Thanks to all that made it out for last Friday's session with Per Boysen and Dave Brosky.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6bUenKOVh8[/youtube]

The total session clocked in at an hour as there was so much to cover. Per walked us through his creative processes, a screenshare with the Fractal AXE-FX, some very clever delay overlays for right and left hand (but never 5 over4) as well as some insights on the SG-12. We had an all-star cast in attendance, tip of hat to Dbro for hosting and all that made it out as well as Andy Prokopyk who requested the session with Per, but was unable to make it out.

A quick reminder next week's session will feature Flint Blade with Matt Tate hosting! I expect Matt and Flint will have lots to cover, including Flint's massive American tour this last year. Please drop a line to info@freehandsacademy.com if you would like an invite!

I have a question for Per - is the "live" effect that you discussed another effect in the AxeFX or an external pedal? Something else? I didn't quite catch what you meant or what you were doing.

And thanks for all the info!

I have a question for Per:
you say in the video that you have an 'alive' switch (as opposed to the 'kill switch'). What did you mean by that? and how did you set it up in the Axe fx? I have an Axe fx myself.

And one more question: you say you have a volume pedal and the the delay mix crossfaded in one expression pedal, so volume up is delay mix down. Is the feedback amount of the delay also attached to the same expression pedal?

Could be both - or whatever I have at hand. The important thing is not the gear but the signal routing and processing. I simply use two delays, one on each fretboard's output. And I have two expression pedals: one for each delay/fretboard. But the "next level" mockup is that these two pedals double up as volume pedals as well. For each of my two fretboards it works like this: At pedal toe-down there is full fretboard output going through the amp but now delay at all (just a dry and tight natural sound). At pedal toe-up (heel-down) there is no fretboard output going into the amp (fretboard output muted) but the delay effect is faded in at full level and also at full loop feedback. This means the sound that got caught in the delay keeps looping and if you played a long note or chord it sounds like a frozen cloud of sound just hanging there. Finally, the two fretboard's delays are set to different delay time, often like 4th note vs 8th note triplet to make for interesting poly rhythms in case I should freeze chunks from both fretboards.

The normal "kill switch" kills audio while pressed but mine is the opposite: audio is muted but when you press the switch it lets audio through. I just find that more straight-forward to play with. In technical terms I simply set up two momentary switches to send the same MIDI CC's as the fading expression pedals, but just the two levels 0 and 127 (closes vs fully open). Oh, and then I have a third such switch that targets both fretboard's delays at the same time. And the final touch is that I have a switch that changes the delay time in both delay units from the short "three against four" 8th or 4th note duration to the full 4 bar duration allowed in the AxeFx delay. By using the four bar delay you can loop the last four bars you played on one side and play with both hands on the other side on top of that loop, or you can go back to the short delay length as a way to "tuncate" the loop and chop off everything but a small segment.... there's a lot fun stuff you can do with this rather simple control setup. It's not specific for the AxeFxII amp though, I always set up my effect rig like this whatever hardware or software I'll be using to play through.

Thanks Per for explaining. Really like this stuff and it is always good to know how other players set it up because the possibilities are endless.

I forgot to talk about the outdoors busking rig. I'm cabling both stick sides through a TC Electrnics Trinity reverb stopbox and from there each stereo channel into the two channels of a Roland Street Cube. Since the Trinity is a true stereo box the two side's signals are kept separated for the amp. Great sound, but the reverb pedal eats up a nine v battery in two hours. I use to keep a fresh re-charged backup battery when I go out and play. The Roland amp seems to be able to play for days on one battery charge-up, but I still recharge over night to be safe.

As a side question. I guess you know this because of your experiences with software loopers:
I do all my looping stuff with the Ableton Live looper. In Ableton I have set my monitor to ON but I also use the monitoring from my soundcard. So I have the infamous chorused double notes. But when I don't monitor (only Ableton monitoring) from my soundcard there is a latency in the sound. And when I only monitor from my soundcard (Ableton monitor off) then nothing gets fed in the looper. There is no dry/wet for the Ableton looper as I far as I know. Any idea what the solution might be?

I have used Mobius as well but I prefer the simplicity of the Ableton looper when I do quantized and synced loops.

Sorry for the off topic but I can't find the solution anywhere. I thought you might know this....

Hey Ravi - you might try posting that in a new topic as we do have some people here that are pretty good with Ableton.

ok thanks. I will do that. Hopefully there are some Ableton looper experts here.

What time is this Friday's Free Hands starting?