Elph are you talking Pet Sounds or radio beach boys? If the latter I can forgive. If the former, you need to try it on headphones with some bong hoots. The experience will thoroughly destroy your mind/soul then remake them for the better, I promise

Research Brian Wilson. I recommend the book "Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson".

Brian was a wizard at using found and natural sounds as parts of his compositions (running water, dishes clanging, fire crackling, people chewing, things like that).

I used to feel the same way as you but it wasn't until earlier this year that it finally hit me. This song was my entry point.



Guy was pretty messed up. It might help if you start with the songs he wrote the lyrics to. Lots of heartbreak and longing and all the good stuff that makes for good music, as opposed to "songs about surfing and cars"

soniclovenoize would have much, much more to say on the subject.

I tried listening to Pet Sounds and didn't get it sorry man

If you can find a way to separate Brain from the rest of the Boys (which happened within the group) you will be much better off.

Brian Wilson > Beach Boys

Unfortunately he lyrically contributed less and less to every album although Pet Sounds and Smile (Smiley Smile) were his megaliths.

Maybe there's hope for me

Idk I won't give up on them yet

For the record I don't revisit it everyday but it's at least worth listening to once or twice with an informed ear.

Not trying to sound like a dick, but someone who is obsessed with post-punk will most likely not "get" The Beach Boys.



Just listen to this. Listen to the lyrics. Then go back and listen to the chord sequence. Then go back and listen to it as a whole, as a production.

If you don't get it, don't bother.

A lot of their music has a dark undercurrent to it. Probably has to do with their backstory too. Surf's Up the album rules.

Starting to learn the importance of an engineer. I went through about 20 takes of a certain song and the only thing I could think was "man I wish the vocals were up a bit higher". Find the ones with the best sounding vocals and I think "eh this performance isn't as good as the others". I should have checked these things in between takes instead of just constantly recording until I got a performance I was happy with.

Or like a certain instrumental in 7 takes the best performance has a couple spots were another part could be a tad higher in volume but the others with the best "mixing sound" have booted performances where I completely mess up the ending or something.

I do everything live in real time so it's not like I can go back into a DAW and click a button. I also write and make revisions while recording so take 1 of a song is usually not as evolved as what the final take will be, whether its specific sequences or lyrics or whatever.

I know it happens to everybody but does anybody else have anything to share regarding compromising when choosing takes of your own material? Something other than "choose the one with the best feels, man".

Maybe I should just start to take the time to listen to every playback between performances, or maybe listen to the day's performances as a whole instead of just recording a whole bunch of stuff and then a couple of months later go back through all the audio takes.

I dunno, rambling here.

Are you not multi-tracking? Are you recording live to like a 2-track stereo channel?

For basic tracks, I always prefer the spontaneity of first or second takes. Anything above four is over-thinking it; walk away from it and rehearse it more. Overdubs, same rules apply but sometimes it takes a few passes to get the right feel. But even then, after many takes, I just walk away and try again from scratch the next day and often nail it right away.

I comp vocals like crazy now though.

No I don't multi-track. Everything is recorded live to a stereo channel. I tend to over-record because when the recorder isn't on I'll often play something I wish was recorded.

I agree about over-thinking it though. Even if I do 20 takes of something more than likely I'll be choosing something in the first 4. What I do (instrumentally) leaves a lot of room for experimentation though, so I like to play around with the recorder running. Sometimes a simple take on the first pass will evolve into something more complex over the course of a day or a month.

You are mixing looped/FX guitars and vocals, right? If so, I would recommend investing in at least a 4-channel interface, so you at least have the option to drop out a vocal flub over an otherwise good take of your guitar loops. Then you can also take elements of different takes and combine them, Frank Zappa's ideas of xenochrony.

Also, a few years ago I got into Can and I really liked the idea of taking epic, long jams and just editing out the best sections of one long piece and stringing them together as the final 'song'. You could try that, hard edits between different takes... Or maybe a crossfade of the different takes if there's some mixing differences?

I'm playing in a newish project called FM Bells that has evolved into a sort of electro-jazz sort of thing. I can't remember if I've talked about that here, but we've been jamming with an electronic producer who makes live beats and sonic manipulations, with us playing live bass, guitar and saxophone. It's pretty cool, I've never done anything like it. But what's happening is everything is devolving into a droney 20 minute jam. I think it's great, and am pushing to do the Can thing of taking those jams and editing the best pieces and making it a six minute thing, idk. All four of us have a different idea of how to proceed and take these hours upon hours of just jamming and make it something feasible an audience might want to hear...

Here it is if anyone is curious. https://soundcloud.com/soniclovenoiz...c-of-capricorn

The material with vocals is something different than my normal guitar instrumentals. I was just using it as an example. I do a small amount of editing within a track, like you mentioned editing down a super long jam into a more defined piece, but the nature of what I do doesn't allow me to cobble different takes together, unless it's a distinctly different movement.

Idk. Thanks for the replies.

Finally got my noise gate to work how I want it to. At first I was stupidly putting it at the end of my chain before, because I was like "that way, it'll cut the noise introduced by all my other pedals," but when I did that, if I put the threshold high enough to cut out the noise when my first pedals were on, if I wanted to switch to clean playing, it's be inaudible because the clean signal was lower than the threshold, and I couldn't turn it up without making the noise louder and having to set the threshold up again.

I then realized that most of my noise is coming from the guitar, and is only being amplified by the pedals, so the gate is now in front of the chain, and it's working very well for me. Like, that feeling when there is total silence of maybe just a soft hum, but then you start playing evil fuzzed out bliss, but then you stop playing, and there's silence again. It just feels crisp and right. The worst thing is when you have a modulation pedal on, like a phaser or flanger, and you can hear it phasing through the buzz when you're not playing. I mean, I feel like that could be used for some cool effect, but it's annoying when you don't want any of it.

My problem now, though, is that there seems to be a tradeoff between cutting noise and having crazy long sustain, because as soon as the guitar signal goes below the threshold, it gets cut off with the noise. What do I do if I want both a lack of noise and some good sustain?

I'm guessing the only things I'll be able to do are (1) shield my guitar so that I don't need a noise gate or can set the gate threshold lower, and/or (2), get a compression pedal and set it before the gate, but set it just right so that the threshold is just above the gate's threshold, so that it sustains the guitar signal without boosting the noise.

Are there any other options that don't require buying more shit or doing anything that takes effort though?

Although sometimes I like doing this cool thing where I let a note or chord sustain and wait for it to fade back into the noise and pretend to be a rockstar in my room

Seems a bit goofy to be using a noise gate for playing at bedroom volume. Are you sure you just don't have a ground hum?

lol how is it goofy

the second you turn on a fuzz pedal you're going to have shitloads of noise every time you're not playing, wether you're playing with earphones or to a crowd of 10,000 people

why would you have your fuzz pedal switched on when you're not playing through it?

i mean, these foot switches were created for a reason. they can be turned on and off with ease.

if you're just standing there, resting for 14 bars, turn the goddam thing off or roll down your volume, something. or if you're recording, fade down the parts where you're not actually playing anything.

don't tell me what to do!

current chain: guitar < envelope filter < noise gate < octave < noise gate < fuzz < noise gate < phase < noise gate < delay < noise gate < reverb < noise gate < amp

i leave all effects on all the time and only control the noise gates.

this actually brings a tear of joy to my eye.

lol slunken you're like being a smartass when it's you who's assuming that by 'not playing' we mean 'resting for 14 bars with fuzz pedal on'

how about riffs that stop and start, or when you solo and you want and pause your playing every so often, and not be concerned that every time you mute the strings you'll have a bunch of modulated static. noise gates are your friends

some of us are still using single coil pickups that buzz like hell even with everything turned off

man, this fucking sucks and brings a tear of sadness to my eye.

truly

literally

Anybody have tips on pinch harmonics? Like, doing them is easy, the hard part is mixing them in with regular picking so that you can regular-pick and pinch the notes you want with precision (like, getting that one squealy note in a riff, or, even harder, in a solo). I can't really move the pick in my hand to the pinch grip in the middle of playing, I can only do squealies if I'm holding the pick that way the whole way through.

I've read some people say that your fingers should always be really close to the tip of the pick anyway so that you can do squealies with your regular pick grip, but I find that holding the pick that way makes my knuckles have way too much contact with the strings, and I'm more likely to hit strings I don't want to or get snagged and slow down.

I've probably been holding my pick wrong this whole time. I tend to hold it between my thumb and index finger pads. I just found out recently that you should hold it on the side of your index finger rather than on the pad. Making this change hasn't been too difficult for me, and it still feels natural. But, the thing about letting very little of the pick peek through, I find that troublesome because it leads to the aforementioned problems.

>What are rests

Is the idea of wanting to cut out unnecessary noise really foreign or something? I thought noise gates were used is more than just the genre of music I play, but it's not very often that I get out of my little bubble of electric neo-Joik/Yuefu-house fusion.

actually i experimented with noise gates back in the day and you can do really cool shit with it.

i fed a synth to the sidechain function of a noise gate plugin, and created loops with the patterns i wanted. you can control the length of each note, have it 'perform' patterns and the noise gate responds accordingly. i reckon that to use that in a song you would need to apply a good measure of good taste, as things could quickly plunge to cheap trance rave party territory (only with guitar) but it's cool shit.

this song features a pretty cool example of such noise gate usage around 2/3 through.

Porcupine tree ew

It's not "a little noise" that I'm cutting out, it's noise that can be almost at the level of the actual playing. It sounds like shit. It's gone now. Why is that so scandalous.

No, I can't just turn up the amp, because then the noise goes up with it. Also, I live in an apartment.

Just because I like things to sound a little less like shit doesn't mean I listen to prog metal. In fact, it kind of implies the opposite.

And the Phrygian mode is pretty cool. I put that shit over everything.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mckjgcUfdq1qzs9xb.jpg

What wah pedal do I get

Is that what they call it

Wah wicky Wah whicky Wah wicky Wah

That one.

I need to sound the least like RATM tho good god no

There isn't bad noise if I play clean. It's the noise from the guitar amplified by the pedals that does it. Sometimes even get radio stations. I probably just need to shield the guitar.

I don't have a wah, but Dunlop Crybaby and Box Wah are the most popular. I'm looking to get a mini Crybaby to save space.

I used to have a Boss wah that had presets to sound like other models, but I wasn't a big fan of it (no spring, and it weirdly came with built-in distortion).

That's DigiTech Whammy.

How you make these pedals sound is in how you play them, though. You won't sound like RATM unless you take your shirt off and draw anarchist symbol on your chest.

I got the Dunlop Hendrix Wah, it kicks ass for both leads and chords in my opinion, really versatile depending on where u put your gain, and as a bonus at its most extreme trebly position (all the way down) I can produce feedback at low volumes which I can then move around the fretboard in a pumpkinsy way...think the outro to porcelina for example