Explain The Effect: Tremolo 2

This is ground I've tread before, but I'm hitting it again at another angle.

Put a little tremolo on a clean sound and it begins to sound like it has the power of a distorted sound, without the difficulties of high gain. I set up my Frontman 25R with a moderate amount of reverb — knowing Duane Eddy, I probably should've poured it on — and two takes at "Rebel Rouser". First pass is tremolo off, second is tremolo on.
That's my SX STL50 into a Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo to a Fender Frontman 25R, recorded on laptop, so you know we're talking audiophile. Still, while it is a simple effect, the resulting sound is much fuller than without, at least to my ears. The good thing about it is that you can play fast enough to hide the effect, then sustain a note and there it is. (Don't thank me, thank Danny Gatton's rhythm guitar video.)

For your edification, this is the lick I was playing.

I couldn't really hit the timing with the TinyLick interface, but all the notes are there.

I suppose I should be fair and show the master doing it....

We're talking like "Sonic", right?

In the late 80s, I was kinda Marten. Not that I was in a relationship with a hot coffeeshop owner, but I was a big music geek who knew new music from lots of bands that most people who aren't me didn't know or care about. I know a little about a few, but I'm not nearly that guy like I used to be. I try — I follow music blogs and all — but I'm just not keeping up.

So, I saw something on Wolfgang's Vault that piqued the interest in the 1990s Marten in me. It's called "The Pixies/Fugazi/Sonic Youth Syndrome" . Let me give you an example: Eddie Van Halen loved Cream-era Eric Clapton. Eric Clapton loved B.B. King. B.B. King got started listening to Bukka White. Half the guitarists of the 80s got into Eddie. Now, consider that EVH fan chasing up the influence chain. Easily, some Cream could leave them cold. Maybe they'd get B.B. King and maybe not. But what is a metal guitarist gonna get from Bukka White?

OK, now recast all that as late 80s alt-rock bands and you get the gist of the point. It does me well to look for ideas in the influence of my favorite bands, but that doesn't mean that I'll get anything that means anything to me, and that doesn't mean the audience should feel remotely obliged to even care.

Let me quote:

I sometimes feel that people grow up but never grow out of that attitude, unable to separate musical opinion from musical fact. The bands they loved when they were young served as gateways to new, exciting music and may have just changed (or, as often stated overdramatically, "saved") their lives. But those bands existed in and for a certain time. I recently did a tedious article for the St. Louis alt-weekly paper where I listened to every single band playing the local date of Warped Tour. After the 15th screamo band I heard, I desperately wanted to burn 3,500 copies of Relationship of Command by At the Drive-In and hand them out to the youngsters in attendance, as if to "teach them something.” But I'm sure many who heard Relationship when it came out wanted to do the same pretentious campaign with Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come at the front gates of ATDI shows. And it keeps going further back until we’re all crowded around a creaky record player listening to Black Flag’s first 7” on repeat all day long. Where’s the fun in that?

This woke up my Marten. Who is At The Drive In? Is Relationship of Command all that?

I don't know yet. Haven't had time to get into it yet. But, so far, I'm liking it better than Jane Doe.

This Week In Review 2009/08/28

My Top 11 Artists

1. The Replacements - 65 tracks
2. Simon & Garfunkel - 61 tracks
3. Paul Simon - 53 tracks
4. Chris Thile - 52 tracks
5. Nickel Creek - 41 tracks
6. The White Stripes - 31 tracks
7. The Raconteurs - 14 tracks
8. Converge - 12 tracks
9. At the Drive-In - 12 tracks
10. Mike Marshall & Chris Thile - 10 tracks
11. Punch Brothers - 7 tracks

Those are high numbers, but justified. I had a Chris Thile (plus Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers) day, two days of Paul Simon +/- Art Garfunkel, a day of the Replacements and today was Jack White (White Stripes and the Raconteurs).

I haven't finished the Jack White playlist yet. I could've done more, but there was big networking fun through much of the day today, so I was largely away from my desk. There's been talk in the forums I frequent about the movie It Might Get Loud, which is about Jimmy Page, the Edge, Jack White and the Cult of the Guitar. Listening today, it struck me that Jack and Jimmy have styles that are very similar, and that much of the WS/Raconteurs work wouldn't have sounded too out of place on an early Led Zep album.

Maybe more later.

On the ability to count to 3

On the Tele Discussion Page Reissue (TDPRI), there's a tread called "Post your three no-brainer tips you've learned here". This is my contribution:

1. You can do it. Learn a technique. Mod your guitar. Build the thing from timber and finish it. Wind the pickups. I haven't done much -- I've modded every superficial thing on my #1, leaving only the fundamentals like electronics, nut and fretwork left for me -- but for any given thing I want to try, I know that a) I can do it and b) someone on TDPRI will tell me how.
2. For hot country guitar, you need a compressor, a clean amp and rubber-band strings. And, of course, a Tele. Unless you want to do it some other way.
3. The most expensive guitar/amp/pedal/cable isn't necessarily the best sounding guitar/amp/pedal/cable. Specifically, the SX guitars from Rondo are perfectly good guitars that make great mod platforms and are even pretty good guitars out of the box.
4. The Parsons White isn't the only way to have a B-Bender. And you don't necessarily need to bend the B.

OK. Clearly, I have lost the ability to count to four. But that's my take. What 3 (or more, or less even) no-brainer tips do you have?

John 5: The SansDirection Interview

Well, not really. This is from the previously-blogged workshop at Sweetwater. But the clip does start with my question, which was "Can you tell us about your Tele collection".

I don't know that I knew about strumming above the nut before the workshop.

And no, he didn't just talk. He played a bit.



On Monday, Sept 14, Victor Wooten will be having a workshop in the same venue, which is just fantastic.

...Bears the Devil's Flower

This is my entry in the Eastwood Guitars contest, trying to win one of their Airline remakes. I did it with my cellphone because I didn't want to plug the camera into my netbook. The top prize is one like Jack White plays in the White Stripes, except I know he plays an original. All you have to do is video yourself playing the "Seven Nation Army" riff.

Well, there's slightly more than that. Check with them.

I did it on my baritone, which is tuned BEADF#B right now, and I just love that growl. Don't you?

How To Not Suck, Chapter 20: Tune Your Ears

I busted a string on Sunday, and proceeded to do the fastest string change on an acoustic that I've ever done. I had clippers, capo and strings, but what I did not have was a portable tuner. The only one I had along was integrated into my multi-effects unit.

Tuning a guitar to itself is doable. Fifth fret to the next string's open. Fifth fret harmonic to the next string's seventh fret harmonics. 12th fret to the next string's seventh fret. Counting the beats and all. All that is a good to practice, to work on, to know. Magic boxes are good to have, because pitch pipes are horrible for tuning to, but you should still know how to tune your guitar to itself.

But that's one thing. The trick, the thing to learn, is a way to remember what a concert-pitch. And I thought I had that trick. "The Theme to Peter Gunn". One of the first things I ever learned on guitar. I get that riff going, and it sounds right, I thought, then I know I have the low E right. I honestly thought I had it.

Until I got back to the tuner.

I had it tuned to C. Not E. 4 half-steps flat.

Back to the drawing board.