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John Davis of Nerve


lxxwj
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Incredible bassist, thought you electronic music bassists would appreciate this.
(if you haven't seen it already!)
[url="http://www.tonefactor.com/blog/2010/07/22/interview-with-john-davis-of-nerve/"]http://www.tonefacto...davis-of-nerve/[/url]

Scroll ALL the way down.. ;)

Edited by lxxwj
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This was covered in another thread a while ago - I think the Drum & Bass/Dubstep thread. The chap that did the interview is in fact a Basschatter. Theres quite a lot of discussion on John's set up, as well as Bond from Miloopa (Another bassist to check out) in that thread if you haven't already...

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Thanks! :D

Now this man taught me (not personally, but through music) that basses CAN have
effects, just like guitar. Originally, I was quite closed-minded in thinking that
guitarists made the best use of effects; but after getting into Nerve, I figured out
that they work on bass, too. And thus began my journey..

Now looking at his board, after seeing your board (panther) it looks small..
but it's quite effective. Only thing I don't understand is the need for an MP-201.
What's the point when you can just use any old stereo CV pedal?

Now, I *do* respect the noisebox and the copilot orbit on there, but if you already
have a mammoth then couldn't you just have a phaser after that for the same effect?
And those two do similar things anyway.. <_< /hate

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The MP-201 does an awful lot of stuff. John uses it to control his Low pass filter in the same way I do, it allows control of the cutoff in the form of expression pedal swells, but also with CV based LFO's - all the Dubstep wobbles and the control of the depth/rate and intensity of such, as well as blending them in an out is all done by the MP-201.

As for phaser after fuzz... That's an awesome combo, but sounds nothing like that Orbit or the Noise box. The orbit is a Gated fuzz, but more aggressive than the mammoth, with a ring mod circuit built in, in the form of a VCO and the ability to blend the mix of both sides of the circuit. The Noisebox has elements of the Orbit, but the VCO has two distinct voices and has a level of frequency modulation and random noise generator. The Noisebox is harder to tame, but has some great results.

Both of them sound very different at their extremes.

John gets some awesome results from his set up and I consider him and Nerve to be a huge influence. The reason my board is so much bigger is I'm filling the role of the synth player as well as the bassist in that genre of music! :)

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Si - behave!! :)

lxxwj - ignore him, he's a penis and he knows it ;-)

Actually, if you want to be precise, looking at the placement of the jack sockets on the photo of Johns gear, he is controlling the LPF's cutoff and resonance with the MP-201. I'm actually surprised he doesn't have it connected to the Mix as well as that would allow him to blend wobbles in and out smoothly.

I alter the resonance by hand as track to track as its not something I find I need on the fly.

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[quote name='pantherairsoft' timestamp='1327796578' post='1517053']
Actually, if you want to be precise, looking at the placement of the jack sockets on the photo of Johns gear, he is controlling the LPF's cutoff and resonance with the MP-201. I'm actually surprised he doesn't have it connected to the Mix as well as that would allow him to blend wobbles in and out smoothly.

I alter the resonance by hand as track to track as its not something I find I need on the fly.
[/quote]
Already one step ahead of ya, checked out the MF101 on the Moog site to figure out were those cables were! ;)
Kinda acts like.. a synth-wah or something, amirite?
On the fuzz thing: Now I see why. ^_^ I would still stick to the simpler stuff though, only one fuzz on the (metaphorical) board for me!

phil's cracking me up! xD

Edited by lxxwj
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Synth wah is an interesting way of looking at it, though most Wah's are band pass (emphasises a specific band of frequencies) rather than low pass (cuts everything above a specific frequnecy and emphasises everything below it). Moving the cutoff by expression with a high resonance will give you a wah like effect. The more complex the signal before it, the more pronounced the effect. At one end you hear only sub and super lows, then as you swell it lets through more and more high frequencies until you have full signal again. You can flavour that with envelope as well.

The classic synth swell is, at it's most basic level, the slow turning of an LPF cut off with a range of octave, fuzz and modulation before it. Feeding it with an LFO gives you a tremolo that rapidly goes from sub to fuzz rather than a traditional volume up and down trem. The LPF trem is what gives you the wobble in modern Dubstep music.

Please excuse the horrid playing. This was done the day I put my stuff on the custom board just to make sure what I had at the time was patched together etc. It's out of time and all sorts but does demonstrate Octave - Fuzz - Low Pass (controlled by MP-201):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i3aPmQ5OOw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

And this one with similar effects using more of the LFO functions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL95ac_73lE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Ah, those are back in the Whammy DT era! :D
Still, my mind is blown. I think I understand what's going on though..
So the MP-201 can control the rate of the LFO too, with just an LPF?

Pssh, weddings. If I ever get married, I'm doing it with a solid bass guitar over my shoulders..

..wait, smaller? Did I read that right?

Edited by lxxwj
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[quote name='lxxwj' timestamp='1327799294' post='1517102']
Ah, those are back in the Whammy DT era! :D
Still, my mind is blown. I think I understand what's going on though..
So the MP-201 can control the rate of the LFO too, with just an LPF?

Pssh, weddings. If I ever get married, I'm doing it with a solid bass guitar over my shoulders..

..wait, smaller? Did I read that right?
[/quote]

Oh my. It was huge wasn't it. Both those Tourman board now live with the band 'Union Station Massacre', they are a 7 piece with 3 guitars and each guitarist has a Tourman full! Crazy ambient sound scape stuff!

As for the LFO. Yes. The out put from each of the 4 channels of the MP-201 can be set to do one of the following using either a 0-5 or a -5 - +5 CV Scale.
1. Expression - swell from and precise point to another.
2. Gate - Footswitch controls an all or nothing CV amount
3. Noise - send white noise the output - some pedals react iterestingly to this
5. Envelope - sends an enveloped waveform to the output per hit of the switch
6. Send Midi CC
7. LFO - Most of the times you see this demo'd it's like in my vid earlier where it controls the LPF but it works with ANY CV based bit of kit. Effectively the MP-201 sends a waveform to whatever you have plugged in that controls the CV voltage of the pedal. A triangle wave for example has the same effect as turning the knob all the way up very quick, then all the way down very quick over and over and over. This can be used on ANY Moogerfooger to to control ANY peramter... Plus other pedals like the WMD range. So an LFO on a phasers sweep would hear the rate of the phaser getting faster then slower then faster then slower. The LFO controlling the frequency of a Ring Mod is insane and totally unusable in a musical setting :)

In LFO mode the expression pedal of the MP-201 can be used to control 1 of 3 perimeters. Rate. Amount. Offset (where the 'centre' of the wave is - so moving it down makes more sub wobbles and going up makes higher tinny wobbles). As the pedal is full programmable you can set the accurate start and send point of a swell, precise clock divisions I it's running off midi clock and wether heel is lower or higher than toe (reverse expression).

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So you're saying that ~500$, discontinued, whammy IV-size, complicated thing actually has its uses! ;)
I think I may need to get myself one of those. In time.

There are 2 routes you can go about this, it seems. One is the hot hand LFO, the other is the pedal-controlled
LFO speed like yours. I was thinking about combining the two: obviously, Moog is higher-quality, but if I could convert
the hot hand to midi and the midi to CV I could possibly control a LPF like the MP-201.

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The MP-201 is amazing, if a little complex roger your head around. I have a 'good' understanding, but still stumble across features I never knew were there!

Hothand to midi is simple enough as Source Audio make a midi input device. Converting that to CV may be a little tougher. I like the concept of the Hothand and have seen some great results... But it's not for me. I jut don't 'click' with the concept and for what it brings to the table over the MP-201 in the realm of rate flexibility, it looses in its offset and mix/blending abilities, which for me are far more musical.

I'm not sure the Moog is higher 'quality', but it does have a VERY rich analog time that I've never heard from anything else. The SA sounds fine as does the Iron Ether, but to my ears, nothing sounds like the Moog LPF. That's it charm I guess and it's got me hooked dammit! The SA stuff though is obviously cheaper and still accessible and will likely be the way most guys go from now in within the genre. Strictly speaking there's a 3rd route as well - Get a synth! :)

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Users of the Hothand can likely add more here, but as I understand it, you can only manipulate one parameter with it?

If you wanted with the MP-201, you can manipulate 4 parameters on any unit or combination of units at the same time... So you coul hook it up to the 4 knobs of the Moog LPF and move them all with one foot, all doing different things, or with 4 LFO's or combinations of different t functions.

If the Hothand has the capacity to control multiple functions (or multiple Source Audio pedals at once) then that opens more doors. If it can't, I'm sure it will only be a matter or time until it can!

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[quote name='pantherairsoft' timestamp='1327841826' post='1517461']
Users of the Hothand can likely add more here, but as I understand it, you can only manipulate one parameter with it?

If you wanted with the MP-201, you can manipulate 4 parameters on any unit or combination of units at the same time... So you coul hook it up to the 4 knobs of the Moog LPF and move them all with one foot, all doing different things, or with 4 LFO's or combinations of different t functions.

If the Hothand has the capacity to control multiple functions (or multiple Source Audio pedals at once) then that opens more doors. If it can't, I'm sure it will only be a matter or time until it can!
[/quote]
You can. ;)
The motion-to-expression/midi has both a direct CV out AND a midi out,
so you could conceivably control 2 things right there. But when you hook up the midi to a
midi-to-cv converter, you can get as many outputs as the converter gives you. You probably
would have to blend things a different way, though.

Might be wrong about both CV out and midi out being on at the same time..
Kinda sounds like they are, though.

You can also chain source audio pedals together to have the hot hand controlling them in series,
and I would think if you got a bunch of receivers you could control them all with one hot hand. I'd
have to get one to find out for sure.

Edited by lxxwj
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I know that the hothand itself will only work with Source Audio products. They do something claled the [url="http://www.sourceaudio.net/products/hothand/midi_exp.php"]Hot Hand Midi Exp Controller[/url] that might be of use with a MIDI-CV convertor & I'd considered it, but for the price you could get a BEF & use it along with the Moog LPF (not controlling one another though).

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