How do you use your Axon?

[handen]

This thread is for those of us who didn't necessarily need the sound-playback functionality of a Roland GK floor synth and instead opted to purchase an Axon AX-50, AX-100 or AX-100 MkII strictly for the superb GK to MIDI conversion capabilities and all of the inherently infinite programming functionality available.

 

The main components of my setup:

 

 

[aliensporebomb]

Some cool ideas there. Especially the "live triggering of techno".

 

I'm not running an Axon but I was using my guitar via the guitar-to-midi interface in my VG99 to drive Mainstage for some percussion tests:

 

http://pod.ath.cx/vg99/sounds/mstests.mp3

(short excerpt) and

http://pod.ath.cx/vg99/sounds/dark.mp3

 

I see there's a lot farther it can be taken from watching the videos.

 

I figured your guitar would be way too confrontational and polarizing for traditionalists. You're not playing a Les Paul or Strat thru a Marshall and you're going to get every doofus who can't handle it hurling hate your way.

 

Worse yet you're playing a guitar-to-midi interface and playing a genre not traditionally associated with electric guitar at all. Oh the humanity!

 

I think it makes a lot of sense personally. The billion note arpeggio bedroom guys are never going to do anything so it's not like they're gigging with that stuff. You at least have a chance to appeal to a market segment that actually gets gigs and people want to see live.

 

Only artist I can think of remotely doing what you do is System 7 (Steve Hillage/Miquette Giraudy) but he doesn't use his guitar to trigger samples, he just uses regular analog guitar thru delays in the techno genre.

 

My own setup is a Mac G5 2.5 with 7 gigs of ram and 4.7 TB of disc. I plan on going Mac Pro eventually but we just got the wife her updated iMac so it will be a bit. Currently my machine is benching just over 2312 but it seems to do the job. Wife's is benching around 5000 or so (grumble).

 

And you gotta realize, for some of these people rocking the guitar-to-midi flute patch is a timeless rite of passage along the lines of standing onstage playing comfortably numb or something.

[Umbra]

I wonder a lot why guitar players seem to be stuck in the stone age and not doing more of this sort of stuff.

 

You really don't even need a midi interface. You can use the vari-audio tool in cubase to generate midi from audio. Just wouldn't be real-time like using a midi converter is.

[girevik]

Handen,

 

I may not be an Axon owner, but I just wanted to say I dig your experiments with MIDI and effects. My goal this year is to make my MIDI guitar/MIDI violin interact with the KARMA function on my Korg M3 synth to produce something more interesting than the KARMA demos that I have seen online so far (they all seem to be smooth jazz or techno - very musically limited range).

 

And yes, death to "MIDI guitar as flute". LOL!

[Nik]

I am an Axon user and I think what you demonstrate in the vids looks like a lot of fun. And I do like the guitar. I bet it's surprisingly comfortable to play standing up.

 

My problem with the Daft Punk track is that you are just recreating an existing track. You've chopped it up and you are putting it back together in the original order. This could be done with a keyboard, with drum pads, with a mouse on the computer. It's a lot like doing a jigsaw.

 

Putting your own sample together, or samples from various sources and triggering them to create an original work = way more interesting. And it seems that's the direction you are heading in. The Failed experiment with the thing on your headstock - that was the most interesting of your vids for me.

 

I have to hold my hand up and admit that I am very close to the 'flute noodling' camp. I used my Axon in a heavy rock covers duo with another guitarist who did all the lead work. I drove my Axon with an old Roland G707 guitar some of the time. I would get far more people coming to me and asking to try the guitar and how it was to play. No-one seemed bother that I was playing rhythm guitar, hammond organ, bass, strings, the odd sax solo and sometimes drum tracks, all at the same time.

 

So mostly, I use my Axon to do stuff that a keyboard player might do, because I can't (or won't) play keyboards. And I love using the Arpegiator in the AX100. Feeding notes into the pattern to make a constantly shifting harmonic sequence.

The most creative stuff for me used to come from using it in conjunction with regular (or effected) guitar sounds. But more and more I am using an Electro Harmonix HOG for that sort of thing.

[aliensporebomb]

I've actually got an amazing flute patch for the VG99 - this guy named Kostas put it together - he's greek and also did a pretty respectable Bouzouki too.

 

Right now I'm working on programming sounds you normally would only be able to get thru an Eventide processor or the like.

 

And last night just by messing around I created a string patch I call "the massed choir of the apocalypse" since it sounds like something you'd hear on doomsday or something.

 

Bill Ruppert is probably the foremost programmer of the VG out there - I aim for that type of quality sounds.

 

Anyway, back to the discussion.

[girevik]

I've actually got an amazing flute patch for the VG99 - this guy named Kostas put it together - he's greek and also did a pretty respectable Bouzouki too.

 

As a VG-99 user myself, I don't count VG-99 flute as "MIDI Guitar flute", because it's based on the real guitar string, however heavily processed by Roland's modeling engine.

 

I need to hang out on that forum more.

[elantric]

 

I need to hang out on that (VG-99) forum more.

 

 

FWIW - These are the VG-99 Forums

http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/

 

Yahoo VGuitar forums

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/vg-8/

 

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Roland_VG99/

 

 

 

 

VG-99 Patch Downloads:

Over 1000 VG-99 Patches created by VG-99 Users

http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php/board,35.0.html

http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php/topic,2052.0.html

 

and here:

http://www.futureguitarnow.com/forum/index.php?board=43.0