Wow, I received my minor in jazz performance- I really miss playing and improv. Looking back i wish I learned more instruments, especially drums and piano, and possibly guitar. You can only do so much with a Trumpet. (No American Pie jokes please)
Hey guys, anyone have any good pickup recommendations?
I just picked up a used Nashville Tele and I’m thinking of swapping out the neck and bridge pups to get it a bit darker and thicker. I’ve been saying I want to try for an angry alcoholic in the gutter vibe and someone said- ‘You want it to sound like Tom Waits?’ which is sorta cute, but on point. Got another Nashville Power Tele and I love the thing so I want this one to have a good contrast with the bright twang. I don’t shred and probably won’t be looking for as dark deep and violent as possible, but getting a good range and unique character is what interests me.
From playing it, I suspect it does not have the standard tex-mex from the factory-- bridge and neck pups are also pretty quiet next to the other Nashville, but in 3rd position it’s got some good volume and character to it. The guy didn’t mention swapping any of the electrics, but I’ll be curious to see what’s under the hood. The 5-way switch is scratchy and might have been swapped from a strat and I’m completely expecting it will need 500k pots.
Kinda thinking a humbucker at the neck, but I will defer to experience as I don’t have a specific sound in mind and also have little to no idea of what I’m talking about.
^uhhhh what?
Just thought some of the musicians here might have some experience with guitar hardware tinkering.
Hey Nerium, I have a tele that came with dual humbuckers installed which gives it a very different sound than your conventional tele would have. Actually it was somewhat blind luck for me because I bought it specifically for playing it with a cello bow, and the humbuckers were not only the perfect sound for this, but the body is light and manageable for the way I have to hold it and the the body is also a good shape for the action of bowing. But then it turned out to have a great rich sound for playing normally with a pick as well so I was more than pleased with this set up to contrast the bright sound of my strat.
A cello bow? That sounds kinda cool- any effects on top of that? Never played a tele without single coils, but I started out with an Epi LP and that might be why I’m leaning that direction.
Yes on the effects, I add quite a bit of delay and reverb to it as well, along with a touch of overdrive. It actually sounds ok without any effects as well but thats not the sound Im going for.
Oh wow, im sorry i was tired. Now i know what your talking about, ‘pickup’ didnt regester.
Possibly the greatest hobby EVER!!!
It’s overrated. Then again, it’s not really a hobby of mine. It’s actually a source of great frustration and joy which consumes my life and occassionally makes me a little bit of money.
But, I don’t really have any hobbies right now (other than collecting action figures, and that’s not what it used to be for me, alas) so it’ll have to do.
So what kind of music do you all like to play/sing when you engage in musical activity?
Me too:)
I guess my stuff would be an Indie/Ambient/Shoegaze sort of thing.
Mostly 60s 70s amd 80s rock
i am happy to see this thread
i am a non professional who has been composing,playing and recording music actively for the last 7 years. i’ve also been posting songs online since 2002…
i have songs on many artist sites http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=40427757
http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?PID=1086046&t=4801
musicdownloads.com,soundclick,jamwave,payplay.fm,etc i have a CD available at CD baby, and singles for 99 cents at I tunes which is where i subscibe to GWC…
THat MUSIC stuff isA LOT OF FUN but the real reason I AM POSTING has to do ABOUT THIS CONTEST I ENTERED AT THE BSG sci=fi website.
it wa about a year ago. they provided a few minutes of video footage of actual scenes, music and FX.
most people have video cameras and they intercut footage with scenes of themselves doing BSG bits.
a couple of them were downright hilarious.
i don’t have a video camera so what i did was sequence the video and then i used their music and FX on the soundtrack but i combined that with my own original music and FX.
it’s not a music video,i would consider it video music.
i have not gotten much feedback except for a few friends who watch the show but are not fanatics like us.
i’d love to have some people watch this… there are obvious music passages that you will recognize from the show right away and unfamilar parts which are mine.
there are also times when the sounds blend together, and it’s not obvious,especially with the FX eacause i have my own explosions,raptor fire ,crashes,etc.
that’s where being an electronic musician helps
so if you have a minute or 4 ,please take a look.
it sits all alone on my you tube page.
its called galactica rock and you can view it here
http://youtube.com/user/dwruckly
thank you
great job with the podcast chuck,audra and sean. i have been listening every week for about a year. you guys rock
Hey all, my name’s Audra and I’m sort of a musician. I haven’t played in a long time, but it used to be the driving force in my life and will always remain an important part of me.
I started taking alto sax lessons when I was nine. A little before I turned sixteen I joined a wind ensemble at the local community college, which I played in for two years. My junior and senior years I also played in a jazz ensemble at the college. I took private lessons in high school and intended to go to college for music ed., because I knew I wanted to be a teacher and music seemed right. The summer after my junior year I played cymbals in a DCA drum corps. My senior year I guest-conducted the elementary band at one of their concerts, played a duet in a talent show with my band director on trumpet (we played “Tenderly”), and after school I gave make-up music lessons to kids who’d missed theirs during the week. I took a few trombone and drum lessons and have played around with guitar and drums (kit).
Armando, you may know the piece - for solo my junior year I played Gazunov’s Saxophone Concerto in E Flat Major, Op. 109.
And, like Chuck said, we played in two bands together, although I’ve always had a classical tone and it was hard to play rock at first and make it sound right!
I don’t regret not having gone to music school, because I found it too competitive and stressful for me to handle. I just really wanted to teach, and now that I get to do that, I am really happy. I would like to find a way to get music back in my life, but as a hobby rather than the competitive thing it tended to be when I was younger.
Oh, my greatest claim to fame: the GWC intro music! That’s me! 
I’ve always wondered, what samples did you use for that?
Right now, when I’m just playing guitar/singing by myself, a lot of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley. I just learned this weekend a great song from Jeff’s dad, Tim Buckley called “Sing a Song for You”
Pike: No samples. We recorded it. It’s Audra playing a kit with some creative mic placement and EQ. Specifically, I mic’d both the top and bottom of the tom, using a low-buck modded condenser (read: Russian) that’s kind of boomy on the bottom. I think I used a '57 on the top (clamped on, kinda like you’d mic a snare) and two small-diaphram condenser overheads. I used a D112 on the kick with another (unmodified) Russian condenser on the striker side. Obviously I added a couple of different reverbs to get the “in a big room” sound.
The “rip” bit is actually a pick on an electric guitar (a Mexican Fender Strat, if you care) running through a cheap-ass Peavey amp and mic’d with a small-diaphram condenser. (I didn’t think it’d sound right, but Audra insisted – and as almost always, she was right!)
Once Audra was happy with her performance, I eq’d the crap out of the different channels to get a more “big drum-like” sound, mixing tiny bits of the messy/boomy low to make it sound more full. Dumped it all to a stereo WAV which gets included in each podcast still in 16/44.1, getting crushed to MP3 as part of the whole 'cast.
Incidentally, it was the same deal with the Here In CIC bit, though I added a tiny bit of bass myself to that – and we used an electronic kick. Everything else was acoustic, added one instrument at a time.
Funny since all I have been doing for the past while is recording with my band! Hopefully we can get an album deal and live every teens dream!
Holy crap! Good for you. That’s not an easy piece.
SonicDave: I WILL check out your music in a bit. I have to go put a kid to bed in a few minutes and I just came home from shopping for the mrs.’ birthday, so time is slipping through my fingers and I wanted to do a quick scan of blogs and GWC before I ran off to read the Magic Treehouse with my six year old, then do dishes. Ah domesticity!
Wait, wait, wait: music school was too competitive but graduate school and academia were not? Hot damn! Really? Where were these music schools you looked at? I slept through most of my classes, and I went to some pretty high ranked schools, if I do say so myself. 