Game changer sustain pedal

[johntarr]

Has anyone tried the Game Changer sustain pedal? I’m thinking that the ability to sustain a note and play over it could open up some interesting practice and possibly even performance possibilities. There are other pedals out there that are cheaper but the game changer seems to be the most user friendly.

Thanks in advance,

John

[Finetales]

I hadn't heard of that before, it looks great. That plus my TC Perform-VE harmonizer/sampler pedal could be a really powerful combination.

[johntarr]

I hadn't heard of that before, it looks great. That plus my TC Perform-VE harmonizer/sampler pedal could be a really powerful combination.

I think the ability to sustain a note now and then could make for some interesting ways to play solo. As far as I can tell, the sound should be pretty good.

How do you use the harmonizer now?

[Finetales]

How do you use the harmonizer now?

I use it to play harmonies with myself in real time with a MIDI keyboard. Not really doable on trombone since you need both hands, but for trumpet, flugelhorn, flugabone etc. (brass you can play with one hand) I play with one hand and play the other parts I want with the other. I've used it on gigs to be an entire horn section by myself. It sounds very close to actually having 4 or 5 of me playing...I've done comparisons at home where I recorded a section passage first by multitracking every part, and then by playing one part and using the harmonizer to get the other parts by playing them on a MIDI keyboard, and the recorded results were almost identical.

There are quite a few guitar harmonizer pedals out there but most are auto-harmonizers, meaning you tell it what key you're in (either through the front panel or manually with a MIDI keyboard) and it automatically fills out the harmonies. These are of limited usefulness if you actually want the flexibility of another part, and since they're made for guitar only they usually don't sound very good with brass. The TC Perform-VK and Perform-VE were made for singers to harmonize with themselves so they have a mic input that faithfully samples the incoming signal in real time. The Perform-VE that I have can also do a ton of other sampling wizardry like record something you sing/play (including words) and then store it so you can play it back via MIDI on any note(s) while you sing/play another line on top of it. It also has built in effects, a looper, formant shaper, and rudimentary drum machine. I haven't really dove into any of that other stuff yet but I plan to.

At some point I should make a video about how I use the Perform-VE as a brass player. It's an extremely powerful tool if you play both keys and valves. I also have an octave pedal that is great fun to put in the signal chain after the harmonizer...that way you can have massive four-octave brass chords from just one initial note! Would love to try one of those TC gang vocal pedals to see if I could simulate an entire marching band's worth of brass. I can imagine all of that with the ability to sustain like a piano with the Gamechanger pedal would be insanely powerful.

[quiethorn]

Depending how far you want to go with this, there are potentially better options. You get way more flexibility and choices for the same or less price if you go the software route:





Or if you really want to stay with hardware, the Boss or Zoom multi-fx pedals likely have the sustain feature built in and give you a whole lot more:




Or if it's really about harmonizing with yourself, start working on that foot coordination:

[johntarr]

Depending how far you want to go with this, there are potentially better options. You get way more flexibility and choices for the same or less price if you go the software route:





Or if you really want to stay with hardware, the Boss or Zoom multi-fx pedals likely have the sustain feature built in and give you a whole lot more:




Or if it's really about harmonizing with yourself, start working on that foot coordination:

Thanks for all those links, a whole new world.

I’ve also been wondering about say using software and an iPad as opposed to pedals. I’m looking for pretty simple as I don’t want to spend precious time tinkering. For now, being able to sustain a sound would be a cool start and then possibly some harmonization and creating sound canvases to play over and speak over as well.

I have used a looper and delay pedal already so am a little familiar with those.

[quiethorn]

Depending how far you want to go with this, there are potentially better options. You get way more flexibility and choices for the same or less price if you go the software route:





Or if you really want to stay with hardware, the Boss or Zoom multi-fx pedals likely have the sustain feature built in and give you a whole lot more:




Or if it's really about harmonizing with yourself, start working on that foot coordination:

Thanks for all those links, a whole new world.

I’ve also been wondering about say using software and an iPad as opposed to pedals. I’m looking for pretty simple as I don’t want to spend precious time tinkering. For now, being able to sustain a sound would be a cool start and then possibly some harmonization and creating sound canvases to play over and speak over as well.

I have used a looper and delay pedal already so am a little familiar with those.

From what I've seen, there are some great options for iPad, but I just haven't gotten into them yet. The main thing you'd need would be one of the audio interfaces made for iPad plus a mic to get decent sound into it. There are a bunch of iOS-compatible interfaces, but if you just wanted to test this out, the onboard mic would work.

For just sustaining a sound, ideally you'd have some sort of wireless MIDI foot pedal, but if you just wanted to try and wing it by hand, you could use something like Audio Damage Eos https://www.audiodamage.com/products/ad034-eos-2. It's a reverb plugin with a freeze function, now available for iOS. You could set a really long reverb tail, play your note(s), and hit the freeze button to sustain them. You could also do something similar with their Dubstation delay plugin, which also has freeze https://www.audiodamage.com/collections ... bstation-2

For harmonization, Eventide has been the king in the hardware world since the 70s, and they have a bunch of plugins for iOS https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/eve ... d546518026 It's crazy that back in the day Eventide gear was thousands of dollars and only affordable by top music studios, but you can get their plugins for $15 each.

I think GarageBand can load AUv3 plugins, but I'm not sure. If not, the standard for modular routing audio between apps on iPad is Audiobus https://audiob.us/

There's also a forum for mobile at KVRaudio https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=166

Anyway, post back if you make any experiments. There's lots of fun to be had!

[quiethorn]

This thread inspired me to spend a few bucks and try out ambient trombone stuff on my wife's iPad:

[Kingfan]

Kinda off topic, but an early adopter of electronics to brass was Don Ellis. He was using a pickup plugged into his mouthpiece, an Echoplex, and a ring modulator back in the early 70s.

[quiethorn]

Kinda off topic, but an early adopter of electronics to brass was Don Ellis. He was using a pickup plugged into his mouthpiece, an Echoplex, and a ring modulator back in the early 70s.

Yeah there were a handful of horn players who used the mouthpiece pickup (Barcus Berry pickup I think, where you drill it into the mouthpiece). Randy Brecker had one too, and I feel like Bruce Fowler did when he played with Zappa, but I can't find any video. And Toshinori Kondo looks like he was using one up until he passed recently (video is in Japanese but you get a closeup of the pickup):

[quiethorn]

Kinda off topic, but an early adopter of electronics to brass was Don Ellis. He was using a pickup plugged into his mouthpiece, an Echoplex, and a ring modulator back in the early 70s.

Ah and looks like these guys make a modern version!
http://piezobarrel.com/

[johntarr]

This thread inspired me to spend a few bucks and try out ambient trombone stuff on my wife's iPad:

Those sounds vaguely remind me of Stuart Dempster’s recordings. Of course his effects setups weren’t so portable.

I appreciate your input on this thread and am both inspired and daunted by the possibilities. There seem to be so many variations of similar apps and pedals that it’s hard to know where to begin. Pedals seem to offer some form of constraint, as in price, which ironically enough actually seems less intimidating.

[Finetales]

Pedals seem to offer some form of constraint, as in price, which ironically enough actually seems less intimidating.

Nowhere does the phrase "limitation breeds creativity" hold true more than in electronic musical instruments. You can get a million different software synths and effects that can do everything in the world, but it's often the more limited hardware with quick and intuitive front panels that allow the most musical productivity and not just mindless sound sculpting (as fun as that is). It's very easily to get paralyzed by choice.

[WGWTR180]

After all of these years working on long tones someone comes up with a pedal?