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I heard Kurt R. last night (boy is he amazing) and I wonder whether any experienced FX users can describe how he is getting his sound. It's like he has killed the initial attack of every note, so that what comes out sounds like a cross between a horn and an organ. In a master class he briefly mumbled the words "gate", "compressor", and "HOG" in a discussion of how he is getting closer to a sound he hears in his imagination.
I'm interested in how one might approximate this, say with a multiFX unit. But there is no "latency", he played blazingly fast runs and they came out clean, as did his comping.
As a pedal/sound processor neophyte, I have this idea that a similar effect should be approximable with a compressor with a very high ratio and very fast attack, but I don't really know what I'm talking about, and my crude experiments with a compressor always sound like shit.
Any people with FX expertise want to weigh in on how one might chain together FX and what settings one might get to eliminate the attack of a note. I guess one approach to this is distortion, a la Holdsworth, but KR seems to have found a different solution. I guess the HOG is only an "after the fact" sound processing, but maybe I'm wrong and its a critical part of the formula.
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11-07-2017 05:11 PM
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Hmm. I love Kurt Rosenwenkel's playing, but not his "sound", particularly the lack of attack he's dialed out.
Albert
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Basically, he mixes some synth sound with guitar sound and compresses it, along softly picking not every note. For something simpler but still effective get Boss Slow Gear, and compress that.
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Yes it sounds a bit weird on those fast runs, more like a synthesiser than a guitar.
Originally Posted by AKA
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He seems to keep it pretty basic, just 10-15 pedals connected in every way imaginable.
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I do not like too many efects with beautifull sounding arch-top jazz box.
...but I think audience like different sounds
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Don't fight the Miku...
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the miku pedal looks intriguing, but the Amazon reviews complain about latency/tracking issues and that it only works with single note lines. KR gets his sound over chords as well as lines, like in the video alltunes posted.
Vladan, I'm not sure your explanation is right. In the video he says he "shaves off attack using POG". To what extent is POG s synth? I understand a "synth" to mean something that identifies the pitch and replaces it with a digitally generated tone. This seems a problem when you play chords, especially with extensions. Also, no matter how fast he played, even when he was a bit sloppy with articulation, there were no tracking/glitchy issues.
Anyone else have ideas or information?
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I think it sounds like ass, but he clearly doesn't and he's better at music than me.
This will always be Kurt's tone for me:
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.......argh......the internet.....
I get that lots of you don't like his tone, and I suppose this thread is as good as any to tell us how much you hate it/him, but
I love Wes and Bernstein and Benson's and Hall and GG's tones and I am happy with my bebop tone. But I play lots of other kinds of improvised music too, and I like to have a wide palette of tones available to draw on.
I think taming the attack on the guitar is *the reason* why distortion has been used in 99% of all electric guitar playing for the last 75 years, even in jazz. The trouble with distortion is that although it makes possible a more horn like attack/sustain on single note, it doesn't sound good (to me) on chords, and the distortion itself is not always the tone I'm after. Rosenwinkel seems to have found a different solution, and since this forum has many knowledgeable
gearheads, I'm hoping to get some insight as to how he gets it.
Vladan is suggesting chaining a "slow attack pedal" like the Boss slow gear, or perhaps the Mooer slow engine, and then a compressor.
what settings? will this work with fast lines? will the chords still ring? How does one approximate what he gets in that video?
I want to be informed before I drop hundreds of dollars on pedals.
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Why not ask Kurt? There are contact email addresses etc. on his website.
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Well,for one there are analog and digital synths. What you take for synth, I call triggering system, where some sound module is triggered by guitar. Originally Posted by pkirk
Synths, afaic, are (to quote google):
"electronic musical instruments, producing variety of sounds by generating and combining signals of different frequencies."
I do not know what POG, or HOG is, but It sounds like it's using original guitar signal to generate additional signals (octaves and harmonics) and combine them in one new synthetized sound.
VladanMovies BlogSpot
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Yeah I’m not into it, but he’s clearly got an aesthetic he’s going for. (There you go I can suck all the actual opinions and visceral emotion out of anything I say to avoid controversy lol)
I don’t like raisins in scones either.
Anyway, give me the raging Kurt of the early 2000s with his use of dynamics and pick attack. Plenty of colours in there....
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Btw I quite like the EHX Synth 9 for modern lead sounds - that’s using POG tech?
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There are different ways to accomplish this. I use a compressor and noise gate to get a similar envelope to what KR gets; and it's part of 'my sound'. I've described it before in other threads.
If you want to explore this sort of thing, I think it's important to not think of these things as "effects" but instead as part of your instrument. You want to be able to play them, which means having in-the-moment control over their parameters. Example: Reverb is an effect. It's unresponsive. It colors everything you play exactly the same, all the time, and you have no "control" over it while you're playing. Stomping on most effect pedals acts the same way.
If you want to have something which lets you modify the attack and sustain characteristics of your guitar in the moment, it must be responsive. It should give you another control surface which should be controllable in the moment with your right hand, in the same way that picking differently gives you different tones. That way it becomes part of your instrument and you can then "play" it.
Some people set up their amps to get just a little bit of "hair" (overdrive) when they pick harder. This subtle change in tone isn't the same as just stomping on a distortion box (an "effect") because it is responsive to your right hand and is only there when you decide you want that. This is not an "effect" it's a device; as an element of expression it becomes part of their voice. Or vibrato; you can do it with a pedal (effect) or with your fingers (expression). Likewise muting the strings. Gretsch used to make guitars which had rubber mutes to mute the strings that you could switch on or off. That is an effect. Muting the strings with your palm isn't an effect, it's an expression; another "control surface" to facilitates expressiveness.
Yes, I belong to Explainers Anonymous...
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It' s been a while since I used Slow Gear. I do nit even remember which controls it had. Also, I never used the pedal, I have that FX in Boss SE70 Multi FX box (should be exactly the same) Anyway, I remember I was looking for a way to tame attack (Squier Tele ...) but without too much distortion and Slow Gear almost did it, except "fade ins" were too long. However, applying some (heavy? Is there any other?) compression, with apropriate attack time and mixing it with original signal made it work, so much that it remained my "go to" sound for a long time. It was not distortionless, though. Hard for me to believe, but It was more than 20 years ago. Phew! Originally Posted by pkirk
VladanMovies BlogSpot
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I think he's using either a Polyphonic Octave Generator, or Harmonic Octave Generator to kill the attack. POG2 by Electro-Harmonix has an attack adjustment which they say allows a swell effect. A bit of a guess, but maybe with the signal mostly 'dry' and no octaves the attack control still does something.
If I was more interested I'd try to scrub through that movie and freeze the part where he points at the pedals or picks one up or something. All you need is the make and the knowledge it's an octave generator of some sort and then check to see if it has an attack knob.
I would think the compressor wouldn't have a lot to do with his attack, which is the most distinctive part of this.
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check this out around 1:20
Far left slider is the 'dry' sound. With that up and the attack slider lower than where this guy starts I think you're most of the way there.
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Pkirk, the slow gear and the mooer clone etc etc. do not respond very well, id say quite poor actually to single line stuff unless you stick to quarter notes in dragging ballad tempo, the swells are way to slow.
kurts exact setup currently for the effect is a ehx pog 2 followed by a Joe meek floor q.
I dont think there are any cheap options that will get you even close.
Edit, regarding distortion, Kurt routes his rat thru a loop (Lehle parallel, gigrig wet box, xotic x blend etc) that splits his signal, dry signal passes 100% and the rat is mixed in as sub layer, its a wonderfull way to use effects like overdrive, works great with compressors too as you can color and or fatten up the sound yet still keep initial dynamics and articulation.Last edited by jazzmus; 11-09-2017 at 07:23 AM.
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The photo is not very good, but this was his pedalboard in a concert of May 2017
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11-13-2017, 01:17 AM #22Jkniff26 Guest
Seems like he changes a lot. From band to band and even day to day. There’s only a couple pedals i recognize on this one. Which band?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Originally Posted by Jkniff26
Bandit 65Last edited by carlescountry; 11-19-2017 at 01:24 PM.
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What it sounds like most to me is that he's found a way of mimicking the sound of the accordion.
Many years ago I got a similar but thicker "rubbery" sound out of a simple delay pedal; I remember it was blue and had a "wet/dry" balance knob. If I recall correctly, when the delay depth was set to maximum with period set to minimum (no delay) and the wet/dry set totally to wet, the sound had no attack... it sounded like Steve Howe's tone on the main themes of Topographical Oceans...
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I don't think what the audience wants has much do with it. Kurt has his own agenda. Originally Posted by kris
I do not like too many efects with beautifull sounding arch-top jazz box.
...but I think audience like different sounds.
Mind you Kurt could decide he wants to spend the rest of his career playing Banjo and his fan base would probably go with him on it.....
Nice situation to be in!
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