Re: The Metheny Tone

Joey Goldstein wrote:
Tim McNamara wrote:
In article <eaidnXnZiZTqZh_ZnZ2dnUVZ_qGdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Jack A. Zucker" <jaz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

which metheny are you talking about? Some of the recent trio stuff he doesn't use reverb or delay. Just straight into the amp.

I haven't heard that stuff yet, so I can't comment. I'd be describing what would be considered his "classic" setup with PMG.

Assuming you're talking about his wide chorusing effect then....

He does that with 3 speakers powered by 3 power amps. The signal driving the power-amps/effects comes from a single preamp source, in his case a Digitech DSP2100 I believe.

Sorry, Jack's right about it being a 2101.

Speaker/power-amp #1 has his direct unaffected tone, perhaps with some reverb.

Speaker/power-amp #2 has the signal pass through a digital delay that has an lfo that modulates the delay time. He sets the centre delay to something like 11ms.

Jack says 14ms and he's probably right.

The lfo will vary that up and/or down a few milliseconds at a relatively slow rate. The delay variations cause a slight detuning of the affected signal.

Speaker/power-amp #3 is similar to #2 but the base delay setting is closer to 25ms.

Jack says 26ms.

There is no direct/unaffected signal in #2 or #3.

This creates a very wide sound field. It sounds something like 3 guitars playing the same part.

You won't be able to get the exact same effect without doing it the exact same way as he does. [I've always thought that his 3rd speaker was a little bit of overkill, but he swears by it. It wouldn't sound all that different, IMO, if #1 was omitted but there was a 50/50 wet/dry mix on #2 and #3. I.e. You could come close with 2 speakers/power-amps running the signal through 2 DDLs.]

You can come close in other ways too.
In the old days I had a Korg DDL that had a modulation feature. I'd set the base delay to about 30ms, the lfo used a sine wave with about a 1hz wave length. Modulation depth was set to just achieve a slight detuning. Mix was set to 50% dry-50% wet. [That DDL achieved the stereo-izing by having the L and R signals out of phase with each other. That can sound cool, but if it's ever mixed back to mono the effect is cancelled. It sounded OK in mono through a single speaker, but stereo was really happening.] That DDL also had significant loss of treble frequencies on the effected signal which made it rather warm sounding.

But most DDLs these days don't have a modulation feature.

Since then I've always used a chorusing effect (or detuning effect, see below) with about 30ms of pre-delay (careful 'cause many chorus effects don't allow pre-delay past 10 ms if at all), depth is set to just slightly detune the effected signal, wet/dry mix is at 50/50 or slightly drier. Reduced the high-end component of the effected signal for warmth.
again, it sounds OK in mono, but stereo is where it's at. Look for a chorus effect that has true stereo, not just phase reversal of the L/R signals. These should allow for separate pre-delay times for L&R as well as separate modulation and mix parameters for L&R. If it's got a choice of wave form for the modulation that includes a sine wave then all the better. I'm using a TC G-Major right now and I've never been happy with the chorusing.

Another way to come close is with a pitch shift/detuning effect.
Set the left side to +11cents and the right side to -11cents. Pre-delay at about 30ms. 50/50 wet/dry mix on both sides. Reduce the top end of the effected signal also. This probably comes closest to what PM does. Mike Stern uses the pitch shift effect on his SPX 90 to do this type of thing. But unlike PM's method the detuning doesn't vary over time (and of course there's no 3rd speaker that's 100% dry unaffected signal).




--
Joey Goldstein
http://www.joeygoldstein.com
joegold AT sympatico DOT ca
.

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