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-Just the right amount of too many guitars-

How I Got Jason Mcgerr of Death Cab For Cutie To Play On My Tracks

Jason Mgerr of Death Cab For Cutie Plays on several of my tracks!After walking away from years of playing and working the Seattle rock scene, I was looking for a way to record music, without having a band to take in the studio. As an old school, tube is better, analog is better, snob of a musician who's shared the stage with bands like Alice In Chains, and as a sound engineer who has worked with members of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, it was less then satisfying to have anything other than a real, live, warm blooded person behind a drum kit in the same room as me, to get my groove on. It was disheartening to try and record 'inspired' tracks. I knew I could, in theory, do full multi-track recording on my computer, but it just SUCKED! Until I found Riffworks Recording Software with it's built in 'InstantDrummer'.  

It's as if I can pick up the phone, dial up Matt Sorum or Jason Mcgerr and set up a studio session on the fly! How about John Tempesta, Terry bozzio, Alan White or Sly Dunbar sitting in on your living room recordings any time of the day or night? 


The folks over at Sonoma took a loop based recording software and stuffed it full of professionally recorded drums to place in your music. In fact, Sonoma has muscled in on the digital drum-loop space, buying out several well-respected company's in the last few years and really asserting their dominance in the market - and are doing it in a way that gives snobby guitar players like me, a quick and simple interface to add real human sounding drum sessions to my recordings without having to spend moths searching for drummers and teaching them your songs. There are products that exceed Sonoma in quality, but the intuitive and quick, simple use of InstantDrummer make it my choice over other products which require a lot to tedious programming that, in my experience, really kills the inspiration. For me, a decent drummer is my muse. When someone gets behind a kit and starts laying down a good groove on drums, I can write new riffs out of thin air all day long. I missed that when I started practicing to drum machines and drum loops. Now that I have InstantDrummer, It's inspiration on queue - FINALLY! 

So I highly urge you to look into Riffworks. They even have a free version with limited functionality, but it does have some free InstantDrummer sessions too. 

The guitar-centric Riffworks/InstantDrummer software is powerful music creation tool with a whole library of famous drummers that you can instantly have backing you up in your recordings. Bravo, Sonoma Wireworks! You hit a home run guys! 

Riffworks Recording Software By Sonoma Wireworks

Sonoma WireWorks Homepate

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Contact and Licensing Information


Contact / Licensing Information




  • PHONE :     908-864-ROCK *7625*
  • EMAIL  :     OlsonSon@Gmail.com
  • BMI       :     Christopher Stephen Olson
  • If you are a Music Supervisor, all music heard here on this site can be licensed either via IndigiMusic / MMMG,LLC , or directly with me (excluding "Where Were You", "She's Heatin' Up", and "November Song" which can be licensed via Indigi/MMMG)

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A Guitar Synth That Won't Kill Your Budget

You Rock Guitar as a live rig!

I put together a live rig based around the groundbreaking new Guitar Synthesizer called the You Rock Guitar.




This guitar is the first full-fledged midi synth, in a guitar form factor, at an entry-level price. I own the first generation - there has since been a 2nd Gen that has even more features.  It looks a lot like the plastic guitars used for games like RockBand and Guitar-Hero. Although it can indeed be used for "Advanced Mode" on those two games, it is also a powerful midi instrument that can be used in any computer based studio with ease.  I can use midi in my studio, but with limited skills on the keys. Now the world of midi is at my fingertips with the YRG (You Rock Guitar). It was literally plug-and-play with my Windows and Linux Studio computers (I run Windows7 and also Studio1337 which is a linux based Multi-Media OS).

So, now that I was using it everyday in my Studio, I began to really enjoy the YRG and started bringing it to work and practicing on my lunch break.  I did not like the built in guitar based "synth" sounds built in to the YRG, but I could live with a few of the default sounds.

I was surprised when I decided to mess around with an old Zoom GFX-707 guitar pedal with stereo effects. I plugged the YRG with a standard Fender tone (guitar patch #7) into the Zoom pedal and was blown away that I really couldn't tell I was playing a plastic guitar!  I'm not saying it will satisfy some tone purists out there, by no means, but for me, it's close enough to use. So, I only use a handful of distortion and clean tones out of the pedal, as well as the Wah effect. Like I said, I know it's not going to be good enough for some, but for me I can use it mixed with the YRG's other synth controller capability!



The YRG is capable of controlling other MIDI Synths. Most everyone is using the YRG to be a Midi controller via USB for Midi hosts on computers and iPads. I'm doing the same -- but the YRG can also control legacy (a new word for OLD) MIDI Synths via the standard MIDI cables. So I picked up an old standard from the late 80's and 90's, an Emu Proteus1+Orchastral rack mount MIDI synth.


I run the stereo output of the Zoom pedal and the Emu synth into a Beringher mixer - something similar to a standard synth rig anyway. I can blend both together and have found some radical tones I wouldn't have been able to produce with either by themselves.

I still have 2 mic/instrument channels to use up, so why not add vox?  EV-664


Basically I've got a small hybrid gyitar-synth-rig / vocal PA to gig with! 



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Bio

Chris Olson is a veteran of the Seattle Grunge scene of the late 80’s and 90’s as both a musician and a sound engineer. He has shared the stage with members of Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Soundgarden to name just a few -