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The songs called Complete. I got a strat. Well… I made a strat. Can ya tell? This clip is like a conglomeration of every strat tone I’ve ever admired on record – from Trower to SRV to Gilmoure…

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The guitar’s electronics and pickups came from a US Highway 1 strat. It has a standard 6 screw Fender bridge. And a Warmoth conversion neck that is actually Les Paul scale – 24 3/4 in length vs the usual strat length of 25 1/2.

HOT GLASS!!

mark and i had a great time lighting up the tubes on an array of amps – the usual suspects – my cascaded marshall super lead – my bassman (a newcomer @ mark’s) – the budda – and my early 70’s super lead spec slaved into mark’s plexi reissue with a metroamp ptp board in it and last but not least (or anywhere near it) mark’s hiwatt.

this tune is a big production number – with thunder and sound effects – grand piano – acoustic guitars – crunching marshalls – a hip hop drum loop – and an orchestral climax.

here’s a clip of the mix so far – we’re not done tweaking but it’s pretty darn close.

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enjoy!!

y’all think i’m asleep at the switch over here – but i revamped the layout of the web site, added categories that allow the posts to be grouped by song, missed the bus, drove to school, bought the toy truck loader with a bucket that doesn’t frustrate, purchased the much needed toilet paper, made the afternoon school bus drop off, raked the yard, answered a work email even though i’m on a vacation day, bottle, book, nap (not me silly – jack), loaded the kids and cameras for the game, weathered the rain, ditched the game too much rain, went to ice cream instead, watched the CARS movie with the kids again, bottle more books night night, and lastly but not leastly recorded this song:

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GOOD NIGHT NOW SLEEP!!

ok – i’m starting to groove on this little tune.

this version is just a little tighter and i’m starting to hone in on something. i just love this with the vocals cranked up through the ceiling. it almost starts to turn into FILTER at verse 2 – i love that FILTER tune – don’t even know the title right now.

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funny how when verse 2 comes in and it says “DON’T WORRY…” again, i don’t mind it – a lot of times i just copy verse 1 into the verse 2 spot to see how the song feels going into another verse. later i change the lyrics if all else is in order and i haven’t been overtaken by another idea before i get the chance to get back and finish – finishing is not always my strong suit.

with verse 2 working the way it is, i might have a really weird lyric approach on this where the only thing that changes is the PRE CHORUS…

we’ll see… you’ll see…

don’t worry… i’m still here! been working on a new tune and catching up on some much needed rest. so i haven’t had my usual work til 1am and then blog it up. but here we have some fruits in the form of a new tune that’s brewing – Up the Dose!

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pretty rough – it’ll change – but such is the process – welcome to the O.R.!! most of the procedures performed here are of the MEATBALL nature.

meanwhile back at the SCHENKER ranch… we are trying the 4 trillionth version of the snare drum for WHEELS. the song sounds superb thanks to mark’s expertise and patience while we weed through many a tone looking for just that certain something and no matter how tedious it gets all mark says is, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing on 10!” so… bless him!

WHEELS is due to be released sometime before 2012 … so we’re FINE!!

-r out.

WHEELS has the dubious distinction of being posted in various and sundry forms of completeness here within the bowels of the blog and elsewhere on the ReverbNation widget on the home page of this site and on Away-Team.com and elsewhere Away-Team MySpace and GALPIN MySpace. Craig took the widget and turned it into what sounds like GALPIN RADIO – all GALPIN – all the time… It’s cool there are little ads for my music and bumpers in between the songs. If you haven’t heard it, check it out – it’s a cool piece of work.

now where am i and why?

haven’t the foggiest and not a thing to wear there…

here’s a clip of WHEELS with the guitars actually running through actual real live fire breathing amps at ear splitting volume because you’ve got to move some air if you want the good stuff. the mix isn’t finished but the guitars are – mark is working on the drums as we speak – er – write – er – read as the case may be.

CLIP!!

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AMPS:

– Marshall 100W Super Lead circa 1974 on the left
 
 

– Budda on the right – I don’t know the model number on that – it’s a combo – purple… with knobs… lots of knobs… when you turn them up they can hurt you – you know the one.
 
 

– Marshall JCM800 50W for the lead at the beginning – this is with our first settings – we changed the settings on this amp and actually tried two other cabinets and amps as we went from solo to solo finding the subtle differences that helped each solo sit in the mix – the middle solo is actually done on the 355 style guitar and you can hear that sturdy creaminess and roundness to the tone on that solo. All the solos ended up being run through the 1×12 with the Weber Pre-rola treatment that I dig so much.

i think that’s plenty for now – next up… SLEEPNESS.

-r

the solos for WHEELS were done using a Marshall JCM800 – an early 80’s model. i believe this is before they added diodes and some other stuff that changed the tone – for better or worse… DISCUSS!!

check out an audio clip…

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we were going after the cleanest sound we could get but still maintain the sustain and power. we tried a lot of different things but this setup delivered better than anything else we tried. i had to really erase all my preconceptions about settings and think about what i was hearing from the amp. we ended up with the master vol on 7 and the pre amp vol on about 1.5. higher pre amp settings actually were producing thinner tones – more gain – but thinner tones that didn’t sit well in the mix.

then we added eventide in post. we’ve added it in subtle amounts to a couple previous solos but this time we made a conscious decision to really lay it on blatantly.

we tried preset 231 [micropitch shift...] which is what we used previously – but i had had great tones playing in a two amp setup using preset 102. so we tried that and decided it was superior in this application.

more to come on this mix… but for now – i gotta rest up for tomorrow’s game – it takes a lot of energy to watch football with your head in your hands wondering why – why did the COLTS have to move to Indianapolis? Johnny U and Tom Matte forever!!

Wheels: Guitars @ Mark’s 9/29/09

In the mix, the left side guitar is a homebrew strat through a SL pushing a 4×12 cab of Weber Pre-Rola clones.

The right side guitar is an Ibanez 335 style – into a Budda.

the left side, SL is the main guitar – agressive and dominant – the budda’s job is to add something from this millenium to balance old JIMI on the left. somehow my SL got the nickname JIMI along the way – and a strict set of rules. stuff like never EVER put anything on top of JIMI – nothing – lest you upset the balance of the r&r universe. my other Marshall is a clone so it took all the abuse – this one is a ‘74 original – and although the PCB has been replaced with a hand wired Metroamp board, my respect for the thing is utmost. just look at it. it’s beautiful isn’t it?

much more to come on this – including, Eventide H3000 shots and settings and audio clips.

that’s all for tonite though – last night’s mix had me up til 3:30 and then up to take the kids to the bus @ 7am and on to work. time to knock it off for now…

-rob

thunder… lightning… DRAMA! added a stormy dramatic intro to IT’S YOU and finally got some words on there that i’m happy with.

also starting to prep those tracks for a mix – which is weird the way i do it – i make little sub mixes of each element to keep ProTools humming – i’m still trying to figure out if that’s going to cut it or not for a final product but here’s what i’m doing:

i write and arrange the basic tracks in a MASTER ProTools session. then i output a copy of the song without vocals on it. create a new session that has only the vocal tracks and one stereo track where i drop the music only mix i just output – with that i have freed up tons of computer overhead and i can go crazy slapping plugins on the vocal tracks without worrying about running out of computer steam. when i get a good mix in that session – i call it the vocal stem – i mute the music track and output the vocal track as a stereo track. i do that with the guitars, drums, and bass, and whatever else requires. so my final session is basically a set of stereo tracks each one a completed track with effects compression etc printed and ready to go – this session is called the COMP session – and i can do final tweaks but the idea is that everything is perfect in the COMP session and needs nothing further.

the cool by-product of this approach is that each stem session has all the pre-built stuff that i just pull into the stem of the next song – it’s very organized in that way – which is good because otherwise i’d be all over the map from song to song.

i brushed up some vocals on WHEELS and it is close but i’m going to add some guitar to the end before calling it a day on that song.

in addition to this… i killed what must have been 1,000 stink bugs today. it’s a one two punch – i have a black cover for the bbq that i laid across the porch rail – turns out these little bugs like to crawl up in that cover because it’s warm – pulled the cover out into the yard and there must have been 1,000 stink bugs in there – i let them have it with some insecticide that KEEEELLED them dead. after spending a month this spring collecting them one at a time for a flush down the toilet, being able to slaughter them in huge numbers was incredibly satisfying. i’m sure there’s more where they came from – but i’ll tell you – i killed a freakin’ boat load of them things – it was a time to kill.

i got no clips to share tonight – so instead i shared a bug murder story – i know how popular those murder shows are these days so i figured that was a good way of keeping the interest high here on the site! Ha!

-ober pinot

i just heard the final mix of Missing the Heart and it sounds great – mark did a great job – killer low end and just a nice fat environment to walk around in while you listen to the tune… just stroll around – little cymbals wisking across the sky at 10,000 feet – feel the ground firm under your feet – guitars and vocals surround – backup vocals tap you on the shoulder – piano begs you stay – reverb reminds you where you been – echo drifts off and disappears over the horizon – and about 130 times a minute you get a punch in the face nosebleed from the kick drum – it’s a beautiful thing! thanks to mark for a stellar mix!

it’s set for release a couple weeks into october –

what else? slabbidy. and that’s about all. thanks for stopping by.

-roberto diminuetto