Random (Music and Guitar Related) Thoughts Thread

hamerhead said:
LucSulla said:
I just joined a country band. I think I am going to play my standard in it as my main ax because it's about time someone played country on a standard.

...or played rock on a standard in key and tempo with a country band that happens to be playing at the same time.
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Ha! Done that:

IMG_4960.jpg


At the time I was thinking how playing in a rock band would be waaaay better.
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That was the wrong way to mic an electric guitar.

 
Painting the bedroom today. With the wife. Confirms the death wish.

Wish me luck. I'm goin' in.

 
LucSulla said:
I think this is awesome.

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Keeping the Bakersfield sound alive, and I very much like Dwight. Anyone else think he did a great job in Sledgehammer? Sure Billy Bob coached him a little, but he nailed the obnoxious country boy southerner, with that sly, passive aggressive, sarcastic disposition. The kid in the movie used to live down the road from me and still does character acting in a couple of movies a year.

Just to keep it rolling, my mother dated Hank Williams Jr for 4 years in the late 70's. He and Merle Kilgore would take me and Merle's son fishing, too many times to remember. Hank wrote a son "Angels are hard to find" for my mother on his Bosephus" album. He fell off the mountain, and we never saw him again.

 
Pulled out my Red Special Bo Diddley from the case where it had been sitting in for a while. Floating trem goodness. At the moment I really enjoy the Queen II live concert from the At The Rainbow 74 box set. Damn it, Brian"s sound had been raw and loud at the time. Very far from the later Queen populary stuff.

 
^Good question.

I have been avoiding my G&L Legacy for months because I thought it had a broken string. I pulled it out tonight to find it not only freshly restrung, but the frets polished and neck oiled as well.

I'm sure I did this myself and just forgot, but isn't more fun if I just assume it was really guitar gnomes?

 
that reminds me of the time Brooks came to jam with us I told him to grab a certain guitar, he opens the case and all the strings were off! I was going to put them on and got busy and put it back in the gig bag, the look on his face was priceless

 
Not sure why, but there are several sounds that I can't stand from MY rig that I have zero problems with when I hear in a song.

One is the hiss you get from single coils in the neck/neck bridge position when you have it on a hot clean sound, or low distorted sound. It is like a distorted sound, but not distorted in a way I enjoy. It is more in the attack than in the held/decay sound, so it comes across almost like a muddling of the pick attack...it is difficult for me to put into words, but I don't like it. Yet when I hear someone else doing it, I have no problem with it, and can even like the tone they are getting.

Another is the heavily distorted neck humbucker sound. I have no problems with it in all sorts of songs, from the heavy example of the melody/intro lead in the Guess Who's American Woman to the lighter example at the beginning of Sweet Child O' Mine. But when I try it on my rig at home, I just want to switch back to the middle or bridge position. I don't like it. No sir, I don't like it at all.

...makes me think I really like low-end dirty/heavy distortion and high-end light/clean distortion (because I like the sustain boost you get from distortion). Not sure that is advisable, or even possible, or even sane.

 
7-8 years ago I didn't like "classic/vintage" clean sounds. I associated them with 70s music and considered them cheesy. Now I kind of like it. Especially the neck-position single coil, and even more when it is overwound, like a P-90.

5 years ago I didn't like twang, and laughed at it. Now I want the twangiest guitar I can imagine, and my first question with any new guitar purchase is "what are the twang possibilities, and what is the twang like?"

The only exception to that seems to be my Diablos.

What does this mean?

I think it means that I grew up/into 80s hard rock, where everything (even many solos) where a bridge position humbucker through a high-gain rig. To me, that's what a guitar sounds like. It took time and personal experience/experimentation to broaden my horizons.

 
I think high-gain and a bridge humbucker is a really easy combo with which to start getting good sounds. I was a lot like you (though I still hate gain and bridge singles), except I did like funk and r&b a bit when I started playing along with Metallica and Alice in Chains. Put for the most part, for really the first decade I played, no matter what, I always ended up on the bridge humbucker with a ton of distortion.

For me, I started embracing more tones for a few reason. The biggest was that I realized I was never going to be a shred wizard. I can do a lot of stuff, but once it gets to multiple fingers on your right hand for tapping or multi-position, sweeped arpeggios, I'm out. Instead, I concentrated on being able to do a little of everything well, so while I was never the best in town at any one thing, I was one of the only guys in town that someone could call knowing I could do just about anything for a 15 or 20 second lead break.

I think that peaked in Gainesville where in a month stretch I was called to do a folk project, a dad rock thing, a metal thing, backing tracks for a rap act, a gospel tune, some jazzy thing, and a smattering of country. At the end of the day, producers and engineers just want someone who can dial the sound that they are looking for quickly and then play something clever that fits the music in as few takes as possible. It was strange learning that clever doesn't always necessarily mean complex as well.

I got into Mr. Bungle pretty heavily in college, and Trey Spruance ended up a huge influence due to that versatility factor. The number of styles he covers on California is amazing to me.

Finally, I think I am more into cleaner tone and twang these days just because I am a better player overall. They're isn't a helluvalot to hide behind on a twangy single coil with just a touch of grit. You pretty much can either play it or you can't, whereas I used to get away with some bullshit on a Lester through a JCM 2000 /emoticons/default_laugh.png

 
Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:
One is the hiss you get from single coils in the neck/neck bridge position when you have it on a hot clean sound, or low distorted sound. It is like a distorted sound, but not distorted in a way I enjoy. It is more in the attack than in the held/decay sound, so it comes across almost like a muddling of the pick attack...it is difficult for me to put into words, but I don't like it. Yet when I hear someone else doing it, I have no problem with it, and can even like the tone they are getting.
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I know to what sound you're referring. I think it qualifies as an overtone...and it's not pleasing. The right pickup set at the right height through the right rig can help. For example, I'm never displeased with the sound of my P-90 Special through the neck pickup. On the other hand, I've played many a neck single (Strat-style) and thought, "Yuck".

 
Biz Prof said:
Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame said:
One is the hiss you get from single coils in the neck/neck bridge position when you have it on a hot clean sound, or low distorted sound. It is like a distorted sound, but not distorted in a way I enjoy. It is more in the attack than in the held/decay sound, so it comes across almost like a muddling of the pick attack...it is difficult for me to put into words, but I don't like it. Yet when I hear someone else doing it, I have no problem with it, and can even like the tone they are getting.
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I know to what sound you're referring. I think it qualifies as an overtone...and it's not pleasing. The right pickup set at the right height through the right rig can help. For example, I'm never displeased with the sound of my P-90 Special through the neck pickup. On the other hand, I've played many a neck single (Strat-style) and thought, "Yuck".
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Good, I'm not going insane.

Or, at least, this one aspect doesn't provide any additional evidence that I am.

But, still, I think it is interesting that I don't mind it when listening to other people play (on YouTube or .mp3), but I can't stand it coming from my amp when I'm playing.

 
LucSulla said:
I think high-gain and a bridge humbucker is a really easy combo with which to start getting good sounds. I was a lot like you (though I still hate gain and bridge singles), except I did like funk and r&b a bit when I started playing along with Metallica and Alice in Chains. Put for the most part, for really the first decade I played, no matter what, I always ended up on the bridge humbucker with a ton of distortion.

For me, I started embracing more tones for a few reason. The biggest was that I realized I was never going to be a shred wizard. I can do a lot of stuff, but once it gets to multiple fingers on your right hand for tapping or multi-position, sweeped arpeggios, I'm out. Instead, I concentrated on being able to do a little of everything well, so while I was never the best in town at any one thing, I was one of the only guys in town that someone could call knowing I could do just about anything for a 15 or 20 second lead break.

I think that peaked in Gainesville where in a month stretch I was called to do a folk project, a dad rock thing, a metal thing, backing tracks for a rap act, a gospel tune, some jazzy thing, and a smattering of country. At the end of the day, producers and engineers just want someone who can dial the sound that they are looking for quickly and then play something clever that fits the music in as few takes as possible. It was strange learning that clever doesn't always necessarily mean complex as well.

I got into Mr. Bungle pretty heavily in college, and Trey Spruance ended up a huge influence due to that versatility factor. The number of styles he covers on California is amazing to me.

Finally, I think I am more into cleaner tone and twang these days just because I am a better player overall. They're isn't a helluvalot to hide behind on a twangy single coil with just a touch of grit. You pretty much can either play it or you can't, whereas I used to get away with some bullshit on a Lester through a JCM 2000 /emoticons/default_laugh.png
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Interestingly, that's kind of the notion I settled on recently, for much the same reasons: I probably will never be able to impress anyone with 24 measures of shred...but there are all sorts of little 2-to-4 beat licks that sound cool as all get out that I can master. And from there, come up with my own.

...not that I've gotten that far down that path yet.

 
Should I have picked up a different instrument to learn many, many, many years ago? /emoticons/default_biggrin.png

 
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