World of Cheese

p 26 augusztus 2016

Trio +

Posted by Andy in Music   

I'm kinda in charge of the Worship music at our local church and for the last few years, the music has been getting tired. There is only so many ways you can play a song on an acoustic guitar. I've looked at using a looper pedal to trigger some backing tracks - I've the excellent jam-man Stereo and it is a really tidy piece of kit. However, manually programming loops is hard work esp as hours of work could be discarded in minutes if the congregation decided not sing with the music.

I first saw the Trio pedal a year ago and thought this could be something interesting. When I finally came round to get one, Digitech released the Trio+ a amazing upgrade and this is the basis for this review.

The concept of the pedal is that you playing in the chords(simplified), tempo and rhythm of a song and the pedal creates a loop with bass and drums. Sounds too good to be true but it is really quite amazing. Yes, you won't get a Pascal or flea-esq singing bassline but the drum/bass loops are solid and inspiring - I've heard worse at many a church. The pedal is really easy to use, I don't feel like i'm focusing on the pedal during use rather listening to the music - Complex functions with simple UI amazing! There are 12 styles including from blues to Jazz via alternative rock, metal and electronic pop. Each style has 12 different feel (good matches to the input are highlighted green, bad ones are orange) which can be external switched. Each feel has an extra intense mode and a double/half time feel(also switchable). There is a built-in sequencer which can store 5 different part(foot-switchable and pre-programmable!!) and you can store 12 songs per mini-sdcard(effectively limitless storage!)! There is also a looper which can record the guitar input and it is seamless matched to the backing tracks - a bane with the freeform looper!

The only slight downside to this pedal is the built-in guitar effects are quite poor(better than non but not really usable) but this is made up by having an fx loop. I've looped in my Pod2 and it sounds amazing. I'm sure that other pedals would work just - the pod is easy to use a wide range of sounds and I just use my noisy pedals with valve amps like the Marshall or Peavey.

Here is an example I've recorded. It's "We fall down" in the Key of E. The tracking was from the first take and I've used an alternative rock style, with an ABAB structure, the first A with a rhythm-esq feel and the second just the rhythm section and finall a more of a lead thingy. The second example is the same track but with different genres selected - Completely different from twiddling two knobs:)

It sounds great and will make church fun :)


    
 
 

Comments