If it's blues, ye seek....

[bigbubba]

Hello all,

Since blues is big these day around here, I thought I'd post my blues tune I had done a while back. This was basically something where I laid down the rhythm track and then just hit record and solo'd over it. Timing is off in places and sour notes may be noticed. But overall I enjoyed the tune and kept it unchanged.

The original chord progression is for a song I wrote and never completed or sung. Might come back to it one day.

Comments are welcome. Instruments, tune, playing, anything you want to talk about, feel free.

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=1488

Omigosh, you guys, blues is like teh new rock 'n roll.

 

[Dogman]

Well, bubba...Spell "the" right.....Ok, I do that one all the time, so seriously....
Reminds me a bit of Hotel California at the start. Not traditional blues...more modern bluesy stuff. There's some choice notes in there. Actually, the whole soloing is pretty nice. Your choice of notes is pretty cool. Nice phrasing. You let stuff hang at the right time, and it makes me want to wait and see what is next. I 'd love to hear it with a slightly more traditional tone, when you getr to the distortion. The cleaner playing has a somewhat Spanish sound to it.
Sweet tunage...
Ed

 

[bigbubba]

Well, I'm a geek/nerd first and foremost. I don't know if you were just joking or if you already know this or not, but I'll go ahead and tell the story anyway.

"Teh" is the geeky "cool" way of emphasizing the word "the". It all started with MMORPG games with people chatting and mis-spelling stuff by mistake until the most common mistakes became the cool way to speak. Another one you'll see is pwned. It was "owned" to say one owned the other team.

Today l337 haXors pwn the id10ts. (leet hackers own the idiots). People who speak like this generally tend to be either teenaged mis-guided kids or just seasoned veterans joking around. Ok, I'll get off the podium.
------

Song: I just picked up my learn blues book and picked out the scale I could memorize after one glance at the book. Threw the book away into the corner, picked out some regular chords, turned a couple into 7th chords, and pulled out the chart I have to tell me what chords put me in what key. Just played with the scale in that key all over the guitar.

To hear you explain the way I played, one would think I know what I'm doing, sheesh!

The weird tone is the higher two strings totally rusted and slightly out of tune. And to top it off, as you know, the rusted strings will sound ok on some frets but not ok on others. They'll also ring weird sometimes.

Thanks for listening.

 

[Dogman]

Well, I spell the, teh, because I get in a hurry. And I do it all the time. I see the likeness in the other words though. Interesting facts. I was just joking, but I now see what you mean about some of the misspellngs being put together that way. Interesting fact. And the way you played...You don't have to know what you play, but play what sounds right.....

 

[Radiohead0709]

ya know, whenever I hear blues like this it reminds me of being back in houston at the crawfish festival they have every year. I know my profile says I'm in virginia beach, but I was born and raised in Texas. Can't wait to get back there when my tour in the Navy runs out. Great song, very unique, and I love the chord progressions.

 

[SnakeDog5050]

"teh" does it get nerdier? Hehe, anyway, dig the style here. Very cool sounds and nice playing. The overall mix sounds great and I hear the spanish in there too. The only thing that doesn't sound as good to me is the electric. I think you said you record direct for the electric, is that right? I usually always record direct too, so just curious, what's your method for that? And is that a miked acoustic you're playing there? Sounds real good.

Cool piece man, enjoyed this... this is the kind of stuff you can just leave on and groove to 2 Kewl!

 

[bigbubba]

ya know, whenever I hear blues like this it reminds me of being back in houston at the crawfish festival they have every year. I know my profile says I'm in virginia beach, but I was born and raised in Texas. Can't wait to get back there when my tour in the Navy runs out. Great song, very unique, and I love the chord progressions.

HAHA, what's funny is that I've been trying to get out of TX for the last 10 years and it hasn't happened. I like TX but the weather is just too much. Too hot all year round and too humid. I know houston residents think Dallas is bone dry but it's still just too humid for the rest of us. I wanna live somewhere with all 4 seasons.

Other than NY and CA, my favorite place is Missouri. I spent a lot of time there a couple of years ago. Just lovely. And the people are so nice.

I spend a good amount of time in Richmond, VA also for my first project. I really liked VA also. I will remember VA always 'coz I got pulled over doing an 85mph in a 50 mph zone on I-95 (Pretty sure it was 95 and not 64) going to the airport. The guy I cut off was an unmarked cop car. Since he was off duty, he just scared the crap out of me and then let me go. Actually by the time his radar worked or something I had slowed down, 'coz I had hit well over 90 trying to pass all the traffic and catch my flight home. Good ol' days. By the way, there's some bar on Broad St. in Richmond that was selling a pint of beer for $0.75 a couple of years ago. If you can find it, good luck and you'll be drunk cheap.

Anyhoo, thanks for listening.

 

[bigbubba]

The only thing that doesn't sound as good to me is the electric. I think you said you record direct for the electric, is that right? I usually always record direct too, so just curious, what's your method for that? And is that a miked acoustic you're playing there? Sounds real good.

Yeah, nobody likes the direct recorded electric, except that I have no choice. I just use an 8 inch (1/8th actually) male to male cable. One end gets the quarter inch convert for the amp. The 8 inch end goes into the line in on the soundcard. The quarter inch goes into a socket labelled "insert" on the amp. There's another socket labelled "speaker" but I don't know what that is. The manual says the "insert" is for using FX racks. Bottom line is that socket gives me some noise that the soundcard can capture.

The acoustic is just the clean signal from the same setup. The dist is turned off ont he amp. If I play with the low-mid-high knobs on the amp I can get a good palette of sounds for clean at least, but then I can't remember how to get it back to the way it was for the incomplete recording I have that I'm working on. I know, excuses....

Cool piece man, enjoyed this... this is the kind of stuff you can just leave on and groove to 2 Kewl!

Well, I'm glad you like it. One of my co-workers who used to give me advice on home recording got really frustrated listening to this. His reason: If you're gonna practice and record, pick a style and do that. Don't do rock 'n roll, heavy metal, techno, blues, what-have-you and expect to be good. I said that's fine but I just wanna have fun.

 

[SnakeDog5050]

Yeah, nobody likes the direct recorded electric, except that I have no choice. I just use an 8 inch (1/8th actually) male to male cable. One end gets the quarter inch convert for the amp. The 8 inch end goes into the line in on the soundcard. The quarter inch goes into a socket labelled "insert" on the amp. There's another socket labelled "speaker" but I don't know what that is. The manual says the "insert" is for using FX racks. Bottom line is that socket gives me some noise that the soundcard can capture..

I still do something similar. Except I dropped the amp altogether. I never was able to hook my amp up to the soundcard without distortion like that. So I plug the guitar straight into the soundcard and use an amp simulator software for everything you hear in my songs I've posted lately. Depending on the soundcard the signal might be too low, so I have a $50 preamp inbetween the guitar and soundcard. If you want to give that method a try you can download a free demo of the same amp simulator I use http://www.amplitube.com/Main.html?prod_AT under "downloads" I just finally bought a mic good enough to mic an amp, so I might try that again on my next songs.

Well, I'm glad you like it. One of my co-workers who used to give me advice on home recording got really frustrated listening to this. His reason: If you're gonna practice and record, pick a style and do that. Don't do rock 'n roll, heavy metal, techno, blues, what-have-you and expect to be good. I said that's fine but I just wanna have fun.

Yeah, just have fun! That's what it's all about. Don't listen to teh "by the book" coworkers Haha, well that's just my way of doing it anyway... always mixing styles/creating new ways of doing things, not listening to "songwriting rules" or so on. I think some cool stuff has come out of it. And I guess as long as I like it, I'm doing ok

 

[bigbubba]

I might buy that pre-amp after all. Been hesitating for a while. Yeah, the guitar noise wasn't loud enought for the soundcard to record it. Also the second thing is that the line-in on the soundcard will play directly thru the computer speaker in realtime. So I can play mp3s and just pick up the guitar, turn on the amp and start jamming along. Or I can just hit the dist. and just play by myself. It also bring the amp level to where I can play it in the apt. at any time I want. Otherwise the amp would be just too loud.

The master volume for all of this is the home theater. Yes, I'm also guilty of mixing on a home theater system (so much for the PMC entry, eh?). LOL. I didn't think it was as funny as it sounds when I see myself admitting it.

Thanks for amplitube link, I'll give that a shot, too.

 

[bigbubba]

Ok the clean guitar sounds a little .... Spanish. Not so much bluesy sound.

For the dist guitar, it's definitely not blues. Any have any suggestions on ballpark low-mid-high and gain settings for an early raw bluesy sound. Something that makes the sound more BB King. I'll go hit google, also.

 

[SnakeDog5050]

I knew I heard some BIG Spanish in there!

Hey, I have NO IDEA if this helps at all, but this is what the "BB King" amplitube preset looks like, for an idea of the EQ and effects settings. I'm sure others can help you out getting that sound much better than this picture
.

 

[bigbubba]

After using, ACID Pro 4, Ableton Live, Cakewalk Pro 9.03, Logic, MAGIX Music Maker 2004, n-Track, I was about to give up on this thing. They all either crash or can't see it.

Sound Forge finally said something about files missing which made me realize I need to run it as an Admin on the box. Which is something I'll go tackle now.

Pisses me off that these idiots write all this software and force you to run it as an admin, causing other potential security issues. Argggggg!

Anyhoo, Thanks.