Still a Zoom nut

In the late 90's my wife bought me a Zoom 707II multi effects guitar pedal. Some music shop guy talked her into it. It was a good call, the idea of a "programmable" effects pedal was far more appealing to me than collecting Boss pedals and chaining them together like my mate did. I had a lot of fun with that pedal, it really opened up my eyes as to what sounds you could get out of a guitar, I dropped two songs I had recorded through it in this post.

Fast forward twenty five years, and I have ordered yet another Zoom G1 Four as a birthday present for a young guitarist I know. I own 3 of the "FOUR" series pedals - a G1 which I bought shortly after they were released circa 2020, an A1 and a B1. Talking specifically about the G1:

• It has a built in tuner. Set the output to mute while tuning, just mash the two pedals together and you get a really easy to use tuner that just takes a moment to retune between a song. It's not a mic so there is no interference from a noisy room. You can be standing up in the dark and those friendly red/green lights tell you exactly what you need to know. It is an absolute bedrock foundation that you need to be playing in tune, with this  tool there is no excuse. The pedal is almost worth it for this alone...
• It has many built in "patches" that are inspiring and change the way you play. It's the kid-in-a-candy store thing; you will play more, because you are having fun, and there are so many delightful surprises to be found. It can make you sound like all the famous guitar legends, and while you might not use them in the long run, anything that keeps you playing, learning, developing - is a good thing.
• It has all the basic effects that you need and you can stack up to five together. For example, the main patch I use when I'm strumming my acoustic with a pick has a compressor, an equaliser, a tape echo and reverb. Notice that is for my acoustic, not an electric! An effect is an effect regardless of what is plugged into it, so if you are looking for a limiter, a gate, various type of overdrives and distortions, delays, reverbs - they are there.
• It has metronome, drum sequences and basic looping. Not something that I need, but it's there.
• I love that I can plug it into my computer and using the aftermarket application ToneLib-Zoom I can tweak while I play through headphones. But that's the nerdy engineer in me.
• I have programmed several different patches to suit the different live sounds I need, I can just tap my foot and go between them.
• Whilst you can buy the X version and it has an expression pedal, that's never really been my thing - the 707II had one - I don't need one right now, but I understand why you would want one.

The main use for my G1 is to give my acoustic guitar a bit of character when it is played over a PA; and as a live setting tuner. Whilst I would say that when recording the acoustic I would only use microphones, and maybe some very minor shaping of the sound in post, when you are playing live you need that shaping to go live straight to the deck. And I have massaged the shape over many sessions to best fit the room. I could have achieved the same thing with a dedicated acoustic pedal with knobs, but for a better price I get an extremely configurable pedal that can do the same and a heap more.

Now sound modelling has been popular for a long time now, and it does that too. It has effects for simulating well known amplifiers and cabinets, so you can chain that into your patch. I've never been  heavy into guitar tone, being that I've mainly only played nylon string, so I didn't much care for those effects. But I did think about how I could get some acoustic modelling, so I bought the A1 Four, designed for acoustic instruments. I played with it for a bit but didn't really "get it". What I found however is it came with a pre-amp (the cylinder + wire thing in the photo above), I could pipe my son's saxophone mic through it. And it has patches for saxophone, and they are pretty good! I still find I need to compress saxophones more than what is built into the patch - hmm, I should dial in some more compression for him - but out of the box it really sweetens the tenor sax tone. So I stuck with my G1 Four and let him have the A1 Four.

And finally, my daughter plays in a rock band and they play a lot of originals, I remember seeing them one night and the weather was cold terrible, when they started playing they were hopelessly out of tune because they had only roughly tuned while in a warm room. They had to stop mid song and retune, it was shameful, ha ha! So my cure was to buy her the B1 Four - the bass guitar version - so she could always quickly check her tuning. And then she can dial in some overdrive and other shaping, to experiment with sounds and unleash creativity!

Which brings me back to why I ordered another G1 Four - the lead guitarist in her band plays through whatever effects the amp she plugs into has. And also suffers from tuning issues. Armed with a G1 Four I'm hoping she can spend time dialling in tones that suit her music and it inspires her creativity in song writing.

Possibly I have mostly been talking up that the Zoom FOUR series are good tuners. Well they are...and so much more!

Bb

The bane of a rhythm guitarist, one of the last chords to tackle - the Bb barre chord - 14441x. I was recently playing a song at my local church and there was plenty of Bb in there, but it wasn't a Bb piece. Normally for that key I will put a capo at 1 and play it in A. I'm not a fan of capo at 1, it bends the strings sharp, sounds out of tune. So sometimes I will put the capo at 3 and play a G. But that only works if you want a lot of treble in your playing - your lowest note now is a G.

It's just that laying down and A chord shape with 2-3-4, and then with your index finger underneath catching the Bb bass note but still letting the top F sing, it is a slow and inaccurate chord. Many years ago I started doing that with my pinky to fret the notes that make up A and then slip in my index finger for the barre chord. This works great for me, it is a fast manoeuvre and I have enough backwards bend in my pinky to still let the top F shine through.  It comes at a cost though; it is a lot of strain on your pinky. I have talked about my poor pinky before.

There are some other variants of Bb, for instance 1444xx which is easier to get to, but I find without the bass note it sounds hollow. The other resort is E shape barre chord at 6, the price of that is being slow to access so far up the neck and can sound out of balance - too high - if all the other chords are open. That's a high Bb on top when you are playing 667886! Just mute it can work, or make the Bb pop as a feature.

So after practising the song at rehearsal I had already worn out my pinky, and from experience it is around a week and a lot of self myofacial release involved. On the day I popped some paracetamol, and played 667886 for Bb more than I normally would.

Bb. You are a pain. Literally.

Switch to Shotcut

Over Christmas I bought a laptop. At my day job, it's all Dells, mostly Latitudes, and because I'm so used to them, and they are business grade and thus pretty reliable, I used them at home too. But I don't buy them new, whoa, too expensive! So I buy all the computers in my household through online auctions. I watch and wait for a sublot of ex-company fleet Dell Latitudes, and then I bid on the best one(s). My experience has been that most people feel "safe" to buy one middle of the road but not many aim to bid on the best one. Well I "went crazy" and won the best one in the lot for $AUD508 (2024). It is a 12th gen i7 with 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, 15" touch screen and even has an MX550 graphics card - not that I play games on it...but maybe that will help with encoding video and audio. In comparison, there were quite a few 10th gen 17, 16GB RAM, 512 NVMe, only onboard graphics...and they went for around $400 each. To me the extra $100 is well spent!

I stuck with Windows 10, I'm just not ready for Windows 11 even though there are plenty of computers at my day job with it. Interestingly it was a painful install process, because the computer was too new (only 1.5 years old) and the old installer have any compatible internet connectivity drivers! I had to do some hackery to get it on the network to complete the installation. But now, wow, computer so fast! A Reaper audio render takes less than a third the time!

I'm not one to do an upgrade/sync settings, I am a start from scratch kinda guy every time. It makes the initial install take a bit longer, but you only put back on what you need. After several years with a computer you have quite often filled it with stuff you never use and all the drivers/stuff that came with it, slowing your system down. I will first put on my usual favourite software, but even then, I will look at upgrading or changing at the same time.

When it came to my usual video editing software, Power Director, I was still on version 16 which is from a long time ago. I looked up the latest version and I could get a perpetual license for around $AUD180 (2024) which I found a little steep. If they could have kept it under $100 I would have jumped in without thinking. Instead I looked around - one of the guys at work mentioned a video editor "Shotcut" which is an open source and free so I looked it up.

Now one of the issues I have with video editing software is that waaay back in the 90's I learnt "Ulead Studio" and understood its workflow quite well. When I later looked at Adobe and the other big players, the workflow was different and I never really got it. Power Director was the closest in operation to Ulead Studio, hence I went with that.

Shotcut seemed to be similarly built, the only thing the internet reviewers seemed to be saying about it was "steep learning curve". I decided to see how I would go on my latest video for YouTube.

Straight out the gate it had a very familiar style of operation. Because my videos are pretty straight forward, just text, fades, crop and resize, audio substitution, it should be easy. And it was! Armed with a chatbot to talk me through operation, I finished the video and maybe only spent an hour getting used to the different process and workflow. Some of it, particularly "Filters", is better than Power Director - it feels conceptually more like Reaper which I'm quite used to now. I really appreciated that.

As for steep learning curve, well, no. I found it easy to learn and navigate, only a few foreign concepts. I took notes while learning, so next video should be just as fast as if I was using my trusty old software.

I was slightly disappointed it was unable to use my fancy Nvidia graphics card, it was doing most things on the main CPU, but it was using a lot of cores so that's better than only using one. And with the new laptop it was fast enough, around 5-6 mins to render a 3 minute video. I can live with that. Especially at the price.

Thanks Shotcut devs, keep up the good work!

What's happening Jan 2025

I managed to record only one song over the Christmas break, but I made two versions, one with a drum track https://youtu.be/2NHKErdw0HQ, the other without https://youtu.be/QpbUkUUNzBE. I was reasonably happy with my play through - 3 takes, using the last take with a few fixes from the first take. When I listen to it I can hear where I'd gone off beat and then re-tracked back on, but it isn't too bad - practice with metronomes and drum tracks does actually work!

I wondered what the internet would think - I posted the drum track first and then without second, thinking that without is my normal syle and that would be my most recent video. The Algorithm however picked up the drum track version and boosted it and it got a lot more views. I noticed that the feedback from viewers seems to be "yeah, nah" (translation: I understand what you did there, I appreciate it, but, I prefer the other one.) Since I had made 5 drum tracks over Christmas, when I got back to work I played them for some people and it further reinforced it - nobody preferred the drum track. My drummer mate said "drums were okay" but "drum tracks are cheesy", another said "if you are going to play acoustic, leave the drum track behind.

So, slightly peturbed, I am still playing along with them to improve my tempo, but not as enthusiastic as I was.

In other news, all the parts for the bass guitar build came in, and construction began! It is currently at a stage where it is assembled, unpainted, with strings at tension, but no pickup. I'm a bit perplexed, the shape of the neck seems slightly wrong. right at the end of the fretboard it seems to slightly pop out, meaning I need to set the action higher than I want to prevent buzzing. I've done quite a few adjustments, I'm letting it settle, I definitely need to file down the nut, but I still can't quite work out what is going on with the end of the fretboard. The manufacturers did a great job on the last neck I had made, so I can't see them as having got it wrong?

We will see! I will finish it, I've put too much time and money into it to not to, but I will be disappointed if I can't get it how I want it!

Meanwhile, I put some new strings on the Esteve. They we very mellow and dull sounding on my last recording...

I will keep practising, next song to record in a couple of weeks is "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" and after that "Fly Like an Eagle".  I'm really looking forward to the latter, I'm very happy with my arrangement of that.

JAW

Reaper, you've done it again. ReaSamplOmatic5000.

As I mentioned earlier I decided to make some drum tracks to play along with for my fingerstyle arrangements, equally to improve my tempo and equally to make them more engaging to audiences. I've played with drummers many times over the years, solo fingerstyle, it makes sense. Solo fingerstyle already incorporates a bassline so don't need a bassist, it incorporates a melody so don't need a singer, it incorporates a rhythm so don't need a rhythm guitarist are out...there's some but not a lot of percussion so drummers are a good fit! I've talked about playing with drummers many times as far back as 2009 and 2010 and at an open night a decade ago not to mention a gig I did this very year at work with my mate Geoff.

I'm not a very good drummer. I own an entry level electric drum kit, a Yamaha DTX Explorer, I dabbled a bit years ago, decided drumming is best left to drummers. But I've always had a love for the drums and how they fit with guitars, and it goes right back. Let my wax nostalgically for a moment.

In the mid 80's I was a Commodore 64 nut. It's where I learnt to program - C64 basic and even hand coded 6502 assembler. Musically, there were a few programs I used on it, one was "Funky Drummer". I would make drum loops and play along with them endlessly. Sadly no recordings of that exist anymore...I do have a few cassette tapes with various stuff on it, perhaps one day I will stand up a cassette player and see if I can find any!

In the mid-late 90's a mate of mine at work introduced me to the DOS multi-track sequencer "Impulse Tracker" which was a whole new level of drum machine, with actual drum samples! I had a lot of fun with that. That eventually gave way to "Modplug Tracker", being Windows based, but I never enjoyed it quite as much. I wrote several original songs in the late 90's early 2000's during the time I was getting more into arranging fingerstyle covers. Fingerstyle had always been my first love, but I had a fun experimental "full band" period of time which ended around 2001.

Impulse Tracker

ModPlug Tracker

Yes, recordings exist from that era...I need to find the masters and remix them...one day. I've never shared any here before, I'm not sure why - possibly because they just aren't any good - but why not. Have a listen to these badly mixed songs I wrote - using Impulse Tracker, my electric guitar, bass and some vocals. Ask me if you want me to talk more about songs from my distant past :-)

Blue Metal:
Sheister Meister:

Which brings me back to the topic of the day, making drum tracks. I'm not going to revive any of that old software, but I have my DAW Reaper, and I have Kenny Gioia, The Legendary Reaperian of Lore. He showed me the FX called "ReaSamplOmatic5000", which is EXACTLY what a sample tracker in the context of Reaper should look like. Good job Repearians. It took me a while to get my head around it, but it is just what I needed. Essentially using MIDI to track samples, making it the drum machine sequencer I loved from my youth. I've already churned out a backing drum track for "Wish You Were Here". What really makes ReaSamplOmatic5000 special for me is that I can us my little AKAI MPK mini mk3 MIDI device as a drum trigger - OR - I can use my Yamaha DTX Explorer as an actual kit through my PreSonus interface to record the drum hits, when I have drummer in the house. Or even, olde school, just click away in the MIDI editor and make them all like I did when I was a kid.

So nice. I've got my WAVBVKERY vintage kit drum samples, I will need to look for others for the various songs I do - but the 70's Ludwig is a great starting point . It will take some time, but it will be good to make these drum backing tracks.

JAW's guide to using ReaSamplOmatic based on Kenny G's tutorials

References: Youtube 1 Youtube 2

Note for Windows OS: In Options->Preferences Device, if you are just using your computer soundcard, then don't use DirectSound, it is gross and laggy. You could use ASIO (either the one that came with your MIDI controller or ASIO4All) but the driver takes over windows sounds so you wan't be able to listen to youtube/music/etc. A good option however is WASAPI, which is Microsoft's answer to ASIO. If you use it in Exclusive mode it is pretty close to ASIO, but then you may as well use ASIO. In Shared mode it is quite good - not too laggy, and you can listen to Youtube at the same time. Change your Block size to be low for low latency, but high enough that you aren't hearing crunchiness.

• Make a new track called Drums. Set it to Record, set the Input to MIDI, All Channels.
• Right mouse click Input, Track Recording Setting, turn on Quantise to 16th notes.
• Right mouse click Input again, set Record MIDI to Overdub. That way each pass just adds drums.
• Make another track called "Kick". Add the FX ReaSamplOmatic5000.
• In the ReaSamplOmatic5000 drag in a Kick Drum sample. The View->MediaExplorer is a great way to browse your sample library, when you have found the one you like, drag it into the waveform window.
• Set the Note start and note end to both be the MIDI number for your target MIDI note. It's a good idea to turn on View->Virtual Keyboard so you can see what number/what is happening.
• Set Min vol to -inf if you are using a touch sensitive (velocity) MIDI trigger. If you are just using your computer keyboard, not really an issue, it's only on/off
• Make sure the Mode is set to Sample (Ignores MIDI note).
• Route your Drums track to the Kick track by dragging the routing icon from one to the other. Set Audio to Off, you only want to route MIDI.

You are now at a stage where you have a MIDI track to record your MIDI triggers, it passes the MIDI down to a drum track, the drum track listens out for the one specific MIDI note and then plays the sample when it gets it. You can add other normal FXs to it, adjust faders, panning, etc, like a normal track.

A few other tips/tricks:

• Obviously, add a track per drum type!
• You can include multiple samples per track, for instance I will have a "Hat" track, and it will include an open and close hat sample.
• In the case of an open hat which rings out, you can make it stop ringing if another hat strike is made. Add an FX "JS: MIDI Choke", set the Choke Note Range Start to the the MIDI note that you want to kill the ringing drum, set the Affected Note Range Start to the MIDI note of the ringing drum. In the ringing drum, set "Obey note-offs" to true. Now, if you trigger an open hat, then a moment later trigger a closed hat, the open hat sample will stop ringing, so more like a real drum kit.
• When in the MIDI editor, setting to "Named Notes" view is nicer, and double right click on a note to name it.
• You can change the Grid size in the MIDI editor in the drop down box at the bottom of the window.
• If you need a different time signature, for example there is a 2/4 bar, then right click on the bar in the main window, Insert Time Signature/Tempo Marker, set it to your new time signature, and then repeat the proces in the next bar to change it back to the previous timing.