Category: Music

Adventures with Guitar Gear: Part 1

So yesterday I dug out my Boss RC1 Looper pedal and my Morley Bad Horsie Wah pedal. I’ve connected them up and had some fun with them 🙂 The Boss ME90 already has a Looper and Wah but I want to play with looping and I have a dedicated pedal so better to be used than stuck in a box, and the Wah on the ME90 is engaged by pushing hard on the pedal (as are most Wahs, Cry Baby, Vox etc.) the problem is I struggle doing that due to nerve damage in my hands and feet caused by Chemo. The Morley Wah is brilliant as it is engaged just by using the pedal and disengaged as soon as it runs to its rest position.

On a side note, this Morley Wah is my third identical one, the previous ones were sold when I decided I didn’t want them, only to be bought again a few months later when I changed my mind. Like an idiot, I did this twice lol. Suffice to say, I now sell very little and the boxes in the garage and spare room are testament to that 🙂

I’ve put the Looper in the Send / Return (more on that later) on the ME90 and I had to find the setting on the ME90 that allows you to set the S / R to either Pre or Post. Post was the option I needed as I wanted the Looper to retain it’s recorded settings and not change them when I changed to a different patch on my ME90. This means that I can play a rhythm with a low gain setting and then change to a lead patch with Delay, Reverb etc. to play over the top of it. Luckily the ME90 allows you to do this via either your computer or phone using a USB cable or Bluetooth respectively.

Coming back to the Send / Return, instead of connecting the Return back to the ME90 i’ve cabled it into a free channel on my mixer which gives me better control over the volume of the recorded track on the Looper. I am now down to one free input on my mixer, i’ve already been looking at 12 channel mixers instead of the 8 I currently have.

One of the good things about the ME90 is that it only needs a standard 9V power supply so I was able to utilise (rescue from the garage!) my 10 way 9V PSU to power the ME90, the Wah and the Looper. Works well, the PSU sits out of site under the futon in my Office / Mancave / Studio making quite a neat setup.

I have ordered a couple of new patch cables for the Wah and Looper as I want them a metre or so long, right angled at one end and straight at the other end. Yeh, I know, did I mention I’m a bit OCD about some things?

Something else I found in the garage which i’d forgotten i’d got, some long guitar cables with magnetic ends, so you can choose between right angle or straight and the end just snaps on. Also good I suppose if playing on stage and the cable gets caught, better to break away (like the Magsafe connectors on a MacBook) than yank you or the instrument, potentially being a nasty or expensive experience.

Guitar Practice Tools (New App)

I’ve had the idea of working on an application that would help me with my guitar learning journey by centralising some of the tools I think I need and information I want to keep track of.

I am a developer by trade but no longer program for fun, however this was something I really did want to do.

When I got up this morning I wrote the gpTools (Guitar Practice Tools) application (Windows and macOS) with three basic functions that I will find useful:

Timers:

A Session timer and an Exercise timer. The idea being I would start the Session timer when I sit down to practise and leave that running, and then use the Exercise timer to see how long I spent on a particular exercise. I can reset that at the beginning of each exercise. I did buy a kitchen timer but its small and fiddly and makes my desk more cluttered, so I will use this function daily.

Clapboard:

This is another timer, but the idea here is that if you are recording yourself and want to leave the recording going so you don’t have to sort through it later to find the good bits, bad bits, cool riffs etc. you start the Clapboard timer. Every time you do something that you may want to reference later, you click the button and the current timer value is written to a list, latest entries at the top. You can edit the list if you like to document the reason for the entry. Once you have finished recording you can save the export file with the recording if you like and then in future you have a reference of where in the file is the bit you want. Again, it’s basic but it’s going to work for me.

Numbers:

This simply shows two random numbers on the window every three seconds or so. The first number is between 1 and 12 and the second number is between 1 and 5. This useful if jamming to a blues backing track for example, the idea being that the next phrase you play has the amount of notes shown on the screen, and is played in the position shown. It just helps keep your jamming practice from becoming repetitive by playing the same licks and shapes over and over again.

Obviously this is just the start, features I will add in future include:

Stopwatch

Practise Log

Chords Learned List

Practice Schedule

Ultimate Song List

Randomised Practice Sessions

If anyone is interested you can see the quick demo video on Youtube at this address: 

This application is designed purely for my own use and as such it’s not pretty, but it works and will provide a basis on which to build something more significant.