KRONOS MIDI GUITAR - AGAIN!!

[BobTheDog]

Nice one thanks, I will let you know how it goes....

[RonF]

YEAH MAN!!!

You'll need to write out your sequencing approach on this one. Was it all done in the KRONOS or did you use the computer?

Thanks jamsire!

Its really a pretty simple song. Has drums/percussion, bass, strings, rhythm guitar and lead guitar. Not so many tracks.

I recorded and sequenced everything in Logic Pro. But the rough outline of the rhythm section was originally built up on the Kronos sequencer. I then ported those basic sequences into logic to arrange and build up the melody and leads.

I started with the bass line, which caught my ear using a cool bass preset on Kronos (can't even remember which one now! lol). Then I built some rudimentary percussion around that, just on the Kronos keyboard, and that ended up sounding cool enough that I kept it intact, and ported that to Logic too. The strings are all done with two patches....a basic orchestral string patch with medium release (added a little reverb to thicken it up), and another patch with a short release and a fast LFO on the amp intensity to give the impression of a bow dancing on the strings rapidly. All those elements of bass, drums/percussion, and strings were sequenced, ultimately in Logic Pro.

As for the guitars....you have three elements.....the rhythm guitar, which is in the background. Its sequenced too, and is actually a clean Kronos guitar patch that I EQ'ed and added a distortion effect to. Then you have the repeating melodic lead part. Also sequenced, and there I tracked two or three passes in parts to add a harmony line. No quantization on any of the guitar tracks for a live feel.

Finally you have the four main free form guitar lead sections...that was the real challenge here. For this I created a combi on Kronos....in slot one is a distorted guitar lead patch, which I EQ'ed dropping a LOT of bottom end, and raising the mid range. In slot two I added a thick sine wave, slightly detuned to the slot one guitar patch, so as you blend the two together you get a phasing effect. Then, I controlled the volume of both slots with an expression pedal so I can bring it in and out...as the pedal goes up, the sine wave increases and the distorted guitar patch decreases in volume. At center, it phases as the two slots are blended. All the way up on the pedal, and its just the sine wave, which sounds like a harmonic on the guitar. So this level of expression added a lot to the lead sound, as I rode the pedal as I played the leads. You can hear sections in the leads where the phasing or the harmonics are prominent. Finally, I added a delay effect to the combi that I could turn on and off with a pedal switch.

Those free form leads are all recorded as *audio*....due to the rapid nature of the playing style...its too much data to sequence properly and keep the feel, with no artifacts. That also gave it a very live feel...far from a "perfect" performance. In a few sections I comped the lead from two tracks, taking the best of a few performance passes. One example of comping/overdubbing is adding some 'string noise', which is actually just judiciously placed open string taps. Put together it sounds like the player is jamming on the frets and accidentally but naturally hitting some low strings.

I think lastly I added some tubular bells as an accent, and ran the whole thing through an outboard compressor/eq to tighten it up.

It not the cleanest recording I've ever done...but the point of the experiment was to showcase the midi-guitar conversion with distorted lead tone.