My Live Session on justinGuitar about Amp Sims & AI (& MOD audio)

Hi guys

While I don’t heavily promote it, i’m part of the JustinGuitar team a website and Community around Justin Sandercoe. I will be doing something there that involves MOD audio and AIDA-X though…

Justin made it his mission to teach the world to play the guitar. He does this by a ton of quality content, organised in grades, songs and skill. Much of that is completely free.

As Approved Teacher, Community Admin, Marketeer and what not, I’ve ben doing a lot of things in this Universe over a course of 20y

Currently, we offer some Live Clubs that are free to join but we try to get users to drop a donation.

I usually do sessions on Sunday evenings, every 2 weeks and my scope is “Motivation and Inspiration”. I’ve been talking about making songs your own, taking control of a songs, how to move from bedroom to stage, why barre chords matter etc.

As you can see in the image above, I planned a session on June 23rd that might sound familiar. **I thought it would be an interesting story to tell on how I moved from hardware to sims, IR and even my own AIDA-X amp sims.

I will tell about the pro’s and cons of my new loadout, how I came to create my own amp models and how I can use these live and in my DAW. I won’t go too deep into the thechnical stuff but it will include MOD Audio and the AIDA-X project as central subject in my stories.**

I usually get 150 to 300 people to subscribe for a session and the one about singing with or without guitar had a lot of people joining in. Popular sessions with get new, improved iterations later on, like the central theme where I talk about “making songs your own” by decomposing them and re-arranging them in layers on top of each other, instead of trying to learn a song note for note, from beginning to end.

If this session proves to be useful to our public, I’d like to include somebody from the MOD audio crew for a guest appearance the next time i do a live session about this. :wink: (date to be decided then)

Since many here have some experience in this field, I’d like to hear what you guys think people would like to hear.

I have to decide on a structure yet but I imagine it will look similar to:

  • brief intro on what digital amp sims and pedal sims are and how you can use them live
  • Brief info on speaker IR’s how they are created and how they fit in a live rig in combo with a regular cab vs FRFR/PA speakers
    - What MOD Audio created with the Dwarf
    - What AIDA-X is and how the amp sim differs from classic amp sims
    - in steps the process of how you can create your own amp sim (not a tech demo)
  • mention how you can mirror live and DAW rig
  • extra features of the Dwarf besides the typical single line effect chain (output mapping, making complex chains, midi capabilities, creating modular synths, doing vocals, recording, playing sound files/samples etc)

Q1: Who from the MOD Audio crew wants to briefly review what I will say when it comes to the parts above in bold?

Q2: What would you, as community member, think I need to add to fit a somewhat older audience that is usd to simple rigs and most of all; more conventional/classic gear choices?

5 Likes

Perhaps talk about shareable presets. The value of seeing what others have done with the technology to achieve their sounds, mimic artists they like, etc. Starting from something you like the sound of and then adjusting it to make it your own. It’s like having a recipe book that you can start with and then choose how (or if you want) to modify the recipe to better match your palette and individual taste. Modelers have communities of users dedicated to helping one another understand and get the most of their machines. This might reduce anxiety about trying something new. Of course, the other thing to hit upon is the ease with which you can experiment and learn without having to acquire a bunch of physical gear. I’m excited for the show. You are a thoughtful teacher.

1 Like

This session is happening on this Sunday (June 23rd).

I like to include a brief explanation on how AIDA dsp uses “AI” to profile an amp.
It needs to be brief and in simple terms since I’m doing this session for a broad audience. Some have little experience with amp sims in general.

I tried to contact the AIDA guys via their general contact address but I was wondering if somebody here could help me, in case my e-mail isn’t read or is ignored (what is often the case for general contact e-mails).

While I know how to go through the process of profiling for AIDA-X (I even wrote a “best practices” article), I know little about what’s under the hood :smiley:

Who could write up something simple or send me an audio/video recording of a brief, high level explanation?

2 Likes

Ciao Lieven,

this is Sebastian from AIDA DSP. We got your mail and I’ll andwer it here directly. Might also be interesting to others.

Your italian sounds very good already - but might be because I’m from Germany and don’t speak it. :slight_smile:
Massimo (@madmaxwell) might be more here to judge.

I really appreciate that you are sticking with AIDA-X and the DWARF.
And the technique of blending gear and effects to capture your personal sound is awesome.

It’s similar to how we did the new SDX channel for the tweaker plugin. It’s an Boss SD-1 pushing the tweaker to a high gain modern metal sound.

To your question:

AIDA-X uses Deep Learning (a part of machine learning) for training new captures. It does essentially take the captured audio data through a bunch of calculations (nodes and layers) allowing it to identify and learn the complex relationships between the input guitar signals and the resulting amplified sound. These values are saved into a json type .aidax file.

This profile essentially functions as a mathematical model that can recreate the amplifier’s behavior.
It uses a specific engine (rtneural) to interpret (interfere) those saved values (weights) in the .aidax

If you have an hour to kill and want to deep dive than I really recommend his talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqrah49GUkI.

Hope this can help you in your talk. If you have any questions feel free to ask at any time.

Cheers
Sebastian

AIDA DSP

6 Likes

Great, thanks @spunktsch

Checking out the talk as well; love it, right up my alley ^^

Danke schön (ich habe auch etwas Deutsches ünterricht in die Schüle gekriegen)

1 Like

you’re welcome. Is there a chance that you post some snippets of the talk to instagram?
Does the policy allow for that? Would be nice to have a little more content for social.

I can check out what I can do;
The content is for logged in JustinGuitar users but some cross referencing never hurt anybody, right?

When it concerns other content (coming from me personally) we could work out some stuff in the future as “ambassador”.

absolutely

  • would really like that. Be great to have at least some posts from time to time.
1 Like