On the Nature of Things | Forum

noddy wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
Considering 19th century violin contests/capriccio- there is no room for the almost-virtuouso but there is room for the almost-composer.

Or the guy who has composer on hand.

all the shred stuff is of the same nature , no matter which century you find it.

currently the fashion has moved onto diva vocal gymanstics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNGXVoMlYPs

Indeed.

As for Ms. Aguilera, an amateur shredder.

YuBeBjqKSGQ

What's old is new again.

Other famous shredders of the past come to mind, Paganini on the violin, Liszt on the piano.

Sorry for the interruption, back to the regular discussion.

Did anyone post this yet? Beato is surprisingly good.

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I like parts of this.

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it has its moments but im going with Van Halen on that live version.

"Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin 1 and Led Zeppelin 2 are classics. As a player. He's very good in the studio. I never saw him play well live. He's very sloppy. He plays like he's got a broken hand and he's two years old. But if you put out a good album and play like a two-year-old live. What's the purpose?"

for me the heartbreaker solo on the album is best seen as the tension before the riff kicks back in, so its not that i enjoy it so much as I enjoy the release it sets up.

Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:William Bunch played guitar, but on most of his recordings he played piano. He knew or untilised a limited number of riffs and his recorded repertoire can be reduced to basically two melodies or modal progressions or whatever you want to call them, yet I find him infinitely fascinating:

tis good.

most folks only have a handful of melodies and chord progressions in them, the sensible ones realise that - and keep making the same album over and over and over to maintain their fanbase

some have pretentions of being more creative than that but only a rare few ever actually do it.

I'm sick to death of people saying we've made 11 albums that sounds exactly the same, Infact, we've made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/angus_young_185192

noddy wrote:it has its moments but im going with Van Halen on that live version.

"Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin 1 and Led Zeppelin 2 are classics. As a player. He's very good in the studio. I never saw him play well live. He's very sloppy. He plays like he's got a broken hand and he's two years old. But if you put out a good album and play like a two-year-old live. What's the purpose?"

for me the heartbreaker solo on the album is best seen as the tension before the riff kicks back in, so its not that i enjoy it so much as I enjoy the release it sets up.

I will go ahead and take the other side of that.

That is the orthodox criticism of Page, sloppy and disorganized live, but at times I love it. As a Zeppelin fan I am more than willing to admit that there were live sections that are not very listenable, but when it all came together it was as good as anyone ever did.

Overall I defend Page on the following.

1) The extended jam sections were par for the time. It was new, and people were trying it out. It ran it's course in guitar world like everything does eventually. It's not like he invented it or was self indulgent in some unique way.

2) He was as good at it as anyone

3) I like the sloppy style of Page live when it was on. And, EVH could be accused of the same sloppiness live by standards of other times. EVH is numbered among the wankers a lot, fairly or not.

The only 2 guitar players I would pay money to watch noodle are Page and Hendrix.

i agree with most of that except for the noodling bit, id leave page out of that and say hendrix's noodles are pretty much the only noodles that stand the test of time from that period.

thats mainly because (as i mentioned elsewhere) he seemed to be concerned with keeping rhythm and even composition going whilst he improvised, it was never just licks for licks sake - i cant think of any scale running exercises in any of the hendrix jams.

voodoo chile is the reference point by which all noodlers be will be judged, and fail.

EVH is not someone I listen too, for some reason I just remembered that quote and it stuck with me - none of the hair metal things really work for me, barring a good riff every now and then.

I enjoy sloppy playing but only for rhythm and simple licks, I dont like with it fast playing, it falls apart for me and takes me out of the song.

that tasteless guy you put up the other day reminded me of a whole bunch of other players from the 90's blues rock scene that I had completey forgotten about.

Gary Moore, Jeff Healey, Robben Ford, Robert Cray, the Black Crowes .. so many variations on a theme that played well, but within very defined limits, pretty much killed any novelty or interest in the genre.

something that Jimmy Page could never be accused of, for any of his aforementioned faults it is remarkable how much he pushed into different areas, each zep album is its own thing.

---

this is a pretty awesome set of axes, shame i never had what it took to pursue middle aged man child

https://www.vai.com/guitars/

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: I do resort to the Alice in Chains recording trick: guitar through a cranked, small boutique-amp. Then putting a bass through that amp, crank the mids/cut the highs and lows, and double the roots of the chords in the upper registers.

When I can use a baritone guitar instead, I do. But people get bent out of shape (in my limited experience) when 'baritone guitar' is mentioned- like I'm talking about toy kazoos.

Im in the haggling stage for a fender mustang (hipster shape) baritone guitar tuned to A.

Ive also got a truckload of cheap chinese knockoff pickups (vintage lipsticks, p90's, classic humbuckers, railed single coil sized humbuckers) lined up on aliexpress if it comes through.

now that I have my two classic guitars doing classic things I need a frankenstein hacker machine and this seems perfect for it - I want to get Humbucker,Lipstick,P90,Lipstick,rail humbucker all in a row with toggle switches on each one, if im dead keen ill have a second toggle for phase aswell.

Colonel Sun wrote:

noddy wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
Considering 19th century violin contests/capriccio- there is no room for the almost-virtuouso but there is room for the almost-composer.

Or the guy who has composer on hand.

all the shred stuff is of the same nature , no matter which century you find it.

currently the fashion has moved onto diva vocal gymanstics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNGXVoMlYPs

Indeed.

As for Ms. Aguilera, an amateur shredder.

YuBeBjqKSGQ

What's old is new again.

Other famous shredders of the past come to mind, Paganini on the violin, Liszt on the piano.

Sorry for the interruption, back to the regular discussion.

Mean girls with crazy looks in their eyes theater?

noddy wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: I do resort to the Alice in Chains recording trick: guitar through a cranked, small boutique-amp. Then putting a bass through that amp, crank the mids/cut the highs and lows, and double the roots of the chords in the upper registers.

When I can use a baritone guitar instead, I do. But people get bent out of shape (in my limited experience) when 'baritone guitar' is mentioned- like I'm talking about toy kazoos.

Im in the haggling stage for a fender mustang (hipster shape) baritone guitar tuned to A.

Ive also got a truckload of cheap chinese knockoff pickups (vintage lipsticks, p90's, classic humbuckers, railed single coil sized humbuckers) lined up on aliexpress if it comes through.

now that I have my two classic guitars doing classic things I need a frankenstein hacker machine and this seems perfect for it - I want to get Humbucker,Lipstick,P90,Lipstick,rail humbucker all in a row with toggle switches on each one, if im dead keen ill have a second toggle for phase aswell.

Sounds good

-----

I've got my eye on the modern arpeggiones right now- seems like a whole bunch of quirky ones are floating out there:

dLnmHYL9gFo

from wiki:

The arpeggione is a six-stringed musical instrument, fretted and tuned like a guitar, but bowed like a cello, and thus similar to the bass viola da gamba. So it had another name, the guitar violoncello.[1] The body shape of the instrument is, however, more similar to a medieval fiddle than either the guitar or the bass viol. The instrument was essentially a bass viol with a guitar-type tuning, E–A–d–g–b–e' . The arpeggione was especially suited to playing runs in thirds, double stops and arpeggios.[1]

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
I've got my eye on the modern arpeggiones right now- seems like a whole bunch of quirky ones are floating out there:


from wiki:

The arpeggione is a six-stringed musical instrument, fretted and tuned like a guitar, but bowed like a cello, and thus similar to the bass viola da gamba. So it had another name, the guitar violoncello.[1] The body shape of the instrument is, however, more similar to a medieval fiddle than either the guitar or the bass viol. The instrument was essentially a bass viol with a guitar-type tuning, E–A–d–g–b–e' . The arpeggione was especially suited to playing runs in thirds, double stops and arpeggios.[1]

those are very cool - like guitar tuned banjos you can get the sound of the more traditional instrument without subjecting yourself to even more learning curve than required to play it.

im going to head off in the opposite direction with the baritone - tune it to 4ths like extended bass, as a means of avoiding all my guitar cliches and focusing on scales and triad voicings.

Colonel Sun wrote:

noddy wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
Considering 19th century violin contests/capriccio- there is no room for the almost-virtuouso but there is room for the almost-composer.

Or the guy who has composer on hand.

all the shred stuff is of the same nature , no matter which century you find it.

currently the fashion has moved onto diva vocal gymanstics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNGXVoMlYPs

Indeed.

As for Ms. Aguilera, an amateur shredder.

YuBeBjqKSGQ

What's old is new again.

Other famous shredders of the past come to mind, Paganini on the violin, Liszt on the piano.

Sorry for the interruption, back to the regular discussion.

I dunno. There is a difference.

Christina Aguilera's [she's a convenient stand-in for all the pop divas] vocal runs and all the other tricks of derring-do are never-ever pleasant. It's too much for the form- with few exceptions. There's is the contemporary bias in comparing it to the past shredders (of any instrument) as the more time passes, only the best of the best is remembered. So who knows what anyone will make of it.

I still think this is not a digression from the topic of this thread- when zeroing in on what makes a good use of these developed skills- so much relies on the context.

Mozart&Liszt had fully thought out formats to handle what might otherwise be overwhelming spectacles.

The Joe Satrianis and Aguileras of the world have a certain pop format which makes them strange birds. Liszt had Lisztomania which was pretty intense; but add a 150 years of developed pop-mania and technology advances, and we have these forms where the existence of the shredder can be more important than the shredding itself.

========

This is effecting how kids pick up guitar just as much as the next thing on the list.

It's like the old psychology joke that everything is about sex, except for sex itself; which is about everything else.

Having a good grasp of playing isn't just spending hours practicing formulas [the bizarre systems Mr.P was mentioning earlier] but applying all sorts of cross-knowledge and indirect formation into guitar playing.

Maintaining rhythm and groove dynamics with the right supporting band-mates
Being a tone-chaser or developing a sound outside of the instrument, unadorned
Spending countless hours playing with others (preferably the right support as mentioned above) in crappy conditions
Developing the ear and forming a clear picture in the mind's eye about the form and direction of one's music and how to write to that.
Maybe most important, committing to either learning a certain tradition inside and out until mastered where one might add something extremely tiny to it; or being completely iconoclastic and aim at struggling against the mold while failing spectacularly 99.9% of the time. This one is a big one because being lukewarm here is where people get in trouble.

All this takes precedence, to me, over locking down the licks and chords and dexterity...the physicality. Because otherwise, one seems to end up in this shredder ghetto.

after throwing all the fusion players and chops monsters under the bus, I recently rediscovered I still have a soft spot for Scofield.

a-grade noodling over funky cafe jazz, makes great background music for lifes more boring tasks.

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his fat mid range boosted tone, strong levels of attack and movement between the blue minors (aeolin,dorian) and chromatics (diminished,whole tone) is very much inline with my ear holes.

I've been able to spend several months of quality time with this little unit and am pleased with the results.

5U7OSeMZdyw

I've had a few digital modellers before but found them too complicated to spend time really mastering them for the amount of free time one has.

This program had an extra carrot, that is the ability to swap out amp components with a click, essentially building an amp from scratch, enormously time consuming in real life;

It's been educational. First, it's very cool to be able to dream up your own circuit and work it out. But it has some 30 amps in there and I've finally been able to spend lots of time with lots of digital amps.

What I came away with:

1) The HiWatt is really awesome. I think I will build one of those, both clean and drive channels have a great sound I will use for the long haul, so I'm in.

2) The Mesa Boogie crunch metal amps are worthless to me. Unless you are playing metal they have no practical use. I'd always wanted to monkey around with them and see what you could do and now that I have I can move on with my life. They are just for metal. I'm really suited for overdrive tones, occasional distortion but I have no use for crunch. I think the high water mark for that tone is And Justice For All, but there isn't anything you can do with them other than that.

The sound is quite good, but I wouldn't ever use it live I don't think, and only occasional recording. And there is a bit of latency.

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

noddy wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: I do resort to the Alice in Chains recording trick: guitar through a cranked, small boutique-amp. Then putting a bass through that amp, crank the mids/cut the highs and lows, and double the roots of the chords in the upper registers.

When I can use a baritone guitar instead, I do. But people get bent out of shape (in my limited experience) when 'baritone guitar' is mentioned- like I'm talking about toy kazoos.

Im in the haggling stage for a fender mustang (hipster shape) baritone guitar tuned to A.

Ive also got a truckload of cheap chinese knockoff pickups (vintage lipsticks, p90's, classic humbuckers, railed single coil sized humbuckers) lined up on aliexpress if it comes through.

now that I have my two classic guitars doing classic things I need a frankenstein hacker machine and this seems perfect for it - I want to get Humbucker,Lipstick,P90,Lipstick,rail humbucker all in a row with toggle switches on each one, if im dead keen ill have a second toggle for phase aswell.

Sounds good

-----

I've got my eye on the modern arpeggiones right now- seems like a whole bunch of quirky ones are floating out there:

from wiki:

The arpeggione is a six-stringed musical instrument, fretted and tuned like a guitar, but bowed like a cello, and thus similar to the bass viola da gamba. So it had another name, the guitar violoncello.[1] The body shape of the instrument is, however, more similar to a medieval fiddle than either the guitar or the bass viol. The instrument was essentially a bass viol with a guitar-type tuning, E–A–d–g–b–e' . The arpeggione was especially suited to playing runs in thirds, double stops and arpeggios.[1]

Another great idea is to put 13s on a normal guitar and tune down to D. Sounds like a baritone.

This guy is probably the best amp builder in the history of Earth. You can't get these sounds anywhere else on this planet.

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wgu0n-CEckA

I mean wow. Grand Canyon tone.

x8IjVp9iOHE

Mr. Perfect wrote:I've been able to spend several months of quality time with this little unit and am pleased with the results.

5U7OSeMZdyw

I've had a few digital modellers before but found them too complicated to spend time really mastering them for the amount of free time one has.

This program had an extra carrot, that is the ability to swap out amp components with a click, essentially building an amp from scratch, enormously time consuming in real life;

It's been educational. First, it's very cool to be able to dream up your own circuit and work it out. But it has some 30 amps in there and I've finally been able to spend lots of time with lots of digital amps.

What I came away with:

1) The HiWatt is really awesome. I think I will build one of those, both clean and drive channels have a great sound I will use for the long haul, so I'm in.

2) The Mesa Boogie crunch metal amps are worthless to me. Unless you are playing metal they have no practical use. I'd always wanted to monkey around with them and see what you could do and now that I have I can move on with my life. They are just for metal. I'm really suited for overdrive tones, occasional distortion but I have no use for crunch. I think the high water mark for that tone is And Justice For All, but there isn't anything you can do with them other than that.

The sound is quite good, but I wouldn't ever use it live I don't think, and only occasional recording. And there is a bit of latency.

neat, I havent seen a HiWatt, on all the modellers Ive tried I end up heading for the vox ac30 (cleans) or the fender bassman (crunchies) - back in the day I have a fender tube amp and Im quite partial to that sound.

agreed on the metal tones, they only make sense in the mix against the drums and bass playing muted chugs and they all sound pretty disgusting in isolation.

Mr. Perfect wrote:I mean wow. Grand Canyon tone.

x8IjVp9iOHE

it is very cool but I mostly got jealous of his glorious single mans loungeroom - it needs a electronics workbench and a few computers but perhaps they are out of shot.

Mr. Perfect wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:

noddy wrote:

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: I do resort to the Alice in Chains recording trick: guitar through a cranked, small boutique-amp. Then putting a bass through that amp, crank the mids/cut the highs and lows, and double the roots of the chords in the upper registers.

When I can use a baritone guitar instead, I do. But people get bent out of shape (in my limited experience) when 'baritone guitar' is mentioned- like I'm talking about toy kazoos.

Im in the haggling stage for a fender mustang (hipster shape) baritone guitar tuned to A.

Ive also got a truckload of cheap chinese knockoff pickups (vintage lipsticks, p90's, classic humbuckers, railed single coil sized humbuckers) lined up on aliexpress if it comes through.

now that I have my two classic guitars doing classic things I need a frankenstein hacker machine and this seems perfect for it - I want to get Humbucker,Lipstick,P90,Lipstick,rail humbucker all in a row with toggle switches on each one, if im dead keen ill have a second toggle for phase aswell.

Sounds good

-----

I've got my eye on the modern arpeggiones right now- seems like a whole bunch of quirky ones are floating out there:

from wiki:

The arpeggione is a six-stringed musical instrument, fretted and tuned like a guitar, but bowed like a cello, and thus similar to the bass viola da gamba. So it had another name, the guitar violoncello.[1] The body shape of the instrument is, however, more similar to a medieval fiddle than either the guitar or the bass viol. The instrument was essentially a bass viol with a guitar-type tuning, E–A–d–g–b–e' . The arpeggione was especially suited to playing runs in thirds, double stops and arpeggios.[1]

Another great idea is to put 13s on a normal guitar and tune down to D. Sounds like a baritone.

I got the baritone guitar - its not a mustang, its a jazzmaster - I got my hipster blobs confused and it came in a wonderful vomit burst colour and its bridge is so crap (wider than the neck and held on with a single screw) its hard to believe its an official product.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... er-antigua

its the most godawful thing Ive ever seen but I got it for less than 1/3 the new price and being tuned down to A , its so much fatter than a guitar but less muddy than a bass.

That baritone looks like stale sliced cheese. And why basswood? That stuff is so soft it's the wood preferred by carvers.

noddy wrote:

Mr. Perfect wrote:I mean wow. Grand Canyon tone.

it is very cool but I mostly got jealous of his glorious single mans loungeroom - it needs a electronics workbench and a few computers but perhaps they are out of shot.

Lol bro he has that and much much more. Interesting cat.

https://www.instagram.com/gjika_amplification/

Now I am not a Marshall guy and he says he isn't copying Marshalls but this is pure Hendrix at Woodstock tone,

noddy wrote:
neat, I havent seen a HiWatt, on all the modellers Ive tried I end up heading for the vox ac30 (cleans) or the fender bassman (crunchies) - back in the day I have a fender tube amp and Im quite partial to that sound.

agreed on the metal tones, they only make sense in the mix against the drums and bass playing muted chugs and they all sound pretty disgusting in isolation.

Yes, AC30 and Bassman have been my 2 amps for over 10 years, AC30 going back to the 90's. I've had a few of them, currently I have one I built myself and this one:

http://jmjamps.com/

This is one of the best amps ever made by human hands, it's pricey but worth it if you are sold on the AC30. This is the purest AC30 tone available on planet Earth.


Get your cabinets here and you are done forever.

http://www.voxshowroom.com/northcoast/v ... index.html