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| Feature: |
April
2004
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| Digital
Modeling, Facts and Fiction by
Joe Bigham |
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The benefit
for guitar arrived in the form of Roland's VG-8 guitar system.
The system required a special pickup that processed each string
individually. Rather than give guitarists carte blanch in
terms of tone, Roland simplified their models to commonly
used guitars, amplifiers, and speaker cabinets. This allowed
a guitar to switch from sounding like a Telecaster through
a Blackfaced Twin, to a roaring Les Paul through a Mesa-Boogie
stack with the press of a button. In addition, because each
string was processed individually, any manner of tunings could
be simulated at the touch of a button. Still cost was prohibitive
at $2000 and required the specialized pickup. Line 6 solved
these issue with the "POD" By eliminating the tuning
features and guitar modeling, the price was cut down to a
quarter of what was previously available. The POD quickly
became a staple in studios and stages as it allowed electric
guitarists to switch amplifier tones quickly with no backbreaking
amps to haul.
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Roland's
VG-8 guitar system |
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With the advent of the POD, digitally modeling became a hot
buzzword in the music industry, and of course slowly changed
the definition of modeling. Modeling became less about creating
a sound from scratch, but more about complex filtering. A
guitar signal is converted into digital form (0's and 1's),
and then manipulated by various filtering algorythms, and
then converted back to analog form to make an electric guitar
sound like a Gibson Jumbo for instance. Thus we are at the
same place we were when this story began, taking a signal
and processing the sound to get an approximation of another
instrument. That's not to say it hasn't worked out for the
better, however.
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Acoustic guitarists have only recently reaped the benefits from
this new style of filtering. Roland's previously mentioned VG-8
system, and the next generation VG-88, allowed guitarists to
turn their electric into a nylon guitar, a capoed 12 string
guitar, or any acoustic instrument. Yamaha broke ground with
its AG Stomp box, that let an acoustic guitar filter their pickup
sound to resemble any number of acoustic guitars. Fishman's
recently introduced Aura achieves great results by filtering
a pickup sound to get closer to the "mic'd" sound
without using a mic. Probably the most unusual is Line 6's new
"acoustic modeling guitar": a specially designed guitar
that approximates the sound of a dobro, banjo, sitar, or even
a vintage Martin. |
Fishman's
Aura
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So where does this all leave us today? A guitarist can take
one instrument to a gig, and achieve a plethora of sounds that
would require tens of thousands of dollars to achieve naturally.
A guitarist can record a whole album by plugging directly into
a computer, and then manipulating their recorded tone to get
the right sound for a track. Do they sound like the real thing?
For most casual listeners, yes. But for musicians who sweat
hours to achieve the perfect tone, they will fall short of the
real thing. So don't sell your favorite acoustic, condenser
mics, or even you mediocre banjo, in the hopes of digital modeling
providing all the tools you'll want. Use your ears, and you
will know if you are hearing the sound of inspiration. |
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