Tweet
Since the Axe-FX has been a hot topic around here lately, I thought I would share my experience of creating my first patch completely with the official editor for it. I normally don't mess too much with whacky effects but different sounds can be very inspiring. Here's my tale.
I just finished a first pass my patch made completely with Axe-Edit and since I had so much making it, I thought I might share a little background on how I created in the hopes that others can learn from my experiences. Overall I spent about 3 hours on it and Axe-Edit made it so easy to try out various routing combos and controller assignments. Without the editor, this would have driven me MAD!
While I was putting together my banks today, I was listening to/watching "It Might Get Loud" (every guitar player should see this BTW). When I finally got around to playing, I started messing with Axe-Edit and decided to mess around with a patch I made for chicken pickin' with my Tele. I started moving blocks around to set up parallel routing and ended up messing with the Rotary block and control the rate with an LFO. One thing led to another and I started to think of Led Zep and decided to create a new patch based around the Rotary block.
Anyway, I knew I wanted a Jimmy Page tone for the regular guitar sound but I didn't want the heavy LP + Marshall sound especially since I was playing my Tele at the time.
That led me to playing around with the Vox sim a bit but that didn't sound quite right so I changed to the Matchless which worked out much better.
Anyway, enough of my yakking. Here's the skinny on the patch.
This patch basically has 2 states:
#1 Mildy Distorted Rock Tone (the Brian May-ish tone)
#2 Rotary block with a nasally (telephone) Filter block to make it sound lo-fi.
Here's what those states look like in the editor:
To toggle between these (2) states I would set up one controller like this:
Ext#1
- Bypass the Cab block which will mute the regular amp signal.
- Bypass the Drive block to clean up the guitar tone.
- Engage both Compressor blocks to allow the Rotary sim and it's accompanying Delay block so their signals will pass to the outputs.
I also had a lot of fun assigning LFOs to various parameters along the way but I finally settled on assigning LFO 1 to the balance of the Rotary block so its signal sweeps back and forth across the stereo field at the rate of a 1/4 note. To tie into the panning balance, I set the Rotary block's rate to a 1/16 note.
Finally, the last thing I did was add a ducked Dual Delay off the Rotary block signal path so when I play the last chord of the riff this patch inspired, I get right around 3 repeats that bounce from left to right and back to left. The first repeat is an 1/8th note, the second is an dotted 1/8th note and the last is another 1/8th note from the left channel of the Dual Delay.
One thing I did a lot while making this patch was I copied effects blocks and moved them to blank blocks. This allowed me to save the work I had done a block in case the new thing I didn't like the new thing I put in its place.
IMHO, this patch needs another pass but I'm hitting the hay after this post is made. For next iteration, here's what I have in mind:
1) Try and get the main distorted guitar sound a little clearer but not too thin. I think I'm looking for a tone somewhere between a Marshall Plexi and a Matchless. I might try throwing in another Amp block if I have the CPU power to spare (I'm glad I bought the Ultra). I will probably try playing with cab and mic combo first because that's a quick way to radically shape the amp's tone.
2) Try taking out the Compressor block after the Rotary's Dual Delay block because I don't think I need it any more. I was mess with some crazy high feedback settings on the Delay block so I added a compressor to keep that path's level under control.
If you want to check out this patch, you can find it on the Axe-Chagnge in Bank I slot #1087.
Last but not least, this patch was built around a Tele with Barden pickups which I loud and bright pickups, especially the bridge. Consider this if you decide to try the patch with your guitar. If you've read through this whole post, you'll understand why I named the patch Rotary Tele-Phone.
I just finished a first pass my patch made completely with Axe-Edit and since I had so much making it, I thought I might share a little background on how I created in the hopes that others can learn from my experiences. Overall I spent about 3 hours on it and Axe-Edit made it so easy to try out various routing combos and controller assignments. Without the editor, this would have driven me MAD!
While I was putting together my banks today, I was listening to/watching "It Might Get Loud" (every guitar player should see this BTW). When I finally got around to playing, I started messing with Axe-Edit and decided to mess around with a patch I made for chicken pickin' with my Tele. I started moving blocks around to set up parallel routing and ended up messing with the Rotary block and control the rate with an LFO. One thing led to another and I started to think of Led Zep and decided to create a new patch based around the Rotary block.
Anyway, I knew I wanted a Jimmy Page tone for the regular guitar sound but I didn't want the heavy LP + Marshall sound especially since I was playing my Tele at the time.
That led me to playing around with the Vox sim a bit but that didn't sound quite right so I changed to the Matchless which worked out much better. Anyway, enough of my yakking. Here's the skinny on the patch.
This patch basically has 2 states:
#1 Mildy Distorted Rock Tone (the Brian May-ish tone)
#2 Rotary block with a nasally (telephone) Filter block to make it sound lo-fi.
Here's what those states look like in the editor:
To toggle between these (2) states I would set up one controller like this:
Ext#1
- Bypass the Cab block which will mute the regular amp signal.
- Bypass the Drive block to clean up the guitar tone.
- Engage both Compressor blocks to allow the Rotary sim and it's accompanying Delay block so their signals will pass to the outputs.
I also had a lot of fun assigning LFOs to various parameters along the way but I finally settled on assigning LFO 1 to the balance of the Rotary block so its signal sweeps back and forth across the stereo field at the rate of a 1/4 note. To tie into the panning balance, I set the Rotary block's rate to a 1/16 note.
Finally, the last thing I did was add a ducked Dual Delay off the Rotary block signal path so when I play the last chord of the riff this patch inspired, I get right around 3 repeats that bounce from left to right and back to left. The first repeat is an 1/8th note, the second is an dotted 1/8th note and the last is another 1/8th note from the left channel of the Dual Delay.
One thing I did a lot while making this patch was I copied effects blocks and moved them to blank blocks. This allowed me to save the work I had done a block in case the new thing I didn't like the new thing I put in its place.
IMHO, this patch needs another pass but I'm hitting the hay after this post is made. For next iteration, here's what I have in mind:
1) Try and get the main distorted guitar sound a little clearer but not too thin. I think I'm looking for a tone somewhere between a Marshall Plexi and a Matchless. I might try throwing in another Amp block if I have the CPU power to spare (I'm glad I bought the Ultra). I will probably try playing with cab and mic combo first because that's a quick way to radically shape the amp's tone.
2) Try taking out the Compressor block after the Rotary's Dual Delay block because I don't think I need it any more. I was mess with some crazy high feedback settings on the Delay block so I added a compressor to keep that path's level under control.
If you want to check out this patch, you can find it on the Axe-Chagnge in Bank I slot #1087.
Last but not least, this patch was built around a Tele with Barden pickups which I loud and bright pickups, especially the bridge. Consider this if you decide to try the patch with your guitar. If you've read through this whole post, you'll understand why I named the patch Rotary Tele-Phone.
Comment