The Harp: Right hand
controls the pivoting slide/bridge while
simultaneously picking, plucking and
effecting pitch and modulation. The
slide brings the harp's relative notes
and scales through exponentially fluid
chromatic increments. Additionally, a
foot pedal acts independently on
specific harp strings in order to
bend/manipulate pitch and intervals in a
way reminiscent of a pedal steel guitar.
Single or two-handed play is possible
and allow for the simultaneous playing
of other instruments manipulation and
effects.
The harp uses standard electric guitar
strings with a 14 inch wide custom built
pickup mounted close to the upper
bridge.
A Fisman Triple Play midi
pickup has been added to 6 the lower harp strings.
The Bass
I put together a cello like casing that conceals a
"vintage" Peavey Midibase allowing midi capability
in tandem with the one hand, hammer on
technique I've been using forever.
Among other things, I can now play
some the cello parts that swirl around
my head -
The
bowed cello and bass string sounds
consist of samples excerpts from a
sample string library I developed
recording and sampling my
daughters cello. It sounds great
considering the limitations of the circa
early 1990s peavey midibase limiting the
amount of potential variations of
samples to only one keynote per string.
The ancient, yet awesome technology uses
midi pitch change data, provided by
electrified/split frets to control pitch
with a separate transducer for each
string to trigger the note. I came up
with a completely sleazy technique of
adding modulation/ vibrato with a system
I put together on the bass neck It's
hard to explain but it's key for making
it work..... like dynamically cello.
I also came up with another "clutch"
enabling me to play select power
chords & drum's via bass.
The Keys A
Fatar piano action keybed - that replaces a
CME Xkeys. It's an absolute pleasure to have piano
action ,weighted keys on this thing . I
harvested and Frankensteined two Studio
Logic keyboards together and capped the
keys in oak.
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Main
Reactor
My rack has become somewhat sparse..
Reaper seems to favor the PC platform so
I use a powerful AKY i7 laptop with 32
gigs of ram as a computer. I currently
use a Focusrite interface with
independent systems of gates, limiters
and stompboxes.
Reaper is the primary DAW I use . The
ability to utilize reaper's learnable
"actions" custom commands is crucial
to control the rig's many functions.
Running Inside Reaper I have
a ridiculous amount of insances od
Kontakt running as the primary sound
source for midi elements. I The
majority of patches, sample sounds I
use, including drums are all my own
custom patches and library set up in
complex
routings, key
groups and spits specifically laid out
for the harp. Many of the sounds and
patches I use now have been migrated
from samplers I developed my own
libraries foe years back . One of my
main keyboard (fake guitar) sounds is a
holdover from pre computer (sampler and
synth days) is a dx7 Clavichord put
through distortion and wha wha as my
signature
Johnny Skilsaw
"slide
guitar" sound that's been adapted to
Kontakt.
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