Jazzmaster Clouds

Published on Feb 12, 2017 Nick Jackson

"Here's some guitar improvisation through the Mutable Instruments Clouds.

I am playing a Fender Jazzmaster straight into my Pittsburgh Modular In/Out module, which is amplifying and sending the signal out in the 1/8" modular format to the Mutable Instruments Ripples filter. The filter is open all the way and thus not really affecting the sound much, but I suppose it just made me feel more accomplished to patch it up anyway, lol.

From Ripples the signal goes into Clouds, which has the pitch control dialed all the way up, to achieve an octave up effect. I have my UokiToki 4lfo plus MI Tides lfo modulating the Freeze, Position, Size, Density, and Texture of Clouds to keep the effect dynamic. It ends up sounding like a shimmer reverb/delay effect, making the dry guitar signal sound like it's enshrouded in a 'cloud' of magical fairies sprinkling pixie dust everywhere (I mean, right?)..

From there we patch back into the In/Out so that I can send a 1/4" signal out to my pedalboard, upon which I have engaged a Strymon El Capistan delay and Strymon Blue Sky reverb.

Out from the pedals into my interface and computer, where I add a bit of very light compression, mostly for gain and limiting purposes. I do apologize for the few clips, I really had to gain-up the guitar signal to get it to speak with the modules, and thus I had to be very careful with the dynamics of my playing. You can hear how hot the signal is when you hear the pick scraping the strings.

I really enjoy mixing the realms of guitar and synth. Modular isn't just for techy synth nerds after all!

Thank you very much for tuning in."