SKU: PR.16400248S

UPC: 680160038244.

This work is my second for a solo woodwind and a solo percussionist, following Firewing: The Flame and the Moth for oboe and percussion by nine years. The earlier piece followed a specific story line, and pitted the oboe against the percussionist as both adversary and lover. In Spirit Realms, my aim was not only to juxtapose the very different sounds of flute (plus alto flute and piccolo) against a large array of percussion, but also to attempt three different meditative spaces, each named for a different type of spiritual practice. The musical means of expression is very different for each of the three movements (as is the instrumentation), although they share a common scale-source: the looped pentatonic scale I have been developing over the last several years.   The first movement is called Prayer Tunnel, and is named for the Eskimo practice of solo meditation within a tunnel of ice blocks. This is said to be a means of overcoming demons within, and in my musical rendering it takes the form of an unaccompanied alto flute solo. The flute begins rather angrily, full of tension, but in the course of the solo passage manages to slowly unwind. The percussionist then plays the exact same music the alto flute had played....on seven tuned cymbals. Toward the end, the alto flute re-enters, its original meditation having fused with its mirror.   Kiva represents the circular, subterranean pit in which the Anasazi practiced their religion, a form of which still can be found in the Hopi tribes of the American southwest. These are not spaces for solo meditation, but rather a group meeting place in which only the sanctified are permitted. After an introductory invocation (dove call), the music begins. At first, it is flowing, in a repetitive double-five meter. It then traces several sections, with metric shifts forcing the pulse to race faster and faster, until it halves itself in the coda and returns to the exact pulse of the beginning. The flutist here uses the C flute, and the percussionist plays on both pitched (marimba) and unpitched instruments (various drums and struck sources).   Zendo is the meditation room used by Zen Buddhists. My music begins with another invocation (wind chimes, temple cup gongs, and temple blocks), then moves on to a slow subject stated by the flute. The subject is taken up by the vibraphone, and after several modulations and tempo changes, the flutist takes up the piccolo. The music continues higher and higher, and faster and faster (Zen meditation is NOT all about becoming lost!) until it breaks free at the very end. The percussionist is put through his paces in this movement, having to reach a staggering number of instruments in a short time.   Spirit Realms was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, the Armstrong Duo. -- Dan Welcher.

SKU: HL.1158247

UPC: 749350578400. 6.25x4.0x3.0 inches.

VERTEX BUFFERS NOW AVAILABLE TO THE MASSES! For over a decade, every buffer that's come out of Vertex Effects has been custom made, bespoke, for the pedalboard it was designed for or the customer that ordered it. Needless to say, our buffers were very limited, with only a few hundred made over the last ten years. Over that time, and through hundreds of custom buffer interfaces being made, several common applications for buffer combinations and routing emerged as the most common uses as it comes to placing buffers on a pedalboard for the most optimal results. Routing schemes such as mono, stereo, audition loops (inserts), four-cable method, five-cable method, and wet/dry/wet were all common requests from our customers, but there was never an all-in-one solution that provided all of these options for buffering and routing your pedalboard in a pedalboard-friendly enclosure – until now. Introducing the Vertex Buffer Interfaces and Buffer Modules. The first all-in-one solution that covers 99% of all pedalboard routing options, whether you have multiple amps, amps with effects loop, a wet/dry/wet rig, an impedence sensitive fuzz, or want to side-chain pedals off the board in the middle of your signal path with an insert loop, these boxes have a solution for you that won't compromise on tone. WHY ARE OUR BUFFERS BETTER? Firstly, our buffers are designed to have no sound of their own – totally transparent, no color, no EQ, no distortion – just your tone as though you plugged your guitar directly into your amp with a 10ft cable (even if you're running a dozen or more pedals between the guitar and amp with over 100 ft. of cable). So often buffers in our industry will be described by the manufacturers with words like “warm” or “fat” when really the buffer should NOT be imparting anything to the sound other than 1) loading the guitar pickups properly with the same loading as your guitar would see if plugged into a tube amp and 2) converting the signle to low impedence, driving the line so it is the least susceptible to environmental factors that might alter the tone. Unfortunately, 99% of the buffers available on the market don't do this – they add a color to the signal and lack the proper specifications to dive even 20 feet of cable without introducing artifacts into the sound.

SKU: HL.438847

UPC: 852940000417. 4.5x7.25x2.606 inches.

The Carl Martin Paraloop helps to bridge the gap between digital effects and analog signals. When using digital multi-effects through amplifiers with only serial fx-loops, using the Paraloop will allow you to adjust the amount of digital fx signal or the amount of analog signal you prefer (with the Wet/Dry Control Knob), or with a Bypass switch to take the entire digital effects unit out of the loop. Allowing a certain percentage of analog signal to remain under your digitally affected signal, creates a fuller, richer tone....just ask Carl!