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Reamping and Getting into Modifiers

Lesson 12 from: Using the Axe-Fx

Cooper Carter

Reamping and Getting into Modifiers

Lesson 12 from: Using the Axe-Fx

Cooper Carter

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Lesson Info

12. Reamping and Getting into Modifiers

Lesson Info

Reamping and Getting into Modifiers

What if you want to re ample reem things a lot easier than people make it out to be so let's say you have a direct guitar tone just dry guitar so what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna delete this and I'm gonna run this right over here um this is going to this is direct guitars this's all it's very quiet but that's the sound of the guitar without anything processing it all okay so if you go into your dog and it doesn't really matter what dot is this is ah if you're using the axe effects as your sound card so what you want to dio um is going to your preference is to make sure you're using the expects as your driver make sure inputs you're using three or four inputs you have all of them included on what you want to dio is whenever you're recording so when I'm recording I set up two tracks I'm gonna record simultaneously on these two tracks and one is going to be uh inputs reaper calls it zero in one but that's basically the first two outputs the expects and then the third is going to be...

a mono track and it's going to be the third output and what that is is a completely unaffected by passed signal on the axe effects so if I come in here and I add this back in and for the sake of simplicity I'm in a I just have this one cab here so I'm just gonna record for a minute and you're gonna see what will happen if you get that front panel shot queued up at some point the muted okay hold so still that there were okay so what I've done there is I've recorded this tone and I've recorded this town unity gain so this means that whatever's going in is coming out just like this this is the guitar completely unaffected by the expects its being passed over usb okay so this is how simple revamping is I want another tone I want I don't like the faa air let's say I don't like um you know uh I don't like the double verb cab I'm going to choose a basket weave cab and uh just to get some really extreme here let's uh let's do the twenty so these are the two calves I like now what I'm gonna do is go to the front panel and in the input output menu on the audio page the very first option is main input source it's on analog one in right now which means you know wants to listen to my guitar but I'm gonna do is I'm gonna switch it to usb that means that whatever is coming in on the usb is going to actually be driving the expects itself and putting it through this grid so what I want to do is make sure that on ly this track is playing we don't want to send an already distorted amplified tone through an amplifier again because that would sound bizarre but we're going to do is take this off of record we're going to make sure this is record armed and it's not acoustic anymore called that uh and we're going to record this, uh with a new tone so again all that we're doing this preset we've changed to sound how we want to get heart of sounds we recorded on that third output the dry signal and now we've switched the input on the axe effects to be the usb instead of the guitar as you can see if I play not gonna hear anything it's waiting to listen to something over us be so making sure that we haven't changed the level on this because we want unity gain hit record again and we've just recorded that same riff with another amplifier cooper I mean, this is essentially the revamping ok off I don't know you didn't mention to specifically, but there were a few people in the chat room I allowed sorry, yeah, this is no worries yeah, but but this is we have a question about revamping I just thought I'd do it quickly absolutely thank you so much I wanted to make sure that anyone out there watching waiting for it it was here yeah, yeah, sorry kind of segway. Nicely off having that many cabs on the grid, we could sit around between some cabs. So yeah, that's really a simple that's revamping is no big secret that's really all there is to it if you're already set up to have the expects going into your dog, all you need to do is recorded dry tracks like that on that third output by default, the third output of the expects is always a dry signal. Um and then just change the input to usb. Now be careful. Make sure you don't forget and go pull up your ideas and crank some song because it's going to start sending your itunes through this massive, uh, f a s modern amp and four different cabs on blow your face off. So uh, so yeah, but you can also, you know, you can re amp with a tone that you captured out of the back of a nap head and that doesn't have a cab, so just be select the amp. So you're just hearing a cab and reem through that, but really it's just a simple as having a tone you want to send through this grid and then switching it to usb on the input output and whatever is going through the usb is going to go through the rig that you have uh and you khun you know, we could press play and change it in real time here I'll just show you that, uh, little jitters there because the editor is running, actually, but, um better illustration would be affected this bypassing locks and whatever we tell it to do there I mean, like I could, uh while we're recording here through a chorus block on it. Now we've recorded that re amped and we need to know now switch it back from us. Being so doesn't blow our faces off so revamping is a simple is that I wanted to touch on that really quick I hadn't planned on it, but we got so many questions so thank you for that and it's an important part of the expects a lot of guys wonder about it. It's really just pretty simple that's all there is to it really? So I want to briefly touch on um you get that next slide real quick modifiers which are this incredibly powerful part of the acts effects and again a little bit beyond the scope of this class to get too far into modifiers they are they're simple on their face, but the abilities that they have to be a little overwhelming you can modify almost every parameter in the axe effects, which means that at any given time you could be having automated changes going on um controlled by any one of these controllers if we can switch to the editor hero quick um any one of these controllers can affect something so you know lf o's got two a t s ours sequencer which is a personal favorite of mine you can make some really weird stuff with it. Um you got a very powerful envelope uh seen controllers which we were going to touch on but we talked about other things and sean's um there's some really good videos on youtube about seeing controllers and I'll show you something real quick about it right now also the manual a bcd which are the four manual buttons on the front of the expects you can attach to parameters so you want to drive knob playing live attached drive in your amplifier to manual aim or ah bee and crank it up that way I would use because a used for scenes but um and then the modifiers on external control are pedals that you would have so what I'm gonna do is just show you real quick how these modifiers work and very simply um I have a pedal plugged into the mfc and it said in the m s fee to be controlling external one which is one of these modifier controllers our modifiers I suppose actually so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna add a a wall block here and see you want the steel like a cry babe um and on this wall block I'm gonna go to the control which is you know how it uh does the wall so I'll just do it manually right now, okay? And so that would usually be my foot. It would be my foot moving very rapidly be like you saying bolt playing the pedals someone right click on that. This opens up this modifier paige this is the source so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna select external one that is what my pedals I'm somehow selected ideas are the slight external one and if we cut to this mfc thing you can see that right off the bat my msc is controlling this wah pedal now all of these parameters adjust how far um how far it affects the tone and how quickly it affects the tone uh and in what manner? So for example, if you don't like the bottom sound of a wah pedal, you can adjust it up say, you know halfway so that the minimum value is now halfway into the wa pedal. So if we watch this well the petals all the way down this controls on lian halfway now it's all the way up now it's halfway down, okay, so but what I want because that's just an illustration and musically probably not very useful example umm I'm gonna put this wa pedal so that the whole suite controls the wind you can hear it wait okay now what I want to dio really quick on this is show you what by default is on an ex fix presets which is auto engage what that's going to dio basically is make it so that when I moved the pedal it's going to turn this wa so right now the wives off if I do that it comes on uh so it's off wow what here when I return to the bottom off there you know and it turns off but we don't just want to use these for awhile petals that's certainly one way to do it but what if we wanted to for example affect the level of delaying a preset so if we had a delay block here um could go along and say we want the feedback to be here all right so we wantto do the delay mix so let's set our mix it fifteen ish right there we'll see ah all right we'll go in here and we're gonna go into the modern fighter screen and go to source external one okay and so at our lowest value that's doing is taking when the heels down the delay makes zero on the heels all the way out when the started the petals all the way down the toes down delay makes it all the way up so you don't even hear the first note so we want to do is set that to some practical values so let's say all the way down we want fifteen percent delay and all the way up we want fifty percent allay safer like an atmospheric part so now way down we have this theme with pedal up that huge swells on down you can see only graph moving so you say put it somewhere in the middle between fifteen and fifty at fifty fifteen okay so that's using like a manually controlled modifier but what if we want to get a little weird with the delay and make it so that it's pitch controlled so that's going to dio how I know we're gonna have a lot of the wei wei alone oh we're gonna have a little bit of the way so again maybe not a super useful musically example but it illustrates the variety of ways you control different things I do want to show quickly here um what we were alluding to earlier which is seen controllers and seen controllers are really really powerful and honestly you could do a whole class just on them but basically what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this river here and I'm gonna put a controller a modifier rather on the mix so what I'm doing for that I'm just right clicking on the mix and I'm gonna set this to seen one once is the first scene controller and basically if you go into this controller screen and you got out of scene, this controller one has a different setting for every scene's. All right, now we're in scene one weaver mixes on zero so like unseen one lets say we want fifteen percent reverb there's fifteen percent river but saying scene to you get into kind of an anthemic chorus and you want thirty percent river is like twice as much to switch over to see him too scene three just to show you you want a hundred percent reverb teo and you've got thirty seven so this is really powerful because you're going obviously apply these controllers I'm just showing you this one example, but a lot of parameters are controllable via these modifiers, for example, and I was asked earlier about what I do for different guitars I don't do this, but I know a lot of guys who do you can actually attach a scene controller to this input dr oren put trim either one on your amplifier so let's say you only really use one amp during a set, but you have a lot of different a lot different guitars they all have different kind of inputs what you'd want to dio just come in here on the input trim and modify this by scene one and you'll see here that these values now correspond to the amount of input trim you have so you probably want the minimum to be like let's say you have a hot guitar like point eight and then like some really low guitars like maybe two okay you're gonna go into the scene control are now and in the scenes these now your knobs thes will be your guitars so your first guitar and you couldn't do the math if you'd like I don't want to uh you can do the math what percent of the difference between point eight and one point two are these knobs I prefer to do it by hearing it so you could play all your different a target like say this is your low powered strat so you want it at one hundred percent which would mean it's at the maximum value that we picked for that scene controller and you want it you know like you're really hot say you have the new ernie ball majesty which has very high output really sweet sounding john petrucci signature pickups and they're very hot so you kind of bring him down let's say you know tio here and so on and so forth so that every scene now unlike before when we were changing pedals or whatnot these scenes are now changing the amount of drive to your amplifier so that as you step through them you're getting the right amount of dr for each guitar. So that's, just one way. You can use the scene controllers. And, of course, you could also do it so that you're changing your rig entirely as well, because along with scenes, you can do all the other stuff we did with scenes. But attach a scene controller to this one parameter, and you've now got the ability. You can see the input from jumping, but the ability to change the input tram slightly for different guitars. And again, this is just one example of how you can use this modifier. It's. Incredibly powerful.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Cooper Carter - Axe-Fx II Presets.zip
bonus material with purchase

Ratings and Reviews

Bernie a5cffc
 

A winning combination (Axe-FX II with Cooper Carter)... Just started using the Axe-FX II and this class just gave me the best startup for this amazing magic box. Cooper Carter did an amazing job at getting the basic covered and I feel this course is worth every penny. Now, I'm hoping for an advanced course hat will cover the more advanced topic for both the Axe-FX II and MFC-101. There is so much to learn here and an advanced course is the next step. i.e. expression pedals config in various setup, using Mission SP-1, Sp-2, EP-1, re-amping setup, creating IR. This course is at the top of the best training I had recently. CC is an excellent musician and he knows the Axe-FX II inside/out, the end result is having a high level musical training of this magical box. Love the interaction of web/live audiences and real time explanation with demo, tips/tricks. Thank you Cooper Carter and Creative Lab for making this course, I will view this one again for sure. Don't stop here, time to start working on the follow-up, more advanced course. It will be a hit for sure...

a Creativelive Student
 

Great class! Cooper is a great inspiration, a great guitarist and a great teacher! Never heard of him before this class, but he really nailed some tips and tricks in the Axe FX! I want more classes with him or/and other with same skills regarding the axe fx! Again; really inspiring! Also liked the guy next to him asking web questions! The production was great to! Good quality! I wish there were more camera angels the viewer should be able to choose from, like the screen, the MFC and the display of the Axe… not very important, but could be useful in some sequences… anyway… Thank you!

a Creativelive Student
 

I just finished session #1 on setting up clean tone. I built the same preset while following along with the tutorial and was extremely pleased with the end result. I got sidetracked a few times because I was enjoying playing with the new preset and ended up taking an hour and a half to get through the lesson. Previously, I always seemed to find an existing preset and tweaked it until I got close to what I was looking for. I never seemed to develop the ability to scratch build my presets and as a result, my progress in learning the Axe FX was a bit stagnant. These tutorials have rekindled my interest in taking this box to the next level. I'm confident now that I'll be able to become much more proficient at squeezing out the sounds I'm looking for. Like many others, I've been hoping someone with Cooper's expertise would take the time and effort to offer up these types of tutorials online. Cooper is an excellent instructor. The training is well paced and perfectly suited for my level of ability. Well worth the price of admission! Thank you.

Student Work

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