Sarah Lipstate has become something of a modern guitar superstar. Between opening for major acts, demoing the coolest products at NAMM, and her raft of distinctive ambient records as Noveller, she has proved a master (mistress?) of the looper. Her records reveal a serious composer, and through her Instagram page has proved she can geek out about gear with the best of them. Here she talks about how she made the excellent Arrow, which you should pick up immediately at Bandcamp.
Benn Jordan doesn’t actually tell you everything you need to know about MIDI guitar, though he gives you a fair introduction. But he pulls no punches in his review of the Boss SY-1000. His dismay at the presets is more understandable when, later in the review, you get to hear his own presets, which, unlike he Boss ones, sound more like something you might have heard in the last 20 years, and harness the emotive potential of synthesis in a way that the Boss presets fail to do.
Guitar wizards David Torn, Bill Frisell, Anthony Pirog, and Mary Halvorson all performed at the 2019 Big Ears Festival, but it was the Friday night performance by Rafiq Bhatia and his band that stole the show https://www.guitarmoderne.com/artists/big-ears-2019. Under lockdown in Brooklyn, Bhatia participated in a performance for the New York’s National Sawdust arts organization. That is presented here, followed by a video interview in which Bhatia reveals that all in the video is not as it seems.
It is still looking like summer festival season will be cancelled. But fear not; you can count on Guitar Moderne to continue to supply virtual, germ-free festivals like this. Pandemic is creating new paradigms for performance. Solo looping, already popular, ensures social distancing from band members. Those musicians brave (or foolhardy—you be the judge) enough to play together in an enclosed space are often doing so without an audience save for a skeleton camera crew.
The rollout of the Poly Effects pedals has been one of the slowest in memory. It was at least three years ago that Loki Davison unveiled his concept for a modular, programable, touchscreen, pedal. Now that his concept seems to be finally hitting the street, we see that like some Source Audio pedals, the basic housing allows either pedal to perform the functions of the other. Here are a couple of demos outside the noisy NAMM environment that show some of the fascinating possibilities.