MIDI Guitar: The Axon AX-100 Mk II

I've decided to get back into MIDI guitar and synthesis after about twenty years since I was a Synclavier guitarist back in the 80's. As with every new - or, renewed - technological change I make, I expect that it will take some time - about a year - before I'm performing with MIDI guitar again. The reason I know this will take time is, obviously, because of my previous experience with the Synclavier: You have to play very clean and deliberately to get the synth to accurately track what you play.

As with everything, this comes with advantages and disadvantages: It's great for your technique to have to concentrate on it so much, but expressiveness is bound to suffer, at least a little, and quite a lot at first. Hence, again, it will take time.

When I was in a power trio playing Synclavier, I used it on every song, but not in every section, necessarily - I controlled whether the synth was in or not with a pedal, and the straight guitar sound was always present. This time, at least, I'll only play MIDI guitar on selected pieces where it will work best, and again, I'll use my Lexicon MPX-R1 MIDI pedal to bring the synth in and out. And yet again, by "straight" guitar sound through my Lexicon MPX-G2's will always be on, so the synth will just be mixed in. This may hasten my being able to integrate MIDI into my set again (Hey, I can hope).

Nothing since the Synclavier has really aroused my interest until the Axon AX-100 Mk II came along. You really ought to watch the demo videos, as they are quite impressive. Some of them actually border on the mind blowing. It fits my requirements for a performance device, as it is a 1U rack mount unit, but it does have some limitations. First and foremost, to me anyway, it isn't a synthesizer. I became so good at programming timbres on the Synclavier that New England Digital actually distributed many of my timbre programs with the Synclavier, so I can synthesize, and I much prefer purely synthesized sounds to samples of real instruments. The Axon only has a General MIDI sound card in it, so eventually I'll go modular and have another rack that contains real, actual synths in it, or I may just use a Mac to run something like Native Instruments' FM 8: I love FM synthesis.

For my first foray back into the MIDI realm though, the AX-100 will do fine: I'll probably just use synth and string pads for background at first. So, for my Christmas present to myself, I built up an entirely new performance rig:



From top to bottom:

1] Behringer BTR-2000 Racktuner

Both the AX-100 and the Lexicon have built-in tuners, but they don't calibrate down to the A=432 philosophical pitch I tune to (And, I may have to tune to A= 440 with the Axon, I'm not sure yet), but there is nothing like being able to keep track of your tuning visually at all times.

2] Lexicon MPX-G2

I simply can't live without these, as my guitar sound is defined by them, and I have literally hundreds upon hundreds of hours invested in the virtual acoustic environments I've programmed into them over the past ten years. This unit makes 4 MPX-G2's I have now, and I still think it's the best guitar effects device ever (When someone makes something better, I'll switch, but I'm not holding my breath). In fact, nothing else really even comes close - the MPX-G2 is in a class of its own.

3] Axon AX-100 Mk II

Here's the new toy, and despite being an impressive piece of gear, it does have some semi-pro and toyish aspects to it. My bigest bitch gripe is that the device is powered by a wall-wart exterior transformer. I absolutely detest those things, and that's the reason the next device is where it is.

4] Furman AR-1215 Line Voltage Regulator

This is no rack mount power strip or conditioner: It actually regulates the output voltage through an isolated transformer (Not cheap, either). All of my performance racks have these, as the foundation of ANY good electric or electronic sound is clean power! When I plug in at a gig, especially if I'm running off of a generator, I never know what I'm going to be getting out of the outlet, so this is required, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, it also protects the gear from spikes as well as regulating the power. Expensive, but a wise investment, IMO.

5] Behringer RX-1602 Eurorack Pro submixer.

It may seem like overkill to have eight channels of stereo inputs when I only need two right now - one stereo channel for the Lexicon and one stereo channel for the Axon - but I'm thinking ahead to having MIDI synth modules in an auxiliary rack down the line.

6] Bryston 2b-LP power amplifier.

Brystons are the only solid state amplifiers that sound musical to me. This makes four Brystons I have now: two 2B-LP's, a 3B-NPB, and a Lexicon NT-212, which is just a THX Certified Bryston 3B-ST with a Lexicon faceplate on it.

The reason the Bryston is on the bottom for the time being, and not on top where it belongs, is because I can't get the damnable rubber feet off of the amp chassis! Bryston is not the only company that has fantastic engineering combined with retarded design execution, but really, if you have feet on a rack mount chassis, you ought to be able to screw them on and off with your hands! Seriously, WTF?!

The Furman is in between the Axon and the Eurorack because of the above mentioned wall wart transformer that the Axon requires. Serious BS for a piece of gear that is about eight Franklins in price, but oh well.

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It will be a while before I can get to this, because my practice routine suffered a major setback with the move (But is coming back nicely), and then I have to do my metronome work and record a demo CD for my new San Antonio market. I'm going to do a five song demo, and kill two birds by also putting them on my MySpace page. Right now, I'm thinking of these five pieces, in this order:

1] Classical Gas - Mason Williams
2] Spanish Fly - Eddie Van Halen
3] Eu So Quero Um Xodo - Dominguinhos
4] A Day at the Beach - Joe Satriani
5] Stairway to Heaven - Jimmy Page

Of course, I'll post MP-3's (Well, M4A's actually, since iTunes makes those now) here too.

My business plan is to hit all of the wedding planners, event planners, caterers, and art galleries first, and just not worry about the club/restaurant scene at all right now. I do "professional courtesy" prices for artists and art galleries because I love those gigs, and it's a great way to get in with the local arts crowd, and then, of course, the weddings and corporate events pay big bucks. It is very important to do these contacts in person and not by mail, by the way, as handing someone a CD and a press flyer personally makes all the difference. Besides, I need to relearn my way around San Antonio and see what's actually here (I graduated from Mac Arthur high school here, but have not lived in San Antonio for about twenty years).

I'll also wait on the lessons, as I really don't want a lot of students and so I plan to charge an arm and a leg. LOL!

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Happy (Belated) New Year!

Whew! I hate moving, but I was highly motivated to get into the new house, so it really wasn't so bad. All of the major chores are out of the way - all the moving, new electric panel, arranging, deco - and now it's down to little stuff, and I'm getting back into my practice regimen.

I'm settling in pretty well, I think.

The computer/recording/entertainment center:



Which sits nicely in the "family" room.



Of course, I set up a dedicated practice/recording studio in the third bedroom.



And - in the second bedroom - I have a gym now!



There's enough room for a cardio machine of some sort too, so, since I've been wanting to get a fixed-wheel track bike to ride, I think I'll get a rolling-resistance frame for it for the winter and those rainy days.

The "living room" will be a dedicated listening area.



For now, I'm using my ancient 15" 400 MHz G4 Titanium Powerbook to run iTunes and CD's into a Lexicon NT 212 power amp - which is just a THX certified Bryston 3B ST with a Lexicon faceplate - into...



... a pair of Turbosound TXD-081's. I can play my favorite Georg Solti version of Beethoven's Ninth louder than live with this simple rig!

Oh, and what do you do if you buy a house with blue carpet? Why, you get a blue couch, of course (Getting the carpets cleaned and stretched was the FIRST thing I did to the place).



Toodles!

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Greetings from The Alamo City

Got 2 of 3 moving trips out of the way - one more tomorrow just to get the last few things that wouldn't fit in the 12x6 U-Haul I rented (It's times like this I really love having a full-sized pickup with a tow package) - and I'm obviously now reconnected to the internet and staying in my house (!) in San Antonio, but still sleeping on a futon.

I'll do a New Year's post with show-off pix when I return!

So, here's a redhead.



Even her lips have freckles!

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Vanessa Mae: Iconoclast

Being an iconoclast myself, I like the ideas behind Vanessa Mae's renditions of classic chestnuts, even if the execution of those ideas is sometimes a bit... well... you'll see.

Toccata and Fugue in D minor:



And, since I play my own arrangement of this, Classical Gas:



While we're at it, let's eviscerate Vivaldi:



OK, this one is just bad, but her British accent isn't, so, Vanessa Mae murders Paganini's 24th Caprice:



Didn't like the earlier Classical Gas? How about Bob Marley meets Mason Williams in Raggae Hell:



Just to make a point, she can play straight ahead. Here's some J.S. Bach to prove it:



Her intonation isn't exactly perfect, but it is a live performance.

Finally, The Devil's Trill:

(No embed available)

And, of course, it doesn't hurt that she's the hottest girl in all of music at the moment. I. love. her.

No redhead today. LOL!

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Musical Monk Moves!

Not the blog, but ME!

What an amazing Thanksgiving. I drove to mom's place in San Antonio last Sunday, looked at a house on Monday, made the guy an offer on Tuesday, he accepted on Wednesday, and then on Thanksgiving Day - after the Macy's Parade - The National Dog Show was televised. Mom's Lhasa Apso, Lulu, won both of her rounds and got to the Best in Show round - that dog got a lot of air time! The Pointer won Best in Show - hilariously, Lulu took a dump on the lead-in to that round (Mom and I were initially mortified... and then we laughed ourselves into helplessness) - but Lulu is barely two years old, so she's going places fast. They even mentioned mom's name on TV! She was thrilled. Then we consumed mass quantities and passed out. LOL!

The house I ended up getting was the one I really, really wanted, which I posted a bunch of pix of in this post from September 27th. The guy ended up not getting any other offers as good as mine, and he was looking at the economy and next year's property taxes, so he came down some and I went up some, and there you have it.

The Monk's new abode:



Like I said in the earlier post, this house was owned by a contractor who redid every room in the house, so it needs absolutely nothing. His bathroom and floor tile work is particularly stunning, and there's even a kick ass glass brick wall into the front living area. No cheap PVC plumbing either. All copper with metal finishing at the sinks! Then there's the permanently installed gas grill in the back yard, which is connected to the house's gas lines, so no gas bottles to run out or refill. I'm psyched!

I thought it also interesting that I posted about that house on the 27th, and the last two digits in the address are also 27: A number that's permeated my life since I was born (On 12/15, of course). It will also be 5 years to the month since I moved to Alpine. I hate to leave as I love it out here in the desert expanse, but being home for Thanksgiving really drove home that my mom is 80 and needs some help now. I think I changed almost a half-dozen light bulbs alone! I'm the only child, so it's not like anyone else can do it, not that I'd want them to. This house is only a mile away from her in the same 'hood, so it's a slam dunk, gift from God type of deal.

Plus, I'll be 51 when I make this move, I've been on every continent in the northern hemisphere, and I've been to every State except Maine, so I guess it's time to settle down... just a little.

The house closes on the 19th, so needless to say, the rest of this month will be a Chinese Fire Drill and I doubt there will be many more posts before I move.

Have a Merry Christmas everybody!



I thought the over-the-shoulder look would be apropos for a moving post.

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Tap Technique Breakthrough

I have only two tap technique pieces in my set so far - Eddie Van Halen's Spanish Fly and Joe Satriani's A Day at the Beach - though there is a third that I wrote coming up soon on my to-do list (The Toccata in E Minor from Sonata One in E Minor; link, PDF and streaming MP3 in the right sidebar).

The first problems I encountered when I started learning tap on the nylon string were, 1) Getting the tapped notes to ring well, and, 2) my left forearm would pump up and lose strength from all of the anaerobic activity involved, especially on the two-finger Satriani tap piece, which is motoric and fast throughout.

The problem of the notes not ringing well solved itself as I built up calluses on the tips of my right hand i and m fingers, and just a whole ton of forward and reverse wrist curls on my Bowflex allowed me to build up my forearm strength and endurance. Whereas at first my left forearm would pump up just one time through A Day at the Beach, now, three years later, I can go through it ten or more times in a row with no problem (And both of my forearms are all sinew and ripples now).

The final remaining problem has been that, in actual performance situations, I'm not warmed up to the tap technique when I get to the tap tech pieces in the set. When Im practicing, it takes three to five times through those pieces before I start to really flow with and groove on them, so in performance situations I have to play them rather slowly and deliberately. This has vexed me for over two years now, but I finally came up with the solution.

What happened was, I asked myself, "Self, what if you play these pieces once through each at the end of every suite when you practice, instead of eleven times through and only at the two places where they belong?" - the idea being, if I play them all the time when I'm not warmed up to them perhaps I'll get better at playing them relatively cold. Yes! That's the answer, right there.

There's two ways to look at this: I'm either getting much better at playing them cold, or I'm making myself warmed up for them all the time. Regardless of perspective, after just a couple of times through my set maintenance practice routine doing this, I can jump into them cold way better now.

Whew! What a relief.

So, if you are trying to learn tap tech, but like me find actually performing tap tech pieces in the middle of a set with mostly trad tech nightmarish, try this: Just play them cold a lot. It's worked near miraculously for me, and in just a week or so (But remember, I've been busting my butt over tap tech for a few years now).

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Had a really cool private party gig at a home in the hills above Alpine the other day.



The house was a gorgeous Spanish style place, and since it was below 60 degrees - my minimum required temp for outdoor playing - they put me in the living room. I thought it would be just another background music thing, but it turned into a command performance situation, with the living room packed with guests, many of whom had never heard me play before. It was a blast.

I wish I'd thought of taking some outside pix, but I only had my iPhone, which has a pretty lame camera (As you can see).

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I've come up with a novel approach for writing the final blog and book form of Why Music Works: The Harmonic Series, Musical Context, and the Natural Laws of Musical Motion." I'm writing all of the examples, which I call musical proofs, out in Encore 5 first, and then I'm going to go back and re-write the text. So, the first thing I'm going to post/publish will be an index of the musical examples, each of which will have streaming MP3 audio, a JPG of the score, and a link to PDF's, if anyone wants them. There are also Observations and Deductions on the score pages, so the index will serve as both a review and a primer.

There is going to be a lot better flow this time from a pedagogical standpoint - I've been working on this for two years since the Musical Relativity series of posts - and the musical proofs are way, way tighter now. I have 45 of the example proofs done so far, I'm really psyched at how well they are turning out, and I'm thinking I'll probably have well over sixty before I'm done.

My metronome slow-play season starts after Thanksgiving, and I could be interrupted by a move to San Antonio at any time if I find a house, so I may not have anything but the index posted until next March or so. We'll just have to see how it all works out.

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Off to San Antonio for a week tomorrow, so I can look at houses, do some bee's wax, irritate old fiends friends, and spend Thanksgiving with mommy. So, have a happy Thanksgiving, and I'll have a post for when I get back.



Don't think mom invited Erica Campbell. Pity.

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The Experience is No More: Mitch Mitchell Dies

No band influenced my teenage years more than The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The only others even in the same league to me were Cream, The Who, and Led Zeppelin. I didn't have any posters of anybody but Hendrix in my bedroom, however. In fact, I had this one from Woodstock. I see that it's "rare" now and commands $85.00!



That poster was in the bedroom of my first three apartments as well, until a ruptured pipe upstairs from my condo destroyed it in 1980. I wanted to be the right handed white guy version of him for years, but my musical tastes eventually turned to jazz and then classical music. I always thought that particular poster represented the epitome of the rock guitar god much more than the more flamboyant poses and guitar burning stunts: Eyes closed, riding the wah-wah pedal... just into it.

So, it was with a true sense of loss that I read today that Mitch Mitchell has died while on tour with his tribute band, Experience Hendrix. Noel Redding died back in 2003, before I started this blog, and Jimi, of course, infamously died in 1970 at the age of only 27.

My favorite Hendrix album was, by far, Electric Ladyland, and THE higlight of my NYC rock band days was the time my band did some recording at Electric Lady Studios, which was, "The House that Jimi Built."

RIP and Godspeed, Mitch. I'm sure there's one hell of a reunion concert going on about now in Rock and Roll Heaven.


The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Noel Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and Mitch Mitchell.

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Major undertakings going on, and another epic series of deep musico-philosophical posts are on the way. Plus, a review of GVOX Encore 5, which is what inspired this upcoming series of epic posts.

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