Well it looks like the Smashing Pumpkins will be back in the public eye, as I have heard some astonishing stats lately about things like Aerosmith’s 40% increase in sales after being part of a Guitar Hero release featuring their music.
According to KROQ radio this morning, and also reported in the Chicago Tribune, the Smashing Pumpkins will be heavily involved in the latest Guitar Hero release and you will be able to ‘play as Billy Corgan’ if you so desire to. Songs included in this promotion (I believe some of this will be VIA Download from the internet if it is not included in a new Guitar Hero IV package) include:
GLOW * new song
Everlasting Gaze
Billy Corgan Guitar Hero IV
The game has now become a cooperative ‘band’-like experience - I guess they had to really drum up to compete with Rockband’s releases - Featuring advanced wireless controllers / instruments? with new online as well as offline modes of playing this game. There is a new Band Career section that has 8 player Battles of the Bands. For the first time ever, two full bands can now go head-to-head to compete together
SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH GUITAR TECHNICIAN STUFF?
Nothing. but you bastards all play and hate/love Guitar Hero and are expected to be better than non-musicians who study this game just to beat you. So I figured why not tell you about it. Plus we have a lot of Billy Corgan inside guitar information as Vegas was his Tech for a long time. When Billy’s in the news, so should we be. At least reporting it. It will be an interesting discussion topic to see if these alt rock 90s bands along with Aerosmith and Guitar Hero can bring the guitar back to the forefront of the new music scene of 2009.
So the new controllers for Guitar Hero IV include a redesigned guitar controller, a microphone (This is new!), a special drum kit controller and a microphone.
Guitar Hero IV now comes with (finally something to get kids creative and away from dance dance Revolution or whatever crap they pump out) a new Music Studio Music Creator which allows for composing, recording, editing and sharing of their music. This could create a whole new type of ‘computer game generated music’. Its not super fantastic but it could lead to cause younger players to eventually or shortly pick UP a GUITAR and learn how to play it. THAT is hella cool. yea I said Hella Cool. Maybe I shoulda said Hella Sweet or ‘Really?’…..Anyway.
So as an Artist what the hell does this mean? - It means I have to make guitar hero IV versions of all my music and use that to inspire kids to learn my songs the real way. Wish me luck. As I learn to do this I’ll write about it and post some comparisons of how to play our songs (from my band KRONiS) for Real as well as in video games.
Till next time, I’m off to Toronto.
Aaron Kronis
I had the opportunity to check out the stage prior to the gig as my guitar tech and friend was working for Ace Frehley’s replacement guitarist, Thommy Thayer who I believe used to be Ace’s tech and was rumored to have played a few gigs when ‘Ace couldn’t make it’.
Check out the Stage, 
it spins around between bands and after the second band starts, they can strike the first band’s gear off stage and setup a finale set at the back. Pretty cool idea and very efficient.
Kiss Played first and put on their full stage show as though they were headlining. The number of explosions in their show deafens you and makes Aerosmith seem quieter. I’m pretty sure that this was Pyrotek’s plan with the pyro. At this show, Steven Tyler ran out during the first song and I some him look a bit confused and touching his wireless receiver…I think it was not on or dead or something and he missed the first vocal cue in the intro to Sweet Emotion. (You think he’d know that by now! - but he was obviously distracted and fucked it up). After the show he was yelling and screaming as someone amidst the mob of people walking him out to his limo. I felt better about any in-ear monitor issues I’ve had..which isn’t many, I love my UE-10s!
Here’s some Pictures:
Live Stage Rig - Aerosmith’s Guitar Amps stacked up on Stage.
Another Photograph of Aerosmith’s Guitar Amps on Stage.
Aerosmith’s Amps never looked this good!
Live Drum Setup for Aerosmith - Closup Shot taken before the show on stage.
Smashing Pumpkins Live
According to LiveDaily.com and what I heard on Kroq driving to work the other morning was that the only announced date of this Smashing Pumpkins 20th Year Reunion Tour is in HAMMOND, INDIANA on August 9th.
Why there?
Shows have also been confirmed but not scheduled for New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
This is a quote from the Smashing Pumpkin’s official website:
“We can confirm the band will be playing in New York, Chicago, L.A. as well as additional cities that have yet to be announced. These shows will focus on the band’s history, legacy, and accomplishments over their career.”
So to honor whatever you want to call it when a band breaks up for 5 years and then has a reunion at 20th year - Today we will be discussing the last guitar rig Billy Corgan was using with the pumpkins and what he needed to pull of his ‘antics’ electrically on stage.
Here is a photo of his rig (click to enlarge)
It works is as follows: There are 2 rigs.
Rig A and Rig B.
This is for redundancy. If his guitar goes out…the tech simply hits an a/b switch to have the performer back up and live on the backup rig. So rig A would be the main rig and rig B would be the backup rig.
Now if you are a guitar tech and you have to deal with a personality such as Billy Corgan, you’d better get this right and also explain it to him well.
If Billy was to edit a new patch onto rig B for some new idea he has…then the tech must know this and copy it over to rig A. A solution to this is that the artist ONLY edits rig A, then the tech copies it all to rig B and backs it up to disk as well.
ahh..but if the artist can’t remember and then edits on rig B it can become a bit of a pain to manage as you really don’t want to delete any ‘new ideas’.
Okay, so POWER.
You will notice on the left side there is what almost looks like a computer tower. It in fact is a UPS. An Uninterrupted Power Supply - these things have large capacitors that can hold a charge for 20-30 minutes depending on their model. Basically if the power goes out, likely the show is over but these units will keep the entire guitar rig on and functioning, also regulate power, protect against surges and in an emergency, allow you to shut everything down in the proper sequence and gradually, to prevent damaging any equipment or losing any data. Tubes can have problems as well as Speakers when turned on and off at quick intervals when at high volumes.
Switching:
Rocktron All Access pedal.
Billy uses what a Bradshaw system is very similar too…simply a tank like midi foot-controller that can switch patches and control midi in specific ways. Basically one funciton of the rocktron All Access pedal is to control the 8 separate loops in the GCX (ground control) Loop Switcher.
(download Manual for All Access here:)
How it works -> Each patch has the ability to turn on or off any of the 8 loops that are being sent along the signal chain.
For example I modeled my rig after his and Vegas (billy’s tech) help me build this. We used the same idea as billy’s rig with the difference being an additional backup rig and UPS power supply, as well as different effects units and amps on the loops.
Guitar input-> Loop 1 goes to Tuner from which the signal goes to a Volume Pedal then returns -> Loop 2 goes to a Dunlop Rack Wah - > Loop 3 goes to Digitech Whammy Pedal - > Loops 4, 5 & 6, Go to the Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier Channel switch jacks -> Loop 7 Goes to the Mesa Solo Boost Switch -> Loop 8 Goes out to the Effects Processer which I keep INLINE Before the amp to get the sounds I need. Then from there it goes to the Mesa Boogie Solo boost Jack.-> out to the Input of the Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier.
With all of this I can use any combination of these loops to get the desired effects I need.
MIDI PATH. Options are to use an adapter for the rocktron’s power or a powered midi cable that will allow you to remove the need for a wall wart plug on stage.
Midi goes FROM the Rocktron into the GCX Audio Loop Switcher. if you run midi to the Boss SX700 Effects Processor, you can also control which patches come on when you engage the loop it is on. Midi THRU should allow you to do this, also set the Boss SX700 (or other effects unit such as a G-Force) to a specific Midi Channel that nothing else in your chain is using.
ON THE FLOOR:
Foot pedal consists of the Rocktron All Access Foot Controller. Dunlop Wah CONTROLLER pedal. This controls a rackmount dunlop ‘rack wah’ which kicks ass and the pedal on the floor doen’st require any audio to go through it.
With this setup there is NO AUDIO ON THE FLOOR at all. That means shorter signal cables which means less signal loss issues.
How to work this setup?
Lets say that on the rocktron you want the very first sound, Patch one to have a clean sound with a wah pedal.
LOOPS: 1=tuner/volume pedal 2=wah controller 3=whammy pedal 4,5,6=channel jacks 7=solo boost 8=FX
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
on | on | on| on |on | on| on| on
I would create the clean sound by engaging which ever combination of 4,5,6 switches to clean added to loops 1 and 2.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
on | on | x | x |on | x | x | x
And I would name the patch ‘Clean Wah’ and save it.
NOTE: I would always leave the tuner engaged and the volume pedal(LOOP 1) engaged to allow for tuning whenever needed by simply turning the volume down with the pedal.
Additionally: can leave loop 2 on and just activate the wah pedal with the footswitch when needed. This way you know its always available for emphasis or something to experiment live with.
This setup also allows for using the volume pedal to make ’swells’ of volume which can be combined with delay in very interesting ways, to make string-like effects or other weird sounds.
If I wanted to have my heavy sound with delay and a solo lead boost with a specific delay patch on the SX 700, (provided MIDI through the GCX is connected to the MIDI In at the back of the SX 700)
I would do this (using whatever the combination of 4,5,6 switches to the high gain channel on mesa)
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
on | on | x | x | x | on | on| on
The rocktron can also assign through its midi setup which patch on the unit on a specific MIDI channel is needing to use. Here you can have it so the delay on the boss unit is appropriate for the solo patch.
So what does Billy Use?
Rocktron All Access Pedal
How Billy Corgan uses the Rocktron All Access MIDI Foot Controller Pedal
Billy Corgan uses an All Access to control his use of either the Deisel head for massive distortion, a small amp (similar to a peavey rage!) for some weird clean effects.
His main effects generation comes from the Eventide Ultra Harmonizers with one in each rig. These expensive studio units have a wide variety of different digitally processed effects that are very cleanly implemented and sound great with a lot of different parameters that can be easily manipulated.
Other Units in Billy’s rack:
Diezel Amplifiers. Two for redundancy.
Alesis Datadisk:
This is a MIDI backup utility unit that allows you to save, for example all the patches on the Eventide Ultra Harmonizer to a 3 1/2 ” floppy disk. You can also use this to recover from backups.
Whenever you update your patches..you should backup all your sounds to an Alesis Datadisk in this situation.
Rockman Midi Octopus.
These units KICK ASS and are used very simply to change channels on 8 different amps at once!
HOWEVER I don’t recommend dealing with Rockman.fr as they don’t communicate very well. I don’t care if i burn that bridge because they’ve burnt it with me - or they could email and be nice. I mean seriously folks. I use lots of products and can endorse them on here and explain how they are used so people will by them. I OWN an octopus and to have rockman.fr delete the image I had which ‘LINKED’ to their website and replace it with some stupid image.. i just don’t get it. Links are GOOD things. especially from sites in your niche. Oh well, I guess in France they don’t email you first to ask you to remove an image. Yes I’m in the USA but I’m Canadian. Way to piss me off guys! hahaha fuck it. I guess I just don’t give a shit about websites in France - Au Revoir.
Well you could if you had to… but basically the 1/4 inch outputs on the back of these units are used for things like switching an amplifier from a clean channel to a heavy channel, but VIA MIDI. Basically anything that requires a 1/4″ footswitch should be controllable from here.
Simply connect any of the 8 1/4″ output jacks to your amps channel switching jack and you can now use midi to control very simply whether you want that set to on or off and it will switch for you via midi.
This helps us in our quest to have ONE BUTTON control everything.
His rig includes custom patches that we can’t explain here as they were simply programmed by billy and his tech into his Eventide Ultra Harmonizer.
For now this is a good start to understanding simply the components of a large professional guitar rig and what it takes simply to be able to use all this gear with ONE button controlling it!
Till next time,
KRONiS
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