Here’s something I want to mention here - I don’t dare post this on other forums for the amount of aggression they seem to have…
Over the years I’ve played one guitar (a Yamaha RGX that I bought 30 years ago). The guitar is heavily customised, starting with a bridge humbucker, middle and neck single pickups, and now ending up with a bride and neck Entwistle Nemesis pickups. Last year I finally bit the bullet and installed a Roland GK3 internal pickup(!). I then picked up a Boss GP10 with an idea of using it as a way for me to get MIDI notes into my DAW without playing keyboards.
A few days with the GP10 and I realised that it’s guitar and amp modelling weren’t just good, they were phenomenal!
So for my workflow of trying to write music I switch on Logic, throw in a Drummer track and try to get as close to the beat I’m looking for. I dial in a bass sound on my GP10 and play bass and lay that down. I can then dial in a clean / acoustic guitar sound and record that and then add all my Gibson / Strat / Rickenbacker / whatever sounds over the top of that.
Note, this is not a final product yet, just the rough tracks to turn into a songs. Later I will play drums to replace the drummer track, and re-record guitar parts.
Curious to know, anybody out there using a Boss GP10 in their workflow at all?
I have no experience with the unit, but am alarmed to hear that posting this sort of workflow description & question would garner aggression in responding…! Sounds like a perfectly good way to proceed to me, the bottom line is, does it get you into the creative space you want, and it sounds like you’ve got a combo that works for you. More power to ya. :beerbang:
The Yamaha RGX was my very first guitar, and to this day I STILL regret ever selling that thing.
Sounds to me like you figured out a killer way to get all your rough tracks going.
Any process that you can find that enables you to just concentrate on creating is a win in my book. The beauty of your setup is that there isn’t a bunch of setup and teardown involved to move from one thing to the next.
I haven’t used the GP-10, but I’ve heard that it does a really good job of midi tracking and is very responsive. Finding that’s the case?
Mine is (was) a black RGX - those shameless “tributes” to the Ibanez RG range! Mine was stripped down to natural wood, sanded, and then varnished with 4 coats of boat lacquer. I was trying to get the Satriani look for my guitar. To this day, most people who pick it up and play it will comment on it’s action and feel - there’s simply not a guitar out there that has the same feel. With my Entwistles in there, the sound is now phenomenal as well.
The GP-10 was I realised a dream that I’d had for about 25 years - namely to get MIDI notes out of a guitar. If I simply send MIDI out of the unit into Logic, it will track 99.99% of all notes I play, velocity included and will track bent notes as well. The GK3 pickup is a mother to set up properly, but if you do and configure it well, it will track every little thing you do. Now, add the GP-10’s guitar modelling and you’re talking serious power. The absolutely brilliant thing about it is that you can send out a signal via the USB port so that it powers a channel in Logic, simultaneously send MIDI and capture that in a separate channel, and even send an output into the input of your audio interface. So you can easily capture a modelled guitar, capture of all the MIDI information and record a DI signal as well. When I get back home I want to set up a small challenge for this group - it’s something that’s been on my mind for a few months and I think I have finally found the place to try it out. More details to follow in the new year!
I don’t have any experience with the GP-10 but I’ve tried a GR-55 (with a Strat equipped with GK3 pickups) but sold it after a while because I was a disappointed by the tracking to MIDI. The build-in sounds were cool (and there were also some model emulations that sounded fine), but not on par to the Virtual synths I use in my DAW, so translation to MIDI was what I was looking for and it was not accurate enough IMHO…
Perhaps the GP-10 is better in this regard?
About this, don’t listen to people telling you that the way you do it is wrong. If you do good music with whatever equipment you have, then it’s good music!
I strongly believe that the end result is all that matters. I personally use a Variax JTV and a Kemper Profiler and I’m very happy with the sounds and versatility, something I wouldn’t be able to achieve without a huge collection of guitars and amps in a well insulated/treated environment, which I don’t have anyway. I use virtual drums (Superior Drummer) and they sound great to me. I use Trillian VST for bass, and MIDI synths and keys. I do the music I like and manage to get what I think are great sounds out of all of this, and this is the only thing that really matters to me.
Work on songwriting/arrangement/production/performance, this is far more essential than being caught up in a useless quest for the ultimate “authentic” tool…
Any instrument you will use is just that in the end: a tool.
It took me a while to get my confidence together for this - especially when you’re told that you have to mic your amp - authentically with a Shure mic, at such and such distance, at this angle. I kind of got caught up in it, and then realised I was spending days / weeks just trying to get a sound that was impossible to capture in my loft!
Now, the GP-10 is my first foray into MIDI guitar. I did months of research on the GK pickups, and not he various Roland / Boss MIDI solutions. I spent an inordinate amount of time mounting the GK3 internal pickup properly. I had to drill and route into my guitar to get the controls and cable to fit properly. I then set up each string religiously to get the perfect signal. The GP-10 is a little different from the other MIDI synths. I would say it’s strength is the guitar modelling. When you dial up the Strat sounds, and then flick “virtually” from the bridge to the neck pickup, you have to convince yourself that it’s actually a modelled guitar. Before I got that, I was saving up to pick up a Variax JTV myself, having owned a Variax before. A few days with the GP-10, and I was hooked. The way it tracks every note, every bend is amazing. I don’t really play the synth sounds, but to be fair I need to spend a few days and make some of my own synth sounds. The fact that you can blend the synth sounds with your guitars own pickups just makes the possibilities endless for tones.
