guitars

Rolling Stone has a review of Lou Reed’s recent live performance of Metal Machine Music – Reeds’ controversial symphony of noise.

When Metal Machine Music was released in 1975, people did not know what to make of it. The album, influenced by the drone music of La Monte Young and John Cale,  consists entirely of guitar feedback played at different speeds.

Two guitars were tuned in unusual ways and played with different reverb levels. Reed then placed the guitars in front of their amplifiers, and the feedback from the very large amps would vibrate the strings — the guitars were, effectively, playing themselves. He recorded the work on a four-track tape recorder in his New York apartment, mixing the four tracks for stereo. Read more…

Here’s another set of photos from the 2009 NAMM Show, via Mark Dalzell, that has more of a guitar focus.

For more Winter NAMM show photos, check out our 2009 NAMM Show Photo Mother Load.

Mike Levin has an interesting review in this month’s issue of Electronic Musician of Moog Music’s new Moog Guitar.

Is it worth the nearly six grand asking price?

Levin says:

Overall, I found the Moog Guitar to be an inspirational instrument. It opened up exciting new worlds of playing technique for me like no guitar I’ve ever played. Especially when I used external effects, like distortion, delay, and modulation, I found myself getting lost in the guitar and playing and improvising for long stretches without even realizing that time had passed. It was kind of like discovering a whole new side to my guitar skills.

 

That said, the Moog Guitar is quite expensive and at this point in its development is a luxury item that will be affordable only to some. I hope that in the not-too-distant future, Moog will release a lower-priced line, bringing the Moog Guitar’s exciting combination of sustain, mute, and filter effects to a wider range of potential buyers. I can already tell that I’m going to miss having this guitar around when I have to return it after this review is over. There’s simply nothing else out there like it.

In other words – if you got the 6K to drop, there’s nothing else like it.

Otherwise, you may have to wait for the Behringer version like the rest of us.

IK Multimedia has announced that AmpliTube X-GEAR has been made available as a free download for AmpliTube 2 Live users and StealthPlug users.

X-GEAR is an expandable guitar amp and effects modeling software system, available as a plug-in and standalone version for Mac/PC, that allows mixing and matching between all the gear models in a single host interface. It also allows for control over every parameter directly from IK’s StompIO USB floor controller and audio interface.

Using AmpliTube 2 Live with X-GEAR, users will get access to these new features:

• 5 modules including: Tuner, Stomp, Amp, Cabinet and Rack effects (instead of 2 modules).
• Double rig with 8 series/parallel configurations (instead of the single fixed rig).
• 1 new Amp and Cabinet (bringing the number of available Amps and Cabinets to 4).
• Custom amp building (thanks to separate Amp Pre, EQ and Power Section now available) now offering up to 192 different amp combinations.
• More controls like Ambience in the cabinet module and advanced Automation.
• Possibility to integrate AmpliTube 2 Live with other “powered by AmpliTube” software applications, including AmpliTube Jimi Hendrix, Ampeg® SVX and AmpliTube Metal into a single interface with full mixing and matching between the included gear models.
• Seamless integration with StompIO advanced USB floor controller and audio interface for using your computer live like the most powerful multi-FX system ever made.

AmpliTube 2 Live is available as a software-only download in the IK web store for 74.99 EUR / $99.99 USD (exc. taxes) and it is also included in the StealthPlug audio cable interface for 99.99 EUR / $129.99 USD (exc. taxes).

Moog Music has been pretty tight-lipped about it, but information is starting to slip out about the Moog Guitar.

At the Ethermusic Festival in Asheville, NC,  Moog’s Jason Danillo demo’d the Moog Guitar. Here’s a first-hand take on the demo:

My first impression of this instrument is that it was an electric guitar with built in (software driven) fx in the body of the guitar. And I would add, super CLEAN fx. And the infinite sustain, for example, was INFINITE with no noise, glitches, etc. However, my guess about the theory of operation was mistaken.

The guitar utilizes built-in ebows — I’m not sure how many are built into the guitar however there is a least one per string. As many readers here know, the ebow imparts energy to a string to set it into vibration and keep it vibrating forever. The engineers at Moog took things to another level — for ebow technology can do the opposite: it can be used to remove energy from a string, too.

Each string is independently settable — some can sustain, others can sound in the normal (unsustained manner), others can produce a staccatto pluck — in fact, on [sic] of the sounds is a strum followed by a bow. This is all user-settable. Jason strummed a chord and as the chord died down a “bowed string chorus” came up — as if an entire string section was doubling Jason’s guitar part.

My first thought was: Ohhh… my looping friends would LOVE this.
And the tone was really clean. During Jason’s demo, he mentioned that some people can’t believe that this is all being done on the strings until he unplugs the guitar and folks listen to the strings themselves.

Moog looks to be building on its strong line of Moogerfooger pedals and expanding into the guitar market.

Cikira via Matrix