Whatever

Another quick one for tonight. Here's an instrumental piece that I wrote on keys. A rare event by all accounts :P.

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To All My Homies

This is all I got to say today...

Studio D

We spent Saturday up in Folschette with the band recording our demo. The studio itself is a cool place, set up in an old farm building in the village. The room has a good sound, as far as I can tell. Yves Ditsch, who was manning the console for the day was very helpful and friendly, we got good coffee and such. Two thumbs up for the facilities and service. We went in to record 4 songs: 'Let's Pop', 'Oceanbound', 'Sunday Driver' and 'Too Much Room'. The drums went down real quick, kudos to Jacques for that, although his playing on Sunday Driver is a bit uneven. We were done so fast that we decided to lay down a fifth track, a cover of 'Psycho Killer' by Talking Heads. However, we hit the big hurdle when recording the bass. [edit] It really is too bad, we got off to such a good start. I decided to put down two rhythm tracks before we left. I was pretty happy with the one I did for Oceanbound and Sunday Driver was okay. (Before anyone accuses me of being too hard on the others and not being as critical towards my own work, I only recorded easy-peasy things that day, we'll see how I will fare with the hard stuff, like the vocals and lead lines...) At least I didn't bring all my stuff along for nothing but on the whole, I was pretty disappointed with what we achieved that day. On the up side, I was really pleased with the sound I got out of my amp (a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe). I used the "clean" channel. With the volume up about half way, I got a nice, well defined, crunchy tone. Too bad I can't have this setup live right now, it's just too loud. I'm looking at attenuators, but I'm not sure if they're worth the investment. After all, I can use the "drive" channel or my DS-1 and get close (kind of). I've been looking at the THD Hot Plates and Bad Cat's 'The Leash'. I hope the shops here in Luxembourg have something. I want to try before I buy. That's one of the downers in living in a small place like this, it's often hard to find the gear you need (want) without resorting to extensive travel or the internet...

20

Just been reminded that it has been 20 years this Christmas since I got my first guitar... Jeez, 20 years. 1988. I think it was sometime during the summer that I got the idea that I was was going to play guitar, when I saw 'Sweet Child O' Mine' on MTV (that's when we moved to New York, where dad worked at the UN Embassy). I was already listening to a lot of music by then but I guess this is when it clicked for me. And I guess I must have driven my folks nuts with it. My first axe was a horrible Asian made black electric with a little built-in amp and speaker. I think it was from Sears or something. I remember being so happy to have it. My dad used to play when he was a kid and he taught me my first three chords, open E, A and D. I remember D was so damn hard. ;) He also got me some fake books, which was awesome, 'cause it was great fun learning songs (and as a side effect, the chords). In fact, I don't think I would have kept with it if I hadn't begun that way. Fake books are the sh*t, kids. For a good couple of years, it's all I did, comping myself, strumming along. I only got into lead guitar when I began taking lessons as a high school student. But I always kept with the fake books and to this day, I can spend a whole day flipping through them and playing my favorite songs or learning new ones. The great thing about them is that you only get the chords, the vocal melody and the words. The rest, you make up yourself. We do lots of covers with Radio Daze and I like to approach things the same way. It's way more fun.

CAE Boost/Line Driver

Now if the Memory Man is my most elaborate piece of gear, this has got to be the simplest. This is a true bypass pedal that boosts my signal by up to 20dB's. It slightly accentuates the highs when turned on, which is welcome. I use it for solos or to add clarity to clean guitar parts. I keep the knob at around 9:00 for the former and turn it all the way down for the the latter purpose. I got this pedal just before a gig last December and it worked really well for me. Again, the blue LED is slightly annoying but it's an 'evil' I can live with :).

Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai

The SMMH is my craziest pedal of all. It does a lot and is an altogether more complex toy than my other stompboxes, as the length of this post already suggests.

It's a digital delay with several modes (4 echo, 3 multi tap modes and the looper mode). 'Echo' is a traditional delay effect, while in 'multi tap' modes the pedal repeats your notes from 1 to 32 times. The most interesting modes are:
- '300ms echo + mod', where the pitch of the echoes is modulated. When you turn the delay time all the way down you can also get absolutely wild flanging, which is great fun to play with;
- 1sec (multi tap) + rev, where holding down on the 'tap/record' switch plays back the last six seconds of whatever you played into the pedal backwards. This is a really cool effect that gets a lot of mileage from me. I use it on long chords, and in solos a lot. It's brilliant;
- Reverse Echo is just that. The repeats play back in reverse and turning down the delay time produces an effect that's kind of like a ring modulator.

Six knobs control the effect. The white 'Hazarai' (Yiddish for 'all the bells and whistles') knob toggles between modes and calls up/stores presets. You can store one preset per mode, which is very useful. As the name suggests, the 'Blend' control adjusts the level of the effect. As with most delay pedals, you lose the volume of the dry signal as you turn it up, so you have to be careful with this one. I usually have it set low when I play with the band, as I rarely need a pronounced delay effect. The next knob, 'decay' adjust reverb in the first two and the reverse echo modes. The reverb is not exactly to my taste and I only use a touch of it. In the third 300ms echo + modulation mode, it sets the level of pitch modulation. In the 3 'multi tap' modes the 'decay' control actually does what it says: it adjust the decay of the repeats. The volume of each repeat decreases whit the knob up till noon. Beyond halfway, the volume of each repeat actually increases, so you can get a great swelling effect. In loop mode, 'decay' allows you to flip the recorded loop for backward playback. The 'filter' control is basically an EQ for the repeats/loop, twisting it anti-clockwise adds bass, turning it to the right accentuates the highs. 'Repeats' sets the amount of repeats, as you rightly guessed, and adjusts the level of subsequent layers as you record loops. 'Delay' sets the delay time and in looper mode, allows you to adjust the pitch of your loop from an octave down (half speed) to an octave up (double speed).

There are 2 switches on the pedal, one of which turns the effect on and off. The other one, 'tap/record' allows you to set the delay time by tapping your foot, which I find indispensable live. In loop mode, you can thus adjust the tempo of your loop without changing the pitch. A green LED blinks in time with the rhythm you set. If you hold down this same control, the pedal records a loop of what you play. You can record a loop in any mode except 1sec + Rev (see above) along with the desired effect. The loop turns around when you lift your foot off the switch. You can then edit your loop (flip it, slow it down, filter it etc.) in loop mode.

Now this pedal does an awful lot more than what I can use it for in my band. It does the simpler delay effects that I need in that situation well but it's also the main reason I pull out my pedalboard when I'm fooling around at home. With the looper, it's a great practice and songwriting tool. I love it to death.

Boss TR-2 Tremolo

Tremolo is one of my favorite effects. This Boss pedal is another one that I've had for longer now. Very simple to operate: it has rate and depth controls plus a smaller knob in the middle for adjusting the waveform (from a very gradual seesaw to an on-off helicopter effect). I usually have it set to a subtle, relatively fast throbbing to spice up clean chords. I really like Boss pedals for their sturdy construction and especially for their quiet switching. Although they're not true bypass, they won't eat at your tone. I was surprised to read that a common complaint against the TR-2 is that it drops the volume when turned on. I don't know if mine is a freak example but I hear a slight volume boost... Anyway, I have a lot of love for this box and use it pretty often.

MXR Super Comp

This is the second new pedal on my 'board. I got this one as a Christmas present from my wife, Anna. I've been struggling a lot with my clean sound in Radio Daze and I think this might just be the thing that's missing for songs like 'Suspicious Minds'... Why did I put the Super Comp on my Christmas wish list instead of some other pedal? I tried several compressors and really liked the timber of the Dyna Comp. This is basically the same pedal (with 'output' and 'sensitivity' controls), with the added possibility of setting the attack attenuation (a knob labeled 'attack level'), which should be useful to me as my guitars' pickups each have very different characters. The P-90's on my Les Paul Special have almost twice the output of my Strat's pickups, which will affect the level of compression I can get. MXR boasts that the Super Comp can bridge this gap with the extra control. The effect itself has a tonality that is very pleasing to my ear (like the tone of Andy Summers' guitar on many Police classics). It's not very noisy. There is some added hiss but nothing too bothersome, even with the distortion engaged in front of the Super Comp. I love the slight volume swell as the notes seem to sustain forever. The Fuzz Factory especially comes alive when the Super Comp is on. I've read some complaints that this pedal has an adverse effect on the tone when bypassed but I haven't experienced this. The output control sets the level of the effect. Unity gain seems to be around 2:00 on the dial, leaving quite a bit of room to use the pedal as a boost for solos. The attack level and sensitivity controls seem highly interactive, though, and I'm still struggling to find the perfect mix for all my axes. As always, a test run at this Thursday's rehearsal with the band should reveal more.

Boss DS-1 (Keeley Ultra Mod)

This is one of the new additions to my pedalboard. I wasn't really looking for a distortion pedal but I stumbled upon a demo of the DS-1 Ultra on YouTube and was sold right away. I immediately began browsing for a distributor here in Europe and since the pound is pretty weak against the euro right now, I ended up ordering it from the UK. I received the package just in time for Christmas :). It was fun to see those 'little differences' between Boss' US and European packaging... Those damn Yankees get a 5 year warranty, not fair! ;) A warranty, which I guess is void now that Mr. Keeley and his trusted employees had their way with this brand new Boss DS-1 (Keeley provides a 2 year warranty on workmanship). As far as the sound goes, this modified version is nothing like the original. The distortion is rich, creamy, harmonic, very musical indeed. A red LED is added to the circuit (right where the 'o' used to be in 'tone' under the left side knob), which lights up as you pick a note. The brighter the LED, the more distorted your sound gets. The pedal cleans up beautifully as you roll back the volume on the guitar or lighten your picking attack. A switch is added to the left of the said LED, which allows you to choose between 'Seeing Eye' (up position) and 'Ultra' (down position) modes. The latter has less gain but a higher output and makes the pedal sound more like an overdrive. I've played around with both and haven't really made up my mind yet about which one I like better. The pedal has three knobs: tone, level and distortion ('dist'). Operating it is straight forward. The instructions provided by Keeley along with the pedal are very helpful, too. I found my sweet spot with the tone control at around 11:00. Things can get as harsh or as muddy as you like, the tone range is surprisingly wide. The 'dist' knob goes from a slight crunch to full blown shred heaven. Again, a good array of sounds to play with. I really enjoy cranking it, although I'm pretty sure I won't be doing that too much in practice. Radio Daze is no metal outfit... Optical changes include a super bright blue status LED (which verges on the annoying, IMHO) and cool new knobs (you do get the originals in the package, though, if you prefer those). I'm still yet to try the DS-1 Ultra with the band but have high hopes for it.

MXR Phase 90

I've had this pedal for a while now and have fallen in and out of love with it and back again. I tried it just about everywhere in my effects chain until I settled on keeping it towards the front end. This pedal sounds magnificent when it drives a good distortion or overdrive and has enough kick to shine through a compressor, as it adds a discernible boost in the treble frequencies when turned on. This is also great for clean parts because it lifts the guitar out of the mix. Anyone who, like me, has to fight for sonic territory with another guitarist and a keyboard player in the band will appreciate this. (By the way, I found that it's this boost that is the most notable difference between this 'block logo' version and the vintage '74 reissue.) Operating the pedal is easy, the only knob regulates the speed of the phasing effect, ranging from a slow wash to a whacked out wobble. Despite it's simplicity, this orange box ended up covering a lot of bases for me. With it, I can get pretty close to a wah-wah effect but the Phase 90 also produces a convincing rotary/Univibe swirl (about halfway on the dial) and has also worked decently as a replacement for a flanger, where a similar effect is needed.

Z.Vex Fuzz Factory

This little monster blows my mind. The Fuzz Factory (FF) can be pretty ordinary or take you into the twilight zone. There's a million sounds in this green box and it can oscillate like crazy, which is great fun to play with. It's not a modeling pedal (as the name may suggest), all the effects you get out of it are very original indeed. You need to spend a while with it to figure out how each of the five controls (volume, gate, compression, drive and stability) interact but it's well worth the effort. And a lot of fun anyway. The first four knobs are pretty much self explanatory, stability, or 'stab', is where things get really weird. It has a profound effect on the tone of the fuzz, treble content is reduced as you turn the sucker down. It's modus operandi is not explained in the manual but I remember reading a post somewhere that said that it regulates voltage. I usually have the FF set to a sharp fuzz sound that's great for power chords and lead (volume at about 9:00, everything else around 2:00). It's just on the edge of breaking loose and has that velcro feel when the compression kicks in. I also use the 'octave fuzz' setting (gate between 2:00-3:00, comp and drive at 7:00 and stab all the way up). Here the pedal produces an overtone when I play above the 12th fret, especially with the neck pickup. Pretty often I just play around with the oscillation, twisting the knobs to change the pitch and tone. In accordance with Mr. Vex's recommendation this is the very first pedal in my signal chain, going even before the tuner. It uses very little power, and I can therefore safely run this one on batteries, which is welcome since I have 8 units to power and only 7 plugs on my daisy chain :).

Photoelectronic noise

This was posted by Tom on his Musicthing blog, a really cool gadget made by a guy called Gijs. ;)

Mice

Mice.mp3

I spent most of Friday afternoon recording this track. The song itself is something I've been playing around with for quite some time now. It's been recorded during rehearsal by Szegényanyámhalátna. At that time our drummer was away on a scholarship for 6 months, and we had a guy fill in for him who just got back from Canada and was trying out for orchestras and stuff, so he was pretty good. Anyway, I used the bassline that was on that recording as a basis for what I do here. I also recorded an acoustic version about two years ago but that was very uneven.

The bass became the lead instrument for the first two verses, so I reverted to playing chords on it so as not to overshadow the guitar solo at the end. I must say that I'm really happy with the way my bass guitar sounds. My playing is still a bit sloppy, so it's nice to have that compensated by a pleasing tone.

The drums are made up of a backing loop (dnb 156bpm) from Guitar Rig 2 and some added accents from the LiViD synth. Again the LiViD patterns were manually modified in the sequence.

I used my Telecaster for the comping right up to the solo. I made several attempts at recording the lead with that guitar but it always came out too clunky. The Les Paul's P-90 at the bridge was the answer. Since I had about 30 shots at recording it (no kidding), the solo came out more structured than usual. The section over the verse riff was fully mapped out by the time I recorded the final version, the rest was pretty much improvised on the spot. I feel I'm stuck in a rut with my lead playing. I have horrible difficulties coming up with stuff that sounds original and isn't too repetitive... Anyway, both guitar tracks use GR2's "Hall Warm FX" factory preset.

Kitchen Groove

This one came along as a series of accidents. I initially wrote the underlining bass groove in 4/4. As I was setting things up to record it, I accidentally set the metronome to 7/8. I tried it that way and it worked out, so I kept it. It then took me a good couple of days to figure out the guitar parts. I accidentaly stumbled upon a video review of the Roland JC-120 amp on Gearwire. The guy was playing those jazzy arpeggios between chords, something I still couldn't get my head around after all these years. I saw that he was pretty good at responding to questions posted on the site, so I asked him how that works. He told me to check out diminished chords and scales. I googled it and found a website with a basic introduction. Reading that article, I realised that one of the riffs I'm playing on the bass in this song actually matches the "whole-half" scale. That's how I ended up playing the corresponding diminished chord over that part. Recording the lead part there was pretty uncomfortable, my left hand is locked into the pentatonic box thing. It took me about 10 takes to get an acceptable result.

For the recording I used my Magix Audio Studio software. I built the drum track with "LiViD", a synth that is included in the DAW and did some manual editing to fit the bass track. All bass and guitar parts were done with Guitar Rig 2. I used a Jazz amp with a Psychedelay a synthlike effect on the rythm guitar. The main bass groove uses my own preset, all the others are stock, namely "Vocode Bass" for the bass solo, "No Holds Barred Lead" for the cleaner lead guitars (the distortion is turned off), "Stepping Gates" for the parts over the diminished chords and the lead guitar following the bass solo (the tremolo rate was adjusted to fit the song). The latter part is doubled on another track with the "System of a Crown" preset from the Metal & HiGain bank (wah pedal on, controlled by the input level modifier). Enjoy:

Kitchen Groove.mp3

So Easy v2.0

Here's a new version of the song I did based on comments I got on various forums. There still might be some room for improvement...

So Easy v2.mp3

So Easy

Yeah, right! I spent the better part of three days putting this thing together and I'm still not entirely happy. But I guess this is as good as it'll get without starting over from scratch. Check it out:

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A 3rd One

Here's the last recording for this weekend. It's something I came up with Sunday morning. It seems I'm kind of stuck with slow minor progressions for now... This is just one acoustic track with some nice stereo reverb. I spent 2 hours trying to come up with a second guitar track, but in the end I just stuck with this. It sounds full enough to stand on its own, and everything I added seemed out of place. Anyway, have a listen:

B minor song.mp3

Another Acoustic Demo

Here's a new one I recorded 2nite with my acoustic. This is a song we've been working on for the last couple of weeks with the band. The main riff and chorus are from our keyboard player, to which we added stuff during rehearsals. The arrangement is (hopefully) the one we came up with last Tuesday. I recorded this demo on 3 tracks panned left, right and center. The guitar on the left has a capo at the 8th fret and plays the basic rythm part. In the center I put another rythm guitar, this time playing the chords at the lowest possible position (even adding the low 5th if the root falls on the A string) to add a bit of dimension. On the right, I'm playing the main synth riff with a slide (standard tuning) and adding some other elements just to keep it constant. Check it out:

Mark's Song.mp3

PS: I did screw up a bit towards the end, falling out of tempo on the last couple of chords. Being the lazy bastard that I am, I just faded the whole thing out before it got really nasty ;)...

New Song

Hey, I just came up with a new thing on my acoustic while I was noodling around. I recorded it using my Samson C01U condenser mic. I haven't got any lyrics yet, but it's the best thing I've come up with in some time. Check it out:

D minor song.mp3