integrated circuit. That and we're stuck with what other people want to feed us as the right sound, without much option to tweak. If you've got a 3 band parametric EQ on your distortion pedal, you've got a powerhouse of options, apparently....
So I'm fed up. I've got enough of a grasp on signal processing and acoustics to build every pedal I own, digitally. Even the multi-effects stuff and the midi/synth guitar junk.
Setting aside the analog vs. digital debate, (trust me there is nothing wrong with digital, just the way it's usually implemented, that and crappy converters in guitar pedals) I think what I would like to do is sell all my gear except for guitars, amps, and maybe a wah pedal, and work at rebuilding everything I would actually use, and build it the way i want it.
Using Max/MSP i could get the jist of each effect and build it into its own patch, then use those patches for a base for each effect that I could build on, and revise. Then I could put all the patches together into one big master program.
I could control it using a mixture of a control board of some sort. Like a midi controller or something I make on my own, and mutli-touch display.
Arduino is an interesting tool that i could use to build things that require a little more thinking "out of the box". Like I an idea I had to ditch the pitch to midi converter and build a pitch to OSC converter that will allow me to use a guitar synth that doesn't resort to midi (ugh), and to use it wirelessly using wifi rather than radio.
Mind you, you can do anything with Arduino.
Other interesting things come out of this as well, like the ability to use an Ipad or other such things in your performances. Or wiimote or Kinect.. etc.
And using a high quality recording interface to patch your guitar into the computer gives the ability to run digital at an impressive sample rate like 96KHz or even higher for really high fidelity digital effects. Time stretches and pitch shifting would be child's play and sound so much better at these sample rates, compared to what we would normally get in a boss pedal.
It's amazing really, how much stuff costs and how simple it is to DIY everything you do for so much less money.
I guess my question is 3-fold.
1. would anybody here be interested in a pursuit like this and want to help out or have the ability to help out?
2. would anybody here be interested in the results of this endeavor and want to try it out for themselves when i'm "done" ?
3. despite all I've said, would anybody be interested in some 2nd hand gear?
thoughts, please.
ps. When did the forum go all white? Where have I been anyway?