Guitar Rig

[Tormod]

Duh...now I feel stupid. Don't have a single one of his records. I thought fusion was coined by Miles Davis in the 50s...oh well.

Impressive discography. I've heard lots of the other musicians he's played with so I must have heard him some time, too...

Tormod

[Freethinker]

Although I have not heard all of his stuff, if his personal opinion is reflected by his play list while touring, the two "must have" CD's wouyld be "Street Noise" (with Julie Driscol, you ahve got to hear her vocal capabilties to appreciate how incredible her talent is, and his daughter did a fair job of duplicating it) and "Closer to it". His version of "Compared to what?", a classic and great basis for comparison, is an absolute killer! Just the thought of it sends shivers....

Yet he is almost obscure at this point. When I saw him it was in a small local club and there were less than 50 people there. Though I hear he does far better in Europe.

I remember when I saw he was coming to town. I wanted to go. I needed to play some of his stuff to my Lady so she would be interested in going. All I had was Vinyl with no functional ttble at the time. So I tried Winmx, no luck! Not a single song anywhere! His stuff did not exist out there! Incredible that the person that invented Fusion was no-existant! She had to just accept my recommendation. She was blown away!

Amazing how some incredible talents just never make the big time!

[Tormod]

Originally posted by: Freethinker
Amazing how some incredible talents just never make the big time!

Yeah, yeah, are you trying to prove your functional limits theory now?



Tormod

[IrishEyes]

My musical tastes lean towards Blues/ Rock. Some Jazz mainly fusion. And early rock, Stones, Hendrix, Van Morrison, Hollies, CSN, Allman Bros, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, ...

I don't know that I would have ever guessed this about you FreeT... Just another of the many things we have in common. On the only other site i've ever posted to regularly, my nic was "moondancer".

I actually considered trying to plan the HC around the dates of a European Van concert, but wasn't sure if anyone else would be even mildly interested. He sings my all time favorite song, as well as about 4 others on my Top10 list... I'm just a VanFan!

[Tormod]

"HC"?

[IrishEyes]

"HC"?

uhhhhhh....Hypography Convention

sorry, i'm up way past my bed time today. my fingers are either lazy or tired right now. "HC" does sound kinda catchy though, don't you think?

[Tormod]

Aaaaaah. Good idea, though. Van's the Man.

[IrishEyes]

Van's the Man.

Truer words were never spoken! It's actually a sort of game I play with Mr. Irish on a fairly regular basis... I'll check out "Van's Diary" for new tour dates, then beg him to take me to some place exotic. I almost had him last year with an Italian concert, but it was over a weekend we had already committed to being somewhere else fo, too bad!!

Of course, if you guys are willing to help me with my little project, the HC could be enjoyable on a much deeper level for me - we'll just plan it in a fabulous city that happens to be having a Van concert that week. Maybe it'll even be Italy or Greece!

Ahh, lest some goofy moderator or site editor step in and remind me how far off topic I've strayed...

the guitar rig thing sounds really awesome. are there similar tools available for other musical instruments?

[Tormod]

Originally posted by: IrishEyes
the guitar rig thing sounds really awesome. are there similar tools available for other musical instruments?

Basically, the entire music industry is being computerized these days. There are sequencers (multi-track recorders), affordable semi-pro sound cards, USB mixer decks, firewire audio cards, MIDI keyboards for computer use, virtual studio instruments and so on and so on...

But of course the only difference between this and previous synthesizers and mixers is that everything requires a PC. The Guitar Rig is in fact not an entirely new concept. I already own something called GuitarPort, which lets me connect my guitar to the PC without an amp, and a software runs on the PC to simulate different amps, mics, tones etc.

So if you play piano, any decent MIDI keyboard would open up an entirely new world! And there are a lot of free and cheap stuff for amateurs like myself.

For other instruments all you need is a microphone and a MIDI converter...

For me, virtual studio technology is lots of fun and it is amazing what you can with a laptop and a decent soundcard (and some software, obviously).

[Tormod]

...and I should add that a lot of stuff runs on both PC and Mac, and the Linux community is also making sure that good software is popping up there as well.