Maths

[mbenigni]

The return of CLIPPY.

 

[mbenigni]

Fwiw, on the GT-10, there's been an easy edit mode. You'd click on a bunch of different things (style, effects-laden yes/no, whatever) and the thing would create a patch for you. Apart from the general modeling quality not being up to date, that feature wasn't all *that* bad, even if it was pretty limited.
However, I could easily see something along these lines to become reality, especially once it's AI-driven. All you'd do is to click categories. And in case you're not happy with it, there'd be refinement options. This could be taken pretty far, from very rudimentary ("Hey, FractalGPT, create a typical 70s rock riff sound for me") to extremely detailed ("I wish this could have a bit more bite in the upper midrange"). Obviously, you could as well tell it "please route a leadboost containing a TS-style pre-boost, an overall level jump of 4dB and a delay onto switch #3".

Voice recognition has gotten so good, this is actually a pretty realistic goal for next gen UIs. I could totally see an edit mode with optional voice recognition. Even without the "FractalGPT" aspect, which would require a deep contextual understanding of musical references, responding to explicit commands along the lines of "insert a tube screamer in front of the amp block" would be an awesome time-saver. Yes, sometimes the user's cues would be ambiguous, and the OS would drop something in the wrong place. Then the user would just adjust by dragging the resulting component on the (inevitable) touchscreen. Still far better than menu-diving just to get started.

 

[Rock Chalk]

None of this really matters in my case......my modeler has 300 amps give or take, and I dial them all in to sound the same!!

 

[Klaus Twangster]

But you can't already distiguish them from the real deal or from each other anymore.

But one can distinguish fidelity.. Irrespective of the IR's source...
In the case of higher fidelity, that would mean massive headroom, and nuance that's barely perceptible which along with ridiculously low latency, translates to "feel" under the fingers. We already have stereo IR's that are mixes from mics in various positions in a real room with a real speaker,
the next step, I think, will most certainly be hyper-dynamics

 

[Will Chen]

If we wanted to try out each of these combinations, that'd be 61 x 88 x 42 x 12 = 2705472 combinations.

That's nothing...let's say you want to write a 5 note melody. There are 4 billion combinations of different notes and rhythms possible. How does anyone ever write a song? Because they aren't trying to listen to every possible combination and rather have an inspired direction. So what is the point of these devices and really playing guitar in general, is it just to randomly make a sound or are we inspired and have a direction?

 

[Sascha Franck]

the next step, I think, will most certainly be hyper-dynamics

Things are already as dynamic as real amps and you can overdo it already, too. So I don't see the point in that. Lowest possible latencies, though - yes please. But anything else? What's "higher fidelity" in the land of guitar amplification?

 

[Sascha Franck]

That's nothing...let's say you want to write a 5 note melody. There are 4 billion combinations of different notes and rhythms possible. How does anyone ever write a song? Because they aren't trying to listen to every possible combination and rather have an inspired direction. So what is the point of these devices and really playing guitar in general, is it just to randomly make a sound or are we inspired and have a direction?

I brought up pretty much the same example in a music related forum when it was about improvisation, composing melodies and what not. People were complaining about how much they were limited in their melodic choices by western harmony, 7 note scales and what not.
My example just covered one bar of 8th notes within one octave and a major key. No rests, just consecutive 8th notes. If we allow the octave, that's 8 possible options per 8th note. Makes up for 8x8x8x8x8x8x8x8 = 16777216 possibilities. Possibly none of them would sound particularly bad. If you manage to play each possibility within 2 seconds, it'd only take you 388 days of 24/7 playing to explore the (very, very) limited melodic choices of just one bar.

or are we inspired and have a direction?

Hopefully so. But that is why, just as with melodies, we should rather stick to what we're familiar with and only break ot of it when whatever special things require it. Otherwise all this becomes an excersize in futility - which I actually think is what quite some people are making of it.

 

[BahamaDada]

The return of CLIPPY.

"I see you're trying to achieve a deathcore sound. Can I suggest you one of these solutions: - Throw guitar in trash."

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

They are. And pretty much all of them - by now, even all those cheap things from the far east come with a truckload of at least pretty decent sounding amps and pedals.

Thing is also, my stupid little calculation didn't even include adding any FX but just the core sounds. It also didn't include balancing more than one sound so they'll work well together in, say, a live context. And most of all, it didn't include to touch a single control yet. While there might certainly be some sort of "set and forget" amps (with their ideal settings probably being loaded by default already), there's others offering such a broad palette of tones that it'd take hours and days to just explore those more or less thoroughly.
All these multiply the amount of options so much that even an entire human life dedicated to tone chasing wouldn't be sufficient to explore just a fraction of them (let alone trying them out in whatever actual musical contexts, even if it's just jamming over a backing track).



While this would very likely describe a wet dream for most of us (myself included), I'm not sure whether it'd do us good. Could you resist the urge to try out as much of that stuff as possible?

Fwiw, while I didn't start this thread with any dedicated purposes in mind, I think one takeaway should be clear: While less isn't necessarily more, if we want to actually make music with all that stuff, at one point in time we will have to start limiting ourselves to less than what is available.
Add to this that almost sort unfortunately, these days money isn't much of an issue for anyone anymore (something like an HX Stomp is an affordable item for pretty much any person living in the western world), with modelers space and volume are no issues anymore, either, so there's pretty much no natural limits anymore.

Being a sort of an old fart, I remember the days when this was very, very different (in fact, it's barely 20 years ago). Back then, you simply were limited. In case you couldn't use your glorious pedalboard or rack and that cranked amp most of the time (but on rehearsals and gigs), you were happy when you found anything that'd sort of give you a kind of acceptable home practice tone. Or two. So once you had these two tones, the tone chasing ended and you just had to see what you could be doing with them.
And it didn't end at home. Us mere mortals usually didn't have the financial means to afford a big ass rack or whatever. Until not too long ago, the most common thing has been one (1!) amp with maybe 2 channels and a handful (or maybe 2 handfuls) of stomp boxes in front. Sure, all that changed with the first half-decent programmable units on the market (such as the GP-8), but those were usually just used by some outliers.

What I'm saying is that until not too long ago, if we wanted to get the most mileage out of our gear, we had to do this by exploring the limited options very thoroughly.
Back then: So, your amp for 500 bucks with your two 50 bucks pedals in front don't sound like a kitchen sink rack? Well, let's see what else this might be good for.
Today: <Laughs in 27 HX series delays> (all of which you could even use multiple times in one patch)

Long story made somewhat shorter: When I re-organized my pedalboard somewhen early last year, which included quite some reduction of tonal options (basically down to two pedalsized modelers always running the same patches, serving as a clean and dirt platform, plus a handful of dirt pedals), I found myself playing a whole lot more pretty much all of a sudden. My live sound improved, too, a big part of that improvement being familiarity with the sounds and their readily available shaping options.
And then the last HX update came along. Soundwise, it's a fantastic update, really. Some of the new amps IMO are just glorious.
So, what did I do? Right, exploring all these new amps, combining them with whatever how many stompboxes and cabs, etc. And I've been playing considerably less - even if some of the sounds I explored are worth being played all day long. But uh-oh, there's all these other goodies to explore, I possibly couldn't miss out on them, could I?
And that (plus another thread on Gearspace) has been pretty much the main reason for me to start this thread...

I didn’t read this wall of text, but they are only overwhelming if you don’t know what you want to do. If I’m shopping for a Strat I’d rather go to a store than has 10,000 guitars in stock, 500 of which are strats, all of which are guaranteed to be at least really good Strats than the shop with 100 guitars, 5 of which are strats, even if all 5 of those are guaranteed to be great guitars.

500 strats is too many to sit down and play each one for a meaningful amount of time, so I’d start with all the Dakota Red, Rosewood board ones. If one of those struck my fancy, id spread my search to include models with 1.65” nut width or narrower, rosewood board, traditional 6-screw trem and nickel-silver frets and do some comparisons

It will likely be that I wind up missing “the best” Strat in the 500 Strat shop. But I’ve played enough Strats to know that (1) there is no “the one” that I will find better than all others, (2) the difference between great! And GRRREAT!!! Is…really small and not that big a deal.

I can’t figure out how people that are overwhelmed with the number of options in a modeler get through life. Like, if you need a space heater for a room, how do you possibly handle the options Amazon throws at you? Surely that’s more overwhelming than having to pick from amongst 100 different amp models, 90+ of which having little to do with the sound you are shooting for.

 

[Will Chen]

I can’t figure out how people that are overwhelmed with the number of options in a modeler get through life. Like, if you need a space heater for a room, how do you possibly handle the options Amazon throws at you? Surely that’s more overwhelming than having to pick from amongst 100 different amp models, 90+ of which having little to do with the sound you are shooting for.

Analysis Paralysis is a real thing.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Analysis Paralysis is a real thing.

And it is different than “option paralysis”. There is no analysis on the latter, which is the problem.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I can’t figure out how people that are overwhelmed with the number of options in a modeler get through life.

Just ask them. They're populating all forums where these matters are discussed.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

You know what is going to help with option paralysis? Adding a knob for each parameter so now you can be further overwhelmed with tweaking as well as choosing…

 

[Sascha Franck]

You know what is going to help with option paralysis? Adding a knob for each parameter so now you can be further overwhelmed with tweaking as well as choosing…

And you know what helps with being snarky? Being even snarkier.

 

[dronerstone]

I didn’t read this wall of text, but they are only overwhelming if you don’t know what you want to do. If I’m shopping for a Strat I’d rather go to a store than has 10,000 guitars in stock, 500 of which are strats, all of which are guaranteed to be at least really good Strats than the shop with 100 guitars, 5 of which are strats, even if all 5 of those are guaranteed to be great guitars.

500 strats is too many to sit down and play each one for a meaningful amount of time, so I’d start with all the Dakota Red, Rosewood board ones. If one of those struck my fancy, id spread my search to include models with 1.65” nut width or narrower, rosewood board, traditional 6-screw trem and nickel-silver frets and do some comparisons

It will likely be that I wind up missing “the best” Strat in the 500 Strat shop. But I’ve played enough Strats to know that (1) there is no “the one” that I will find better than all others, (2) the difference between great! And GRRREAT!!! Is…really small and not that big a deal.

I can’t figure out how people that are overwhelmed with the number of options in a modeler get through life. Like, if you need a space heater for a room, how do you possibly handle the options Amazon throws at you? Surely that’s more overwhelming than having to pick from amongst 100 different amp models, 90+ of which having little to do with the sound you are shooting for.

This.

But a modeler shouldn't be overwhelming to experienced geeks (like us) who know how various industry standard pedals and amps sound, which circuits they're based on, being able to "decode" most of the model names/colors anyway, etc.

It's just like getting up in the morning, saying "oh, I guess today I wanna play a Fuzz Face into a Klon into a DM-2 with some pitch reverb, and through a Dumble-esque amp, but with a tight-ass 4x12, miced with a plain old 57".

That sentence might irritate noobs and people who aren't as much into gear, but I can totally hear the possible sounds and feel the response, all in my head, when I read it.

Maybe the next day I wanna play something else? Easy to set up, ready to go.

Also, I'm sure there's things in your neighborhood supermarket that you've never bought in your whole life, just because you never needed/wanted to.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Voice recognition has gotten so good, this is actually a pretty realistic goal for next gen UIs. I could totally see an edit mode with optional voice recognition. Even without the "FractalGPT" aspect, which would require a deep contextual understanding of musical references, responding to explicit commands along the lines of "insert a tube screamer in front of the amp block" would be an awesome time-saver. Yes, sometimes the user's cues would be ambiguous, and the OS would drop something in the wrong place. Then the user would just adjust by dragging the resulting component on the (inevitable) touchscreen. Still far better than menu-diving just to get started.

the other cool but is as far as I am aware there would be absolutely no IP infringement concerns in making your voice recognition UI map the sound of someone saying “tube screamer” to your model that is called Green Spleen or whatever.