Vincent van Gogh may be the only artist who painted with more than one color at a time on his brush. In various studies of his work, close-up detail photographs of his brushwork show his use of multiple colors at once.
It's possible to do something similar with guitar and I've written previously on the mechanics of obtaining multiple voices (i.e. colors) but beyond the mechanics is the need to use voices with substantially different attack / release profiles (i.e. how quickly does the note rise and then fade away).
Consider first what happens if each voice has the same attack / release rate. In this case, every note will sound like all three voices and this may very well be what you want. This will yield an extraordinarily rich sound but it's not so much for dynamics. It will sound the same whether you play quickly or slowly and may not have the 'soulfulness' you want.
Alternatively, with a different attack / release for each voice, first you will hear one voice, a second one will build behind it and another one will come in as the others fade. With this type of approach, playing briskly means you will hear mostly the first voice whereas playing slowly will allow each note to 'evolve' and change while you listen. For me, this is the closest approach to what Vincent was doing and that's specifically what I'm trying to do.
One caution in trying this sort of thing is no patch librarian will help you. Long before things got so sophisticated, Opcode had Galaxy and it was fairly decent at managing patches. Gibson Guitars bought Opcode and ran it into the ground. That was the last time I saw the Galaxy librarian and that must have been about fifteen years ago. Some type of patch librarian(s) must have arisen since or the Ableton Live people would be dribbling on themselves but that doesn't do me much good as the applications aren't the same.
The Roland GR-20 has some unknown number of patches, maybe a hundred or so. The Korg TR has hundreds and hundreds of patches. For live you need to find that GR-20 patch and that Korg TR patch Right Now. I have yet to find a Right Now way to do that. This isn't a huge deal but be ready for that sort of thing if you try this.
It's possible to do something similar with guitar and I've written previously on the mechanics of obtaining multiple voices (i.e. colors) but beyond the mechanics is the need to use voices with substantially different attack / release profiles (i.e. how quickly does the note rise and then fade away).
Consider first what happens if each voice has the same attack / release rate. In this case, every note will sound like all three voices and this may very well be what you want. This will yield an extraordinarily rich sound but it's not so much for dynamics. It will sound the same whether you play quickly or slowly and may not have the 'soulfulness' you want.
Alternatively, with a different attack / release for each voice, first you will hear one voice, a second one will build behind it and another one will come in as the others fade. With this type of approach, playing briskly means you will hear mostly the first voice whereas playing slowly will allow each note to 'evolve' and change while you listen. For me, this is the closest approach to what Vincent was doing and that's specifically what I'm trying to do.
One caution in trying this sort of thing is no patch librarian will help you. Long before things got so sophisticated, Opcode had Galaxy and it was fairly decent at managing patches. Gibson Guitars bought Opcode and ran it into the ground. That was the last time I saw the Galaxy librarian and that must have been about fifteen years ago. Some type of patch librarian(s) must have arisen since or the Ableton Live people would be dribbling on themselves but that doesn't do me much good as the applications aren't the same.
The Roland GR-20 has some unknown number of patches, maybe a hundred or so. The Korg TR has hundreds and hundreds of patches. For live you need to find that GR-20 patch and that Korg TR patch Right Now. I have yet to find a Right Now way to do that. This isn't a huge deal but be ready for that sort of thing if you try this.
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