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Old 03-12-2016, 01:58 PM   #271
redbreegull
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Hey girls and guys with acoustics

so I played this really, really, REALLY nice sounding Taylor, a 214CE I believe. It's like 900 bucks and the tone is so warm and gentle, yet it has perfect attack. Really balanced sounding, and projects almost like it's plugged in. Anyway, so then I figured out that it has a fucking laminate back. My old acoustic was solid wood and it was cheaper. The sales guy tried to convince me that the laminate backing actually is what makes the projection and attack so perfectly balanced but I am unconvinced. Conventional wisdom tells me no one should buy a 900 dollar guitar without a solid back. What do you d00dz think? Is this a legit concern or is the solid wood obsession a pretentious purists thing?

 
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Old 03-12-2016, 02:10 PM   #272
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Hey RBG are you any good at fingerpicking? I'm trying to learn the motor skills to do it fluidly. Any tips? I can do a 5-2-3 (thumb, middle, index) pretty well and am trying to learn 5-2-4-3 (thumb, middle, thumb, index), those numbers being the strings.

 
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Old 03-12-2016, 04:01 PM   #273
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I know nothing when it comes to guitar quality and sound. I just buy cheap used shit from Craigslist and as long as it isn't a suspicious $40 "First Act" or "Crescent" guitar, I'll take it.

 
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Old 03-12-2016, 04:35 PM   #274
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Punk Rock

 
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Old 03-12-2016, 04:48 PM   #275
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Originally Posted by crabshack View Post
Hey RBG are you any good at fingerpicking? I'm trying to learn the motor skills to do it fluidly. Any tips? I can do a 5-2-3 (thumb, middle, index) pretty well and am trying to learn 5-2-4-3 (thumb, middle, thumb, index), those numbers being the strings.
I do some fingerpicking but I'm probably not the best guy to ask for any sort of guitar advice cause I've learned everything kind of just over many years through my own trial and error and limited actual teaching or proper learning. I mostly just fingerpick with thumb and first two fingers which I know is not "correct" but it sounds fine. I think what you call 5-2-3 is how you pick Tonight, Tonight, which was my introduction to fingerpicking.

one of my biggest influences is Paul Simon, and his fingerpicking is all over the place. sometimes his picking pattern changes chord to chord and he works in tons of little melodies within the pattern. It becomes intuitive after awhile, but it's hard to explain how. I'm sorry I can't give better advice. Just learn a lot of fingerpicking songs, take them slow, and pay attention to how your different fingers perform different functions (your thumb kind of keeps a bass line in a lot of fingerpicking for example). If you're fairly new to fingerpicking, one song I might suggest is the original version of Landslide. The chords are very simple but the picking will give your hand a good work out. Your thumb will be very active and you'll get a good cramp there for sure. There's probably a name for different kinds of fingerpicking, but this song also is a good example of something I like a lot, which is that in each measure your fingers start on the outside (highest and lowest) strings and then work their way into the middle.

 
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Old 03-12-2016, 06:26 PM   #276
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It becomes intuitive after awhile, but it's hard to explain how.
(your thumb kind of keeps a bass line in a lot of fingerpicking for example).
Yea this is what everyone says. I'm anxious to be able to pull of hammer-ons and stuff like that within the patterns, like how you mentioned Paul Simon does. Dylan does that too. I just keep mindlessly practicing over chord changes while watching TV.

 
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Old 03-12-2016, 08:52 PM   #277
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yeah I'm sorry to just repeat the same dumb thing everyone else says, I know how frustrating that is. This might seem incredibly obvious but for some reason it wasn't to me for a long time: when you are practicing something you are having trouble with, isolate the exact thing you are getting tripped up on, and just do that thing over and over. Even if it's just one measure with a hammer on, just play that a fuck ton of times. Often a lot of players tend to hit a troublesome spot and jump back to the beginning of the verse or whatever, but I would break it into as small a piece as possible.

Hammer ons are about precision and strength and the only way to improve that is just to exercise your fingers by doing it over and over and over. When you start to get good at hammer ons, it kind of opens up this whole new economy of movement on the guitar because you can do much more with less work.

 
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Old 03-12-2016, 09:00 PM   #278
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I remember when I first started playing I thought solos were played with all these complex scales you'd have to memorize

But it's really simple patterns played with a lot of tricks like hammer on and vibrato

 
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Old 03-12-2016, 10:09 PM   #279
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I think the Catalinbread dude died.

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 12:10 AM   #280
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I don't really understand how to play electric guitar anymore at all. I just always feel like my tone is shit and not what I am trying for at all. I have some pedals and I'm playing a nice strat through a nice Peavey tube amp. I dunno. Just never sounds good to me. Thank god for acoustic guitars I guess



ewwww...Peavey?

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 12:13 AM   #281
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Originally Posted by redbreegull View Post
Hey girls and guys with acoustics

so I played this really, really, REALLY nice sounding Taylor, a 214CE I believe. It's like 900 bucks and the tone is so warm and gentle, yet it has perfect attack. Really balanced sounding, and projects almost like it's plugged in. Anyway, so then I figured out that it has a fucking laminate back. My old acoustic was solid wood and it was cheaper. The sales guy tried to convince me that the laminate backing actually is what makes the projection and attack so perfectly balanced but I am unconvinced. Conventional wisdom tells me no one should buy a 900 dollar guitar without a solid back. What do you d00dz think? Is this a legit concern or is the solid wood obsession a pretentious purists thing?


I would guess the Harmony-Central forums and/or reviews might clear that up a bit. Taylor is a solid brand, that's a good start. All concerns are legitimate at $900.

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 12:25 AM   #282
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My buddy Paul kinda messing around. He played in Act IV once with Analogue. I needed a soundcheck one day for this Q2HD handy-video recorder from Zcom. Very nice little recorder with an amazing mic. For open air recordings, nothing beats it for the price.




 
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Old 03-13-2016, 12:36 AM   #283
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I remember when I first started playing I thought solos were played with all these complex scales you'd have to memorize

But it's really simple patterns played with a lot of tricks like hammer on and vibrato
Well it depends on the solo and what scale you wanna use, I suppose. A large chunk of rock and pop solos are built off the minor pentatonic scale, so a lot of people just kinda learn those patterns. If you want to build solos off of other scales, I suppose you'd learn those ones.

It's hard for me to memorize scale shapes, and sometimes I'll have them all down only to forget them again after a while of not playing. I mostly just play in modes of the pentatonic and major scales, but I've been planning on branching out to modes of the harmonic minor (similar to the natural minor, but with a sharpened 7th... the parallel major would have a sharpened fifth in comparison to the regular major scale), and then some cool exotic scales. I like the sound of when I screw around in exotic scales, but I haven't committed any of them to memory because I don't want to confuse myself while I'm still trying to memorize the basics.

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I think the Catalinbread dude died.
That's awful. I've never tried any of their pedals because I always stick to cheap stuff but a lot of them look good.

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 01:22 AM   #284
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ewwww...Peavey?
Dogging Peavey is such an outdated tactic from the era of 'not fender or marshall' line of thinking.

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 01:24 AM   #285
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My buddy Paul kinda messing around. He played in Act IV once with Analogue. I needed a soundcheck one day for this Q2HD handy-video recorder from Zcom. Very nice little recorder with an amazing mic. For open air recordings, nothing beats it for the price.



*Breaks into the same lick every single time after every pause*

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 02:02 AM   #286
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DUDE...its a soundcheck. He'd been working on that riff at the time and since I was filming he wanted to flush it out in various modes. I posted it to emphasize this thing:



 
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Old 03-13-2016, 02:09 AM   #287
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ewwww...Peavey?

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 02:14 AM   #288
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Dogging Peavey is such an outdated tactic from the era of 'not fender or marshall' line of thinking.

It depends on what you're going for, but the proof is in the pudding. When they tried to expand their market share with a classic series a couple years back, they immediately dropped in price 30% within months. Nobody was going to buy a Peavey for 2 grand when you could get any number of much better amps for that price.

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 02:17 AM   #289
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Peavey has been favored by country musicians since the 70s. It might not be steroid rock but it's pretty stupid to dismiss the line.

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 02:20 AM   #290
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It depends on what you're going for, but the proof is in the pudding. When they tried to expand their market share with a classic series a couple years back, they immediately dropped in price 30% within months. Nobody was going to buy a Peavey for 2 grand when you could get any number of much better amps for that price.
Good for any brand not bending to contemporary "standards"

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 03:51 AM   #291
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yeah I play a lot of classic rock/country/folk type stuff so I thought the Peavey would be good. It's kind of brash sounding though and I have a lot of trouble getting it to cut through in a full band setting. I think I will sell it eventually and pick up a small Fender or something, there's just no reason I need a huge heavy amp anymore. I took it to my friend's apartment and almost died trying to get it through the lobby to the elevator

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 09:11 AM   #292
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Well it depends on the solo and what scale you wanna use, I suppose. A large chunk of rock and pop solos are built off the minor pentatonic scale, so a lot of people just kinda learn those patterns. If you want to build solos off of other scales, I suppose you'd learn those ones.

It's hard for me to memorize scale shapes, and sometimes I'll have them all down only to forget them again after a while of not playing. I mostly just play in modes of the pentatonic and major scales, but I've been planning on branching out to modes of the harmonic minor (similar to the natural minor, but with a sharpened 7th... the parallel major would have a sharpened fifth in comparison to the regular major scale), and then some cool exotic scales. I like the sound of when I screw around in exotic scales, but I haven't committed any of them to memory because I don't want to confuse myself while I'm still trying to memorize the basics.
Well I mean I figured you'd have to switch between a bunch of scales or something when really most of the time you don't, and even an exotic scale pattern isn't that difficult to memorize it's more about learning what to do within that scale

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 09:14 AM   #293
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I remember I learned the most prominent scale for Flamenco but it would take years to learn to play it properly, just knowing the notes isn't what makes it sound good

 
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Old 03-13-2016, 04:27 PM   #294
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That's awful. I've never tried any of their pedals because I always stick to cheap stuff but a lot of them look good.
I believe we had already discussed this some years ago, but I do have the Semaphore and have always enjoyed it. Even without dialing in a tremelo effect, I've liked having it somewhere along the chain for a boost and to push through a sort of clarity when it's been preceded by a bunch of other pedals that have taken little chips out of the tone.

It was originally purchased almost purely for a love of the following song, though I'm actually not aware of whether the band used that specific pedal.


 
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Old 03-22-2016, 01:48 PM   #295
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Ooops I seemed to have gotten a new toy today.


 
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Old 03-22-2016, 08:24 PM   #296
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looks p cool!

 
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Old 03-25-2016, 09:08 AM   #297
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We're a jeans band, dammit!

 
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Old 03-25-2016, 03:12 PM   #298
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those amps are too science for my tastes

 
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Old 03-25-2016, 03:28 PM   #299
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I know nothing when it comes to guitar quality and sound. I just buy cheap used shit from Craigslist and as long as it isn't a suspicious $40 "First Act" or "Crescent" guitar, I'll take it.
The reliable tone-building components in Billy's setups are EQ, compression, and boost / overdrive into an amp's own clean or high-gain sound.



I think that Billy's basic MCIS sound is this:

For cleans:

EQ -> maybe added clean boost pedal -> mild compression and additional boost from 3630 compressor -> clean channel JMP-1 -> (effects loop) sometimes with a quiet delay effect -> Strategy 500.

Billy's clean tones throughout SP don't come without using an EQ to finely raise or lower particular aspects of the whole sound. Amp EQ settings are usually pretty blunt, and I would use an amp's EQ to get generally as close to a decent sound as they can, and then really carve a good tone out using an EQ pedal or rack unit, starting with the high frequencies, and working towards the low end, moving each next slider to its max and min range, to hear what aspect that slider is contributing to the sound, and then finding its optimal placement.

There also could be an additional clean boost pedal after the EQ and before the Alesis 3630.



For distortion:

EQ -> MXR Distortion II -> mild compression and boost from Alesis 3630 compressor -> JMP-1 -> Strategy 500

The compression could also come before the DII, not sure.

I'm guessing on the MXR Distortion II, but that pedal has a distinct sound to it, and that's what it sounds to me is being used on MCIS, being run into high-gain from the JMP-1's distortion channels - and billy did use one on Siamese Dream for at least leads. I think the MXR Distortion II might almost be to MCIS what the Big Muff is to Siamese Dream.



Bullet With Butterfly Wings:
https://youtu.be/8-r-V0uK4u0
The intro riff sounds distinctly like an MXR Distortion II to me, for a guess I'd say possibly going EQ -> MXR Distortion II -> Alesis 3630 -> clean 2 channel of the JMP-1



MCIS demo Millieu:
https://youtu.be/Kyk8c0ybHgc

This sound is 2nd pickup selector placement on a Blue/Silver/Red Lace Sensor strat, going into EQ, into Alesis 3630 for boost and mild compression, into the second of the clean channels on the JMP-1. Having an EQ in the effects chain is essential to get this sound, rather than something that is murky, muffled, and dull by comparison.


Mild compression is important for Billy's plucky clean guitar sounds. Having no compression at all is often just unpleasant, making the apex of guitar notes thin, and makes string bends sort of whiny-sounding during high-gain leads. Though adding too much compression flattens the signal too much and takes away all the pristine chime-iness.

Some pedals, like the BOSS CS-3 squash the sound too much to get that kind of well-defined tone - though Billy has used a CS-3 compressor, it generally is an overly-squashy, loud noise compressor.

It sounds to me like the BOSS CS-3 is being used on the lead guitar in this MCIS night-time version demo from the 2012 MCIS reissue:
https://youtu.be/hp6NIjg7Kjg

I would not recommend a BOSS CS-3 for general compression needs, due to its excessive tone-squashing, and high noise level.

Last edited by he/she/it : 03-25-2016 at 10:44 PM.

 
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Old 03-25-2016, 10:22 PM   #300
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this is great


 
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