This Pedal Turns Your Guitar Into a MIDI Controller: Recovery Effects Ghost Writer

welcome to get offset my name is Emily

and you’re looking so cute today it’s

downright spooky hauntingly beautiful

I’m here today with the recovery effects

ghost writer and this isn’t like a

normal pedal at all just just completely

this does not have any effects built

into it it’s more like an interface but

what it does is it converts the signal

from your guitar or other stringed

instruments into a midi signal so you

can use that to play through

synthesizers or in the case of this

video through the midi effects in your

Daw so I’m going to be using Studio One

but first let’s talk about The Ghost

Writer

so you have the sensitivity knob here at

the top

I do not recommend immediately cranking

that instead I recommend starting it

with it very low and then turning it

until you get that sweet spot that

you’re looking for when I had a

sensitivity up all the way I was hitting

like ghost notes for lack of a better

phrase so the tracking wasn’t perfect

but there you go

um next we have glide on or off this

adds a slight port montoe to your notes

I’m probably not going to use that but

it’s apparently great for like bends and

stuff like that

um again I just haven’t used it

finally we have two foot switches we

have audio and that’s a through signal

for your guitar so you can record or

play through

um just a standard guitar sound in

addition to a midi sound which is really

cool and that’s what this is so this

converts through midi right there

this

goes to

your other petals or your signal chain

so I

am probably going to use both at the

same time for a bit of this video

but let me uh open up Studio One here

and I can talk about the setup so this

is Studio One and as you can see I

already have some tracks built out

that’s just for Speed so I have some

instruments up here

The Ghostwriter pad lead piano I have

the sounds all set up and I have two

guitar tracks but I want to show you

really quickly how this setup works so I

just want to add

device

and I said recovery effects Ghost Writer

all midi channels receiving from my midi

in

and I didn’t select the anything else so

I’m going to remove that because that

was an accident

and here is my Ghostwriter

I’m not sure why it says not connected

but it is

so I’m gonna go and turn on recording

and monitoring so if you play Studio One

and you have I believe at least artist

version

maybe even lower you have a ton

of effects within presence so I’ve

already pre-selected some but the cool

thing about using midi is that one you

can of course fine tune all this stuff

just so you like it but if you decide

later you don’t like it you can you can

just change it

it’s not a not a big deal not a big deal

at all

okay so I’m going to do a little cover

of a song I like by a band called

Charlie Bliss called capacity so I’m

going to grab my music man Cutlass HT

that I’m borrowing

and lay this stuff down and kind of show

you what it looks like

foreign

well that went really well

um I don’t have a ton of notes on my

what I did I could quantize this a

little bit actually I’m going to show

you one quick little thing that I’ve

noticed happens sometimes you have this

little false start here

and you can’t usually hear it but if you

go to quantize

it’s not ideal

yeah so it’s only going to play that

first little blip

which is essentially nothing in this

case so if you do go to quantize you’re

going to want to remove those little

blips first

and then we can quantize

or if you think you’re playing as tight

enough you just you simply don’t have to

do that

all right so I like this again like

there are a couple little things I would

remove as I was going through and doing

my fine tune fine tuning but this is

going to work great for my purposes

next I have two tracks I arm the guitar

[Music]

and then I have my

synth sound

[Music]

all right so I’m going to record both at

the same time but I’m only going to

monitor the synthesizer all right

thank you

all right so let’s take a look at this

one a little less sharp I actually

missed a note in here so let’s play it

of course now you can hear both guitar

part and since part you can hear how

well it tracks

[Music]

see there’s where I missed it

so that went too long but I the problem

was I missed this note right here so I’m

going to copy that over

[Music]

yeah the other thing I would do in this

is I want to well I’m probably going to

quantize everything

after I clean up any

duplicate

triggers

I know that was actually really clean

other than that missed note so I’m going

to

quantize everything

[Music]

yeah and later when y’all aren’t

watching I am also going to just make

sure these notes fill out the space

[Music]

because I I was a little bit nervous

about hitting that note just right so I

kind of split the difference and played

a little bit shorter knowing that I

could lengthen it so there we go

next I have this little piano guitar

part I want to

record

[Music]

laughs

so

[Music]

thank you

let’s actually see how that Glide sounds

so if I don’t have the glide on

it’s not going to bend up to another

note but if I do

[Music]

hahaha

it’s pretty fun but I’m gonna go ahead

and record that um last part now again

I’m just going to monitor the

um synth

[Music]

all right well let’s go ahead and look

and listen

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

I love the way that uh last note held

out there sorry my hair got a little

wonky while I was fixing uh while

adjusting things so that’s a quick look

at how I’ve been using the ghost writer

to add midi stuff to my songs I it’s

you know the studio ones uh sound packs

are fine they’re obviously much better

sound packs out there but being able to

add those parts move things around

um ultimately in Studio One you can like

create charts

so like let me move back to over here

like you have you can do charts of your

songs

and you can provide these to people that

you play with

so that like if you write a little horn

part you use midi to do it then you have

this awesome little little chart here

similarly here

and there

it really opens myself as a guitarist up

to uh more elaborate

um Productions because otherwise I

wouldn’t be able to do that I would have

to tell somebody hey just uh

use your ear but if I have the ability

to be like here’s some actual sheet

music or tabs or something for uh

someone I’m working with maybe if I hire

if we hire a violinist or

a horn player a cellist for

a gig I can just hand them the stuff

that I recorded because I already know

what I want it to sound like and that’s

really really fantastic and again just

being able to use your guitar as a midi

controller which is something that you

already have

I really believe that the ghost writer

is an essential studio tool especially

home recording studio tool for any

guitarist who’s also composing multiple

Parts I love it it it just works and I

isn’t it great when things just work so

yeah thanks again to recovery Greg and

Zara my friendly neighbors for letting

me

play with the ghost writer for a while I

it’s a game changer for sure

um check it out on their website always

buy directly from independent Builders

when you can please but if there’s

anything else in the world that you want

I have affiliate links in the video

description for Sweetwater Reverb and

perfect circuit uh that perfect circuit

one was would be really great if you

want to use the ghost writer to play

with some really awesome synths so again

thank you all for watching please like

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but yeah once again everybody out there

thanks for watching thanks for

understanding until next time my name is

Emily goodbye