Tonight will mark a bit of a change for me in terms of live performance. A buddy of mine has asked me to play a little guitar at a show he’s playing tonight. A last minute kind of thing. I’m going to try out my concept of using a program called MainStage by Apple along with a couple of amp modeling plugins that I like. I will run it from my laptop and a simple audio interface to plug directly in to the board.
There’s a few of reasons for it. First, I’m not interested in lugging a big ass amp around for a few songs. Second, I want to see how the program will do in a live setting. Third, these amp models are only ok, but when I couple them with a speaker cabinet model, they sound utterly real. Fourth, I’m seriously interested in seeing if the big boys are right in using it.
Being a tone freak, the biggest issue is the sound and how it works compared to an actual amp. There truly is nothing like a real speaker moving real air. But I have to say, these amp model plugins when paired with a speaker cabinet IR really do come about as close as one can get. The only difference I’m noticing so far is that I don’t have the massively loud volume blowing me out and that’s something that takes some getting used to.
While I’m messing around in the studio with sounds from a laptop, I’m also doing archive thing. Boring as hell but much needed, in order to clear out some hard drive space and start moving forward with more and newer material.
Today, I’m sharing Simon Fagan with you. The moment Water’s Edge kicked off, I was like, ok, this is different for me. While it’s not a technological leap for guitar stuff, it’s a musical leap for me. It reminds me of something that would have been very right for O’ Brother Where Art Thou. There’s an old school slightly gospel sound that is permeating the track. But it feels down home organic enough that I can feel the hints without being hit over the head.
There’s an artist I met recently that reminds me of Simon and come the 21st of this month we’ll be sitting down to craft a song. There’s a darn good chance that song will be the type of thing you’re hearing now at the Single of the Day site. A very sit on the front porch and enjoy the song type of thing while drinking homemade lemonade.
Go forth and enjoy!