duh?

It wouldn't even be hard to play it acoustic, where there are actually notes, it would just be pointless

Yeah let me just play this on acoustic:

Why would it be pointless? Any song can be stripped down to its chord or root notes with vocal applied. What's stopping you?

I just youtubed some Pere Ubu and these songs are very rhythmic. Very much inclined for an acoustic guitar which is a kind of a rhythmic instrument.

lol so you think

common sense?

Drums are tuned. If you mash down on all the notes on a keyboard - a note is formed. Even a badly played guitar chord has a scale that it falls in to.

Are you being serious?

Don't blame your inability around a musical instrument stop you from thinking that any song could not be played around a campfire.

Unless we're talking about abstract noise or something which you're not.

It's not a question of whether it can be done like I said

It's a question of why the fuck would you

I'd like to find a song to cover and do it as well as this guy did with his choice:

You could transcribe the two synth notes in this song and do an acoustic song of it. It might be boring if you're not a great guitar player, but it could be done. Many amazing folk songs only feature two chords.

This is where being a proficient or knowledgeable guitar player comes in to play. You can transcribe individual notes or melodies into chord progressions. If you're any good.

i remember randomly watching an unplugged lorraine hill (i think...?) concert on mtv, a few years back. i'm not into her music but it really inspired me because she basically did her rap numbers with only an acoustic guitar (and perhaps very sparse other instrumentation).
half chording, half tapping on the body or on the strings to create a rhythmic effect. i would never think doing rap with a classical guitar could work so well but it did.

re: this discussion, it really is possible to fill an entire room with lush arrangements using only one acoustic guitar. it's all a matter of how good a songwriter/musician you are.
that's not to shit on shoegaze or rock or any electric genre, as i wholeheartedly love those as well, but something about the craftsmanship and minimalist approach that's required to really get the most of just a voice and an acoustic guitar is extremely compelling for me.

Again, yes it could be done. But it would be ridiculous. Do you not see the comedy here

I'm getting trolled

lol yes


the opening chords sound a lot like Have You Forgotten by Red House Painters



Kozelek is another example of someone who can bring the most supremely powerful music with just his voice and a trusty guitar

For my money Funk is the best thing you can play on guitar

Unless you're like RHCP and don't have a cool bone in your entire body

*plays James Brown*

lol

I've been into actual good white guy funk since I really got into music. It's all I play really between just dissonance

*plays Gang of Four*

*Enjoys Elphenor's rendition of a Gang of Four song*

Not bad, bro.

The intro solo to this is what I'm trying to learn RIGHT NOW

http://youtu.be/ZCDAudHaaQw

I'm on mobile so embed would be a pain in the ass

I worship D. Boon as a guitar player and usually you don't do that in punk

It's fun you can play GoF songs and Minutemen songs with the same guitar setting, it's all clean treble cut out the mid and lows no distortion

It also helps to be an old souled storyteller with a voice that resonates like a wisened owl.

Listening to people play at an open mic and feeling like shit cuz they're all better than me. Dude was double-tapping and shit. They are all good singers, too.

Some guy is doing an acoustic version of Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' right now, so that makes me feel better, though.

Hey guys what's a good pedal to sound like you have self esteem

Compressor. makes you loud at any volume!

Never had a use for a compressor before, but I have this one fuzz pedal that I can't use quietly. As soon as I engage it, the volume goes insane and everything is picked up (sometimes even get radio stations), and the only way to get it to a volume acceptable for apartment playing is to turn it so low that I'm not even getting much fuzz anymore. Or, I can turn the guitar and amp volume so low that the bypass signal in inaudible, and I only even get sound if the pedal is engaged. Which sucks if I want to alternate between distorted and clean.

I guess a compressor would help even that out.

nope, that'll be a disaster.

it'll make everything even noisier and squish your sound to death.
sounds like a shitty pedal, but if there's no other way around it i'd suggest a volume pedal or something like that to use exclusively with that fuzz pedal (after it in the chain, of course)

Man I prefer amp distortion always. I've never played a fuzz or distortion pedal that sounded nearly as good.

Disco King, maybe take a look at the EQ on your amp and/or the EQ knob on your guitar. Some fuzz pedals just can't handle certain frequencies and will go batshit with them.

For distortion right now I use an A/B/Y and two amps: a solid-state fender ultrachorus from like 1994 (has great, predictable and really saturated 90s style gain channel) and a tube peavey ultra plus, which has two gain channels. The combo between the predictable/consistent solid state distortion and the more wild, fruity, musical tube distortion (plus the ability to mix them and throw more on during a bridge or whatever) is perfect and I don't have to waste space on my pedal board with a distortion box.

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

Kind of sucks, the demos sounded pretty sick and I loved the oscillation in the fuzz, but the thing is borderline unusable for me. I've got another fuzz from the same company, and that one is usable and I like it a lot (even tho there's still more of a volume jump than the cheap Joyo fuzz I have, which is easy to use and has never given me trouble despite being less than $40).

I'm wondering if it's just a low-quality company (it's a boutique company that sells things in the price range of big-brand pedals, so maybe it was always just too good to be true), or if I maybe got a defective one. Perhaps I'll email the company about that. I probably should had done that right away, but I have this weird thing where I always feel bad when I let someone know I'm dissatisfied with their product, almost as if them even selling it to me was a favour to me (even though it wasn't because I, you know, gave them money...)

I feel even weirder about telling them about the problem now because I recently just sent the fuzz in to repair the knobs I fucked up, and didn't mention anything about the volume.

I'll try playing with the EQ. Thanks. Also thought of shielding my guitar to deal with the radio-station business that sometimes happens. I heard that sometimes noise problems aren't due to the pedal, and that even good pedals will amplify the interference your guitar is picking up (though I'm sure in this case, the pedal is a problem, addressing the guitar wouldn't be a bad idea in general).

I've never had an amp where the built-in distortion suited my needs, but I've never invested in a great amp (my only non-practice amp is from this cheap Chinese company nobody's heard of).

I never know what I want from the EQ. I fiddle with the knobs and go, "that sounds nice; oh, that sounds nice, too."

I think to make things simpler, a lot of the time I'll try to evoke the guitar tone used on a track I like. I won't try to nail it perfectly, because that's impossible. It's just kind of a direction to get me started. I wouldn't want an exact mimicry, anyway.

I think a lot of people get caught up in getting a tone in their heads, and trying to find the gear and settings that'll nail it for them. For me, that's the wrong way. You don't make your setup to try to force a particular tone out of it. The peculiarities of what your setup is capable of is your tone. Like, it'd be pointless for somebody to make it their life's mission to find out how to sound exactly like Siamese Dream or something. It'd be pretty hard to find a cheap used Butch Vig on eBay anyway.

I gotta buy myself an acoustic again sometime. I keep on checking Craigslist, but there's never a seller near enough to me, and I don't wanna buy a new one. I haven't attempted to write an acoustic song for a while, and I find that whatever instrument I'm playing affects the songwriting process, so it doesn't feel the same trying to write what I eventually want to be an acoustic song on an unplugged electric.

Are you using the pedal with batteries or is it plugged into the wall ? I've found some noisy pedals will act up if you're plugging in. Dodgy wiring in the house or your power block isn't quite clean enough or whatever.

And a lot of pedals just don't work at bedroom levels, they're meant to sound big and loud and crazy. I have a 9oS Funeral Party (boutique at big brand prices too..) and it's a heavy duty fuzz, using it at home would be like using nuclear bombs at a playground fight.

Just picked up an Ampeg PF500 head and a Fender Rumble 115 cab for my bass rig. Sounds good.

You could try stacking different gain pedals on top of your amp's gain. I find either just amp or pedal gain unfulfilling on their own. Amp gain is often more pleasing due to the natural inconsistencies of tube breakup - but when running pedals through it, then their distortion gets the same treatment.

Getting a great tone involves stacking qualities. No one pedal or amp delivers a complete result, imo. The amp used can make a very big difference in the final sound.

I'm partly guessing here, but I think that would be a relatively easy tone to generally match. 4-layers of Big Muff into a clean JCM 800. Mix in an additional 2 layers of open chords during bar-chord sections, and EQ them in subtly. Stereo pan all layers. EQ eveything for brighter top end, and ******* some subtle harmonizer plugin treatment. Use a Micro Synth pedal for lead tones, with a boost pedal of choice.

^ The above was what I wrote ahead of thinking of the Catherine connection to the SD sound, and googled this retrospective blog post.


I struggled with getting satisfactory amp sounds for a long time, but I've finally worked out how to get the sounds I like. A lot of it has to do with starting with the right amp, which is going to fundamentally shape what distortion sound you'll get, with or without pedals. But every item in your chain matters, and the order they're placed in matters. And it's all about stacking particular qualities in the order that sounds best.

If you have a small variety of equipment, you can try all different organizations of it, and you should mentally note what qualities you like most, and what brings them out. That awareness will translate to other equipment that you use. And if you can't find anything you like with your current equipment, get different equipment, and start with something you know can contribute to get you where you'd like. A little research and verification through watching youtube demonstrations can result in more satisfactory equipment acquisitions and playing experiences. And don't expect just any equipment to lead to greatness - but create a meaningful context of everything, together, achieved by knowing what qualities you're working with.

Don't stick with gear that doesn't satisfy you - that's defeating of the point of enjoying playing music, and it's a waste of time. Learn what you can from what you have, then make a decision on your gear knowing that tones you like exist to be had, but depend on having gear that can produce their sounds.

Learn to EQ an amp by ear for different sounds. Sounds you create give off very different impressions depending on what other sounds they're put together with. A sound you love on its own might not do a mix or live band any favours, and a sound should be customized for its application. Want a more spread sound? Try scooping the mids. Want to remove fizziness? Tone down the treble, and maybe even even boost the mids. Increasing the bass fills out the overall sound, and makes everything sound bigger, but let it fill up the other parts of the desired sound, and not mask them.

How you play the guitar matters as well. Confident playing sounds better than someone just going through playing some chords. All the minute details of how a guitar is played are expressed in the output sound, and a person who's controlling their playing inflection to compliment what they're playing sounds different than someone who thinks that what they're playing is just chords.