Wall of Mouths

That’s what I thought.
But even with that adjusted the action’s too high?

Isn’t it possible to adjust the action on them?

Ah now that is bad news…But very glad you tipped me off! Nice one!

Perfect sense, appreciated! ;)

Well I will need to buy some, that’s the problem really, I don’t know what to get.

He’s given me a 100mb one but he says he has some stuff on there already and he doesn’t know how much space is left, so really I’m just going to get myself some new ones - or just one disc if that will do what I need it to do. As I understand it, all we want to do is record live from a stereo feed from the PA - i.e. just two tracks, left and right. We will probably need two or three songs for the demo so we’ll want to record maybe four so we can pick the best. I have no idea how much space on a disc this kind of thing takes up…

What I am getting at is - If I just pick up a couple of 100mb discs, am I going to leave myself short for space?

Anyone out there got any experience of recording with a multi-track machine that uses zip discs?

I have borrowed my brother’s Boss BR8 and I want to record a band rehearsal as-live into this unit and I want to know a little bit about running times and how much will fit on a disc - so I can make sure I have enough blanks ready on the day.

I know the Stones do, just to ensure they start off at the right tempo - If you hear some of their older live recordings they vary wildly between far too fast and far too slow (I wonder if chemicals that had been ingested had an effect on this?!) so now they use a click to set them off.
And a band like U2 that has keyboard parts on tape must use clicks too, for songs like Bad and With Or Without You.

LOL

On a sort-of related but not quite related note, there seems to be some debate about the Spice Girls’ reunion shows, saying “Oh I bet they are miming” etc etc and their official spokesperson has said that they are singing to a clcik-track. Now, some people seem to think this is an admission that the girls can’t sing and are “cheating” but…surely with a big live band behind them and presumably the odd keyboard sample etc, isn’t click track par for the course? Nothing to do with cheating, just a necessary evil…?

A guitar that stays in tune must surely be the Holy Grail for guitarists..?

I have lost count of the times I have seen perfectly good amateur guitarists playing in pubs etc who let themselves down because they just cannot tune a guitar properly. It really sorts out the guys with a good musical ear from the guys who have just learnt everything parrot-fashion from a Tab book.

I mean, we all suffer from tuning problems (old strings, temperature changes, dodgy guitar etc etc) but I’d like to think that at least I can hear when my guitar is out of tune rather than just not notice at all. Or as the other guitarist in my band says “I’ve had these fucking strings on for six years so ONE of them must be in tune by now…?!?!”:D

Not sure i like the whole Robocop feel of the idea of a self-tuning guitar though…

have a look at this miracle of modern wassname:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2j60MeiDQAc

What do you make of that?

I cannot decide if it is the best thing since loaves came in handy, sandwich-ready, pre-prepared sections…or…

could it just be a little bit, well, naff ?

Sorry if this isn’t a useful answer (I don’t have the tab) but I would say that with a song like this, it is important to get the sound right, as much as the chords. The echo (delay or reverb, whichever you have) can go a long way to making this sound authentic.

I’m like that with my guitar playing too, coming in far too early…

FNYANKEZ wrote:

You get the heavy strings for fatter chords, but still have the light strings for solos.

Ernie Ball make a pack called “Hybrid Slinky’s” (Slinky’s being their most popular string range) which is just that - fatter bass strings for, well, fatter bass, but thinner strings for the higher ones, like you say for lead work.

Double bass isn’t just for technical metal, you know - I have heard some great stuff on Prince albums that’s done with double bass drumming and isn’t even slightly Heavy Metal in style.

I like it!

I like the lyrics in particular - all save for the chorus

@ Hey Satan: Ha ha “Cruise control”! I like it ;) Good tips there - I will try some of those out.

Youtube is a good source of instructional clips of all sorts - there are some good guitar ones and some good drum tips on there. Takes a bit of digging through to find some of it, but worth a browse if you have a spare afternoon.

I don’t know any useful sites but I saw a clip on youtube of Dave Lombardo from Slayer showing how he sets his peddles up for minimum effort. (Don’t have a link, you’d have to search for it, sorry!) Basically involves setting the beater at a further back angle (imagine that it now has further to travel to hit the bass drum) but then as his natural resting position for his feet, he has them in such a way that the pedal is partially down anyway, so that he only has to do sort of a half-kick to hit the drum.

God I bet that made no sense at all but hey, I tried!

I’d call myself a guitarist but I’m fairly good on drums.. Probably a little rusty through lack of practice but if I was playing drums regularly I reckon I could hold my own in a Rock/ Indie setting. I’d struggle with Metal though, never tried double kick drum pedals - which I’d love to have a go at.

Squall is this your new guitar you are talking about? If so I would get a professional to set it up before you do anything else - it may need the truss rod adjusting

On the one and only time I ever recorded in a studio, I was told I was a very light player, so maybe that’s why I get away with 9’s…?

I thought Hammett used really thin strings…? Shows what I know. I always put his weedy thin tone down to thin strings and down-tuning, but if he’s using 12’s then god only knows what he is doing wrong. (Sorry, don’t mean to bash the ‘tallica here, just Kirk’s tone in particular never appealed to me).

Maybe it is time for me to move up to 10’s and just put the hard work in getting my fingers used to it. It’s got to improve the tone, hasn’t it?

twangy is good…isn’t it…?

11s! Feck, I play 9s and I struggle with 10s…

Mind I am quite a bender.

*spots potential flaw in his choice of word*

I guess then that it’s just down to the 24 fret neck and the relatively thin body (compared to a Les Paul).

Great guitars though. Definitely on my “must buy when I win the Lottery” list.

Just above “speedboat” but below “Cadbury’s Chocolate factory”

regards to the Epiphone being neck-heavy - Does anyone know if the Gibson ones are the same? I mean, I know the whole Gibson/ Epiphone link, before anyone points it out, I just wondered if the Gibson ones are any better…?

That’s quite a cool clip.

Must say what little Mastadon I have heard sounds technically great but a flat in terms of emotion. A bit “metal by numbers” kind of thing.
Should I be made to walk the plank or do others agree…?

Misanthropologist wrote:

I think the idea is to get a bit of lateral thinking into your playing.
I mean, if you tuned to, say, open E, then to play a Major chord you’d just barre one finger across all the frets. You get E, F, F# etc that way. Then you use that basis to get the more complicated chrods by adding the notes that you need. Which is what I mean, that you need to have a good idea of what notes you want to add in the first place. So it’s more music theory that you’re after, rather than a book about tunings.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying, and I do kind of agree, but at the moment I am not looking at writing my own stuff, I just wanna work out how the fook to play Johnny Marr’s stuff!

Still, thanks for the advice, appreciated.

It isn’t so much the actual tunings themselves that are the problem - it is how to form chords in them!

Anyone know of a decent instructional book/ DVD on this?

Title: Alternate Tunings

Anyone got advice for a stuck-in-his ways guitarist on how to finally get to grips with alternate tunings?!

I mean, the almost ubiquitous Drop D is pretty straight-forward, but how about open tunings?

This has all been brought about by me reading a Johnny Marr biography and remembering that I can hardly play any of his work cos I have no idea a) what the tunings are (and he did use some weird tunings) and b) how to make chord shapes in those tunings…it’s like learning the instrument from scratch all over again.