New concepts for effect pedals?

[CBGB]

There are plenty of examples where the new instruments/effects have driven the sound and style of music: synthesisers, fuzz, etc.

I agree that plenty of people are obsessed with 60s sounds but, well, 1) the sounds were very very good, and 2) there was a lot of new things happening. The rate of experimentation in popular music has diminished with every decade since.

I have no problem with classic tones, they need to be there. It just seems like the range of stuff on offer to guitarists is limited and we're waiting for a new explosion of ideas/sounds.

[less_cunning]

Still, there are a lot of people obsessed with '50's and '60's tones (pretty much everyone plays a guitar/amp/pedal that was conceived originally at that time). Because rock music is so obsessed with that period (though honestly I'm not sure why), anything you make that you call "vintage" or "60's" will probably sell a lot better than a "fad" effect. So, you'd think someone would take the plunge and try to sort that out. If it were a double pedal format, the price could probably be set fairly high. After R&D, I think you would have a winner..

but how does that like explain punk, new wave, grunge, thrash, metal, indie et cetera... you can still be "obsessed" w/ those ideas but still make interesting music or come up w/ new ideas based on that particular rock fundament?

i am thinking more in terms of like Radiohead or something. using rock to achieve something else. or using "something else" to achieve rock & roll.

kind of hard to explain it. but you know. just something different...

[Scruffie]

This has promted me to design an Totally absurd pedal that begins the next Music Revelation...

Any ideas of what it should do or sound like (nothing that i'm gunna have to go digital with)

[royaltrux]

Rock music...

[my bloody television]

would it be possible to make a pedal that turned the guitars signal into a very simple sine wave or square wave or triangle wave, and then the ability to have it randomly generate/change the waveform? that would be cRaZy

[Scruffie]

Yes... yes it would be possible... just an LFO going into an Square wave shaper could make some cool kinda synthy tones with glitchiness. Sine wave is less easy, infact if I could turn the guitar into a perfect sine wave i'd be rich and Octave effects would be far easier.

[Nychthemeron]

would it be possible to make a pedal that turned the guitars signal into a very simple sine wave or square wave or triangle wave, and then the ability to have it randomly generate/change the waveform? that would be cRaZy

Some kind of crazy oscilloscope? That'd be pretty awesome.

[SirBlend12]

I have something I'm working on that seems... just crazy enough. At least for the idea of something that nobody has seen before. I don't even know what the end result will be (er... what it will "sound" like).

Just hope I can find small enough fans...

i'm your fan

Haha. Thanks. I'm just waiting to get a few things done before I show anyone anything.

Oh, and when I said fans, I literally meant motorized blades that create airflow Crazy enough?

[CBGB]

This has promted me to design an Totally absurd pedal that begins the next Music Revelation...

Any ideas of what it should do or sound like (nothing that i'm gunna have to go digital with)

That's what I'm talking about!

Ideas? Ha, well that's the hard part...

...things that give you control over the sustained guitar sound, to alter pitch and volume, to take it away from the sound of the pick

...other ways to control guitar sounds (DE joysticks; the optical control of the EOG or the Moody Sounds Mushroom Echo; the volume knob on oscillating fuzzes)

...is a primitive analog harmoniser possible?

[Roseweave]

I think the thing is it's hard to conceptualise any "new" effects. You have volume effects, pitch shift effects, modulation effects, and filter effects, and flanger/phaser are really just filter effects in of themselves(comb filters). Short of trying out new kinds of filters, which generally just has the effect of making things sound "synthy", I dunno what you can do.

I think someone needs to invent new kinds of distortions. I really like the noise the Soda Meiser makes on powerchords. It's like a disgruntled but more musically pleasant scrambling, not something I've really heard before. Most distortion pedals just try to emulate amp sounds so we don't tend to get anywhere like that. I can't think of any distortion pedal that reallyt excites me at the moment that isn't basically at the end of the day an amp in a box. My Turbo RAT is kinda nice to use with SS amps but sounds like a JCM800 run through most tube amps/modelers.

I think with DSP you don't have to rely on conventional filters and shit and can do a lot more. Though it might still be possible to model circuits that can emulate it, I think the future for effects might be in digital. After all you can code any number of random ass algorithms on how to alter the sound. The problem is getting to sound in any way transparent so you're not just basically playing a synth effect.

[less_cunning]

[Scruffie]

I think the thing is it's hard to conceptualise any "new" effects. You have volume effects, pitch shift effects, modulation effects, and filter effects, and flanger/phaser are really just filter effects in of themselves(comb filters). Short of trying out new kinds of filters, which generally just has the effect of making things sound "synthy", I dunno what you can do.

I think someone needs to invent new kinds of distortions. I really like the noise the Soda Meiser makes on powerchords. It's like a disgruntled but more musically pleasant scrambling, not something I've really heard before. Most distortion pedals just try to emulate amp sounds so we don't tend to get anywhere like that. I can't think of any distortion pedal that reallyt excites me at the moment that isn't basically at the end of the day an amp in a box. My Turbo RAT is kinda nice to use with SS amps but sounds like a JCM800 run through most tube amps/modelers.

I think with DSP you don't have to rely on conventional filters and shit and can do a lot more. Though it might still be possible to model circuits that can emulate it, I think the future for effects might be in digital. After all you can code any number of random ass algorithms on how to alter the sound. The problem is getting to sound in any way transparent so you're not just basically playing a synth effect.

Yeah that's all pretty much true... but i'm gunna give it a go anyway! Make something weird...

New distortion would be cool, but there's only so much you can do with it and it all ends up happening the same sorta ways... Mid-Fi have some good ideas and weird designs, maybe I could try some kind of PT2339 based delay to get some good glitchy delay into an Square Wave Shaper with an LFO for good measure and then some kind of Octave stuck on the end for fun and to make it more glitchy... but in a controllable way.

Or I could invent a pedal that alters space & time to draw out your notes... I think pitch shifting/ harmonizing is the way to go at the moment, analogue harmonizing would be one hell of a trial... but I guess I could try and do it by mistake, which is by far the best way to make an effect and I do love harmonizing.

Other ways of controlling things... The joysticks are cool but they are just a pot really... trying to use other things would require some design like the Zvex Probe series, which could be cool though with a weird glitchy circuit... alot of the time other ways of controlling things have flaws, see Mike Matthews soul kiss, you dribbled everyway and your wah didn't work on a dark stage but things that are touch responsive are always nice I find, maybe some kind of blend sliders instead of normal knobs, can control sliders with your feet too... or some kind of spinning control like a CD drive motor attatched to some kind of infinite turn pot for constant change, now that would be mental.. and break relatively fast i'd assume.

Right so I have some ideas, now who wants to fund me on what may be a futile breadboard quest lol.

[Scruffie]

Having a think about the harmonizer thing... a dirty way to get it I think could be dirty down octave fuzz into incredibly short delay and a sprinkling of glitchy octave up like a green ring, that kinda thing might sound like it in a way... otherwise i'd have to look at CMOS chips and it'd probably be shit if even possible, I think emulating it would be easier if I did what I just suggested I can think of doing it no problem with 2 chips and a few transistors, what do you recon? Otherwise it's gunna be a stupidly large thing like the old ADA harmonizer which had many a BBD chips in it, which are expensive and confusing.

[less_cunning]

i think a computer simulator would be cool. something where you could make your own effects then run it out to a guitar effect pedal module. maybe something like a Line Pod & Max/MSP combo. something like that let's you tweak, or create, your own effects. but not as cheesy a Pod & not as "digital" as Max.

[Scruffie]

I'm pretty sure Line6 did something like that...

Here ya go http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2008/03/ ... fx-pedals/