Adventures In Technology

In these technological times, we tend to take things for granted; cell phones, DVDs, home computers... None of these things were available to the Byrds or the Beatles back in the day. But one thing remains the same, music technology marches on. How *did* the first pianos get built? How *did* Stradivarius make violins? Jimi Hendrix was a continuous customer of Manny's and all the other W.48th Street, NYC music stores, snapping up all the latest gadgets. Musicians today are no different, though the tools are far more numerous, sophisticated, and powerful than in Jimi's day. So I thought that I'd let all of you in on my latest technological adventures.

One thing that bothers me about playing in a band that has only three members is the fact that my musical tastes require four or more people to make prog that I find interesting. The extra person increases the sound palette in terms of tonal texture and increases the complexity possible in the basic compositional elements. For our new album Meld as with our EP A Man's Reach..., Karl, Greg, and I were not at all shy about overdubbing extra parts. But now it's time to play this music in concert. Well, if you're expecting to hear the CD in concert, it's impossible! We've had to translate our recorded music into something a three piece outfit can perform. From a musician's point of view, this is a fun, yet challenging process. I hope that audiences will enjoy the final results.

Still, I'd like to maintain as much of the feel of the recordings as is humanly possible... and technology comes to the rescue! In Pinnacle's previous shows, I've mostly played bass straight into the bass amp. I used to use a Line6 Bass Pod on occasion but switching patches by hand was far too risky when both hands need to be dedicated to bass playing. For echo effects, I once used an Akai Headrush. That was cool because I can use tap tempo to set up the proper delay time. But that's an extra box to think about while playing. Now, I'm using a Yamaha MagicStomp. When the MagicStompII was released, there was a store dumping the original MagicStomp for cheap and I grabbed one. (With hind sight, I should have grabbed two. This box is fantastic!) Although it's an electric guitar effects unit, it works fine on my bass.

But wait! That's not all... I also play Moog Taurus II synth pedals. Mostly, these are used for bass lines but I sometimes use them for melodic lines, too. In the trade, Taurus II pedals are nowhere near as coveted as the original Taurus pedals. There's some kind of extra beefy mystique to them that was lost when the Taurus II pedals were given an entirely different synth engine. To beef up my pedals, I've taken to running them through a Peavey Kosmos, a subharmonic generator. If this doesn't shake the rafters, nothing will! I'm considering grabbing an effects processor to add to the signal flow for when I'm playing a higher pitched melodic line, too. After all, it's just one more thing to plug in...

But wait! That's not all... There are times on Meld when Karl overdubbed a guitar line that was exactly the same as the bass line I was playing. (Poor Karl. He had to figure out what notes I was playing by himself in order to surprise me and Greg at the following recording session!) This is something that we can do live... but not always. After all, Karl has other guitar parts to play, too. To simulate this, I've added a Digitech Whammy and a Digitech RP-100 effects pedal. I use the Whammy to pitch shift my bass up one octave into the range where a guitar is playing. Then I process this pitch shifted sound with the RP-100 as if the signal had come from an electric guitar. Viola! Bass and guitar are playing the same line in octaves without Karl, leaving him free to fly off on one of his fabulous solos!

How is all of this hooked together? The bass plugs into the Whammy. The Whammy's effect output goes to the RP-100 and from there to an on/off switch so that the PA or guitar amp gets the "guitar" part on demand instead of all the time. The Whammy also has an uneffected (dry) output. This goes to the MagicStomp and from there, on to the bass amp. Simple! Yes?

Bill