New Developments in Music Technology

jonerik writes "The Christian Science Monitor has this article on acoustic and electronic music technology, including a visit to MIT's Hyperinstruments lab, which has developed a series of Music Shapers; ball-shaped musical toys which are covered with 'a patented thread containing sensors that react to the way the child handles them. The child manipulates a preprogrammed "little seed" of music and helps it "grow" by the way he or she shapes it.' Also worth a read is this article (free reg required) on the Line 6 series of bass and guitar amp emulators, which do a pretty decent job of mimicking various amp or amp/stack combos; from a '53 Fender Deluxe to a mid-'60s Vox AC-30 to the sludgy murk of a '70s Orange stack. 'Line 6 uses a technology called modeling to measure the characteristics of a particular vintage amp, from the distortion of its original tubes to the resonance of its speaker cabinet. The company has developed a way to reproduce those measurements in a powerful D.S.P., or digital signal processing, chip that contains models of dozens of classic amps.'"

Comments

Line6 GuitarPort

[bmarklein]

The article doesn't mention my favorite Line6 product, the GuitarPort. It's a little box that hooks up to the USB port of your computer on one end, and your guitar on the other. The box is a D/A converter for your guitar sound, which is then fed to your computer. You run GuitarPort software (Windows only) which does the amp modeling and effects on your machine.

You can use it in combination with a service (pay per month) that lets you download "tones" - amp and effect combinations that model the sounds on specific songs. So you just search for "Comfortably Numb" and you've got a pretty damned good version of the tone. It also comes with tab and backing tracks for a lot of tracks, plus other backing tracks for different chord progressions. Even without subscribing to the service you can rip your own CDs or use your own MP3s and play along to them, and even play them at half speed. Great stuff, and it sells for about $170.

For more details see this review

some other interesting software DSP amps..

[dogas]

Amplitube is quite awesome at emulating some of the best amps out there. I've started using this as an alternative to mic'ing my triple rectifier at my studio, simply because the amount of control you get is so much greater (IE changing the amp after the guitar was recorded)

Also, Sonic Foundry's Acoustic Mirror does a great job of mimicking any environment, even the charicteristics of a piece of equipment (vintage mic or amp).

I believe both of these products have demo versions you can try out, and they are both directx plugins (so use with Sound Forge or some other audio editing app).