Pedals and other tools by This1smyne

This1smyne makes signal routing pedals and other useful tools. Examples:

Mini Expression Pedal (with a big knob you turn with your foot):


Flip Flop - reverses the order of two pedals with a switch:


Pedals with extra switches for Eventide effects pedals:

Dr FREAKENSTEIN FUZZ (and Igor)

I like the design of this fuzz pedal, which has a stylized switch that you must reach down and throw, just like Dr. Frankenstein throwing the big switch to bring his monster to life. It comes with a little expression pad named "Igor". More info at Rainger FX's site.

TapCritic

As a new iPhone owner (got my 3GS recently), I'm on the lookout for iPhone app review sites and blogs. I found this one via a review of a storyboarding app that was posted elsehere.

TapCritic blog

Intua BeatMaker

BeatMaker is a music creation app for iPhone inspired by hardware beatboxes (such as the Akai MPC- series), loop samplers and software sequencers. Like the Akai MPC- series beatboxes, it is a sample-playing instrument designed for quick creation of beats, songs, and remixes.

Noise.io iPhone Synth

Noise.io was one of the first iPhone apps that I heard of that relied on realtime synthesis rather than sample playback for its sounds. I'm not sure how it compares with more recent iPhone softsynths such as Jasuto, SunVox, and bleep!Box, but I'll probably end up getting all of them eventually.

OHNOHO Pedals

OHNOHO makes a couple of unique effects pedals - the Chk Chk Boom and the Utter Stutter. From the website:

The CHK CHK BOOM works by feeding your effects loop input to it’s output. The amount of feedback is controlled by a pot with a real vintage chicken head knob.

The CHK CHK BOOM has a momentary switch so it’s only on when your foot is on it. This is a good thing because its perfect for short blasts of crazy noise mixed into other melodic content. It’s also great when you’re playing through a delay and you want the delay to swell and feedback with out bending down to twist a knob.

Like CHK CHK BOOM, Utter Stutter creates a timed feedback loop feeding your effects output to it’s input. What’s new here is you can set the oscillation rate of feedback like a tremolo pedal. This opens a whole world of possibilities to time your aural modulation to what ever tempo your working with.

Check out the site for more info and demo videos.

Cool Music Blog Alert - So Much Sound

So Much Sound is a new blog by NYC-based professional musician Sean Driscoll. I first became aware of this blog when Sean posted his transcription of Drew Zingg's solo over Steely Dan's classic "Peg". He's put up a lot of high quality info - mostly about jazz improvisation - in a short time already.

Expert Sleepers' Silent Way

Silent Way is a suite of plug-ins designed for use as part of a modular analogue synthesiser system. In other words, these plug-ins let your computer interact with your analog synths via any audio interface with DC-coupled outputs. Thus you can have your favorite DAW (eg. Digital Performer, Sonar, etc.) send control voltage to your analog synths. I'm sure there are other interesting applications

Silent Way sounds a lot like MOTU's Volta, except there's OSC support and a significant price difference.

Steel Guitar Black Box

The Steel Guitar Black Box is a true, audiophile quality, vacuum tube pickup driver (buffer/impedance matcher) especially designed for enhancing the tone of steel guitar pickups, yet has proven to be equally effective with acoustic instrument pickups, electric bass & guitar pickups, electronic keyboards and drum machines, and much more.

Keith Jarrett Interview at Jazz.com

In conversation with keith jarrett

I would say the 'cleverness' syndrome has taken the place of melody. It’s like everyone has come down with this terrible disease in jazz. First of all you are always expected to do your own material, which is a strange thing to do if you’re a poor composer but a great player. If you are a great player and luckily you know what great melody is about things can happen that can’t happen otherwise.

5 Sliding Content Techniques, Examples & jQuery How to’s

Excerpt:

The more intuitive layout structure is designed, the better users can understand the content. Whatever content you have to present, you can present them in a more interactive & more responsive ways.

Today we would like to focus on sliding effects and how i can change the structure of a page in a truly unique and creative way

5 Sliding Content Techniques, Examples & jQuery How to’s

Harmonic Capo

A normal guitar capo is designed to act like an extra finger, holding down the strings between frets at a spot on the fretboard that you select. A Harmonic Capo instead lightly touches the strings so that you get the harmonics when you pluck notes above it.

Here is a demo:



It's available at the Weaseltrap site.

Five Things That Will Kill Your Site

I've run into just about all the items listed. Archiving this Carsonified article for future reference.

Ampeg J-20 Guitar Amp Mods

The Ampeg J-20 Guitar Amp was recently blown out for $299 each, so I picked one up. The amp seems to be fine enough to me, based on what little playing I've done through it so far. Amp modifications (mods) are part of the tradition for amp enthusiasts, so in case anyone got a J-20 and is looking for ideas for mods, check out this thread on The Gear Page.

Korg M3 Instructional Videos on Youtube

I own a Korg M3, a synthesizer workstation. The difference between a synthesizer and a synth workstation is that the latter has features for writing an entire song, often with the capability to record samples. I confess I have yet to explore my M3's sequencer in earnest, as I'm used to simply recording audio into multi-track recorders. Still, it's great to see Korg post these instructional videos on using the sequencer. I don't know how many they intend to post, but here are the first two:

EHX HOG - Nice Freeze-Gliss demo

The Electro-Harmonix Harmonic Octave Generator (HOG) is a pitch-shifting effects pedal that can produce synthesizer-like sounds. It is one of the few pitch-shifting pedals that sound great with chords - most pedals of this type struggle when more than one note is played simultaneously. The HOG has several modes of operation. One that I admittedly do not use much is the Freeze-Gliss mode, because I found it a bit tricky to control. With the expression pedal all the way down, the HOG will "freeze" whatever is being played. After the expression pedal is raised, the HOG will "slide" from the frozen notes to the currently played notes, at a rate determined by the current position of the expression pedal.

Harmony Central forumite "Loobs" does a nice demo of the HOG's Freeze-Gliss mode here:



Loobs said the Spectral Gate toggle was on, and the expression pedal was set half-way.

Lokua Kanza

Lokua Kanza (born April 1958) is a singer, songwriter, and composer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is known for his soulful, folksy sound, which is atypical of the dancefloor friendly soukous music that is common in the Congo.