flute effects rig

[JavaJ]

I am working on a live effects rig to play at church. In seeking the best interfaces, I am going to see how far I can get with JamUp Pro, Apogee Jam guitar interface, and the best of all, a repurposed Radio Shack PZM microphone. I took the plate off and have added some foam to the remaining microphone. Since the PZM needs a battery, this ended up working well as I can plug in directly to the Apogee Jam. I have been playing around with the effects in JamUp Pro and find that putting the noise gate further down the chain reduces chances of feedback and really allows me to use this as a mic processor.

Next step is to find the best mounting position on the flute. I plan on using Velcro straps and try the head joint first. Might also try the foot joint to see what different tone I get down there and what the added keypad noise does to the effected sound.

I was going to use the irig mic but may put that on my iPhone to run plain vocals for now.

Will update as I progress down this path. Would love any ideas if you have them.

[ObiWonder]

Definitely keep us updated! I love hearing how people are using iOS and our stuff live, especially something as cool as flute! (I was a clarinet guy growing up, til I moved to percussion)

[JavaJ]

So I decided to head over and jam for a few hours. My first observations, just using the default presets in JamUp pro- most guitar effects are useless for flute (or rather any higher pitched instrument). There were 2 presets that were awesome though- ones that utilized tape delay for trailing echos. Distortion effects just don't sound that good. Of course when you plug a guitar in- those same presets are awesome. I will post some pictures up once I find a better way of mounting the microphone on my headjoint (used some velcro strips which, although worked, looked UGLY). Using a PZM microphone seems to be a smart thing to do for this setup- as it reduces feedback since the mic is placed on the flute head with minimal gap between the mic and flute). This is the key issue I have with mic'ing a flute- you can't just use a normal handheld mic with extreme effects- instant feedback (and even worse when playing live).

You can see the mic I modded here (removed the plate).
[url}http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pzm/[/url]

I may decide to take apart the mic capsule (which is quite long and big for attaching to a flute head)- but that will be alter once I iron out everything else.

[Tony Ostinato]

probably my favorite flute effect besides echo and verb and the typical things is analog octave divider, you can hear it on a lot of hubert laws cti fusion albums from the 70's.

heres one in vst format thats quite authentic:

http://mokafix.chez-alice.fr/vst/guitarstomps.html

guitar rig has one thats polished up more to sounds like a really nice one.


although i think he used a barcus berry type contact pickup to get the really good tracking and a sound so organic you have to point out the octave to people before they realize its there.

[Calvin J. Abel]

Not a flute expert at all, but what if placing an overhead mic, and go direct to the house PA? Will that help improve feedback?

[JavaJ]

For what I do, I also need to be able to sing as well, so an overhead mic is no good. Also, I need to keep my rig simple for the sound guy to deal with. The PZM seems to work well. Would love to see some sort of feedback preventer pedal in case you need some ideas for JamUp Pro. another idea is some sort of resampler that slices up the incoming audio and echos back in random fashion. I can imagine that dripping in some reverb to give cool washes of sound. Also an octave pedal although I wonder if one is there already.

FYI- just bought the effects bundle in JamUp Pro. I am thinking that some of the effects will work well for flute. Will post how it goes.