Roland VG-8

I've had a lot fun playing with this amazing device. It combines the ability to imitate a myriad of different guitar setups with a polyphonic pitch shifter and amp simulation. On top of that, it will do what Roland calls "Harmonic Restructure Modelling" to get even more weird sounds.

Here are a couple of my patches:

Pink Floyd - Hey You	(242K mp3)
Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Dance of Maya	(314K mp3)

Using the VG-8 for Jazz Block Chords

One of the main reasons I got this thing was because I realized that the number of ways to play jazz block chords on the guitar could be greatly increased using the polyphonic pitch shifter. Normally on the guitar it is practically impossible to play close position block chords because of the wide finger stretches required. (Johnny Smith can do it, but he has huge hands!) With the VG-8 you can cheat and shift certain strings up or down an octave to get a lot of great block chord voicings. Here are some examples:

Shift the D string up an octave

If you do this and play a regular drop2 black chord voicing on the top four strings, it comes out sounding like a close position block chord.

Shift the low E string up an octave

If you play a drop 3 voicing on strings 2, 3, 4, & 6, it comes out sounding like a close position voicing. If you play a drop 2 voicing on the bottom four strings, it also comes out sounding like a close position voicing.

Using the VG-8 with a Looping Device

Here's where it gets really crazy. Using all the different sounds available, you can synthesize an entire band.

Virtual Country Band

These patches and many more are included in this ZIP file: (4K ZIP), which contains a VGP file for the V-Library librarian program.