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  1. The distortion on the first clip sounds sick. The second piece is indeed beautiful and has a big sound.

    The title reminded me of Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl. But as a reference to June Carter and Johnny Cash I like it even better.

    Alex
  2. Originally posted by WojBhoy:
    I'm still trying to come up with some new material personally, but for the moment I've never really hit on anything. I think, as far as playing styles go, I'm better at improvisation than anything and like coming up with arrangements of songs, but I don't seem to quite have the nous to develop anything of my own just yet.

    If this is your gift, then use it. There are a lot of gifted musicians out there that never wrote a song. For instance, the whole studio musician scene. A songwriting rock singer might be glad to have you join his band to play and arrange his songs. The church network worship band I play in has me mostly playing simple rhythms and free improvisations over the basic chords.


    The only piece of my own material (such as it is) that I have ever recorded was a solo part for a song that my friend wrote for his (now reformed) band - he came to my house, played me a couple of songs and then just asked me to come up with a solo part on the spur of the moment, and somehow I did lol. I still love listening to it simply because I managed to come up with something sort of original, but also because I thought I actually got a pretty nice sound out of my shitty Strat. copy which I've never been able to replicate since...I nearly died when he asked me to write a tab for it lol (I don't do tabs, never have and probably never will).

    I can't read or write tabs either. But since I rarely play any existing riffs or licks by others I don't have to. I either write my own music or rearrange other's peoples songs in a way that suits me. I don't care that much about true authenticity.


    Can't open the file. Bad Link?

    Alex
  3. Originally posted by Alex:[..]
    The distortion on the first clip sounds sick. The second piece is indeed beautiful and has a big sound.

    The title reminded me of Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl. But as a reference to June Carter and Johnny Cash I like it even better.

    Alex


    If memory serves... The distortion tones for the first clip, "Manta Ray", was just an Lovetone Big Cheese into an Boss OD-2r overdrive plus a bit of compression and slight flanging. Pretty dry and no reverb that I remember. The guitar was a 6-string Danelectro 56-U2 tuned to open D [LOW TO HIGH = d-a-d-f#-a-d]. The Danelectro's have these lipstick pickups that are a bit nasally and cool sounding.
  4. Alex (German Alex xD ) I like a lot your clip, it sounds damn good.
    As someone said, the first two aprts (specially the second) sound a lot like RHCP's guitar by John Frusciante, and that rocks A LOT
  5. Originally posted by Alex:If this is your gift, then use it. There are a lot of gifted musicians out there that never wrote a song. For instance, the whole studio musician scene. A songwriting rock singer might be glad to have you join his band to play and arrange his songs. The church network worship band I play in has me mostly playing simple rhythms and free improvisations over the basic chords.

    [..]
    I can't read or write tabs either. But since I rarely play any existing riffs or licks by others I don't have to. I either write my own music or rearrange other's peoples songs in a way that suits me. I don't care that much about true authenticity.

    [..]
    Can't open the file. Bad Link?

    Alex

    Pretty sound advice there cheers. I'll check the link, if it's still being a pain I'll stick it on MediaFire and see if that works

    EDIT - ok, I'm no techno buff, I don't know what's going wrong with the eSnips link, so I just went to MediaFire and stuck it there instead

    http://www.mediafire.com/?ljbtkuzzgqt
  6. I think the solo sounds a lot better than the backing track. Pretty nice melody line, too. Congrats.

    Regarding your Strat: Of course we all love to have expensive quality instruments. But if you compare today's beginner instruments with those from 1980 you can notice the incredible rise in quality. So if you play a "shitty strat copy" it'll still be much better than a "shitty strat copy" from 1980. I've seen nobodies with no name instruments really rock out, and only true snobs would have dared to mock them. After all, the tone comes still from the fingers - that's why we keep practicing. And our daily improvement is not only technical but also feeling- wise. So your tone gets better every year, even with the same old "shitty strat copy".

    Alex
  7. Originally posted by Alex:I think the solo sounds a lot better than the backing track. Pretty nice melody line, too. Congrats.

    Regarding your Strat: Of course we all love to have expensive quality instruments. But if you compare today's beginner instruments with those from 1980 you can notice the incredible rise in quality. So if you play a "shitty strat copy" it'll still be much better than a "shitty strat copy" from 1980. I've seen nobodies with no name instruments really rock out, and only true snobs would have dared to mock them. After all, the tone comes still from the fingers - that's why we keep practicing. And our daily improvement is not only technical but also feeling- wise. So your tone gets better every year, even with the same old "shitty strat copy".

    Alex

    Cheers Alex - regarding the backing track, so to speak, my friend is definitely a competent guitarist but he does tend to over-attack the strings...what you say about instruments as a whole is very true. Even though I notice the difference in quality between say, my Strat. copy and my Epi. Les Paul (and not just because of the basic differences between single-coils and humbuckers), I still love my Strat. copy, firstly for sentimental reasons because a) it was my first ever guitar and b) I played my first gig with it, and also as you say, the quality of play isn't purely down to the instrument and as I said, I think there was a point where I could get some pretty nice tones coming from it before I got a new FX pedal and the Les Paul (which, for the moment, is my primary guitar). Since we recorded that little jam I do think I've got a lot better, and I think we'd all agree that as musicians we're always learning.

  8. There's a lovely used Taylor dreadnought guitar in my local music store--great feel and sound, superb fit and finish. Seems to be a fine instrument, and perhaps a steal at $450. The grandparents gave me some cash for a Christmas present, as much as I want to stick it in the bank I would also love to spend it! Any thoughts?

    I believe it's this model, the 110:



    Or should I hold out a bit longer to save up for the $600 114? I do like the sound of jumbo body style.

  10. Originally posted by Alex:[..]
    Yes, I wrote that piece of music. Thanks for the compliments.

    It's meant as an intro for a quite heavy song, so the heavy distortion makes some sense. Right now my wife and kids are away, and I have a few days off. So I'm working on a few new pieces of music. Let's see what I can finish until Thursday.

    Alex


    You are welcome. I love heavy music and heavy distorion, what I was saying is that I didn't like your distortion on that part. It sounds a bit artificial. It's a matter of taste obviously. I happen to be old school.
  11. Originally posted by thechicken:[..]

    You are welcome. I love heavy music and heavy distorion, what I was saying is that I didn't like your distortion on that part. It sounds a bit artificial. It's a matter of taste obviously. I happen to be old school.

    Okay - I understand. No offense taken.

    For your info: I played through the Lead channel of my Hughes & Kettner Tubeman direct recording workstation. Gain at 11 o'clock, Voicing at 1 o'clock, bass eq at max, mid and treble at 2 o'clock. So even it sounds artificial to your ears it's still full tube preamp saturation. The other guitars were recorded through the clean and crunch channels of the same unit. I also used a Promeek recording compressor on every track and finally some master compression (actually too much but I didn't want to redo it considering it's only a demo).

    As you said - it's a matter of taste. I can make the Tubeman sound completely different if I want to. The Voicing control gives it a great versatility. I even use it live - I bypass the speaker emulation and plug it into a small 18 Watt Class A power amp head, so I have a three channel full tube amp. I haven't used distortion stomp boxes in ages.

    Alex
  12. Here's a little piece of a song that I've been recording today. Still a rough mix, no reverb / delay and no vocals. I'll probably add a little keys, too. This is all my blue strat. The bass is a Korean Rickenbacker copy.

    www.freak-alex-band.com/DemoDez2008.mp3

    I noticed a small background hiss at the beginning that I still have to eliminate. And too heavy master compression again...

    Enjoy

    Alex
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