Author: Gianni C.

Posted in Tips and Online finds

How to make your own guitar pedals

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After being frustated with my tone tools for quite some time, I moved onto trying to to build my own. It is not as difficult as you would think if you have basic soldering skills and a predisposition to problem-solve and troubleshoot. Of course a simple circuit like a Fuzz pedal or an overdrive is possible to achieve with basic tools and knowledge but semething more complex like a delay pedal migth call for a printed circuit or maybe a kit if your skills are not top notch.

There are quite a few great sites and forums for you to learn the craft (I will post quite a few here). I am sure you will start up with a small selection of tools, but this is highly addictive stuff, so you will see your arsenal of tools grow very rapidly. for the UK the goto place is still Maplin Electronics as for the US Radio Shack still rules the high street.

What you will need:

Soldering iron (nothing too strong 30w will do to start, then maybe a temperature controlled station)

solder (try to get some decent one, maybe with silver and rosin core)

a selection of resistors and electrolytic capacitors, small value capacitor (learn how to read them, it’s not that hard) and stranded wire in a few different colours (you will soon learn the common coding). I’d suggest at the beginning to first to pick a project  and try to find all the components, but you will soon realise that most pedals use similar components as they all run at around 9v.

Hammond metal enclosures (you will find predrilled ones online if you are not keen to use a drill), dpdt, 3pdt (for true bypass) switches, jacks, led’s and a set of knobs of your choice.

Here’s a list of great sites :

http://www.generalguitargadgets.com – projects and kits, lots of famous pedals and tweaks of famous pedals. A must.

http://www.tonepad.com – Lots of schematics for the most famous pedals and some good step by step picture tutorials.

http://www.runoffgroove.com – original schematics, this site has been around for quite a while and I have built some of the pedals. highly recommended the different variations of Ruby amp.

www.muzique.com – by Jack Orman, this site has been on since 1995, and it is a must for original designs (don’s quote me on this but it seems that Fulltone took a look to this site for his famous fet booster…)

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/ – one of the top forums for the pedal mad.

http://www.beavisaudio.com/ – I LOVE this site, not the biggest but one of the best and clearest (the design is awesome) to understand how things work…great to understand how to connect switches and put together the pedal itself.
http://fuzzcentral.ssguitar.com/ – the name says it all, great site for all of you fuzz mad a lot of variations for fuzz pedals
www.geofex.com – again one of the oldest sites, great stuff especially the ‘technology of’ pages, where famous pedal are dissected and explained (tubescreamer, fuzz face…). lots to learn here
http://www.super-freq.com/ – a great site of tweaks and original schematics, very clean layouts!
http://freestompboxes.org/ – the ‘black hat’ circuit discovering and bending, great to find out how most famous pedals are built and who copies who…
Premade Kits:
http://www.buildyourownclone.com/ –  the most famous site that covers most famous pedals and tweaked famous pedals
http://olcircuits.com/olckits.html – licensed kits for some of runoffgroove’s beavis audio, and more sites cited above, if you are in trouble but you like some of the stuff you see on the sites above, here you might find a solution.

Where to find Parts and components:

www.smallbearelectronics.com – great site (stateside)

www.banzaieffects.com – german based businness that serves europe. I have bought quite a few times from them and they are great.

http://www.pedalpartsplus.com/ – not the biggest, but a great shop especially for the powder coated enclosures

 

Some of my creations:

‘Income Booster’ – just a clean volume boost, similar to LPB-1 EH, just a clean and fat volume boost.

 

 

OCD clone – Great pedal, made a clone to see how the circuit worked (basically 2 Fets used to clip) and liked the sound after a few tweakes…now in my pedalboard.

 

Fuzz Face variation:

 

Swtich pedal for Line 6 MM4 (and all that serie of pedals): This has been on youtube for ages…and I am glad to see it has spakerd quite a conversation and more mods…

 

Disclaimer: I love making original circuits and cloning existing pedals: the latter should be an exercise and never used for commercial purposes. Companies and individuals spend a lot of time and money to develop those pedals: respect other people’s work. Pay attention to soldering and extra attention if you want to venture into etching and making your own PCB’s, I will not be held  responsible for any damage!

Posted in Tips and Online finds

Transpose songs in different keys the easy way

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We have seen in one of my videos how to transpose music. I have stumbled a couple of days ago on a site that has on preview this little nifty software, soon to be released for free (this is what the site states, don’t quote me on that!)

You can check out the site here:

http://www.theoreticallycorrect.com/transposer/index.html

It basically promises a very fast and accurate transposition of chord in songs that we can find online. It looks a bit like a text editor that will recognise the chords, just check out the quick demo video on the site and you’ll see what I mean.

It is quite a handy way for songwriters, beginner guitarists or singers that want to find a way to play their favourite song in a more comfortable key.

In a way it is what the site chordie has online, in a portable format, in case you had no connection.

These are great tools, but in my opinion not to be used without knowing the theory behind transposing music, a necessary skill if you are serious about making music.

Posted in Special Topics

Recycling melodic material

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Recycling melodic material is a concept that you can apply to many different situations. Here we will see how to change a melodic line and how to adapt this line (with some harmonic knowledge) to other chords.
1) This is our original melodic line, a D minor ‘jazzy’ kind of phrase.
2) The first thing I could do is to lower all the A to Ab so to use the same phrase on Half diminished chords (natural nine adds a really nice color to the phrase)
3) Let’s now change the m3 (F) to M3 (F#), and the m7(C) to Maj7(C#)
4) Let’s try anther one: m3(F) to M3(F#), m7(C) to Maj7(C#), P5 (A)to #5(A#) goes to morph the phrase so that if fits a Dmaj7(#5) chord. Very Modern indeed.
5) Let’s see if you can spot these other examples: Altered dominant & Dim H/W

Posted in Tips and Online finds

Great free online resources for ear training and rhythm training.

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Ear training is the skill of recognizing pitch, intervals, chords, chord progressions, rhythms and more. A lot of people think perfect pitch (or absolute pitch) is essential to be the next Beethoven. I think relative pitch is probably more important. Yes, perfect pitch is great if you want to transcribe a solo and you don’t have your instrument with you, but I think to recognize progressions relative pitch helps a lot more. And relative pitch is easily acquirable. This is a good list of websites to check out to develop your skills:

Ear Training:

http://www.good-ear.com/servlet/EarTrainer

http://www.trainear.com/

http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id90_en.html

http://www.solfege.org/

http://www.ibreathemusic.com/article/44

http://www.miles.be/

http://andyvn.ath.cx/aquallegro

Rhythm Training:

http://www.therhythmtrainer.com/

http://www.practicesightreading.com/index.php (this is about sight-reading rhythms, but you can record yourself and then train your ear by transcribing the rhythms)

To practice all of the above (and to practice in general) you need a good metronome: this is a free Java metronome from Seventh String (also the creator of Transcribe! An innovative transcribing software)

This is the page with the demo and the info about this cool looking metronome that you can use freely online or on your desktop by downloading the zip file (second link):

http://www.seventhstring.com/metronome/metronome.html

http://www.seventhstring.com/metronome/ssmetronome.zip

On a different note for all of you out there who love jazz and use real books they have on their great site a master index that helps you find any tune on most fake books:

http://www.seventhstring.co.uk/fbindex.html

Now you don’t have any more excuses to keep your ears in top conditions…get practising!

Of course remember that ear training and rhythm training are just a few of the skills you need to be a 360 degree musician: read TrueGuitarist.com’s Master-plan!

Posted in Tips and Online finds

55 riffs that you must know as a working guitarist

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In alphabetical order 55 guitar riffs that I feel you must know as a working/depping guitarist…at a jam, or a last minute covers gig, knowing these will save you from a few embarrassing moments…and a good set of  ears will help you busk through the rest of the song!
 
1.Ace of spades (Motorhead)
2.Aint Talkin 'Bout Love (van Halen)
3.All along the watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)
4.All right now (Free)
5.Aqualung (Jethro Tull)
6.Are you gonna go my way (Lenny Kravitz)
7.Back in black (AC/DC)
8.Beat it (Michael Jackson)
9.Black Dog (Led Zeppelin)
10.Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones)
11.China groove (Doobie Brothers)
12.Cocaine (Eric Clapton)
13.Cult of personality (Living Color)
14.Day tripper (The Beatles)
15.Enter sandman (Metallica)
16.Eye of the tiger (Survivor)
17.Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
18.I feel fine (The Beatles)
19.I love rock and roll (Pat Benatar)
20.Immigrant song (Led zepplin)
21.Johnny be goode (Chuck Berry)
22.Kashmere (Led Zeppelin)
23.Layla (Eric Clapton)
24.Life in the fast lane (The Eagles)
25.Moby Dick (Led Zeppelin)
26.Money For nothing (Dire Straits)
27.More than a feeling (Boston)
28.My sharona (The Knack)
29.Owner of a lonely heart (Yes)
30.Panama (Van Halen)
31.Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
32.Pride and joy (SRV)
33.Purple Haze (J Hendrix)
34.Rebel rebel (D Bowie)
35.Roadhouse blues (The Doors)
36.Satisfaction (Rolling Stones)
37.Sharp dressed man (ZZ top)
38.Smells like teen spirit (Nirvana)
39.Smoke on the water (Deep Purple)
40.Start me up (Rolling Stoned)
41.Start me up (Rolling Stones)
42.Summertime blues (Eddy Cochran)
43.Sunday bloody Sunday (U2)
44.Sunshine of your love (Cream)
45.Sweet child of mine (Guns and roses)
46.Sweet home Alabama (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
47.Under the Bridge (RHCP)
48.Walk this way (Aerosmith/Run dmc)
49.Whola lotta love (Led Zeppelin)
50.Wild thing (The Troggs)
51.Wipeout (The Surfaris)
52.Wodoo chile (Jimi Hendrix)
53.You really got me (The Kinks)
54.You shook me all night long (AC/DC)
55.Zero (Smashing Pumpkins)