RE: Harmonies...man

["Rick Walker" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Me bro wrote:
"Actually, I seem to have forgotten that boss makes a diatonic style 
harmonizer pedal, Doh! Haven't tried it though."


Actually,   after being really unhappy with my old school Digitech Red 
Whammy pedal,
I discovered that the Boss PS-5 Super Shifter has both simple intelligent 
harmonizing capabilities
and simple parallel shifting capabilities as well.

I love the 'theremin effect'  that one can get with the expression pedal 
on 
the old Digitech Red Whammy
pedal  (which actually has some beautiful and very musical artifacts in it 
if you have the original one)
but it was just so damned noisy that it compromised my whole chain of 
effects; exacerbatet by having
an AKG C1000s condenser microphone at it's start)   so I was thrilled to 
discover that
the BOSS PS-5 has an expression pedal in.

I just used it as my only 'effect'  on my Europe/UK tour and loved it.
There's nothing like getting a single dayglo orange frisbee to be a kick 
drum and any pitch of tom tom that you want!

You have to predetermine which scale you want to have harmonized so I 
didn't 
find it all that helpful
(due to the fact that I was mostly using found sound sources) but I didn't 
delve to heavily into that world.

I also like the forcing of suspended and dissonant harmonies by using 
paralell or incorrectly harmonized
pitches,  so it produced some very 'happy' accidents.

The quality of the sound, however, was excellent, it has low noise (way 
quiter than the Digitech) and I can highly recommend the pedal.

I love artifacts so much that I'm even considering buying a second one to 
put in the chain.
I love screwing up the sound by pitch shifting down two octaves and then 
taking the results
and pitch shifting back up two octaves.

You get the same pitch you began with including a lot of juicy and weird 
artifacts.

**********************
And,  while we're at it,  I also had read that the relatively new and 
ludicrously cheap
Danelectro Chili Dog Octaver pedal tracked better and had a cleaner sound 
than the tried and
true brown Boss Octaver and the rumors were completely true.

You can get them for only $29 USD  (that's like 5 Euros 
right............................lol)
through Musicians Friend or , preferably,  your local independent music 
store.

Arild Andersen borrowed mine and made me sell it to him after A-Bing the 
Boss and the Chili Dog.

It has three knobs for normal sound,   one octave down and two octaves 
down 
and
it really tracks nicely..............one of the best deals in all 
stompboxdom.