The New Tone Thread

[minerman]

I've got one more cover to demo for this album, and it's a doozie. It's gonna be my hardest one - Ozzy's "I Don't Know". There's no chance of me getting anything right on that one. But, all I gotta do is good drums and some scratch guitar tracks so I can probably fumblefuck my way through it. My guitarist can probably do his part in one take. He's a Randy Rhoads retardo.

You'll be able to do that song man, I read about 3 pages of you, JDOD, & Bubba talking about improving your lead playing....Here's your chance man, since they're gonna be scratch tracks & replaced anyway, you don't have to get it note-for-note dude...And if you learn those leads in little sections, it'll improve/expand you chop vocabulary dude....I've got full confidence in you Greg...

The drums won't be a problem at all for you man...


Bill: It's nice to have you here IMO dude, while it won't be anytime soon, eventually I plan on upgrading my setup, & you talking about the R24/other interfaces is helping me learn about what I might pick/choose when that day comes...I think your clips sound really good, & again, it's nice to have you here...

Bob: Hope everything's ok with the family, I know you're busy, but be sure to take a few minutes for yourself too...

 

[Lt. Bob]

Hey thanks Boob. Sorry about your mom, man. Hang in there and make sure they don't kill her!

mom-in-law ..... thanks, I'm doing my best.
The hospital staff scatters when they see me coming!



Right now we have her back in her home and she's doing ok so here's hoping when her time comes she just falls over dead.
No more hospitals!!!

 

[Greg_L]

You'll be able to do that song man, I read about 3 pages of you, JDOD, & Bubba talking about improving your lead playing....Here's your chance man, since they're gonna be scratch tracks & replaced anyway, you don't have to get it note-for-note dude...And if you learn those leads in little sections, it'll improve/expand you chop vocabulary dude....I've got full confidence in you Greg...

The drums won't be a problem at all for you man...

Well the drums have a lot of triplet fills that I'm not too good at. But I can fudge my way through them. This might be one of those times where against all my best judgement, I'm gonna have to do a lot of punch-ins or even track it section by section. I'm not even gonna try the leads or nuances of the riffs. I'm just gonna do a placeholder scratch track that's close enough and let my guy rip shred his own keeper tracks. I'm just not wired to play this cheesy metal stuff. It doesn't interest me so I just don't wanna do it.

mom-in-law ..... thanks, I'm doing my best.
The hospital staff scatters when they see me coming!



Right now we have her back in her home and she's doing ok so here's hoping when her time comes she just falls over dead.
No more hospitals!!!

Lol. Damn. Yeah I guess just dying immediately would be a good way to go.

 

[minerman]

Well the drums have a lot of triplet fills that I'm not too good at. But I can fudge my way through them. This might be one of those times where against all my best judgement, I'm gonna have to do a lot of punch-ins or even track it section by section. I'm not even gonna try the leads or nuances of the riffs. I'm just gonna do a placeholder scratch track that's close enough and let my guy rip shred his own keeper tracks. I'm just not wired to play this cheesy metal stuff. It doesn't interest me so I just don't wanna do it.

Well man, you've gotta do what you've gotta do, if that calls for tracking in sections, then IMO, so be it...I honestly don't think you'll have any problems with the drums Greg...On the guitar parts, that's cool man, I understand you don't have any interest in it...

 

[Tadpui]

mom-in-law ..... thanks, I'm doing my best.
The hospital staff scatters when they see me coming!



Right now we have her back in her home and she's doing ok so here's hoping when her time comes she just falls over dead.
No more hospitals!!!

I feel ya man. My parents are both in that pitiful "circling the drain" state, and it's tough to watch. Last fall, my wife's dad laid down for a nap and never woke up. That's the way to go, and I hope that when my time comes, that's how it ends for me. The whole decade of chronic disease thing sounds worse than death to me.

Greg, I pretty much spent 2 years of my life in high school studying the tab book to the Ozzy/Randy Tribute live album. I was never nimble enough to truly pull it off smoothly, but I loved hacking away at those songs sooooo much. Those 16th note palm muted notes in I Don't Know would throw me for a loop at this point. I play that song to myself every once in a while, and I just don't ever play that fast any more. It'd take a couple of weeks of working back into it if I wanted to get it steady. It's a fun song though, I've always enjoyed playing that one.

Anyways, I'll catch up on tones later tonight. I'm about to record the latest installment of my "over-long, under-interesting" home recording series for youtube.

 

[JDOD]

I'm just not wired to play this cheesy metal stuff. It doesn't interest me so I just don't wanna do it.

Yeah, there's no point in trying to learn stuff that you just don't like. I've tried that a couple of times and just ended up thinking "I don't even like this - why am I bothering?" Trying to think of some stuff that's both technically complicated and that you'd like. There's not that much of it. You quite like early Metallica don't you? Creaping Death has a cool lead section that's full of really fast triplets that go right up to the dusty end. Fade To Black has loads of good lead in it, but you'd probably hate that. Another common song for people to make a goal when learning lead playing is Master of Puppets. I can still remember the solo to this - I'm fucked if I can keep the rhythm part of for more than 1 verse anymore though. Bad Religion also have some good lead work - they often throw a solo in.

I feel ya man. My parents are both in that pitiful "circling the drain" state, and it's tough to watch.

Circling the drain - what a horrily accurate metaphor. My grandmother was in (very expensive) nursing care for the last years of her "life" but she didn't have any really quality of life - she pretty much died of a combination of thirst and starvation exascerbated by boredom. It was horrible.
We've got such an aging population over here that they're probably going to be changing the law on assisted dying at some point as the current situation isn't sustainable in the long term. I actually changed my will when I bought my last house to let people know that if I end up in a situation where I can't make decisions for myself I want them to cut the fucking cord.

I'm about to record the latest installment of my "over-long, under-interesting" home recording series for youtube.

Excellend - as I seem to be your only commited fan - I'll be watching with interest! Tad is like a YouTube celebrity to me!

 

[rayc]

I've been thumping away on bass since 1974 I think.
Rudimentary then and rudely rudimentary forty two years later.
I THINK it was changing from short scale to normal that retarded my development.

 

[Lt. Bob]

Lol. Damn. Yeah I guess just dying immediately would be a good way to go.

man, after taking care of her in several hospital situations I've started realizing there's something to be said fort a good ol' massive coronary!

 

[antichef]

Sounds great Greg.

Sorry to hear about your mother in law Bob

 

[Tadpui]

Okay here's another off my bands' influences album - Love Gun by KISS.

Again, no vocals, just mainly focused on drums and scratch demo-ing for the other guys, but it's fun to do the guitars and shit.

I don't have much info for this one since I did the guitars the other day and I've already changed the settings and shit. I didn't write anything down. What I know though is...
The centered "Paul Stanley" guitar is the Les Paul Goldtop, Plexi 1959, and G12-65 speakers.
The wide "Ace" guitars are the Les Paul Custom, Plexi 1959, and Greenbacks.
The end leads are the Ace setup boosted with a Tube Screamer.
All of this was done pretty near cranked, but I wanted to control feedback, so the cabs were moved out to the front entryway. My dogs damn near had their heads blown off, but they're used to it. Anyway, I thought it came out pretty cool so here it is.

Love Guuuuuuuuun, Looooooooove Gun

See whatcha think.

Awful. Just terrible. Just...bwahaha I can't even keep a straight face while typing that

While I'm not a fan of the bass tone, the guitars and drums are just stellar. That snare just kills me every time I hear it. I'm loving that guitar solo tone, it's just the perfect guitar tone to me. That Plexi just fucking rips man! And nice solo playing to boot. Jeez, this is damn near album-ready.

 

[Tadpui]

Circling the drain - what a horrily accurate metaphor. My grandmother was in (very expensive) nursing care for the last years of her "life" but she didn't have any really quality of life - she pretty much died of a combination of thirst and starvation exascerbated by boredom. It was horrible.
We've got such an aging population over here that they're probably going to be changing the law on assisted dying at some point as the current situation isn't sustainable in the long term. I actually changed my will when I bought my last house to let people know that if I end up in a situation where I can't make decisions for myself I want them to cut the fucking cord.

That sounds painfully familiar. My folks just sound bored to tears. But hell, they just refuse to get involved with any of the people or activities there. It's a self-imposed isolation, I wish they'd participate at least a little and I'd bet that their quality of life would improve markedly. Stubborn old coots...I love 'em, but I kinda want to shake them.

Excellend - as I seem to be your only commited fan - I'll be watching with interest! Tad is like a YouTube celebrity to me!

Hahaha, well I do appreciate your patronage. And I'm still thinking of how I can pull off a video about miking a guitar amp with just my one camera. I don't want it to be 15 minutes of staring at a grill cloth, but I want to show some close-up detail about where the mic is and how it sounds in each position. So I've taken your suggestion, and I'm still thinking through the details.

I've thought about doing a "user comments" episode, as a tongue-in-cheek kind of gag. It'd just be 10 minutes of me reading and responding to your comments

JDODify wrote...
JDODify asks...

 

[Greg_L]

Sounds great Greg.

Sorry to hear about your mother in law Bob

Awful. Just terrible. Just...bwahaha I can't even keep a straight face while typing that

While I'm not a fan of the bass tone, the guitars and drums are just stellar. That snare just kills me every time I hear it. I'm loving that guitar solo tone, it's just the perfect guitar tone to me. That Plexi just fucking rips man! And nice solo playing to boot. Jeez, this is damn near album-ready.

Hey thanks guys.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get some clips of that Diamond amp. And the mess of tracking an Ozzy song will begin.

 

[Greg_L]

Hahaha, well I do appreciate your patronage. And I'm still thinking of how I can pull off a video about miking a guitar amp with just my one camera. I don't want it to be 15 minutes of staring at a grill cloth, but I want to show some close-up detail about where the mic is and how it sounds in each position. So I've taken your suggestion, and I'm still thinking through the details.

I've thought about doing a "user comments" episode, as a tongue-in-cheek kind of gag. It'd just be 10 minutes of me reading and responding to your comments

JDODify wrote...
JDODify asks...

I didn't know you had a whole channel. Subscribed!

 

[Lt. Bob]

the view from my office

 

[Tadpui]

I didn't know you had a whole channel. Subscribed!

Sweet, thanks! Just let me know if you have any suggestions, corrections, gripes, etc. I've been too self-indulgent and made the episodes waaaay too long. I expect nobody to actually make it to the end of any given episode.

the view from my office

That's it, I quit my job. I'll be there at noon tomorrow, just pick me up at the airport

 

[Lt. Bob]

That's it, I quit my job. I'll be there at noon tomorrow, just pick me up at the airport

just let me know when .... I'll be there to take you to the bikini girls

 

[JDOD]

That sounds painfully familiar. My folks just sound bored to tears. But hell, they just refuse to get involved with any of the people or activities there. It's a self-imposed isolation, I wish they'd participate at least a little and I'd bet that their quality of life would improve markedly. Stubborn old coots...I love 'em, but I kinda want to shake them.

My aunt is like that - she just won't go out and socialise with people. She seems to think that she's better that the other people her age that go to the community centre and do various social activities. So she just sits at home getting depressed and ill.

Hahaha, well I do appreciate your patronage. And I'm still thinking of how I can pull off a video about miking a guitar amp with just my one camera. I don't want it to be 15 minutes of staring at a grill cloth, but I want to show some close-up detail about where the mic is and how it sounds in each position. So I've taken your suggestion, and I'm still thinking through the details.

I've thought about doing a "user comments" episode, as a tongue-in-cheek kind of gag. It'd just be 10 minutes of me reading and responding to your comments

JDODify wrote...
JDODify asks...

I think its just nice to go over the basics. The video you did where you talked about sample rates and bit depths was really handy - 'cos I just had no idea what any of that shit actually meant and how it affects audio quality and storage space. Mic placement will probably be quite a short one fortunately!

The other thing I'd like you to talk about is spacing things out in a mix properly - panning, volume levels and reverbs. I know there's no right or wrong answer here. But there's definitely a few rules of thumb which would be worth knowing. Like the other day, Greg suggested I hard panned my double tracked rhythm guitars (up to that point I had been panning 50-75%) and it really worked for the song. Don't know why though.

 

[jimistone]

man greg...
"luv gun" kicked ass big time! As far as the bass...yeah it sounds different than your bass usually does, but it sounds a lot like the original recording and fits the song.
The lead, tone wise and performance wise was excellent. I bet you broke out the clownburst custom for this huh?
very cool!

 

[Greg_L]

Thanks jimi, yeah the clownburst was used for all of the Ace parts.

 

[Greg_L]

Product review time...

I finally put my new Pedalboard through it's paces in a live setting last night. It was great. Review over.


For real though, to make this official, I have a Pedaltrain Classic 2, Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2+, and the only new pedal on this board is the Electro Harmonix Silencer noise gate.

The board itself is pretty awesomely unremarkable. It's an aluminum, four-rail design, about 3-4 inches slope from front to back, super easy mounting and cable routing. Not much to say about it. It's well built and very solid. It just perfectly is what is. No muss, no fuss. I've always used flat boards before, so the angle concerned me at first, but it's super comfortable and duh, it is easier to tap dance on everything. The flight case it came with is super awesome. It's big though. My old board fit in a gig bag and could be carried over your shoulder. It's smaller overall traveling profile was nice, but the board and gig bag itself also took a savage beating. This one lives in a large flight case. It's not heavy, it's just big. I'm gonna mount some eyelets to it and put my own strap on it so I can just sling it over my shoulder and carry it like a tone purse.

The power supply. I think this made a pretty big difference. Not that noise was ever really a problem for me, but my signal did seem cleaner and more transparent going through the board. I can only attribute this to each buffered and true bypass pedal having it's own clean power supply. No more daisy chaining One Spots or using a self-powered board. This way seems to be better. I have two more pedals than Voodoo outputs though, so two of them are daisy chained using the old One Spot linking cable. The tuner and gate are linked into one power output. Not a problem. Clean crisp silent operation. I don't pretend to know how or why a dedicated power supply is better than batteries or linking everything together with a One Spot. All I care about is stuff working like it's supposed to, and the power supply, for me, works a lot better. It mounts very neatly under the Pedaltrain board (with the right brackets) and all of the necessary cables and routing supplies are included.

The gate. This one surprised me. I mainly got it for single coil guitars through big volume amps, but even with a humbucker guitar it clamped down on any unwanted noise beautifully. With the previously mentioned power supply, noise was minimal anyway, but with the gate all extra shit went silent. I was impressed. It took about 5 seconds to dial it in to engage how and when I want it to. With all of the interference in the world attacking our amps and PA, my rig sat there completely silent until the instant my pick hits strings. The only drawback, and maybe I just don't have it set right yet, is that I have to remember to turn it off if/when I roll the guitar vol back for a cleaner setting or if I go into a section where I want a loooooong sustain into feedback. It did clamp off my feedback one time and I got mad. I shouldn't complain, it did it's job. I just need to kick it off when I actually want the raucous noise. Really though, I don't need it. I usually kill the guitar with the pickup selector switch. It was just cool to have NO hiss or noise whatsoever.

Anyway, pretty standard stuff. Nothing to see here. Carry on.