TEXTURED GUITARS
by Nine Volt Audio
For those of us who are solo players it can be great fun to play with others: both accompanying and soloing; learning new styles or different perspectives on old ones; and best of all, making music spontaneously by improvising, whether in a duo or in a band. But if it is such a rewarding experience, why aren't we all playing in duos or bands, in addition to our solo stuff?
There are several reasons, but the biggest one is often fear. We are afraid that we will look foolish, that we don't know enough, that we will be ridiculed. Similar to the fear of being judged by our audience, we can be afraid of looking bad to other guitarists. Just like stage fright, it takes experience to overcome the fear. The best way to overcome fear of performing is to perform, and to overcome the fear of jamming is to jam. Just like we have to practise playing if we want to do well on stage, we have to practise improvising to be able to jam with another person.
So how do we start?
There are all sorts of products on the market that claim to teach you to improvise. In the coming months I will be reviewing some of the best of these. However, before you spend money you will probably want to get out a recorder of some kind and record yourself playing simple chord progressions so that you can improvise over top of them. Many of us have been doing this for some time and it can be a great start. There are a few pitfalls though: we tend to play what we can already play; we play our same style over and over; and we lose inspiration and get bored.
There is another option. I have just come across a terrific set of guitar loops called Textured Guitars from Nine Volt Audio. If you are unfamiliar with loop technology, loops are simply digital recordings that can be played back any number of times, either in whole or in part. Better loops allow you to change key or pitch, as well as tempo, so that they fit with your ideas or even a partially-recorded song you are working on.
More than just loops, Textured Guitars is really a "song construction set." It consists of a set of loops of chords, riffs, and progressions in REX, Apple Loop, or Acid format that can be formed into the rhythm guitar basis for songs. The 514 loops in Textured Guitars are divided into 43 "Suites" that each use a single type of processing. For example, the fast delayed sounds of the "Divine" suite are played as a straight D chord, a C-A-D progression, a D chord with rest at the end, a G chord with a rest, a high D chord, a high G-F-D progression, a high Bb-C-D progression, as well as D and G chords with no thirds, which can be used as both major and minor. You use a sequencer or Rex player to combine them into longer more complex units.
Each of these suites can be transposed into different keys and into different tempos to mix and match into your own songs, or they can simply be repeated to solo over. You can gradually add chords or progressions to increase the complexity as you get better at soloing. There are many different styles of playing, from simple strums to lead riffs to slide and even electric sitar grooves. You may well find yourself so inspired that you create original songs from these snippets as you use them in your own unique way. With over 500 of them to choose from, it is easy to find sounds that fire your imagination in ways that you have never considered before. Personally, I've been having a blast playing straight acoustic lines over some weird and wonderful electric guitar parts.
If you have a REX player you will have complete control with this set, but they work just fine in any major sequencer. I did my tests in Logic and found that they worked like a charm. They are labelled with all of the appropriate tags to find them easily in Logic's media search. The guitar sounds go from mildly processed to wildly so, in easy guitar keys such as D, A, and G although these are easily transposed to more "jazz" keys such as F, Bb, or Eb. I found that I could easily patch together song ideas in under five minutes, and then solo over them for days. You can check out one of these by clicking this play button:
(This demo took me TWO MINUTES to create!) Here I combine just one set of loops with drums from BetaMonkey (which I will review soon as well). You should also check out the video demo and the audio demos on the Nine Volt Audio site at http://ninevoltaudio.com/TEXTUREDGUITARS/TexturedGuitars.html.
In summary, these loops are a blast to play with! They are very creative and will take your guitar playing into new and fascinating places. I have found Nine Volt Audio to be a terrific retailer with prompt, informative responses to email questions; excellent products that work as well as (or better than) advertised; and a great download system that ensures that you get what you pay for. While you are checking out their site at http://ninevoltaudio.com you might also want to take a listen to their "Funky Rex Guitars" and "Big Bad Guitars."