A-list performances, gear exhibits and over 200 workshops draw record crowds to the nation’s largest customer-focused music trade show
Fort Wayne, IN — For the 17th year, Sweetwater hosted its annual GearFest on Friday, June 22 and Saturday, June 23, 2018 at its campus in Fort Wayne, Indiana, drawing record crowds with more than 15,000 attendees from across the world — including guests from Australia, Brazil and Japan. This year’s event also saw a 15-percent increase in music equipment sales during the event
Considered the nation’s largest customer-focused music and pro-audio trade show, GearFest 2018 offered something for every music lover — from over 200 workshops to new gear releases from top musical instrument manufacturers to performances by some of the biggest names in the industry, including Greg Koch, Peter Erskine and John Scofield.
“We are thrilled that GearFest continues to attract more and more musicians from across not only the U.S., but the world, who are searching for a unique music experience unlike any other,” said Steve Dwyer, Senior Director of Brand at Sweetwater Sound. “Through GearFest, Sweetwater is reaching today’s music creation community and bringing them the opportunity to learn and interface with some of the brightest minds in the music industry. We are certain that anyone who attended GearFest walked away with a new piece of knowledge and are ready to take their passion for music to the next level.”
For those who couldn’t make the event, Sweetwater live streamed select panels, performances and workshops on Facebook Live so everyone could be a part of the GearFest experience. The live streamed videos can be viewed at: https://www.sweetwater.com/gearfest/watch-live/.
Unforgettable Performances
Inspiring the crowd, this year’s GearFest was full of memorable, impromptu performances by some of the biggest names in the music industry, including guitarist Nita Strauss who took the stage during her seminar with Nick Bowcott and performed an impromptu performance of Pantera’s “Walk” as a tribute to the late Pantera/Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul.
Another unforgettable performance came when drummer Steve Ferrone, who has worked with top talent like Tom Petty, Eric Clapton and Duran Duran, learned that his former bandmate — keyboardist, arranger and music director Greg Phillinganes — was also at GearFest. The two legends connected and jumped onstage, entertaining the audience with a spontaneous rendition of Clapton’s “Pretending.”
Serious ‘Master’ Classes
Performances aside, GearFest also offered attendees the opportunity to learn from some of the best and brightest in the industry during expert panels and workshops which featured names like Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor, drummer and producer Russ Kunkel, and former Megadeth guitarist Chris Broderick. The more than 200 workshops and seminars covered such topics as getting discovered on YouTube, music creation with computers, and tips on improving technique and theory.
A perennial GearFest favorite, this year’s Producer’s Panel offered a high-powered discussion on what it takes to be a producer, how to help artists perform their best and what makes a song great. The panel was made up of Sylvia Massy (Tool, Prince), Neal Pogue (TLC, Pink), Kevin Killen (Shakira, U2), Fab Dupont (Jennifer Lopez, Bon Jovi), Chris Lord-Alge (James Brown, Prince) and Rich Chycki (Dream Theater) along with Sweetwter’s own Mitch Gallagher moderating the panel.
Among the most popular of the events was “Getting Great Electric Guitar Tone” which featured Butch Walker (Taylor Swift, Panic! at the Disco), Buddy Miller (Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant), Tim Pierce (Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen), Lyle Workman (Bourgeois Tagg, Todd Rundgren), and panel moderator and Nashville session star Corey Congilio. During this session, the group dug deep into capturing electric guitar tones and demonstrated the power of Universal Audio’s OX.
Next year’s GearFest 2019 will be held June 21-22nd.
Fat envelope and wah sounds are made even wilder with the help of an expansive octave effect that can be used in tandem or independently from the filter.
For those that haven’t delved too deeply into the subject or the sounds, envelope filters can seem a little loaded, stylistically speaking. Used well, they add bounce, joy, or even menace to a guitar or bass. Used wrong, they sound horribly corny. Used unconventionally, though, they can radically reshape guitar tones in surprising ways. Leveraging how they reshape tone with picking dynamics, for instance, is a great way to bust out of a box. They also pair well with distortion, fuzz, delays, modulation, and more (though if you aren’t willing to dig for gold in these combinations the results can confound at first).
Tsakalis Phonkify X FINAL VIDEO
The Tsakalis Phonkify X, an evolution of the original Tsakalis Phonkify, is, in part, a great envelope filter for the way it smooths the path to the outer edges of the effect’s potential. It’s got great range, which is enhanced by effective mix, gain, frequency, and Q controls. Using those controls together in the right combinations also makes the Phonkify X sound fat where other envelope filters can sound narrow, thin, and not terribly nuanced. (An internal voltage doubler that increases headroom is another contributing factor.) And with an octave section that can span corpulent and piercing regions of the sound spectrum—and be used independently or with the filter—the Phonkify X is a trove of powerful, odd, and uncommon guitar sounds, and a true provocateur for those in a rut.
Clarity, Body, and Brawn
One of the Phonkify X’s great strengths is the extra mass and air in its range and how easy it is to find it. As far as envelope filters—which can be counterintuitive to many players the first time out—go, the Phonkify X is very forgiving and responsive. The same qualities make it a great pair for radical or merely fattened fuzz and drive tones. Sixties-type germanium fuzzes coax fiery Hendrix- and Ron Ashton-isms that you can also utilize in traditional sweeping wah fashion if you add an expression pedal to the mix. It also sounds amazing upstream from a dark smoky overdrive that can blunt the sharpest filter edges while adding ballast and attitude.The octave effect is great on its own, too, not least because you move between deep octave-down settings and reedy high tones.
The Verdict
The latter can be a bit cloying and full of digital artifacts in some applications, but when the low octave content is used to temper that tendency, or dial it out entirely, you can summon very organic, complex, and rich tones that can be made rumbling and earth shaking with distortion or drive, or reshape the pedal’s filtered tones if you add it back in the mix. (An additional switch also enables you to situate the octave before or after the filter.). Together, these two effects that blend so seamlessly are a formidable combo.
Co-designed with low-end professor and tone connoisseur Ian Martin Allison, the MXR Bass Synth will turn your bass into a filthy funk machine, delivering a range of monophonic synth tones that call back to hits from Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Parliament Funkadelic, and more. This pedal is ready made for intergalactic grooves, capturing vintage analog-style vibes with killer tracking and sustain to serve up thunderous sub-octave, expressive envelope, and lush modulation effects with the flexibility and control that modern players demand.
A full, player-friendly suite of controls allows you to shape not just the aforementioned effects but every other detail of your bass synth tone: blend dry and wet signals, sculpt filter sweeps from rubber-band bounce to syrupy slow-motion, adjust filter cutoff and resonance for extra punch, switch between triangle, sawtooth, or square waveforms, and add harmonically rich oscillators for more complex textures.
Or you can skip straight to the groove with eight presets that Ian crafted, inspired by iconic tracks from Michael Jackson, Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, and more. And for tone chasers who love to dive deep, the Bass Synth offers advanced parameters, stereo capability, and flexible rig integration to take your sound anywhere you want it to go.
Whether you’re replicating pop hits in a cover band, holding down the low end at church, or touring the world, this pedal gives you instant synth bass magic. Get down on the one with the MXR Bass Synth.
“Over the years, I have tended to make synth sounds either with individual pedals or with blocks in a multi-FX unit, and while those sounds can be super cool and get close to legit synth sounds, the MXR Bass Synth gets closer and, in some cases, even totally indistinguishable from an incredible keys rig,” Ian says. “We worked tirelessly to make this thing as perfect as we possibly could—to tweak every single parameter, to get every aspect of how the knobs turned and what effects they controlled just right—and especially the latency and tracking. I wouldn’t relent until we got it perfect. This is perfect.”
MXR Bass Synth highlights:
Intergalactic grooves and vintage analog-style vibes reminiscent of your favorite funk hits
Designed in collaboration with Ian Martin Allison
Thunderous sub-octave, expressive envelope, and lush modulation effects
Killer tracking and sustain
Eight different presets to plug you straight into the groove
Three different waveforms, additional oscillators, tap and expression control, and more
Availability
The MXR Bass Synth is available now at $269.99 street from your favorite retailer.
“There are other worlds (they have not told you of). They wish to speak to you.” —Sun Ra
Middle Eastern or Mediterranean guitar music is an entire musical world with its very own guitar heroes, legendary solos, coveted gear, mysterious deaths, and (of course) some wigs as well. As the ’60s arrived with a fresh wave of guitar madness, musicians worldwide chose the electric guitar as their voice, working it into their region’s musical vocabulary, which was often based on the local folk instruments. Guitarists like Omar Khorshid and Aris San created guitar history as they infused their regional influences with their new love of the electric guitar and brought a new style of playing to life. To me, these two legends are the Middle Eastern equivalents of the Western guitar world’s beloved Jimi and Jimmy.
A little bit about our stars: Omar Khorshid of Cairo, Egypt, took part in monumental recordings, often with Strat in hand. He played with Oum (also known as Umm) Kolthum, one of the most renowned vocalists in Arabic music. His collaborations with Hany Mehanna are pure Middle Eastern psychedelia. He has an extended list of covers of western tunes (including “Popcorn” and The Godfather theme), and his music goes everywhere from soloing along with huge orchestras to trippy tunes with just synths and drum machines. Khorshid’s playing is always spot on, tasteful, and with the melody as the top priority.
Aris San is from Greece, and his life story makes those of Elvis, Hendrix, or Cobain seem mundane by comparison. With an incredible voice and an ability to bring bouzouki chops to the electric guitar, San’s style is second to none. Shifting from various random European guitars, Aris eventually championed the Gibson ES-335 and turned himself into a musical powerhouse with a massive recording catalogue. At one point he even had his own music club in New York (donning the aforementioned wig). After a few encounters with the New York underworld, he returned to Europe and rumors abound.
Let’s dive into some of the techniques and tools that make this music so special. The more you practice and study them, the more you can add to your own music and enrich your style.
Scales of Choice
Here’s one interesting scale out of a vast melodic world of Middle Eastern music. It’s a great place to start as you’ll quickly realize this scale is used everywhere, which is why it has so many names. This scale appears in many a Kirk Hammett solo, as well as in Eastern European klezmer music. It’s the fifth mode of the harmonic minor scale and is also called Maqam Hijaz, Ahava Raba, and Phrygian Dominant. Check out Ex. 1 and then listen to Aris San’s “Mish Mash.”
Ex. 1
Ex. 2 is reminiscent of Khorshid’s take on the tune “Habbina Habbina,” written by Farid El Atrash.
Ex. 2
Glissando
The Middle Eastern guitar style features guitarists who can play melodies with a deep vocal quality and a round, lyrical feel to their phrasing. A glissando, or slide, is an expressive tool that is often used in that way. Ex. 3 is similar to what Khorshid played with Oum Kulthum, keeping it classy as he takes his solo with the orchestra.
Ex. 3
Here’s another example (Ex. 4) by Yehudah Keisar, an incredible guitarist from the generation of musicians who followed the rise of Aris San. Keisar made a big contribution to the repertoire.
This is from the hit song “Basbusa” by Shariff, which was produced and played by Keisar.
Ex. 4
The 1980s era of recordings incorporated more drum machines and had a guitar tone consistent with 335’s plugged right into the PA with a short digital delay on them. That gave the player a quick, tight sound that worked perfectly for these melodies.
Right Hand Rhythmic Picking
Percussion and rhythmic elements play a central role in Middle Eastern music. That’s why you would sometimes see Khorshid playing with three percussionists on the bandstand. Here’s one example of that amazing line up:
Check out the rhythmic opening guitar part and how it sits perfectly together along with the percussion, and then try Ex. 5.Another example of tight rhythmic playing is on the opening bars of Aris San’s “Dam Dam,” which you can find in Ex. 6.
Ex. 5
Ex. 6
Harmonizing
Harmonized guitar parts were always a great device to strengthen melodies, long before the days of arena rock or the Eagles. Here’s the traditional Greek song “Afilotimi” in Ex. 7 to showcase that technique. You can play this with another guitarist, multitrack it, or even dare to play both intervals at once.
Ex. 7
Trills and Embellishments
Trills give the music its nuanced accent and dialect. Some are easy to pick up while others are a little trickier. This last piece is by Moshe Ben-Mosh, another pivotal guitarist who recorded and produced many hits with an emphasis on his Yemenite-Jewish roots. Here’s the title track from the Haim Moshe album Ahavat Chayai which was released in 1982.
Our final example, Ex. 8, covers the points we went over about trills. Notice how many of our examples are played across a single string, which echoes the regional folk instruments, such as bouzouki, oud, and baglama. It’s a doozy, but taking the time to learn it slowly and gradually will help to internalize all the techniques listed here. Practice slowly and make sure you dance to the music!
Big Brave, from left: drummer Tasy Hudson, vocalist/guitarist Robin Wattie, and guitarist Mathieu Ball.
Photo by Big Brave
For years, an old upright piano soundboard had sat in the hallway of the tattoo studio where Robin Wattie worked. Wattie, the vocalist and guitarist of Montreal experimental post-rock trio Big Brave, knew it was destined for the garbage dump, but neither she nor any of her coworkers wanted to actually carry it to the curb. Wattie’s bandmate, guitarist Mathieu Ball, had walked by it plenty of times, but one day, he got a notion: It’d be fun to make use of the piano strings still tensed inside the soundboard.
Wattie worked down the hall, listening as Ball spent an afternoon using vice grips to snap the wooden pegs holding the lowest strings, each one cracking loose with a thunderous PLUNK. Ball estimates that he extracted 50 strings that day; 50 violent PLUNKS cutting the air of Wattie’s studio. “It was really, really funny to listen to,” says Wattie. “Also, like, the swearing.”
Ball, a woodworker, disappeared for a day. He returned with “the Instrument:” a stringed instrument made of a maple plank, measuring 9" wide and 5' long, strung with the salvaged piano strings. With the Instrument assembled, Big Brave had a new task: figuring out how to play it. “It’s not something that comes with a manual,” says Ball. He used a double bass bow to generate sounds; Wattie used mallets, and drummer Tasy Hudson took a turn, muffling it with a pillow before striking with the mallets.
Wattie hides behind the Instrument, which was built from the carcass of an old piano in her tattoo studio.
This learning process was happening at Seth Manchester’s Machines with Magnets studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where the band was slated to create a collaborative record with experimental metal duo and Rhode Island natives the Body. When that band couldn’t make the sessions, Big Brave decided to record their experimentations with the Instrument; learning to play it, writing the songs, and recording them all happened at the same time. The result is OST, a collection of eight compositions centered on the Instrument. Wattie thinks that for followers of the band, it will be the most “challenging” music they’ve ever released.
That’s probably true, even though Big Brave’s music has never been particularly accessible. The songs on OST are sparse, shapeless, and heavy, taut with tension and discomfort. The Instrument is accompanied only sporadically by moments of percussion, electric guitar, or voice, and its essential sound is not melody-driven. “Is it an eerie-sounding record?” wonders Ball. “What’s really interesting is that you can’t really play chords on the Instrument. If you pluck a single string, it sounds kind of dark on its own. To me, that’s the fundamental sound.” That’s okay for Big Brave: “I don’t think we’ll ever be making happy music,” continues Ball, “because it’s not the world we live in.”
At left, a close-up of the Instrument’s “headstock.”
“We’re big-feeling people,” adds Wattie. “We do have a lot of joy, and we try our best to find joy. It’s really hard to, but this is kind of what comes out. It’s not in us to make happy music, because if it was, then we would make happy music.”
The record’s most unnerving and intense moments are on “innominate no. vii.” Ball’s vocals on the track are frightening and tortured, beginning as deep, uncomfortable groans before crescendoing into throat-cleaving screams. “I guess I’m only comfortable doing that in the studio,” says Ball, “but that’s how I want to just be walking down the street all the time. Luckily, we get to do it in the studio where people don’t cross the sidewalk.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever be making happy music, because it’s not the world we live in.” - Mathieu Ball
Ball and Wattie met while studying visual arts in Montreal, and Ball introduced his new friend to minimalist composers like John Cage, Tony Conrad, and Steve Reich. Ball became Wattie’s “unofficial guitar coach,” and imparted a critical lesson: If it sounds good to you, then that’s all you need to know.
Big Brave was initiated around the values of minimalism, tension, and space in sound, and OST is certainly the most extreme exploration of those values. Ball describes it as a “process-based project,” where the act of creating came first, and the conceptualizing and thinking came later. “I felt so free,” Wattie smiles, recalling the sessions in Rhode Island. “Playing the guitar, for me, is a bit of a weighted thing. I’m kind of bogged down by having to prove myself all the time on the guitar, even though now I don’t necessarily have to because of where we are. I love not knowing how to play an instrument, because the shit that you can come up with from not knowing, because you’re not bogged down by the technicalities and theory and all of this stuff. I’m not classically trained at all, clearly. It’s really freeing, especially when no one else knows how to play it, because there’s not a proper way to play this instrument.”
“We’re gonna burn it so no one will ever get to learn how to play it,” quips Ball.
The Instrument also appears on the cover of Big Brave’s new album, OST.
As they’ve grown together as a band, Big Brave have turned more and more to the unexpected and incidental elements of their music. They never say no to an idea one of them brings to the table. Saying no without trying something is “a bad idea for so many reasons,” says Wattie. The approach is also partly a rejection of the ultra-professionalization of music work. “It’s what we’ve been doing more and more, just fully deconstructing and rejecting technicality, and making simpler and simpler music,” says Ball. “Like utilizing feedback that’s seen as a bad thing. There’s more and more mistakes in our music that I just see as character, like a buzzy string. It’s adding character to music that gets lost when something is too perfect.”
“There’s some beauty about not knowing what you’re doing.” - Robin Wattie
The approach reminds Wattie of Nan Goldin, the untrained photographer whose work influenced the fashion world. Wattie appreciates the same untrained character in visual art. “I really love seeing people’s drawings who aren’t technically trained,” explains Wattie. “They’re like, ‘I love to draw, but just for myself.’ I want to see it because it’s some of the loveliest drawings I’ve ever seen. It shows how they think about lines and color and how they make up a composition. It’s also why I’m okay with not knowing how to play the guitar, to a point.”
On a few occasions, Wattie has heard from thoroughly trained musicians who, in some ways, regret their training, and envy her lack of it. “It was engrained in them that this is correct,” she says. “It’s impossible to unlearn for them. There’s some beauty about not knowing what you’re doing.”
YouTube It
Ball, Wattie, and Hudson float through waves of feedback and distortion for a live performance of their 2024 song “Theft” in Montreal’s Studio Concrete.
Following the successful launch of itsGold Label Collection in January 2025, Taylor Guitars, a leading global builder of premium acoustic guitars, today announces the expansion of the collection with a suite of new Gold Label Grand Pacific models. The new models mark the second wave of guitar models in Taylor's exploration of warm, heritage-inspired acoustic flavors, featuring Taylor master builder Andy Powers' reimagined Grand Pacific body shape, a round-shoulder dreadnought, now with a deeper body design that delivers enhanced sonic fullness and low-end expansiveness.
Gold Label Grand Pacific: Deeper Body, Deeper Sound
The new Gold Label models feature a Grand Pacific body that's 3/8-inch deeper than Taylor’s standard Grand Pacific design, giving these guitars extra "lung capacity" and a deeper resonant frequency. This translates into more low-end power and projection — providing greater sonic push toward an audience or microphone while maintaining pleasing musical clarity. Even the treble notes have enhanced warmth and depth.
The Grand Pacific bodies are voiced with Taylor’s proprietary Fanned V-ClassTM bracing architecture — exclusive to the Gold Label Collection — a new variant of its award-winning V-Class bracing platform that here adds midrange richness, enhances the sonic depth, and creates the pitch accuracy that V-Class is known for. While Fanned V-Class is also used to voice the Super Auditorium body style that made its debut as part of the original Gold Label launch in January, the Gold Label Grand Pacific leans even more toward a warm, powerful sound.
"Compared to the Super Auditorium body, the curves and depth of the Grand Pacific produce even more volume and tonal dimension," says Andy Powers, Taylor's Chief Guitar Designer, President and CEO. "Its voice is earthy, honest and uncomplicated. It’s a reliable acoustic workhorse — both seasoned and soulful."
The mahogany/torrefied spruce pairing produces a woody, warm voice with focused midrange character. The Indian rosewood/torrefied spruce combination delivers lush rosewood depth and complexity with enhanced warmth from the torrefied top. All models feature gloss-finish bodies.
Distinctive Gold Label Aesthetic
Fitting into the distinctive design aesthetic of the Gold Label Collection, all Grand Pacific models feature Andy Powers' modified headstock shape with an angled back cut and script-style Taylor logo inlay, a different pickguard shape, and a Honduran rosewood Curve Wing bridge. Clean, understated appointments reflect a down-to-earth, workhorse spirit, including:
"Crest" inlay motif in cream featuring simple dot/diamond position markers in the fretboard crowned with a new headstock inlay
Cream binding with simple black/white top purfling and a single-ring rosette in cream and black with black/white purfling
Taylor Deluxe Hardshell Case with "British Cocoa" vinyl exterior
Revolutionary Action Control Neck™ Technology
All Gold Label Grand Pacific models feature Taylor's patented Action Control Neck™, which combines the tonal benefits of a long-tenon neck joint with unprecedented ease of instant string height adjustment. The long tenon extends deeper into the guitar body and, together with the heel structure, enhances the wood coupling to produce greater low-end resonance and a sound comparable to traditional neck designs.
Unlike Taylor's existing neck design that incorporates tapered shims to calibrate the neck angle, the Action Control Neck™ is shimless. The string height can be adjusted in seconds by using a quarter-inch nut driver (or standard truss rod wrench) on a bolt in the neck block, accessible inside the soundhole. Neither the neck nor the strings need to be removed to make adjustments.
"The design serves players by allowing them to adjust their string height for different playing styles, applications or climate conditions as often as they like," added Powers.
Street pricing for the new Gold Label models are as follows:
Gold Label 517e - $2,599
Gold Label 517e Blacktop - $2,799
Gold Label 517e SB - $2,799
Gold Label 717e - $2,799
Gold Label 717e SB - $2,999
Gold Label 717e Blacktop - $2,999
For more information on the Gold Label Collection and more, visit taylorguitars.com.
MXR Bass Synth Serves Up Intergalactic Grooves & Vintage Analog-Style Vibes
