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Recorded live at the Virigina Harmonicafest on March 18 2011. A little grainy in both sound and image, but a good performance overall. I’m using a Fireball V mic with a Digitech RP255; the RP255 is set up to do a short slapback delay plus a medium hall reverb.
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I played my second solo electric show, and the first using prerecorded loops on the looper, at the Virginia Harmonicafest last night. It was also my first live show with my new amped setup, which includes three Digitech RPs, two in parallel, one at the end of the FX chain.
It was a good show, though it felt tough to me. I had some gear problems from the start–at one point the rig just started howling, and I still don’t know why. But I video and audio recorded the show, and the tape don’t lie–it looked and sounded good. I’ll be doing more of this.
Richard Hunter at Va Harmonicafest 18 March 2011
I spent a fair amount of time getting my setups ready for this gig. Two hours before the show, I took each RP device and loaded the patches required for the songs in my setlist into each device, with the patches renamed for the songs, loaded in reverse order from the back of the user patch area to the front. In other words, all I had to do to line up the patches for the next song in the set was step down to the next patch in each RP.
Some of the electric songs were tricky to handle in performance. But the overall sound was very cool. Especially cool were the single RP setups I used for some of the acoustic solo material–basically patches with reverb or delay or both. I dialed in some great long reverbs and delays for the slow solo pieces, and some nice slapback delays and short reverbs for the fast ones.
Singing "It Takes a Lot to Laugh"
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Chris and me on harmonicas, Brendan doing a lot of percussion. There’s some great stuff in here, but Chris and me could not stay connected on the grooves–I think that’s why Brendan started doing the beatboxing thing. Brendan and I had two interesting things happening in the first 30 seconds, one of which is the very opening, and the other Brendan’s autowah lead over a chunky rhythm from me close to 30 seconds in. I couldn’t follow Chris much of the time–at one point I stopped playing completely so I could try to hear his groove. I couldn’t. That said, each of us had some interesting things to say. Did I mention that there’s some great stuff in here? The RP350 sounds cut through pretty well on this stuff. I really like the big lead lines I played with a low octave double patch at about 54 seconds in, that’s a big noise that makes for a big groove, and the wavy chorused sounds at the beginning are nice too. See the other Video of the day for today for more on this event and the second part of the jam.
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This recording took place at a seminar on effects that I did for SPAH at Sacramento in 2009; Chris Michalek was a late addition to the official program, and Brendan just showed up. I was glad to see Brendan. I got upset with Chris after this show, for reasons I describe below.
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I had an idea for a song last week, something slow and heavy, inspired in part by Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced”. I put a drum track, synth drone, and bass together quickly, then recorded a few harp parts over it. I still need to do the vocals and a solo, not to mention a final mix and mastering, but I’m excited by the sound of this thing already, so I’m putting a little taste out there for your listening pleasure.
Read more
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I’ve put a few new ringtones up on my site on the downloads page. Scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the Ringtones section. At the top of that section, you’ll see “3 harp slide,” “3 harp stroll”, and “Dual Electro Harp Leads”. Check ‘em out. Buy ‘em if you like.
These pieces were all recorded first as loops in my Digitech JamMan Solo looper, which I find to be an absolutely awesome tool for quickly developing grooves. Once I had the grooves down, I transferred the loops to my computer, where I either mastered them as is (“3 harp stroll”) or re-created the grooves with drums (and sampled bass guitar in the case of the Dual Electro Harp piece).
I’m particularly interested right now in developing layers of sounds with the Digitech RP355, and all of these pieces have multiple layers of harmonica. For these pieces, I used an amped blues harp patch based on a Blackface Deluxe Reverb amp model; a double-low-octave patch that I call “Tuba,” for reasons that will be obvious when you hear it; a rotary speaker effect patch with a Bassman amp model; an auto-wah patch based on a Matchless amp model; and my freaky favorite, a patch that uses the RP355′s LFO (low frequency oscillator) feature to overlay the main sound (based on a Blackface Deluxe Reverb amp model) with a second voice that shifts rapidly between an octave down and a fifth up.
I’ll be distributing the Tuba patch to my patch set licensees soon, along with a few new patches for RP350 and RP355 users only. (Sorry, the 250 and 255 just don’t have all the models and effects involved.) Stay tuned for those and for more ringtones.
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I’ve started making ringtones out of some of my recent pieces, including my 30-second blues explosion “The Ripper”, as well as some less aggressive (still harp-saturated) pieces.
You can hear them all (and buy one for yourself or someone else, if you like) right here at this site. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the ringtones.
My favorites is the “The Ripper”, 30 seconds of high-intensity blues–heavy amped harp over a big rhythm section, fast and loud. The harp was recorded with a Shure 545 SD mic into a Digitech RP250, and I deeply regret to say that I have no idea at all what patch setup I used on the RP. (Wish I did, ’cause I’d sure like to use it again.) I think it’s worth hearing just for a taste of what the RP can do for a big amped sound.
And it sure stands out in a crowd when your phone rings.
Enjoy!
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New solo acoustic pieces to hear and buy, new solo electric stuff to hear and download–the hits just keep on comin’!
Check it all out on our downloads page.
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As people who’ve been visiting this site regularly know, I’ve been working on some heavy metal sounds for harp, sometimes using multiple Digitech RP devices running in series and/or parallel. I made a couple of brief recordings that show where the new sounds are going.
Heavy Metal 1 is a multi-pedal patch. The RP355 is running a patch that includes an Octavia distortion model and a low octave double. That sound is processed by an RP255 running nothing but a wide vibrato effect, with the footpedal set to control vibrato speed.
Heavy Metal 2 features a similar patch on the RP355. I’m working the pitch shifter via the expression pedal, moving the doubled tone between two octaves down and an octave down. I don’t hear myself doing anything on the RP255–which makes sense, because I can only work one pedal at a time.
I like the way that tongued rhythms wind up sounding like strumming on muted guitar strings with these patches. I like these big distorted tones. I’ll be providing these patches to my customers soon. Stay tuned for more radical sounds.
