NAMM 2012: Peavey AT-200 auto tune guitar
Check out the Peavey AT-200 guitar. Unlike the other self-tuning guitars on the market, this one doesn’t retune your guitar mechanically – no motors, gears, or anything like that. Instead it uses what boils down to a guitar-ified version of auto tune software to take whatever notes you play and spit them out perfectly in tune and perfectly intonated all the way along the neck. Change the tuning pegs and it won’t make any difference. Wild! The guitar itself sounds pretty impressive and it works very well in the demo provided by Peavey at their NAMM display. I haven’t got my hands on it yet to check out what the latency is like. All the guts is neatly contained in the back compartment, and if you didn’t look at the backplate you’d have no idea there was anything unusual about this guitar at first glance. More pics at the end, but here’s the press release:
Peavey & Antares Announce the Peavey AT-200TM Guitar Featuring Auto-Tune® for Guitar Technology
Jan. 19, 2012, ANAHEIM, Calif. (NAMM Exhibit 5740, Hall B)—Music and audio innovator Peavey Electronics® has partnered with Antares Audio Technologies, the creator of world- renowned Auto-Tune® pitch-correction technology, to announce the dawn of the new guitar revolution: the Peavey AT-200TM guitar featuring Auto-Tune for Guitar, a new musical instrument that electronically self tunes and intonates continuously as you play.
With the simple push of a button on the Peavey AT-200, guitar players can now create music in perfect tune and pitch. The Peavey AT-200 utilizes Antares Auto-Tune for Guitar, a DSP technology that works behind the scenes to bring the clarity of perfect pitch to a quality instrument in an unobtrusive manner. No bulky, unattractive hardware weighs down the playing experience— the Peavey AT-200 looks, plays and sounds just like a conventional guitar, exactly the way it should.
Watch Peavey’s Devin Townsend webcast, win Devy’s signature 7-string V!
Quick! Go! http://www.peavey.com/contests/devintownsend/
When you sign in you’ll be given the opportunity to fill out your details to win a Peavey Devin Townsend Signature PXD Vicious 7 String Baritone. Check out the details about the guitar here. I played this axe at NAMM almost two years ago and it’s great to finally see that it’s about to be released.
INTERVIEW: Trivium’s Matt Heafy & Corey Beaulieu
We all know Trivium can play. They’ve been able to shred with the best of them ever since their first album, 2003′s Ember To Inferno, while and 2008′s Shogun veered close to progressive metal more than once, with its complex single note lines and ferocious 7-string riffage. But new album In Waves (Roadrunner) finds these Floridians exploring more restrained territory – to a point. The riffs are more direct, the tones are huge, and the songwriting is tight and purposeful. Guitarists Corey Beaulieu and Matt Heafy refined their approach without losing their edge or power, a rare feat in a world were ‘stripped back songwriting’ is usually taken to mean ‘wimpy.’ There’s still plenty of precision in the latest evolution of the Trivium sound, and there’s more than enough aggression to satisfy fans of the band’s early hardcore days, but In Waves stands out as the best sounding and most repeat-listenable Trivium album to date. I spoke with Heafy and Beaulieu about what went into the project, and what ultimately came out.
You started working on this album quite a while ago. Is that how you always work?
COREY BEAULIEU Mostly on every record, while we’re touring for the previous record, we stockpile ideas. Once we get off tour we have a lot of stuff we can start digging into and putting together. We use the tour to write and put together ideas so that when we start on the next record we’re a bit ahead. We’ve already got stuff we’ve been working on over time and that has been allowed to develop. Some of the songs go back pretty far back in the Shogun touring cycle.
What was your guitar approach on this album?
BEAULIEU It was about focusing on the songs, and writing songs that are straight to the point. It wasn’t all about technical stuff or trying to riff out a lot or show off. It was just making sure everything in the song was what needed to be there and nothing more. Taking a songwriter’s approach and not trying to be a flashy guitar player. It’s all about making the song and the riff the best it can be. It’s a lot simpler technically. We took that approach for the playing stuff, and the solos were whatever was needed for the song, whether it was a crazy solo or something more melodic. The songs dictated the lead stuff.
MATT HEAFY We were thinking about telling [producer] Colin Richardson, “We want a combination of this, this and that…” but I’m pretty sure we held all of our comments until we saw him in person. The guitar process was long. Normally, every record we’ve ever done, you get a BS scratch guitar tone and send it off to be mixed later, but Colin’s whole thing is he doesn’t want to record a second of music until he has a tone that will be the final tone of the record. I think we spent about five days on the guitar tone.
Hi! I'm Peter Hodgson. I write for Gibson.com, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, Mixdown Magazine (including my instructional column, 'Unleash Your Inner Rock God,' which has been running since 2007), Blunt, Beat (including their weekly hard rock/metal column Crunch) and The Brag. And I'm Assistant Social Coordinator with Seymour Duncan.
I've been playing guitar since I was 8 years old, and I've been writing for magazines since I was 18. I've also worked as a guitar teacher (up to 50 students a week), a setup tech, a newspaper editor, and I've also dabbled in radio a little bit. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and my hobbies include drinking way too much coffee, and eating way too much Mexican food.
You can check out my guitar playing at Bandcamp or on YouTube, and feel free to email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com