Can you guess what the four names above have in common? I’ll tell you. They all have six syllables. Ar-nold-Schwarz-en-egg-er. 1-2-3-4-5-6. That’s a lot of syllables to have in a single name. I’ve only got three in mine: Paul- Gil-bert. 1-2-3. All those names have double what I have. I’m a bit jealous, but that’s not why I brought this up. I want you to think about this: What does your brain do when confronted with a six-syllable name such as “minor seven flat five?” I know what my brain does. It shuts right off. That’s too many syllables! Especially when I’ve got simpler alternatives to rely on like minor and major (both with just two syllables). This leads me to a story.
A year or so ago, I was giving a lesson to a student. After exchanging a few pleasantries, he said that his regular private teacher wanted to know if I could play any m7b5 arpeggios. It seemed like less of a musical request and more like some kind of guitar-jousting challenge. Something like, “Yeah sure, you can play widdly-widdly with your rock band, but can you play an arpeggio that takes six syllables just to pronounce?”
I managed to squeak out something good enough to defend my reputation. But since then, I’ve delved much deeper into this arpeggio, and I truly love how it sounds. This month, I want to show you how to play it, and why it sounds so good. First of all, I have to comfort you by telling you that it’s an easy arpeggio. Why do I say that it’s easy? Because it only contains four notes. Only four! It has more syllables than notes, for crying out loud. We can breathe easily and safely turn our brains back on.
Now I’ll give you the benefit of my research and take you to Fig. 1, which shows the easiest fingering that I’ve found. See, I wasn’t lying. It has just four easy notes. This requires a couple of position shifts, but the shape always stays the same.
I should point out that I’m starting the arpeggio on the b7 (E), not the root (F#). The main reason for this is simply because I really like the shape. I think it’s easy to play, easy to visualize, and still covers all the notes I want. If I rebuild the fingering to start on the root, the shape becomes more difficult and the sound doesn’t improve in any noticeable way. So I’m staying with the easy one!
That’s a lot of finger talk. Let’s turn on our ears and listen to the arpeggio in context, by playing it over a chord. Our chord will be a D9, which is a common sound in blues, funk, rock, and jazz. In Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, you can check out the voicing I use along with our arpeggio in context.
I think that’s a nice sound. But you may have noticed something odd. The chord is in D, while the arpeggio is in F#. How does that work? Here is where I should whip out some heady music theory to explain the details of chord substitution, intervals, and extensions. But I’ve made an executive decision to use a metaphor instead, and one that involves Ted Nugent, lots of food, and of course, the IV chord.
Playing a solo over the IV chord is like going to a Thanksgiving party at Ted Nugent’s house. Here’s why: You know that Ted is going to have a turkey. He’ll have proudly plucked it out of the forest with his bow and arrow or possibly even his bare hands. Either way, rest assured that there is a turkey in the oven roasting away. So you, the guest, don’t have to bring any turkey to the party. You might want to bring some cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, or strawberry rhubarb pie. But you don’t need to bring any turkey. Uncle Ted has that under control.
After much playing and listening, I’ve discovered that the same is true for the IV chord in a blues progression. The bass, rhythm guitar, piano, or organ will be playing the root (the metaphorical turkey) of the IV chord. So you don’t have to play it in your solo because it’s already there. It sounds more sophisticated to play the musical equivalents of cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, and strawberry rhubarb pie, while leaving the turkey to the accompaniment.
The notes in our F#m7b5 arpeggio are the cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, and strawberry rhubarb pie. If you look at the four notes in this arpeggio they match up exactly to the notes in our D9 chord, with one exception. There is no D note in our arpeggio. We’re not playing the root in our solo. We didn’t bring the turkey! If you’ve studied music theory, you know this is called a substitution. If you’re a guitar player, you can just think of it as moving a shape a certain number of frets to get a nice new sound.
To digest this idea, let’s repeat what we already did, but in some different keys. First play the chord, then play the arpeggio.
There is some math at work here, and I’m tempted to start rattling off some notes and numbers. But I think the best way to “get it” is just to play these examples a few times. I’m going to spare you the explanation and trust that you’ll play these chords and arpeggios for five minutes. Even in that short time, the pattern should become quite obvious, and you’ll no longer need any wordy explanation. Your fingers and ears will already have it. How do you know when you have it? Just try playing dominant 9th chords in some other keys and see if you can figure out where to put the arpeggio. I’m betting that you’ll nail it. I’ll give you five minutes to test it out now.
You’re back. Now let’s do a variation. Since this arpeggio shape is fresh in your mind, I want to show you one more substitution idea. This is where guitar players have a maddening advantage over piano players. On a guitar, it’s quite easy to play a chord and move it up and down chromatically. All you do is lock your hand into the shape and move it up or down a fret. On a piano, chromatic movement requires different shapes. This can be difficult to play and also difficult to visualize. I suggest taking 10 smug seconds to gloat about this. Piano players have so many other advantages, so it’s nice when we can have one too.
All right. Gloating over. In a blues progression, there are lots of opportunities to do this kind of chromatic movement. It adds a nice tension and release to our old familiar progression. Now let’s use the m7b5 substitution we’ve been playing to outline some of this chromatic movement. In Fig. 4, I want to focus on the Bb13 chord. To outline this chord (without the turkey), I’ll play a Dm7b5 arpeggio. I want to use the same shape that I showed you earlier, but for variety let’s start on the high note this time. Isn’t that cool? I’ve never sounded so sophisticated in my life. All I did was go up a half-step for a moment and leave out the turkey.
I was so excited when I started experimenting with this sound that I decided to search for more fingerings and variations. I’ll quickly show you a couple of my best discoveries.
First, I found a more typical fingering for a m7b5 arpeggio. I say it’s “typical” because it stays in one position. For me, the fingering shown in Fig. 5 is not as easy to play at top speed, but it’s in such a convenient location that I still find myself using it a lot. In Fig. 6 I play it over the IV chord and also over our chromatic chord move.
Please make good use of these powerful sounds, and if you missed my column last month [“The Super-Hendrix Scale,” July 2011], I encourage you to go back and have a look. It’s all about soloing over the V chord in a blues, and this will connect very well with the ideas about the IV chord in this column.
And if nothing else, remember that there are only four notes in an F#m7b5 arpeggio. Don’t let that long name clobber you.
Paul Gilbert purposefully began playing guitar
at age 9, formed the guitar-driven bands
Racer X and Mr. Big, and then accidentally
had a No. 1 hit with an acoustic song called
“To Be with You.” Paul began teaching at
GIT at the age of 18, has released countless
albums and guitar instructional DVDs, and
will remembered as “the guy who got the drill
stuck in his hair.” For more information, visit
paulgilbert.com.
Vox’s Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
I spent a day workshopping ideas in my studio using just the Vox Valvenergy Smooth Impact compressor and Tone Sculptor EQ, and a dash of amp tremolo and reverb to taste. In the process, I produced more arresting sounds than I had heard from my guitars in many days. There were radical direct-to-desk-style Jimmy Page/Beatles distortion tones, sun-sized, cosmic electric 12-string, Bakersfield twang that could burn through crude, and many other sweet and nasty colors. Most decent EQ and compressor combinations can achieve variations on all those themes. But the Smooth Impact and Tone Sculptor also reveal interesting personalities in unexpected places.
The individuality and energy in the Vox Valvenergy pedals is attributable, in part, to the Nutube vacuum tube used in the circuit. Though it looks little like a vacuum tube as most guitarists know them, the thin, wafer-like Nutube is, in fact, a real vacuum tube like those used in fluorescent displays. Fluorescent display tubes have limitations. A maximum operating voltage of around 40 volts means they aren’t useful for bigger power tube applications like a 6L6, which has an operating voltage of about 400 volts. But it can work quite well as a preamp tube in concert with an op amp power section, which is how the Nutube is used in the new Valvenergy pedals, as well as older Vox products like the Vox MV50 and Superbeetle amps.
Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
When you think about “cinematic” effects, you likely imagine big reverb or modulation sounds that create a vivid picture and feeling of space or motion. But narrow, hyper-focused EQ profiles can evoke very different and equally powerful images. Radical EQ settings can add aggression, claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts more evocative of Hitchcock’s Psycho than Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
Any of these moods can be summoned from the Valvenergy Tone Sculptor. Six sliders cut or boost 10 dB frequency bands spanning 100 Hz to 5.6 kHz. A seventh slider cuts or boosts the master output by 12 dB. This platter of options might not sound like much. But you can use these seven controls together to very specific ends.
“Radical EQ settings can add aggression, near-claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts.”
For example, bumping the high-midrange and the master output produces narrow cocked-wah-like filter sounds with enough push to produce extra amp overdrive—effectively turning the Tone Sculptor into a buzzy, almost fuzz-like filter effect. But unlike a wah, you can carefully scoop high end or add a spoonful of bass to blunt harsh frequencies or give the tone a bit more weight. You can also broaden the palette of an amp/guitar pairing. I matched a particularly trebly Jazzmaster bridge pickup with a very hot and toppy Vox AC15-flavored amp for this test—a recipe that can be spiky on the best days. But with the Tone Sculptor in the line, I could utilize the same sharp, fuzzy, and filtered Mick Ronson wah tones while shaving some of the most piercing frequencies.
EQ pedals exist on many points along the cost spectrum. And at $219, the Tone Sculptor lives on the high side of the affordable range. Does it offer something less expensive models can’t deliver? Well, for one thing, I found it relatively quiet, which is nice whether you’re shaping toppy high-contrast effects or performing more surgical adjustments. And the sliders feel nuanced and nicely tapered rather than like a dull axe with a few basic frequency notches. But in many situations I also liked the color imparted by the circuit—generated, presumably, by the Nutube. “Color,” in audio terms, is a broad and subjective thing, and one should not necessarily expect the warm, tube-y glow of a vintage tube Pultec. Still, the Tone Sculptor has many forgiving, flattering qualities—typical of studio EQs—that enable fine tuning and experimentation with more radical and creative applications of the effect.
Valvenergy Smooth Impact
As with the Tone Sculptor, the Smooth Impact’s use of Nutube engenders certain expectations. It’s easy to surmise that because Smooth Impact has a vacuum tube in the circuit that it will behave like a little Teletronix LA-2A leveling amplifier. That’s a big ask for a $219 stompbox. On the other hand, the Smooth Impact exhibits some appealing characteristics of studio tube compression. At lower compression levels, it works well as a thickening agent—adding mass without much additional noise. And at higher compression levels it can sound snappy, crisp, and tight without feeling like you’ve bled every trace of overtone from your signal.
The Smooth Impact’s controls aren’t totally atypical. But because it lacks some familiar features like variable attack and release, yet is more complicated than a 1-knob DynaComp, you have to trust your ear to navigate interactions among the controls. The most unfamiliar of these is the 3-way vintage/natural/sag toggle. The first two are defined by preset attack and release settings: Vintage is slow attack and long release, and natural is the opposite. The sag mode’s compression is more like what you get from tube saturation, and it’s useful for adding thickness and complexity to a thin amp tone at modest compression levels.
Though the vintage and natural modes certainly have a different feel, they don’t always sound worlds apart. And like the sag mode, the thing they have in common is the way they enrich lifeless amp output at low to medium compression, with a bit of grind from the tube gain and a little extra makeup gain from the output. At the most aggressive settings, the tube gain can get a little crispy. And really crushing the compression can flatline your tone without adding much in the way of extra sustain. These are limitations common to many compressors with similar features. But unless I was chasing very ultra-snappy Prince and Nile Rodgers fast-funk caricatures, I enjoyed the Smooth Impact most in its in-between ranges, where mass, mild, harmonious drive, and low noise showcase the pedal’s sometimes studio-like personality.
Boss’ firstWaza Tube Amp Expander, built with an integrated power amp that enables boosted signal as well as attenuated sounds, was and remains the OX’s main competition. Both products have copious merits but, at $1,299 (Boss) and $1,499 (Universal Audio), each is expensive. And while both units are relatively compact, they aren’t gear most folks casually toss in a backpack on the way out the door. The new Waza Tube Expander Core, however, just might be. And though it sacrifices some refinements for smaller size, its much-more accessible price and strong, streamlined fundamental capabilities make it a load-box alternative that could sway skeptics.
Micro Manager
The TAE Core is around 7 1/2" wide, just over 7 " long, and fewer than 4 " tall, including the rubber feet. That’s about half the width of an original TAE or OX. The practical upside of this size reduction is obvious and will probably compel a lot of players to use the unit in situations in which they’d leave a full-size TAE at home. The streamlined design is another source of comfort. With just five knobs on its face, the TAE Core has fewer controls and is easier to use than many stompboxes. In fact, the most complicated part of integrating the TAE Core to your rig might be downloading the necessary drivers and related apps.
Connectivity is straightforward, though there are some limitations. You can use TAE Core wirelessly with an iOS or Windows tablet or smartphone, as long as you have the BT-DUAL adaptor (which is not included and sets you back around 40 bucks). However, while desktop computers recognize the TAE Core as a Bluetooth-enabled device, you cannot use the unit wirelessly with those machines. Instead, you have to connect the TAE Core via USB. In a perfectly ordered world, that’s not a big problem. But if you use the TAE Core in a small studio—where one less cable is one less headache—or you prefer to interface with the TAE Core app on a desktop where you can toggle fast and easily between large, multi-track sessions and the app, the inability to work wirelessly on a desktop can be a distraction. The upside is that the TAE Core app itself is, functionally and visually, almost identical in mobile and desktop versions, enabling you to select and drag and drop virtual microphones into position, add delay, reverb, compression, and EQ effects, choose various cabinets with different speaker configurations and sizes, and introduce new rigs and impulse responses to a tone recipe in a flash. And though the TAE Core app lacks some of the photorealistic panache and configuration options in the OX app, the TAE Core’s app is just as intuitive.Less Is More
One nice thing about the TAE Core’s more approachable $699 price is that you don’t have to feel too bad on nights that you “underutilize” the unit and employ it as an attenuator alone. In this role, the TAE Core excels. Even significantly attenuated sounds retain the color and essence of the source tone. Like any attenuator-type device, you will sacrifice touch sensitivity and dynamics at a certain volume level, yielding a sense of disconnection between fingers, gut, guitar, and amp. But if you’re tracking “big” sounds in a small space, you can generate massive-sounding ones without interfacing with an amp modeler and flat-response monitors, which is a joy in my book. And again, there’s the TAE Core’s ability to “expand” as well as attenuate, which means you can use the TAE Core’s 30-watt onboard power amp to amplify the signal from, say, a 5-watt Fender Champion 600 with a 6" speaker, route it to a 2x12, 4x12, or virtual equivalent in the app, and leave your bandmate with the Twin Reverb and bad attitude utterly perplexed.
The Verdict
Opting for the simpler, thriftier TAE Core requires a few sacrifices. Power users that grew accustomed to the original TAE’s super-tunable “resonance-Z” and “presence-Z” controls, which aped signal-chain impedance relationships with sharp precision, will have to make do with the simpler but still very effective stack and combo options and the “air feel level” spatial ambience control.The DC power jack is less robust. It features only MIDI-in rather than MIDI-in/-through/-out jacks, and, significantly, 70 watts less power in the onboard power amp. But from my perspective, the Core is no less “professional” in terms of what it can achieve on a stage or in a studio of any size. Its more modest feature set and dimensions are, in my estimation, utility enhancements as much as limitations. If greater power and MIDI connectivity are essentials, then the extra 600 bones for the original TAE will be worth the price. For many of us, though, the mix of value, operational efficiencies, and the less-encumbered path to sound creation built into the TAE Core will represent a welcome sweet spot that makes dabbling in this very useful technology an appealing, practical proposition.
