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Do we have any musical people on DC?
40hz:
It reminds me of something I remember Lindsey Buckingham saying about Van Halen, which I completely agree with. He said his problem with their music is that Eddie's solos are like a completely different song.
-Vurbal (January 30, 2015, 04:27 PM)
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Lindsey had a lot to say about a lot of things IIRC. Not bad for a guy who launched his career primarily by sponging off his girfriends and generally driving them clinically insane until he achieved his middling success. (As bluesman Tinsley Ellis so famously said when speaking of his own career: "It's been a long hard climb to the middle.")
EVH was far better on his first two albums than he was for much of anything he did afterwards. (And I think we can all agree that the Sammy Hagar years were the absolute pits for VanHalen.)
That said, I think the solos and guitar work on Women in Love, Beautiful Girls and Somebody Call Me a Doctor are among some of the best in the rock genre.
However, for really good rock guitar, I still think the pinnacle was Frampton on the Frampton Comes Alive album. Skipping the Heil "Bag" nonsense in Do You Feel Like We Do (hey, it was the times...nobody had ever heard much in the way of effects beyond a wah pedal or fuzz box) Frampton's playing was spot-on. He's also one of the few guitar players I think sounds better on a Les Paul than a Stratocaster. Not an easy feat. Les Pauls can sound amazing in the right pair of hands. Too bad they so seldom do find themselves held by such hands.
(Note: absolutely love Bob Mayo's gorgeous Hammond/Leslie and Rhodes piano work on this one too!)
Frampton's trick (if you want to call it that) is that he works his solos around chord forms rather than off of scale patterns. It's a more "orchestral" (i.e vertical structure) rather than single line scale pattern approach. It's how most jazzers think of things. Start thinking within the chord progressions - not memorized and heavily practiced scale patterns. Even his noodling is more musical than most guitarist's signature solos are. And that chord vamping he does towards the end starting at approximately the 12:04 mark is positively inspired.
Most guitarists today focus on scale patterns played just short of the speed of light. And the results speak for themselves. Fast multi-octave runs and riffing mostly devoid of musical interest. Or so I think.
Want to do a good sounding solo? Work inside the chord shapes and chord progression.
Just my :two: anyway. 8)
Edvard:
RE: Slap bass - I remember reading an interview with a famous bass player (I always though it was James Jamerson, but he never played slap) in Guitar Player (?) magazine around 1989, where he said the technique came from a session where the drummer had either broken the head on his snare, or it was stolen, so he just started accentuating the note where the snare would hit, and kept doing it after the drummer got a new snare, because it sounded cool.
RE: Whipping Post - The best version I ever heard (because it was so twisted) was Daddy Longhead and their take called "The Post". DL were a bunch of idiots gathered together by ex-Butthole Surfers bassist Jeff Pinkus. This is what happens when brain-damaged punk rockers attempt to "Jam Band".
RE: Guitar wankers - I never was into "shredding", even being a dedicated metal guy. I was more impressed by a tight performance that didn't have to devolve into stupid guitarist tricks to stay interesting. Then again, if you're going to wank, might as well wank like the devil gets your soul if you stop. Caspar Brotzmann, Helios Creed, Buckethead, Thurston Moore, Gibson Haynes, take a bow.
40hz:
Getting away from all things bass (and bass players) for a moment (YAY!), here's something useful I recently found.
If you want a regulated hum-free power supply to handle multiple effects pedals, but don't cotton to paying the prices some of the commercial versions go for, it's fairly easy to build your own IF you have some electronics project experience.
The key to the ease of building this particular power supply is an unusual transformer sold by a company called Weber Magnetics. It takes 120VAC-in and provides eight separate isolated 11VAC @ 300ma pairs - plus one with 9VAC @2A.
If none of the above makes sense, STOP READING. You don't have enough experience or technical background to safely attempt a homebrew project like this.
To continue...
This transformer, which is specifically designed to power effect pedals, is called a WPDLXFMR-1 and it runs for $25 per unit. There's also a 120/220/240VAC configurable primary version for non-US voltages called the WPDLXFMR-2 available as well. Info and links can be found on this page - look towards the bottom.
Do we have any musical people on DC? Do we have any musical people on DC?
Pedal and effects power supply transformer, Eight 11 volt, 300ma windings and one 9 volt, 2 amp winding. 120VAC input. This is a transformer, NOT a power supply. The output is AC, not DC. You must build a power supply that converts AC to DC in order to use this transformer.
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Drop a voltage rectifier and (optional) voltage regulator circuit after each pair and Bob's yer uncle! A discussion (with schematics of suggested circuits) can be found on on the project page for the Geofex Spyder power supply located here.
I'm being sketchy about details because a project of this type involves potentially lethal voltages on the side of the circuit you'd be plugging into a wall outlet. If you don't know what you're doing - DON'T. And even if you do know what you're doing - be extremely careful. All the usual "At your own risk" disclaimers apply.
Note: This post is only being provided for educational purposes. Any safety risks are the sole responsibility of the project builder.
Vurbal:
The key to the ease of building this particular power supply is an unusual transformer sold by a company called Weber Magnetics. It takes 120VAC-in and provides eight separate isolated 11VAC @ 300ma pairs - plus one with 9VAC @2A.
-40hz (January 31, 2015, 03:59 PM)
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That's pure awesome. Currently my only pedal is a tuner, but I've been running it off a battery until I could find an acceptable quality power supply. The only universal PS I own currently was designed for laptops, so the lowest output is 14V. It's certainly nowhere close to the quality of that design.
Vurbal:
Here's another tidbit for what to listen to when you're learning an instrument. For harmonica, I'd start with horn players, primarily trumpet and saxophone. That's an integral part of Magic Dick's sound with the J Geils Band.
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