I owned the original Helix Floor and loved it. That thing could conjure tones that made my ears genuinely happy. The amp models were solid, the effects library was extensive, and the workflow made sense once you wrapped your head around it. But there was always this nagging limitation that drove me absolutely nuts: DSP. The Helix Floor is incredibly DSP limited, and if you’re someone like me who loves pitch effects, you learned to compromise pretty quickly.
I’ve been using automatic guitar tuners for years now. The concept is simple: you place the device on a tuning peg, pluck the string, and the motorised tuner detects the pitch through vibration and rotates the peg until you’re in tune. No pedals, no cables, no staring at a screen while you turn the peg yourself. It should be the fastest way to tune a guitar, especially when you’re constantly switching between tunings.
If you’re like me, when you play a song in different tunings (especially ridiculously low tunings), you can’t always go as low as you can because of string gauge or scale limitations. I play a lot of low-tuned stuff, especially thall, and those tunings are crazy.
Whenever I tune down, sometimes I’ll have a guitar that is, say, in Drop D or Drop C tuning. Instead of messing with my intonation, I’ll use a pitch shifter to tune down instead. Pitch shifters like the Digitech Drop (an awesome polyphonic drop pedal) allow you to go down a whole octave.
I saw my favourite band, Thrice, recently at their Brisbane show, and unlike other Australian tours, they did a VIP thing where you could pay extra to meet the band, a Q&A, and a couple of songs.
Naturally, one of the questions that came up at the Q&A (presumably at all of their VIP meet and greets) is the subject of Horizons/West, the long-awaited sister record to Horizons/East, released in 2021.
Neural DSP are hosting one heck of a Black Friday (like years prior) where all of their plugins are 50% off. There is a lot of overlap between their Archetype plugins especially, so what should you buy if you can’t afford them all?
TL;DR buy the Gojira, Henson and Fortin Cali plugins (if you can afford all of them). Can only afford one? The Fortin Cali is a solid purchase.
I made the switch to amp modelling years ago. For such a long time, I had been an avid user of physical amp modellers. A few years ago, software amp modelling also started to catch up.
It’s a head trip to think that there are up and coming guitarists out there who have probably never owned a physical amplifier and been purely modelling—never knowing the pain of connecting your pedals, identifying a bad cable in your signal chain and working out how to not only power everything but neatly run the cables.
It’s official. Thrice have announced their new album titled Horizons/East is dropping digitally on September 17, 2021. The physical version isn’t releasing until October 8, 2021.
It’s a 10 song record that the band produced and recorded themselves. If you are a fan of their older stuff from Major/Minor or Alchemy Index, you would know the band produce some of their best work when they do it themselves.
What makes the LP release more interesting is the LP releases come with chromadepth glasses offering a 3D viewing experience including assets the band say they’ll provide on social media.
The saving of 2021 is upon us. Riley Breckenridge (the drummer of Thrice) posted a shot of a studio setup with some amps, a drum kit and a few other bits and pieces. The drum kit is also mic’d up.
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A post shared by Riley Breckenridge (@rileybreck)
While Riley may be working on non-Thrice related music, we know Thrice have been writing an album for over a year now (since late 2019 and throughout 2020). It seems plausible Riley is laying down some drums; Dustin shared some demo stuff a little while ago.
Palms was released in 2018 and Thrice fans have been eagerly awaiting news of a follow-up album. Obviously, in between the release the world has completely gone down the drain with the pandemic and the political situation in the US being so volatile.
In a recent Tweet by frontman Dustin Kensrue, he showed work being done on some Thrice demos
The work continueth… pic.twitter.com/Oq3EWLmJGl
— Dustin Kensrue (@dustinkensrue) January 5, 2021
We know Dustin is working on new Thrice material because someone asked in a reply and he responded in the most Dustin way possible with a Schitt’s Creek gif referencing the word Thrice.
I have gone down the path of streaming my drum playing as I learn to become a better drummer. There are a few ways you can stream with audio, but here is how I do it.
While the title specifically references Roland, this guide will work for any electronic drum kit, whether it be Alesis or some other brand. You just need the ability to pass the sound out of your kit. You either use dedicated outputs or a nifty trick using the headphone output.