What do you use scenes for?

D

Dave Merrill

Axe-Master
I have a III and an FC12. Most of my presets have had 4 gain levels of the same amp across the bottom four switches, and effected or even more gain boosted versions of them in the top row. Sometimes the cleanest and/or gainiest ones are different amps.

Lately I've started to feel like that makes my presets sound too much the same.

The factory presets mostly aren't like that, they mostly show a single amp or amp family doing what it's built to do. Just because I can make a screaming wild thing out of a clean amp and some drives doesn't mean that's what the amp does best, or that that's the best way to get tones in that neighborhood, and some of the unique character of the amp may get lost.

Another possible approach is kitchen sink plus pedalboard: 8 different amps as the scenes, and a layout or two or three full of effects you can use with any of them. If you're a session guy or messing around at home, that might be great -- lots of possibilities, less need for quick switching to specific tones.

If you're in a cover band doing 70 years worth of all kinds of hits, that's less good. You want quick changes to particular pre-built setups, maybe even one per song.

So what do people mostly do?
 
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I am a noob, at guitar, gear, songwriting, you name it, so take this as you will. I mainly think of presets as a cohesive sound. I have been setting them up as one would if they planned to use one preset for an entire song or album. So I'll setup scenes for different parts of a song, for example, Solo, Clean, Rhythm, and Lead. Sometimes this calls for more than one amp, and sometimes not.
 
I have used presets per song which allows using two near identical presets but balanced and tweaked on a per song or per guitar basis. Used scenes to turn on or off reverb, chorus, delay while not changing the core sound.

You can use scenes to utilize 4 or 8 of your favorite amps in one preset. Many players strive to have a workhorse preset that does it all and covers the entire gig. Much as you would old school with one amp. Maybe with a pedal board. I have used presets for special fX that fall outside the scope of the kitchen sink preset. Mostly for wild, ambient or synth stuff. You can use scenes for volume boost (or cut) scenarios for dynamics.

Currently I move all my factory presets over by one bank and use Bank A as my work bank. The first row (via editor) is for my goto presets for jamming, studio etc. The second row is for presets I’m working on, experimenting with, troubleshooting, building variations, etc. The remaining rows of Bank A are for preset per song. The beauty of this beast is you can morph it into what you need.
 
For my home purposes, I use Scenes as Rigs. For example, in my current workhorse preset:
  • Scene 1 is the Band-Commander with JFET Comp, Pi Fuzz (Drive 1A) and Tape Distortion (Drive 2A), then a couple delays (Analog and Digital) and London Plate Reverb.
  • Scene 2 is AC20 12AX7. All the other blocks are obviously the same, but I will use different channels to make sure the effects are complementary to the new amp. Drive 1B is the Timmy 1 and Drive 2B Tone of Kings
  • Scene 3 will get something with more distortion, and I'll swap one of the drives for the Precision Drive or something of that nature. I might tweak the Delays to mellow them out and drastically reduce or remove the Reverb.
  • And so on.

I don't use scenes to activate and deactivate effects. I do think this makes a lot of sense for gigging guitarists, but I just annoy my wife with my noise at home. Rather, I use scenes to present me with a different palette or flavor of effects for a specific amp. Each scene really only pulls up a different channel on the amp block with all the effects deactivated, then I can have fun from there.
 
I use scenes as effects configs and clean/dirty amp settings. I never did use scenes live with my fx8, and dont know how things will change once im in a band again.
 
You can download my presets to see how I use scenes. :)

They change the AMP/CAB model in unison most often. But I also use them to change groups of effects to bring up "special sounds" that I don't use that often, but would otherwise require a lot of individual IA stomping to make happen. I consider them "home base" settings -- if I get lost in IA state I can call up a scene to get back to a place that's sane.
 
iaresee said:
You can download my presets to see how I use scenes. :)

They change the AMP/CAB model in unison most often. But I also use them to change groups of effects to bring up "special sounds" that I don't use that often, but would otherwise require a lot of individual IA stomping to make happen. I consider them "home base" settings -- if I get lost in IA state I can call up a scene to get back to a place that's sane.
Click to expand...
Sorry, drawing a blank on "IA". What do you mean?
 
As a Fractal newbie this is surprisingly helpful to me. Although, it did take me 5 tries to type "iaresee"into the axechange and spell it correctly. Probably the Lsdexia acting up again.
 
I use scenes to turn on/off single or multiple effects for section of a song. I usually organize it something like (Intro, Verse, Chorus, Break, Lead). My pedalboard has presets organized by songs, which I can add to setlists on the pedal board.
 
My presets have evolved into giant kitchen sink affairs all using the same basic "pattern":

Clean
Rhythm (kinda crunchy)
Mild Lead
Lead 1
Lead 2
Clean with dotted 8ths
Lead with dotted 8ths
Clean with envelope phaser

And then I use the FC-12 to also do things like:

Switch between auto-engaged Wah, envelope wah, Envelope Filter.

Switch between mild and 80's style Chorus

Tap Tempo

And 4 expression pedals:

Wah
Whammy (not quite, but my own version)
Rotary engage / speed
Delay feedback/mix

I leave Scene Revert off.

I can and do play full sets of songs with a single preset. My presets are typically just based around different clean-ish amps and tweaks to the drives.

I may pick a different preset depending on how the venue sounds or how I'm feeling.
 
I tend to think of Presets as a theme, and scenes as a variant/embellishment to a theme.

A theme might cover only one song or it may cover a particular bands brand of music, or an album etc. Consequently a theme may only be one preset or it may be 10. The first half of my presets name covers the theme and the second part is named after which guitar I'll use.

It's interesting to see how everyone approaches this in their own unique way.
 
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