Helix doing some mildly interesting stuff!

Drew_TNBD

So this is a track we're working on right now:



I've just got my guitar and vocal part here, muted everything else. So the Helix patch uses Archetype Clean for the clean tones and Archetype Lead for the dirty tones. I have a really clean patch, a slightly hairy patch, and a full on rhythm patch. There are 4 delays and 1 reverb in this patch. A bit of compression too.

Song starts with the really clean patch, with a touch of delay and reverb.
Just At bar 13 I roll my expression pedal forward. This brings in the parallel chain on the Helix by raising the gain on the block at the start. At the same time it cranks the mix parameters and feedback on the two parallel delays (Adriatic Delay and Vintage Delay stacked) to get this really cool sounding modulated oscillation tone. The compressor after the amp holds everything in check, so no matter how oscillatory it all gets, the volume never becomes too much to handle.

At bar 18 I roll the expression pedal back and it clean everything up. The delays tail away naturally and my guitar starts to come through as the oscillation fades away. So I'm playing from the start of bar 18 but you don't hear it until a few beats in. Sort of crossfades between the two.

Then at bar 30 I switch over to an 8th note textural part, where I increase the expression pedal throughout the long part, at the same time as playing harder and harder. This is the slightly hairy patch, so the combination of playing harder and the effects building up results in the amp being more distorted as time goes on.

Then at bar 46 I roll the expression pedal back and switch over to the full on rhythm channel and continue the rest of the song.


----

So this is all possible with the Helix and works great. I'm still figuring out how best to do this in a live context with my amp. This is the reason a 2 channel amp holds me back - I need that 3rd option. I think I see a purchase in my near future - either go back to the Diezel D-Moll or a EVH5150III 100-watter.

Drew_TNBD

Here is the patch:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u3hl3u8epxj1898/Helix_CreeperPatch.tiff

ThePrettyDamned

Blimey, that's impressive. I used an expression on the line 6 M5 to control delays a lot, but this really is something else, controlling so much at once. 

Are you still very much for using a real amp live then? Would a valve power amp and 4x12 hit the spot? 

Drew_TNBD

ThePrettyDamned said:

Blimey, that's impressive. I used an expression on the line 6 M5 to control delays a lot, but this really is something else, controlling so much at once. 

Are you still very much for using a real amp live then? Would a valve power amp and 4x12 hit the spot? 

Honestly, I don't know. I'd like to try setting up some patches and seeing if the amp modeling is as good as my Orange or my 5150III, but it's kind of a pain to do that when the rest of the band are sitting around waiting for you to finish dicking about!

Vaiai

Ignoring the modeller arguments going on, this functionality alone is so cool the EXP pedal tricks are not new - but being able to do it to multiple effects/parameters is cool.
Sounds awesome Drew - so much fun doing stuff like this - not so much of a chance to do it in cover bands!

Wazmeister

Nice sounds Drew - better than that heavy shit you usually play

Seriously though, a great CREATIVE use of the Helix.

Try that on your pedal board...

guitarfishbay

Cool, honestly I think you should consider using Helix as your primary pedal platform. It makes a lot of sense for the way you use effects.

Singing sounded good too

ThePrettyDamned

Drew_TNBD said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Blimey, that's impressive. I used an expression on the line 6 M5 to control delays a lot, but this really is something else, controlling so much at once. 

Are you still very much for using a real amp live then? Would a valve power amp and 4x12 hit the spot? 

Honestly, I don't know. I'd like to try setting up some patches and seeing if the amp modeling is as good as my Orange or my 5150III, but it's kind of a pain to do that when the rest of the band are sitting around waiting for you to finish dicking about!

Hmm, I suppose. 

Is the Helix your current FX board? You could probably copy the patches, but remove the amps, then wire it up 4CM and tweak it until it sounds ballparked. You might need more compression or eq bits but it could still make gigs much more manageable and reliable. 

Unless Helix self-immolates mid gig. 

Drew_TNBD

ThePrettyDamned said:

Drew_TNBD said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Blimey, that's impressive. I used an expression on the line 6 M5 to control delays a lot, but this really is something else, controlling so much at once. 

Are you still very much for using a real amp live then? Would a valve power amp and 4x12 hit the spot? 

Honestly, I don't know. I'd like to try setting up some patches and seeing if the amp modeling is as good as my Orange or my 5150III, but it's kind of a pain to do that when the rest of the band are sitting around waiting for you to finish dicking about!

Hmm, I suppose. 

Is the Helix your current FX board? You could probably copy the patches, but remove the amps, then wire it up 4CM and tweak it until it sounds ballparked. You might need more compression or eq bits but it could still make gigs much more manageable and reliable. 

Unless Helix self-immolates mid gig. 

I'm working up to it becoming my main board. Tbh the only things stopping me right now are practical reasons - the speed of setting stuff up - 4-cable-method, amp channel cable, expression pedal and wah pedal - the heaviness of carrying the Helix to band practice each week - it's basically two hours of traveling and carrying it on my back is proving to be a bit much, and I don't want to leave it at the practice room because I use it at home a lot.

Here is a comparison in terms of floorspace between the Helix, Pedaltrain Classic 2, and Fractal FX8. I added expression pedals and wahs where needed. Ideally I'd add another expression pedal to the Helix. So that'd be wah, volume, and expression pedal functions all on the floor at my feet.




In terms of the algorithms and raw DSP needs, I'm not struggling at all with the Helix. One of the best bits of kit I've ever bought.

ThePrettyDamned

Drew_TNBD said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Drew_TNBD said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Blimey, that's impressive. I used an expression on the line 6 M5 to control delays a lot, but this really is something else, controlling so much at once. 

Are you still very much for using a real amp live then? Would a valve power amp and 4x12 hit the spot? 

Honestly, I don't know. I'd like to try setting up some patches and seeing if the amp modeling is as good as my Orange or my 5150III, but it's kind of a pain to do that when the rest of the band are sitting around waiting for you to finish dicking about!

Hmm, I suppose. 

Is the Helix your current FX board? You could probably copy the patches, but remove the amps, then wire it up 4CM and tweak it until it sounds ballparked. You might need more compression or eq bits but it could still make gigs much more manageable and reliable. 

Unless Helix self-immolates mid gig. 

I'm working up to it becoming my main board. Tbh the only things stopping me right now are practical reasons - the speed of setting stuff up - 4-cable-method, amp channel cable, expression pedal and wah pedal - the heaviness of carrying the Helix to band practice each week - it's basically two hours of traveling and carrying it on my back is proving to be a bit much, and I don't want to leave it at the practice room because I use it at home a lot.

Here is a comparison in terms of floorspace between the Helix, Pedaltrain Classic 2, and Fractal FX8. I added expression pedals and wahs where needed. Ideally I'd add another expression pedal to the Helix. So that'd be wah, volume, and expression pedal functions all on the floor at my feet.




In terms of the algorithms and raw DSP needs, I'm not struggling at all with the Helix. One of the best bits of kit I've ever bought.

Ahh that's a long trek. Hmm. I don't suppose the LT could do the trick? If the budget were infinite that is. 

Not going to lie, listening to your demos and some others on YouTube has me thinking what I'd fetch for my effects and vox. I'd surely enjoy the Helix more, it'd tidy my room (bedroom warrior!) and the LT has more than enough for me anyway. If I got £30 per pedal, plus £400 for the amp, I'd probably get 600-700 quid towards it. 

But finding a buyer for my amp could be tough, what with it being a danplifier modified old solid state that's now a handwired valve beast. That's basically all that's holding me back (of course, assuming I had income coming in too... Goes without saying!). 

Love these demos though. I am so fucking sick of people working out if they properly nail the vintage twin or JTM45... I prefer thinking how much fun a simple bedroom player like me could have. 

I can even see a bit of kit like this creating new genres of music. 

Jalapeno

Drew_TNBD said:

So this is all possible with the Helix and works great. I'm still figuring out how best to do this in a live context with my amp. This is the reason a 2 channel amp holds me back - I need that 3rd option. I think I see a purchase in my near future - either go back to the Diezel D-Moll or a EVH5150III 100-watter.

Why d'ya need 3 channels with all the Helix malarkey or have I got the wrong end of the stick ?

Drew_TNBD

I don't think the LT is that much smaller, and I'd miss the scribble strips

I can definitely recommend one for home recording!

TimmyO

Cool.

Logic, Cubase AND Reaper? 

BintyTwanger77

The beginning is very Mogwai-ish. Great stuff!

TimmyO

Maybe once native releases you can use Native at home and hardware at rehearsal? 

Drew_TNBD

Jalapeno said:

Drew_TNBD said:

So this is all possible with the Helix and works great. I'm still figuring out how best to do this in a live context with my amp. This is the reason a 2 channel amp holds me back - I need that 3rd option. I think I see a purchase in my near future - either go back to the Diezel D-Moll or a EVH5150III 100-watter.

Why d'ya need 3 channels with all the Helix malarkey or have I got the wrong end of the stick ?

Well that's a very good question. Right now for playing live I still use a real amp and cab, and I'm just using the Helix for effects. In the video above I'm just using the Helix for direct recording. So two different scenarios really.

There are a bunch of ways I can achieve what I want, but I don't know what the best way is. Depends on the amp too; right now it's a Orange Rockerverb 100watt MKIII, which has killer clean tones and a great (but different!) drive channel.

There is a whole bunch of stuff I can do. I could set the amps drive channel lower in gain, and then boost it, but I'm not sure if I like the way that sounds. I could crank the shit out of the amps clean channel and use the send and return parameters on the Helix to control the levels, but this could result in extra noise. I could put a drive pedal on the Helix in my signal path and try and get the tones that way, but I typically don't like drive pedals and how different they tend to sound to the amp tones.

It seems like the easiest solution is to use a different amp, and just have three channels to play with instead!

One of the core parts of my sound is to have an amp channel set up so that it's only gainy when you dig in. Then I build up these washes of delay and reverb essentially just to push the amp harder and harder, and then I switch over to the proper high-gain channel and drop all the effects. Clean tones tend to be fairly dynamic too.

Drew_TNBD

TimmyO said:

Cool.

Logic, Cubase AND Reaper? 

And Pro Tools, Max 7, Sketch, Final Cut, Source Tree, Reason, and Visual Studio!

Yeah I got a lot of apps on this machine. Partly it's work, as I do some QA stuff from home. But it's also I like toys!

BintyTwanger77 said:

The beginning is very Mogwai-ish. Great stuff!

Ta!

TimmyO said:

Maybe once native releases you can use Native at home and hardware at rehearsal? 

Definitely a possibility.

guitarfishbay

TimmyO said:

Cool.

Logic, Cubase AND Reaper? 

I don't think it's uncommon to have more than one DAW these days, even if people have a primary one. I mostly use Logic but got Studio One 3 recently, heavily due to Drew's recommendation, as editing and general tracking/comping are superior in it IMO. Still love the mix setup in Logic, so I'm sending files back and forth at different stages. 

Drew_TNBD

guitarfishbay said:

heavily due to Drew's recommendation

Awwww don't say that!! I don't want to be responsible for you spending money! lol. I'm really cross at Studio One right now as you well know!

Drew_TNBD

I had a bit of a brainwave just now. This isn't really addressing the concerns I wrote about above, but it is pretty damn cool!!



So...

Guitar comes in, gets split to paths 1A and 1B. 1A is the first chunk of my regular 'pedalboard' setup. 1B is the guitar DI going straight to the digital output, and hard-panned right. That means in my DAW, I always get my guitar DI appearing on the right channel of my soundcard SPDIF input.

Path 1A goes through to Path 2A.

Path 2A finishes up my 'pedalboard' setup with a delay and reverb. Then it gets split to Path 2B. The rest of Path 2A is for my real amp - FX Loop 1 for the preamp of the real amp, and then a compressor. Then Path 2A goes straight to the 1/4 outputs and into the return section of my real amp.

But Path 2B sends the output of my 'pedalboard' into the front of a Helix Archetype clean followed by an Archetype Lead, then into a cabinet impulse response, and then all the way through to the digital output, and hard-panned left. This means I always get a modelled amplifier signal complete with pedals and cab on the left channel of my soundcard SPDIF input.

So this does:

- 4-cable method with a real amp into a real cab
- Recording of my guitar without any processing
- Recording of my modeled channel for bedroom rehearsal and writing

... all at the same time!!

This thing is bloody awesome!

UnclePsychosis

Sounds good Drew. I'd really love a Helix but its financially beyond me right now. 

I think this illustrates one of the things that the "analogue gear sounds better" guys forget---you can use digital modelling to do things that would be almost literally impossible with a pedalboard alone. 

Sure, if all you want to do is digitally emulate a dozen pedals going into an amp then the "real thing" might sound slightly better than the Helix copy of it. But if you want to do parallel mixing, change multiple parameters at once, rework the signal chain massively type stuff then these tools are incredible.