I thought I might give an account of my recent guitar-related activities.
Pocket Master
As foreshadowed, I set to work on getting to know my Pocket Master (PM) a bit better. While there are several factory presets that I rather like, I thought it was high time I started to learn how to create my own, and get some experience of shaping sounds to my taste - rather than tweaking pre-existing ones.
I plugged the PM in between my guitar and audio interface, then selected a factory-provided program I didn’t much care for and switched off all the elements of the signal chain. I also made sure that no plug-ins were active in my DAW (Cakewalk). Unsurprisingly, this resulted in silence. First, I chose an amp and cab that I liked; this just happened to be a model of the Vox AC30 (hand-wired) top-boost channel. To that I added a Marshall 4x12 cabinet with green-back Celestion speakers. It seems slightly odd that an AC30 needs a cabinet, but who am I to argue? With just these two elements, I had a pretty satisfying basic sound, so I played around a bit before moving on.
I am of the persuasion that amplified instruments nearly always require some reverb, just to add that touch of ambient room acoustics that they tend otherwise to totally overwhelm. The ‘dream’ reverb setting was the one I liked the best, though I have minor reservations that it overdoes things a little - it’s rather lush. I may alter it in time. Again, this was a fun sound, so I played around some more before going further.
In my occasional attempts to sound like David Gilmour, I’ve found that delay is crucial, so that was the next enhancement. I chose a model called Mag, which is apparently an emulation of a solid-state tape echo. That seems like a contradiction in terms to me, but again I defer to the sound designers at Sonicake. The results are great.
Finally, I inserted a chorus effect between the guitar and amp. According to the manual, this is ‘Based on the legendary Arion® SCH-1 Stereo Chorus* pedal’. I’d never heard of it, but I’ve since learnt that it dates from the 1980s and is indeed legendary.
I found that for most of the parameters, of which elements generally have four or five, something near the middle of the range suits me fine. I tried raising and lowering every single one, but in the end didn’t change anything very much. This was just a good way to see what the changes did, and relearning that extremes tend to be unsatisfying.
And for now, that’s that. I really like what I’ve created. I probably need to change its name (I called it Learner) as I think I’ll be keeping it.
What does it sound like? Think of the deep twang of Gilmour playing the E string during the introduction to ‘Time’. He plays long sustained notes of E F# E F# E and then does a couple of little chromatic runs up to F#. I must have played the song over a dozen times a day, just to hear that sound coming out of my own guitar.
Songs and playing style
Nothing new has found its way into my repertoire. I still use these songs for picking practice:
- Maggot Brain
- I’m on Fire
- Don’t Fear the Reaper
- Greensleeves
- Heaven
I’m still trying to get smoother at combining bits of Richard Lloyd’s part in ‘Marquee Moon’. And I’m still doing the two-octave scales in thirds, in both G and C, as advised in Justin’s grade 4, part 7. There are small improvements in both cases.
Post Script
I forgot to mention that in my first experiments with the PM I was battling with persistent hiss and an intermittent pulse. "That’s what you get for buying cheap equipment’ I told myself. But the source of the unwanted noise turned out to be my rather antiquated guitar cables. Yes, I know that no one in their right mind would use guitar cables they bought back in 1980 or thereabouts, but I never pretended to be in my right mind. I’ll be replacing them.
PPS
When auditioning my sound I chose to use the middle Strat pickup, figuring that I could then adjust it in both directions.
I’m still amazed by your dedication to ear training!!
