Xaudia Hexapup |
A hexaphonic pickup lets you record you record the signals from each string separately, either through six amplifiers, or perhaps more sensibly by recording directly through instrument inputs or DI boxes. This gives a lot of creative possibilities.
For example, here's a G major chord, played lazily from the low strings to the high. This was recorded directly into Protools, with the notes spread across the stereo width.
Gmajor - spread
Adding an amp simulator gives it some body...
Gmajor - jazz amp
With a hexaphonic recording, it is simple to change the timing of individual strings. Imagine that we wanted the chord played tightly, rather than note by note. A quick edit and here it is...
Gmajor - all together
Or perhaps we would prefer to strum from the top to the bottom instead. No problem - we can just shift the notes slightly and we have it ...
Gmajor - reverse strum
And by reversing the waveform of three strings and repeating the notes, we get this little ambient loop. A semi-reversed guitar
Gmaj & Amaj - edited loop
Now let's get silly...
... we want to transpose part of a song, but the guitarist has gone to the bar. We can use Autotune on each track to pull each string up by two semitones to play an A major instead. Here's how it looks on the screen...
And here's how it sounds!
Auto-tuned Chord - Gmajor to A major
Of course we could have simply pitch shifted the whole chord up to achieve a similar effect - Autotune gives it an interesting glitchy slide texture as it chases the notes
By shifting the G-string up by one semitone rather that two, the chord becomes an A-minor. Now that's something which can't be done with simple pitch shifting!
Auto-tuned Chord - Gmajor to A minor!
The possibilities are endless!
Very cool, Stuart - I had no idea you were working on this. Now, can you make my Melodium hexaphonic? :^)
ReplyDeleteThanks Myles - only if you buy another 5 of them ;-)
ReplyDeleteI've had the stereo version working for a while, and spend my holidays wiring up a full Hex version for demos.
Cunning. Takes me long enough to sort out my basic recordings as it is though!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great info!
ReplyDeleteDo you have any recordings of a strummed guitar that isn't summed to stereo. Basically I'm looking for a guitar strum broken into it's 6 mono components.
I'm trying to recreate a strummed guitar by recording it one note at a time and if I could hear a guitar broken into it's components it would really help me out.
Thank you so much!
Cody
Hi Cody, I probably do have some sound files like that somewhere - all of these were recorded as six channels, separate strings. I will send you an email directly. Stewart
ReplyDelete