jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I am familiar with Rocky and Japanese steak house culture, but you'll have to forgive me for having no idea who Steve is.... what type of electronic music does this guy spin? This generic EDM stuff? I guess I'll look him up before tackling the documentary tonight.

no, you're not listening.... AN OLD SHERATON

5 brass instruments? including sax? where are the other guys?

don't buy a Chinese Gibson copy, even one released by Gibson.... seriously, they are always kinda off... also, if they want overdriven fusion solos you will feedback with a fully hollow guitar because you will need to get loud to cut thru a full horn section, I started with a vintage guild but switched to a blocked 335 style so I could get the singing BB king kinda tone the director wanted from me without howling like a mofo (I used to run my old Princeton really loud around 8 to 10 and then have my rhythm pickup set full blast as a fat jazz fusion elad and my lead pickup rolled way back for chord work, flip a switch and you are fat and compressed)... for the money you are looking at trawl around for a 70s Yamaha SA series or 80s epi Sheraton II (or early 90s, but the 80s ones are best, my favorite examples say "epihpone by Gibson" on the headstock and go for around $500 US)...

if you must go hollow get a full depth for the wes Montgomery tone, only grant green played a casino/330 and hes 50% blues! My best friend recently decided to elarn jazz and put about $800 into one of the entry elvel D'angelicos and its very impressive, and not just for the price... again Yamaha made and still makes excellent full depth archtops for the journeyman jazz player and of course there's the peerless jazzboxes thata re prised by students...

Eastman makes the only Chinese jazzboxes and 335-style guitars that I have found to be worth damn. I would take an Eastman over any epi made since about '96

also, have a strat available in case you do any 70s jazz/funk like "fireshaker" or something.... the strat's quack position is a must for some of that weather report and steely dan influenced big band music!

aww man, I see we're DX7-II brothers... I wish I had your D50 though, guess its your equivalent to my ESQ1

it makes you itchy and drowsy, the euphoria doesn't last long enough and if you're from my region the stuff's so potent even off the street that you are in danger of OD if you keep trying to recapture the rush... not a fun drug... also? highly physically addictive, thpugh junkies are such whiners, tough thru withdrawal after a long party weekend and you will never touch the stuff again, but its still just like a super-virulent case of the flu with extra vomiting, no reason to knock over liquor stores to avoid it!

Just say no kids.

but good luck in jazz band, if you have any musical questions just ask me.... I played in the school big bands from 7th grade into university, so I got pretty good at it

lovin' the TR8 floor sample at sam ash, hate the TB3... for less money you can get a Cyclone Bassbot which IS a 303 with MIDI implementation. I mean it is scary close, especially now that the pots on mine are breaking in, boy were those knobs stiff out of the box. I am sorely tempted to walk into the store and buy a TR8 and a Moog Sub Phatty one of these days to round out my stash...

nah, that's small band, dizzy/bird type jazz... big bands are totally different

your attitude is like if I said that in order play every style of metal on guitar you just needed to grow your hair out, bring a bottle of jagermeister and an ego problem

my name is ALSO Jim and I swear we could be music-brothers

WELCOME!!!

I am looking forward to checking out your web page when I have a sec...

for big band? generally a hollow body (aka jjazz box) or Gibson ES style guitar, clean amp, maybe reverb or slapback echo... occasionally trem or chorus in ballads, boost for solos if you aren't competent with your volume control while playing... chord encyclopedia, mel bay's modern method for guitar (the one written in the 70s)...

jazz band was a formative musical experience for me 20 years ago and it will be for you if you treat it with respect whether you like the music or not, respect the rhythm section coach even if the band leader is a sax-playing dingus who doesn't get guitarists... try out for every solo oportunty even if you think you'll lose to the horn players, just attempting to write out a winning solo or to improve one will make you better player every time you try it....

oh man, good luck.... just bring your ears first and foremost

when I was touring the big 500+ seat venues I always used at least 2 half stacks with a mix of oversized marshall and mesa 4x12s, 80s marshall 4x10s and/or marshall 1960 cabs to spread my sound around (it also looked cool) but I didn't play insanely loud for the size of those stages, I was actually once asked by the soundman to turn up at the Trocadero here in Philly, dude wanted to really hear my old superlead push my greenbacks and he really did a great mix around my massive volume... and yes, they always miced at least 2 of my cabs

anyway, I would get kick, snare and bass in my monitor and rely on my stage volume to hear myself (if you need vocal then you don't rehearse enough), though it was more 'feel it' most of the time, however the extra bit of stage volume and dispersion allowed me to 'play the amps' more than if I had a bunch of myself in the wedges and turned my amps down... I would also angle all the cabs out towards the sides of the stage about 30 to 45 degrees to offset the directionality of closed backs... as the venues got smaller I started going back to AC30s over marshall superleads and dual showmans as my big rig was overkill even with smaller/less cabs... you really want to scale the rig to the venues you usually play so you can push everything into rock territory from input to speakers, attenuating anywhere will compromise some aspect of the sound, either your ability to sustain into feedback or your overall compression, overdrive voicing etc etc... your rig is a system that you tune in to respond to your playing nuances and if you fiddle with any component too much it may give you grief during the set

it depends, the lows will in general be thumpy and focused in a closed back but the sound is very directional whereas an open back diffuses well thru the venue but has more phase cancellation in the low end and will therefore have less chest thump even if you gun the bass up pretty high at the amp, but the top end will generally be a lot more sparkly and less piercing... but its speaker dependent too, throwing a bass cone celestion design or a JBL/EV/Altec into an open back cab will usally give you some tight thump wherease a peaky speaker like a vintage 30 will sound more even in a closed back... and then there's the question of front and rear loading in both cabs... generally with similarly efficient speakers a closed back will sound louder on stage but quieter everywhere in the venue that's off axis from it whereas the open back cab will sound a lot less loud out font but will sound more even as you walk off axis from the cones allowing you to rely less on your floor monitors while still maintaining reasonable stage volumes to appease those pesky soundmen

keep in mind many heavy bands have used the ac30 open back combo at full tilt from Queen to Stone Temple Pilots and even Foo Fighters, so there's no rule here that you need a raging stack to rock hard... I have had marshall stacks, I have used ac30s and fender combos.... ahrd rockin' is more about turning it up loud and proud and playing with attitude...

can you buy the head first and borrow some cabinets with different construction and speakers to get a feel for what projects your sound the way you imagine it? For my own part I prefer a mix these days, I have the ac30 combos and a couple heads, a front loading sealed 2x12 and a rear loading marshall/fender style 2x12 and I like to run one of each if I can get away with it volume wise... in my main ac30 I use a blue alnico and a bass cone H30, in my sealed cab I have a pair of 80s G12L celestions and in my other closed back I have an old fane 50 watter and a WGS invader (50 watt greenback type)... I jimmied around a lot of different speakers in those cabs to find the best mixes to my ear and I have a stash of alternate speakers in various wattages and efficiencies in case I change my mind and I'll just change them out on a whim sometimes because there really is no BEST sound.

If you want a surefire setup try a closed back rear-loading cab (marshalls tyle) with a pair of heavy magnet creambacks, it will be loud but balanced and sweet with a solid 100+ watt handling. Good all arounder.... if you decide to go open back the lead cone H magnet speakers work well in open back too... if you wanna go cheaper than celestion the WGS reaper series is a great alternative, the reaper HP is a great speaker that goes toe to toe with the creamback. If you want a less aggressive fane-style speaker (hiwatt, early 70s orange sound) consider the emi tonker or tonkerlite.

Then there's American style speakers, but you probably want a british flavor with a british head.

There's also different porting options out there from Thiele cabs to football backs, tuned bass ports on the front to the Hiwatt rear slot... all have a sound

You gotta try some stuff... try to buy from guys with a return policy in case you hate what you are hearing after the honeymoon wears off.

I think Stagecraft offers a convertible back at a slight upcharge, then your cab can be vox style and marshall style and you can hear the difference just by removing some screws.

Stagecraft, Avatar, Lopo, Sourmah etc

did you ever finish this song?

the mix sounds very good, well balanced... its not my kind of music (too poppy to fit my electronic taste, not poppy enough to suit my taste in pop music)... so I can't make a further comment

its very polite though, lacks grit... but if that's what you meant to do then great job

thanks, I don't have nearly as much hardware as you do, but I try to feature one or 2 pieces out front of every techno song... like this one is all about the BassBot 303 clone and an old casio, the rest is software I think

got a soundcloud (reverbnation, Orpheus, whatever) so I can hear some of your synths in action? your collection is blowing my mind

there's nothing special about the open backed Orange cabs, the secret sauce of an orange cab is the closed back designs, especially the 4x12s. these days they come with vintage 30s but the real orange sound was mid powered fanes (cant get them anymore) or heavy magnet celestions, specifically the G12H30 (which is reissued in 2 versions, upgraded as an H magnet creamback and cloned by everyone from Weber to WGS... its a classic). I would get a small tube head like a used tiny terror etc and get a generic open back cab for a lot less than a used orange costs.

If you are going to go solid state, roland's blues cube combos sound way more like a tube amp than the crush series does.... but seriously, get a tube amp and a cheap cab wth great speakers instead of a solid state head and the pricey brand-name cab with the ubiquitous V30 (the V30 ain't a abd speaker and it cuts a loud band well, but the new ones don't sound as good as the 80s ones and they are NOT versatile, nor are they suited to every enclosure, they prefer a closed back, trust me).

I think that's a good idea, I know I tend to pay buskers to turn their crappy street corner playing down if they have an amp.

the best acoustic guitar amp is the venue's PA unless its a total, all in one POS

I also think its hard to find decent drummers and doubly hard to find ones who will play for free... and nigh impossible to find drummers who are good live, play free and aren't rabidly insane... I never had an issue when I travelled in professional music circles, I could always call in a studio grade drummer, but now? phew

maybe check out dieselboy, he was a big deal when there were still raves

I mean, the god of dnb is Goldie and he has never been bettered....

https://youtu.be/MTxeZ1HDg34

I won't tell if you won't....

they re all the same preamp with different output sections, so they have varying degrees of headroom and slightly different 'feels' but its pretty subtle... like the difference in volume between 30 watts and 100 watts is pretty subtle, just a quextion of headroom until you reach ear-bleed levels, so a series of amps offering like 20, 40 and 60 watts? very subtley different.

when you need to switch between more than 2 channels headroom is imperative, the way I play, 15 watts can be a lot for clubs and abrs thru a good set of speakers. You can always scale up as the stages get bigger but its hard to sound good rolling the ,aster too far back, all your tones will get anemic.

I know Bruce Eganter is a great engineer, but his current crop of stuff like the tweaker and vengeance never knocked my socks off.... check out blackstar's club series, theyare just versatile enough covering fender to amrshall thru mesa and other modern sounds but not so versatile they lack personality. Also cheap. Never see them broken either whereas the post MTS eggies with the 2 tone tolex? hrrrm....

aww jeez, that's a low budget for a genre that relies on gobs of effects and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink tube amps with multiple channels, lots of bells and whistles...

in the cheap seats of high gain, a lot of people love Jet City, they are very similar to a soldano hotrod having been derived from the slo/hr circuits by the man himself for JC

if you REALLY scour there are deals to be had on mesa, especially if you are flexibe about the model and cosmetic condition, your genre utilizes both mark style and recto style amps (and the recto is very similar to the 5150 on paper which itself is a knockoff of the soldano slo100)... the ubiquitous 5150 and its descendents go for about 600 bucks usually....

a crushing gain amp with a capable enough clean channel for mellow sections that will also take effects well out front as well as in the loop is a tall order in this price range, especially if you care about reliability! even mesas are not so reliable, the more features, the more shop time until you bust into the upper eschelons like Bogner.

this isn't a purchase I'll be making again

you say that now

happens to me all the time... dealing with brick and mortar stores via the web can be frustrating but they often make it up to you to make you into a steady customer, just as you describe

my best luck scenario was when I decided to order a floor sample TC flashback X4 from a store in NYC, I got a brand new, sealed box for under $100... they honored my bid and when I asked them about it they said someone had bought it at the store the same exact time another employee accepted my but it now offer so they just gave me a new one for close to cost...

not all my stories like this end so well, but that's the cost of doing business... inventory software is at best only as fast as the employee completing a sale and only as accurate as what's input into the system (a lot of the coolest dealers don't barcode the tags, so there's a lot of room for human error)... I have so much stuff I can't keep track of what I own half the time, my equipboard is always behind date of whats been bought, sold and traded so I empathize with small retailers

those artists in 'lesser known' aren't well-known? okay, maybe not durutti column, but they got at least a passing mention in 24 hour party people and I saw that in a mainstream USA cinema when it was released, so...............

anyway, welcome

I am thinking of pulling the trigger now owning a 2nd Volca Bass (and finally warming up to it enough to record it this week)... its basically a DX7 knockoff with a x0x type sequencer and some parameters accessible via front panel knobs (though patch creation apparently still requires button pushing and menu diving like the FM synths of my youth... yes I still have a 7 mk2)...

check it:

https://youtu.be/hzVFohFTClg

I'm a huge FM fan, but I find myself doing stuff with software a lot because 1) the DX7 is big and I don't always have it hooked up, 2) the DX7 has 0 real time control whereas a softsynth gives you a lot of tweakability and 3) its fastest to create the patches you're imagining or tweak your old patches via an external editor so I feel like I might as well be using a softsynth since the DX7 is fully digital anyway LOL

I think this thing is going to replace the TX81z I sold.... the ability to create patterns and just trigger it via MIDI from my host like my bass bot & volca bass is really appealing as a time saver. Its another thing I can get hands on with to create the backbone of a repetitive techno song, no mouse needed... the TX81z couldn't offer that (or the 2 additional operators). I amreally enjoying these modules with pre-midi-style pattern sequencers, great fun!

who else is excited to get a volca FM?!

EDIT: there's a demo unit on ebay already for under $200.... my fingering is hovering on buy it now....

I was just talking 'market' in the capitalist sense.

not everyone likes free jazz... some jazz is rigid and structured, some is not... it like the difference between a symphony and a piano sonata.... the altter can just be loose riffing on a theme or two that you perfected and wrote down while the former is a highly developed, fully arranged gesamtkunstwerk (may have misspelled that)....

I hope you're enjoying the AC4 though....

gotta lov the clep tests.... they aren't even that hard, then again most general course work isn't terribly chanllenging, just time consuming....

if you are addressing subjects you are totally unfamiliar with check this out:

https://www.khanacademy.org/

great test prep online courses and you can actually rewind the motherfuckers if something flies over your head... good luck getting a lot of professors to shut up and repeat themselves

I'm not sure how much of a market there is for any music but Taylor Swift anymore (and some folks will debate that the sounds she puts her name on qualify as music)... I question my sanity every time I warm up a tube amp or hook up some MIDI cables, but why not?

are you on beatport or are you old school, pressing vinyl?

I already pre-apologized, I just ahd to...

we don't use a lot of effects in jazz either, by the way... excepting Pat Metheny of course, but no one takes him seriously

I have to make this suggestion, sorry:

guitar + cable + amp = problem solved

I've been doing a lot of dance music lately and getting tied back into the community of nerds turning knobs (real and imaginary) in their bedrooms after basically 2 decades of absence my new pet peeve is this:

https://www.samplemagic.com/images/uploads/pages/massive-6.png

sub in any other wildly popular software synthesizer, I just picked on NI's massive because literally everyone but me and a handful of other oldsters uses it. I'm rebelling so hard against this shit that I am using piles of my hardware when I remix people's stuff even though software is easier for a lot of these jobs. Tweaking a preset is NOT the same as making your own patch, guys. If I can program a DX7 from scratch and interpret the impenetrable menus of the ESQ1, then you can handle making a unique patch from a sine wave in these easy to understand and user friendly modern synths. Stop being so lazy.

see this window? this is your friend.... you highlight new patch and click it and if you are stumped from there, read a fucking book. http://durkkooistra.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/load_preset.png

https://youtu.be/su9daHxMX_c?t=30s

I shoulda watched the video, but I was at work. I don't remember the episode, must be a post y2k one

its the simpsons, lighten up

late 59 thru 68 spec... rosewood with alder standard, maple as a factory option like custom colors. Didn't know fender was mixing it up that way in the American standards, thanks I guess

and no we can't all verify it instantly, some of us are at work (my massive gear collection wasn't free, duder) and the fender site doesn't load right on our phones, not that I bothered to try today since it was a 'correct me if I'm wrong' aside...

but I didn't mean correct me if I'm wrong as condescendingly as possible, you are one snarky mofo... do you wanna turn this forum into gearslutz? Don't be this guy:

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2941/15170015938_46a71cd930_b.jpg

and if dolphins are so smart, why do they live in igloos?