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partners in twingulation

09:36 / 16.09.01

I've just relocated from Glasgow to London. Any of you mob looking for a musical type? guitarsbassvocalsengineeringsynthsnprogramming. Into various things.

12:52 / 16.09.01

I'm in need of a musical type, and you sound marvellous, but I'm in Southampton. Sorry!

Still, a bunch of us are coming up in October (see the Conversation topic) and it'd be great to meet you.

What you into (if not particular styles, then favourite artists)?

13:21 / 16.09.01

Currently playing-to-death the new Bjork album. I like all sorts of stuff, it's not so much a style I go for as an attitude. Most of what I listen to is ecstatic music in one form or another. That's when it's not ear candy 3-minute pop (the rare good stuff from the last 40 years or so.) Both at once would make my head implode.

14:06 / 16.09.01

Funny - your one of the few other people besides myself to have used the “attitude not style” line.

Currently on expressionless’ playlist:

Godspeed You Black Emperor! “Levez-vos...” - still addicted to this after a whole year. Still makes me weep. Nothing else sounds anything like them.

Matmos, “A Chance to Cut...”

Cannibal Ox, “The Cold Vein”

The Boredoms, “Super AR” - just bought this after falling for “Vision Creation Newsun” earlier in the year.

Saul Williams, “Amethyst Rock Star”

Lift to Experience, “The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads”

Michael Fakesch, “Maria”

Lots of Brian Eno (that’ll be the Virgin sale, five for £30)

I play drums and write words (see "Bang the Drum" and "House of Leaves is a Viral Meme" in the Magick). Have been looking for like-minded people for well over a year, with no success. Would you mind travelling to have a jam? That goes for anyone else on the board, too.

15:08 / 16.09.01

mr nakedflame is a slinky-hipped smooth-ass muthafucka. i've seen him dance.

12:56 / 18.09.01

superfantasticbubbleplastic! heehee. we gotta do that again.

Very much willing to travel the known universe in search of the Groove.

Couldn't find the Conversation topic... which one?

13:30 / 18.09.01

s'in the gathering, akcherleh.

14:14 / 19.09.01

She's right, y'know.

Oops.

16:07 / 19.09.01

Think I found it. 6th Oct, yeah? will come if I can.

Pin

08:30 / 21.09.01

Right. Naked Flame, Or anyone else with this sort of knowledge, could you please tell me the following things:

Where can I find a pedal board (not nessessarily a pedal board, but pre-amps seem complicated) that gives me a range of different possible styles and noises easily. A guitar synth sounds good, but I'd have to fuck about with pick ups and stuff...

Also, where can I find a tuner that lerts me do alternative tunings easily, as my current lets me do EADGBE and just that. My monetary limit is around £22-£250, so please be wallet concious. Note I can go higher if nessessary but I need an actual electric to replace my acoustic/electric aswell.

08:42 / 21.09.01

I absolutely luuuuuurve my POD- it's basically an amp sim, does about 16 models of amp and you can deep-edit it via SoundDiver. You can probably get one for £200 if you shop around. The only drawbacks are the pedal board is an expensive optional extra, and the on-board FX aren't that extensive. But I use it primarily for recording so that's not such an issue.

I've got some tunes on mp3.com I did with it- www.mp3.com/nakedflames

ps it has a tuner built in, many of these types of amp-sim board do now.

If you already like the sound of your amp, you'd probably be better off with a pedal-board.

[ 21-09-2001: Message edited by: Naked Flame ]

12:45 / 21.09.01

Pods are cool.

One of the things I hate about acoustic drums is you need to be playing through a loud rig before you get the benefit of effects. This usually means you can't practice to perfect them, and that you only ever hear the dry sound through the monitors.

Enough griping, though. In all other respects, acoustic drums rule.

Pin

15:12 / 21.09.01

Currently, my amp is a 40 watt practise amp, so a POD soudns good... will it work on acoustics though? And how much is the pedal board? If it works well with an acoustic, then I can just blow all money on that.

The Return Of Rothkoid

15:41 / 21.09.01

Provided you've got a pickup on it, a POD should work with an acoustic. It's a signal modifier, essentially, so if you've got a signal going into it, should work. I used to fuck around with my old pitch-shifter and a microphone - instant Voice of Doom! Same kinda principle.

I'd not mind doing something musical - though I only have an ES-335 copy-stylee guitar with no amp over here. at home - arsenal of old stompboxes. Here? Nada. It sucks. Though I'm in pursuit, once I get cashed, of a MusicMan amp. Ohhhh yes.

Pin; might be worth your while waiting until you get to London for a weekend or something - there's a stack of guitar shops near Charing Cross Rd, and you should be able to find something cheapish there, or at the Notting Hill music exchange. Even if you don't buy an effects unit yet - and be warned, your first six months or so will be spent in pursuit of fucked-up noise, if you do buy one - you can probably pick up a chromatic tuner for about £30, somewhere here, I'm sure.

11:59 / 22.09.01

If you can't stretch to a POD, the Johnson J-Station or Behringer V-Amp are cheaper and almost as good.

The Johnson is (iirc) a bit nicer for clean tones, and is £145. It also does nice Bass amping, you can amp a bass with the Pod, but a bass pod is better for that kinda thing. The Behringer has nice knobs (endless knobs with LEDs around them so you can see where the patch has set things), and comes with and up/down footswitch AND a carry case, for £150. And both of them have fluffly PC editors for all the built in pedals, too.

You'll need a kind of output of some form, seeing as they model both the amp and the cab - in essence, you can run it direct into a speaker/mixing desk/hifi/pc thanks to these things. Or just use the preamp, and bypass the amp on your own amp or something. I don't like these guitar things.

I'm interested in musical pursuits too, if only as a hands-off remix type person, being a keys player who is VERY shortly to acquire a sampler. But yes. Interested, certainly. But non of my gear is in/near/capable of transport to london. Dang. But a keen and developing musician, or some crap like that.

Pin

12:47 / 22.09.01

Sorry to be fussy, but do you have any URL's for these things?

And yeah, a big instrumental London shopping spree sounds like a damn fine idea to me.

Now, a slightly different question... My actual guitar playing skill is not so hot, so... do any of you know of any sort of lessony type things you could provide me with (my former teacher started talking like a very annoying person I knw, who is also taught by this man, and I now can't bear to be in a room with him), of the internet variety? I realise tabs aren't the ideal way to learn, but if I hear him say "jobbie" one more time I will fucking kill him...

15:30 / 22.09.01

Speaking as a non-guitarist, passion and ideas are always more important than technique. There are plenty of ways to make a guitar sound awesome without being able to play a note (I’ve messed around myself, and even I can get it to sound good).

There need to be more guitarists like Blixa Bargeld, Reeves Gabrels, Tom Morello, etc. Look at the Edge: even if you don’t like U2, he’s achieved some incredible results with a maximum of three chords and a brilliant sense of timing.

Oh - don’t skimp on guitar tone. When messing with psychedelia, you can afford to create sounds that aren’t full bodied, but you need a really thick, fat sound for your main riffs’n’shit.

The best guitarists can play one note over forty-eight bars and have it sound awesome. Listen to bands like Mogwai and Godspeed...! Half the time, Braithwaite and Efrim are hardly doing anything, and still making the most ferocious racket imaginable.

Listening to the Boredoms right now, in fact: lots of droning, tonal washes, but probably not that difficult to play. Wicked stuff.

15:57 / 22.09.01

Don't be afraid to play atonal. When it's properly used, it's almost invincible!

Pin

07:03 / 26.09.01

This is my point: How do I play atonal?! My gut reaction is to belive I need a pedal or cocky pre-amp or some such, as experiments on my current set up prove that I can make big-screechy-noise followed by always-the-same feedback, but can't sustain it to make it sound like a droney sorta synth.

And where can I get this Behringer from?

The Return Of Rothkoid

10:18 / 26.09.01

Hmm. On an Ibanez-centric (eek!) forum, I found this discussion, which might help you a bit. Be warned, it's a very theory-heavy topic, and the difference between playing proper atonal music and stuff that doesn't sound right but kinda works is a big thing. There's probably some compositional tools over at The Shareware Music Machine that could let you hear atonality theory in practice - I'm pretty sure there are, actually.

My advice would be to dump the tones for a while. Get your playing up so it doesn't sound too bad without distortion et al - it (like some effects, delay especially) can mask flaws in your playing, but can sometimes be more of a hinderance than a help.

Any largeish music store should be able to get a hold of one of those Behringers for you. You could always try Loot or eBay UK for some secondhand ones, too.

If you want sustain, I don't know how to help you much; a decent guitar or amp does help this a lot. You can get things like Sustainers (Fernandes make a built-in one) and assorted stompboxes to help you with this - delay pedals can also do the same thing, if tweaked enough. If you're that keen about it, and don't need to do incredibly long runs on the fretboard, you might want to consider the E-Bow. I've got one, and it works on acoustic, too. Not good for chords or speed, but it is pretty much infinite sustain, though it will tie up your picking hand...

Pin

06:56 / 28.09.01

Question: I'll assume the Behringer has an amp, and is not just a pre-amp, but how big (ie what wattage) is it?

07:09 / 28.09.01

The behringer is essentially a pre. It has no speaker. Just an out socket.

Wattage? Well, it doesn't have a wattage per se. But it emulates 100W amps - it'll do a JCM900 through a 4x12, I know for a fact. You need a hifi/mixer/speaker to put it in. One sec. I'll find a link.
http://www.behringer.de/eng/products/virtualamps/vamp.htm

There you go. Read about it. Had a pretty good review in SOS - it's not a Pod, but damn close. And funky endless encoders. In the review there is a list of the stuff it emulates, because manufacturers never use the trademarks... which is a pain. Still, there's a good close up on the "pictures" link on the Behringer site, click around.

Does this make sense?

Pin

07:15 / 28.09.01

Yesit is making sense, but shall I assume purchase of a better-then-40W-amp is in order?

07:15 / 28.09.01

Well... depends how you want to play. You see, the Vamp is amping your signal. You don't need to amp it further. You could probably do OK with just a Cab on the end, I'd guess. Talk to someone more guitary than me... the point of it is you don't need an amp, it is an amp.

deletia

07:15 / 28.09.01

quote:Originally posted by expressionless:
[QB]Currently on expressionless’ playlist:

Vulgarian.

I see a running joke developing.

11:50 / 28.09.01

quote:Originally posted by The Haus of Willow:

Vulgarian.

I see a running joke developing.

Do you hear music in radio static, too?

deletia

11:56 / 28.09.01

Only in the artful arrangement of radio static created by Peterson Lee (a band, not a person) in such great albums as <i>Rheostat</i>, available on Coldwater Suplex Records.

12:15 / 28.09.01

I thought I was alone in loving those guys.

Have you heard of Verdantos? On his 1993 album, "Fucking the Light Fantastic," he samples the smashing of his own teeth with a steel bar. He also makes a strange backwards guitar sound from chemically modified semen (don't ask. He's developed technology akin to Spidey's webshooters, and uses it in a deeply personal, deeply disturbed manner). The final track, "My Seeping Dick," is strangely beautiful in it's unlistenability, as he takes the Body Hammer genre to its inevitable conclusion.

It's a landmark release, highly recommended.

Pin

20:25 / 29.09.01

Yes, yes, thank you fuckwits.

Anyway, what I meant was would I have to buy a new speaker output for the Behringer, or could I just stick it in my 40W amp and witness a complete-lack-of-quality output?

22:03 / 29.09.01

Pin wrote:
quote:do any of you know of any sort of lessony type things you could possibly provide me with (URL setc)

An interesting, non-tabulature, URL, is Fripp's Crafty Guitarists - I'm a huge fan of Robert Fripp (esp. his solos on David Bowie's "Fashion" and the King Crimson album, "Discipline" - featuring another guitar original Adrian Belew ) and you might find something here.

I'm an amateur on guitar - piano and bass is more my cup of tea - but, apart from some basic technical skills, I'd recommend following your ears, eschew the theoretical approach (its got me into a lot a creative dead ends)as much as you can. It might take longer to grow your own methods and musical vocabulary, but the best way to grow is to play with others in a group situation, and to imitate what you really love (I spent hours imitating Bruce Foxton - Jam, and Sting's bass lines in the early eighties).

My most important lessons in piano occurred when I took a tape of a piece of music I loved to my piano teacher, and watched him work it out before my eyes, slow it down to a speed at which I could learn the small chunks, then practise it. If you can do this yourself, so much the better, but often a 'teacher' is a great help.

Don't know where your guitar taste lies, but I'm a huge fan of the following: Gang of 4's Andy Gill, John Parish ("Dance Hall at Louse Point" with PJ Harvey), Marc Ribot (Tom Waits' sideman) and any number of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band guitarists.
Ahhhh! if only I could play like these guys!