The Jam Room Blog Thread.

[Discö Rice]

Jibberish - We've passed the heart-to-heart phase. We've done that a few times.

You know what's funny? She's lightened up over the past few days. I set up an email account for us to use for bandcamp/soundcloud/whatever, gave her the password, and told her it doesn't have to be our official email, but I had to set something up to move forward. She seemed actually grateful, shockingly enough. Hopefully this trend continues.

[liquidsmoke]

Methy decongestants are awesome!

[Metal and Beer]

Methy decongestants are awesome!

Drugs save yet another show ! 

[liquidsmoke]

It helped but I still trainwrecked. If I knew the songs better I'd probably do okay going on sick at 1:40am. We had too many bands and there were other issues but I'm just not good enough for this game yet and need tons of improvement. I need to at least triple my practice hours per week and learn to play every part of every song with my eyes closed. I'm extremely disappointed with myself. There are too many mediocre musicians in bands and being a guitar player/singer I'm not going to allow myself to keep playing out unless I improve greatly.
edit: for me our set was a fucking nightmare.

[liquidsmoke]

I should add that the 2 bands that played before us fucking killed it. Vega from Milwaukee(2nd or 3rd show ever, sludgy/stoner super heavy) and Sardonyx(black/thrash?/Frost/???) from here in Madison.

[jibberish]

 "fucking nightmare". I totally humiliated myself a couple times early in the open mic thing. heh. now I can laugh. I made the same commitment. i'm going away for a couple years to get good enough to do it w/o the choke factor.  well I did that, and it did pay off.  also, I didn't die or anything so i'm not so scared of things heading south. 

[The Shocker]

Jibberish - We've passed the heart-to-heart phase. We've done that a few times.

You know what's funny? She's lightened up over the past few days. I set up an email account for us to use for bandcamp/soundcloud/whatever, gave her the password, and told her it doesn't have to be our official email, but I had to set something up to move forward. She seemed actually grateful, shockingly enough. Hopefully this trend continues.

Maybe she was on her period earlier?

[liquidsmoke]

"fucking nightmare". I totally humiliated myself a couple times early in the open mic thing. heh. now I can laugh. I made the same commitment. i'm going away for a couple years to get good enough to do it w/o the choke factor.  well I did that, and it did pay off.  also, I didn't die or anything so i'm not so scared of things heading south. 

It's good that payed off. We have another gig in a few weeks so I need to practice as much as possible before that.

Plenty of people told me we sounded good including a close friend of mine who is 100 times better than me at guitar so I'm not going to hang it up just yet.

Hopefully I'll never have to play sick again but if I do I'll be better and do better.

[eyeprod]

Getting close to finishing the demo of my latest project. Check it out if you like Pink Floyd, OM, Goat, and that sort of stuff.

http://cyanescens.bandcamp.com/album/demo-v-1

[Lumpy]

"fucking nightmare". I totally humiliated myself a couple times early in the open mic thing. heh. now I can laugh. I made the same commitment. i'm going away for a couple years to get good enough to do it w/o the choke factor.  well I did that, and it did pay off.  also, I didn't die or anything so i'm not so scared of things heading south. 

It's good that payed off. We have another gig in a few weeks so I need to practice as much as possible before that.

Plenty of people told me we sounded good including a close friend of mine who is 100 times better than me at guitar so I'm not going to hang it up just yet.

Hopefully I'll never have to play sick again but if I do I'll be better and do better.

[RacerX]

Practice today for the new project. The other guitarist & I are weaving electrics (clean & dirty), acoustics, & lap steel (all in different tunings) together and going for a lot of texture & variety.

[Danny G]

Finally got together with the sax player and went over Ocean of Stars music with him.

Went very well, he's enthusiastic and digs the tunes. Picked up even some of the weirder stuff quickly as well. And he has delay, distortion, flange and a wah pedal to run his horn thru. Awesome!

This could be pretty cool. Now just need bass and second guitar. Will be getting together with the drummer soon to refresh music with him, and will have another jam with sax player this week to make sure he's up to speed before getting all three of us in a room together.

#progress


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[mortlock]

Finally got together with the sax player and went over Ocean of Stars music with him.

Went very well, he's enthusiastic and digs the tunes. Picked up even some of the weirder stuff quickly as well. And he has delay, distortion, flange and a wah pedal to run his horn thru. Awesome!

This could be pretty cool. Now just need bass and second guitar. Will be getting together with the drummer soon to refresh music with him, and will have another jam with sax player this week to make sure he's up to speed before getting all three of us in a room together.

#progress


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i am soooo jealous over your sax player. id kill to have a dude like that. my old group NPV has been dead since my sax player quit. hang on to him, these guys are NOT a dime a dozen..

[jibberish]

so I took a hard look at fred bear by the nuge to figure out the music. there is nothing to figure out. mindless 3 chord wonder. I got right to practicing my modified lyrics timing while playing the rhythm part. I even picked up most of his little tweedle dees between verses..just notes off the 3 chords...my version is "friend beer"

chorus teaser:

friend beer, hammer me, down the hatch again
tip one back, back until it's gone
friend beer, i'm glad to have you by my side again
I won't see you when I pass out before too long...

[liquidsmoke]

Light bulb moment

I've always liked having low action on my guitars because it helps me pick and fret cleaner. I've had rather high action on my main guitar for awhile now and lowered it today. Sounds fine at low to medium volume and feels great but at practice/gig volume it COMPLETELY changes your tone. You get way more distortion because the strings are constantly clanging away at the frets. Most of you already know this I suspect. So high action is it. Once in awhile I need to wail away at high volume without ear protection just to check in on things. Also figured out the perfect settings on my pedal and the maximum volume I can have my amp set at before really weird shit starts happening.

[VOLVO)))]

A properly set up guitar with low action doesn't do that. Lower your pickup. That accounts for the extra output

[Metal and Beer]

^ Yup, adjust p/u to string to the previous distance then try..

[liquidsmoke]

Didn't even think about pup height. Will try that next. Damn I'm such an amateur.

[Jake]

Yeah – pickup height is a huge deal I've come to learn. Still haven't quite found the "sweet spot" on some guitars I've had for years.

(Partly due to changing string brands/guages, tunings, diff't amps, my own evolving playing style & tastes, laziness, etc.)

[Metal and Beer]

Yeah – pickup height is a huge deal I've come to learn. Still haven't quite found the "sweet spot" on some guitars I've had for years.

(Partly due to changing string brands/guages, tunings, diff't amps, my own evolving playing style & tastes, laziness, etc.)

^ Ditto. It took me years to figure that out, too. I think I shifted blame that whole time, haha

[jibberish]

heh, ya tip the PuP to one side to bring out or stuff the high end or the low end.  I also made my guitars sound like ass messing with pup heights. figured out real quickly, "closer isn't better"

------------------------------------------------------
my son was over to jam a bit. he brought his Taylor acoustic.  we were running all the guitars thru that greta 1 w amp.
I had my back to him and he WAS playing with the Ibanez. all of a sudden im hearing like a 12string. wtf? turn around and he had the acoustic plugged in. heh. damn was that awesome sounding clean through the greta. so I finger picked the outro to hotel CA really slow and nailed that measure ending high note hard each time. the tone. fuckin a. 

first real dose of what all you monkeys have known all along. THE TONE! heh
the taylor sounds like treetop flyer, that twangy bright metal string sound and with a flimsy pick wow. the pick makes so much of the sound on that taylor. so my son plays some of treetop flyer..heh ya.

Taylor+Greta=great match. the search always continues for more. the les paul is almost too heavy/sloppy/overpowering for the gretas. no correct words for how easy it is to get mud from the lp.  next up, ima snag a tele. I think that bright ringing sound will match up with greta. the shit Ibanez pups sound nice, just a little tinny, but nice

he also dug the idea of single mic'ing the drum kit. I told him I saw a pic of zeps studio setup with one mic, here on the boards. he has rode rd1 or wtf that big condenser is called. that will work well with its sensitivity and detail back from the kit a ways. mic'ing a drum kit is a royal pain, especially for casual shit.

I fucked up and didn't have record running. next time we will grab a sample.

[AgentofOblivion]

Finally got to put together the audio/video from a live gig.  Sound turned out surprisingly good actually.  Had one of those x-y two-mic Zoom recorders and blended in a little of the iPhone audio.  Switch it to the high quality stream for optimal results.

[RacerX]

Installed a strap button on the treble side of the neck where it joins the body of my resonator.

Very happy now. MUCH better balance & access than tying a strap on at the nut, plus less stress on the neck from the heavy body.

[Lumpy]

I have a Japanese Fender bass that needs the truss rod adjusted, but you have to remove the neck to access it. Nice bass but I'm ready to ditch it for something more user-friendly. The weather here is really dry in the winter, so I figure it needs a setup about twice a year. Just don't wanna deal with it. It's practically unplayable now (at least 5 dead spots on the G string) and the intonation is shit.

[liquidsmoke]

I have a Japanese Fender bass that needs the truss rod adjusted, but you have to remove the neck to access it.

What the hell? Weird.