Making legato runs sound picked

Tahoebrian5

Tahoebrian5

Fractal Fanatic
How would I go about setting up a faker patch that would make legato runs sound like alternate picking? My band likes to torture me with racer x covers and i need all the help I can get on the fast runs. Maybe an asdr controlling a parameter in a drive block or something? I know, not asking for much here!
 
Fast noise gate? Set it to quick release, fast attack and adjust the sensitivity so you have to play pretty hard to open the gate?
 
I've seen most of the Troy Grady stuff and bought the season 2 pass. Great stuff and he's a great player, I've been practicing fast runs for almost 30 years and I think I would be there if I was going to get there at all. Paul's speed is just way too fast. Maybe on a good day when the planets align I can pull some of it off, but live.. No way. Hence my cheating. The Palm mute can work given the correct patch but still not as scary sounding as alt picking. There has got to be a way to make tapped notes pop a bit more.
 
Make sure the bright cap is turned on in the patch and then use light palm muting. It will accentuate the thump of the finger against the fretboard with high frequencies giving the illusion of a pick. However, I dont think you will ever get it to sound like a picked note, especially not a Paul Gilbert picked note as he already accentuates the treble and then picks ;)
 
Can an ADSR trigger the looper? Record a pick scratch and have each note trigger the loop start? Sounds like a long shot, just thinking out loud so to speak.

Or another thought.. Synth sounds cut the head off notes for slow attack. Seems like I should be able to do something similar but opposite to accentuate the head of the note. Maybe attach the ADSR to a gain in a drive block. Then that combined with the muting technique could improve the fake a bit.
 
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Not exactly answering your question, but what about simplifying the runs to something you can pick? Maybe play a similar lick half speed and double it with a delay to get a faster sound.

What song(s) are you covering?


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im working on hammer away at the moment. What I've done in the past is take the three note per string runs and change them to six note per string. I can play those fairly clean but they don't sound the same becuase I usually have to skip some strings so I can start and stop on the correct notes. Similar to your idea, in that I'm playing half as many notes becuase I repeat every three notes. It works ok but just curious if the fractal can give me another option.
 
The lick at the top of that song is pretty tough! I just tried something I thought I'd pass on - play it three-notes-per-string, but just pick the first two. That way, you are doing down-up-hammeron. Repeat the pattern as you move through the phrase. It's 666 parts out of 1000 picked, which is good numerology ;)

The Troy Grady stuff is great. He does a good job breaking down YM's technique. Paul is all about the alternate picking regardless of string crossings and has a different mechanical process / wizardry going on. I'd sell my soul to play like either of them though...
 
Yep, opening lick is rough. I can get it about 3 times out of ten sitting down after Im warmed up on a good day. Ya the pick two notes thing works pretty good in a pinch. If we could find a way to make the hammered notes pop more would be even better. It seems like the asdr and envelope thing has a lot of future potential. If there was a more robust method for the axe to decipher what you are playing (single vs chords, fast single notes, etc), be able to add if statements or logic, and then create a modifier based on that stuff the possibilities would be amazing. Just sayin
 
groovenut said:
Make sure the bright cap is turned on in the patch and then use light palm muting. It will accentuate the thump of the finger against the fretboard with high frequencies giving the illusion of a pick. However, I dont think you will ever get it to sound like a picked note, especially not a Paul Gilbert picked note as he already accentuates the treble and then picks ;)
Click to expand...

And also because Paul is not human.
 
Maybe a compressor with the attack set slow enough to not affect the transient? I'm not great at compressors and also not sure how much transient a hammer on will create but if there is a transient, the compressor lets that through then reduces the volume once the transient is done it could in theory accent the head of the note.
 
I'm still a bit shakey on ADSR use despite watching several vids and reading the manual multiple times. What exactly triggers the ADSR? How does it know to start its cycle? Is it possible in a hammered run to have the ADSR cycle for each note or are they too close in amplitude? Can you process the note with a compressor first to try to just capture a transient and then send it to an ADSR to create a modifier? All this stuff would have to happen really quickly.. 16th notes at 120bpm should be fast enough.. Let's see if I can do basic math... That's 32 notes/sec, so about 30milisec for a full cycle.

I have lots of ideas and very little hands on! My FX8 should be here in a few days so I can try some of this stuff soon.

Edit: I just answered my own question about how asdr's trigger. It's in the axe fx manual but not the fx8 that I could find. I think I get it now.. if I set the mode to once, set retrig on, then it's a matter of getting the threshold correct. This should give me a modifier that triggers on the head of each note. Then what to do with it? Add a gain and treble spike?
 
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And Craggin! I used to do a bunch of climbing around tahoe. It's rough going to band practice with roasted finger tips.
 
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