jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

Never heard of anyone cause them truss rod to move by being too aggressive haha.

I can totally shift a truss without doing much by my standards. I even broke one that was overtightened to compensate for a twisted neck once. People hate me. I have a very nuanced and delicate right hand though.

By the way how do you post gear pictures on your board? I cannot work it out, don't know if I'm being stupid or what but can't see the option to do it :S

GEAR PORN section... 2nd tab. post a pic of your son rocking out on your guitars.... I know when my boy was a month old he had already snuggled my SG. Apart from having better motor skill than I did at his age, he has an ear like no toddler I have encountered and he is always trying to play my enormous 335 which is "Lucian's guitar, red!" We have also progressed past high-note-low-note games on piano to natural-sharp-flat games.... I am training my boy to kill all of you guys on guitar and piano by the age of 10.

I love mustangs and jaguars though, my favourites guitars as far as how they look and sound goes but play ability wise a les paul tends to win for me! Are Les Pauls compound radius? 10''-16'' or something? can't remember! but I don't really care about all that to tell you the truth, if it sits nice in my hand and feels perfect to me I'm happy! I tend to care more about how the frets feel and their size than fretboard radius

no, Gibson and epi LPs are a 12" radius if I recall, or is it 14"? I forget... compound radius guitars are rare... I actually do not like compound because I set my guitars up with medium action on the wound strings and high on the plain strings to facilitate the huge bends my mutant hands are capable of on an unwound string (the high action keeps the bends super precise and clean, on YOUR guitar I will probably have to reign it in to avoid fretting out past a whole step, though I may break or at least DAMAGE your instrument through vicious strength and a tendency to bend thinner neck profiles creating neck vibrato and doing multi-note 1/2 step dives by fighting the truss using my thumb as a lever point... I knw a veritable army of great players who won't let me play their instruments because I am too aggressive with my left hand)... compound throws the feel of this setup when you play beyond fret 8. Compound guys are a bunch of shreddy, EVH tappng, note-twiddlin'-low gauge fairies. I don't suggest heavy strings are more tuneful, its how yu use them. I play mediums because I am strong as an ox from wrist to fingertip. The whole compound thing is really before my time. It was around when I started, but it was an oddity. Now Its a fuckng "feature".... on most guitars I can deal with any radius as long as its consistent and I know the measurement so I can do the "JIM" setup around it.

24 & 3/4" feels good for both lead and rhythm, I mostly write on my Gibons and Gibsonish guitars.... though every rhythm and certain lead/one-line playing is fun on a strat and tele, the 25 & 1/2" scale makes you go for the wound strings which are twangy and bold in a way that only a big neck with high tension delivers. changes my phrasing! on a Gibson I play in strict position, but give me a fender and I hear a huge difference between notes fretted on D and G, so I will change hand position a lot more to capture the right timbrality to express myself. Same notes, but its so different.

I am not quite 6' tall, so your comfort level on 24" scale is all about build. I think Boom is the onlyguy on here with my enormous finger length who posts regularly. We have the same length fingers (we measured on another thread), but Boom is a bassist. I am a tiny, scrawny, willowy little guy.... with GIANT, elfin fingers.

I think whomever won this giveaway should be required to contribute to Jimbo's songwriting collaboration project (see the much more recent thread).

ROCK!

take your time, Nick.... I have a lifetime.... if you have ideas or structural fixes do them and I will adapt to your expertise and intuition.... at 3 minutes the tune may be short as narcist suggested.

So I take it the song's OK when measured by your yardstick. You know what you are ding and I would really love a fellow writer's constructive criticism before proceeding. I just felt really good about this when the ideas to tie it up came t me this week... yes, while vacuuming my house.

EDIT: to be fair I worked a lot of it out while doing a consulting project. I just played piano while reading the billing material and unravelling the billing errors in the front of my mind... and when the song felt good I paused from music, punched the new codes into PCC and generated adjusted claims. Then I got my guitar and demoed the chords. Hopefully that nursing home won't read this thread via google and get upset that my billables were split between songwriting and medicare adjustments because its 2 different sections of your brain and I was working PLENTY hard for them!

Tritones...devil's interval...it's true, sadly but only in the early years. Classical music underwent many changes and luckily that devil business didn't last very long.

I still love the term, sorry. In rock music the term Devil's interval has a positive connotation all of the sudden. Ya gotta love how a cultural shift reorients musical ideas. I always build harmony in groups of tritons for some reason, dunno why.... even the densest stuff is fun to build up in groups of tritons with maybe a diad on top.

and yeah, Narcy said he was unfamiliar with the chord, I just figured he understood the idea of the chord but didn't know any voicings since he hadn't needed to play it off the page before. Me and the m7b5 and diminished go way back.... I remember "discovering" this stuff before I even joined school jazz band in jr high. Just dicking with the basic chords I knew adding extensions or hanging 1 note a half step up or down to change the mood when I was writing my 1st weak pop tunes as a kid. Then I get my 1st jazz chart and I get my chord dictionary and discover that I know this wild guitar chord I pulled outta my hat over the summer, LOL

mystery theater was badass if you haven't read it... available in trade paperback collections I think....

no kidding, I have a duplo bucket full of decent pres... no, seriously, duplo....my son likes his lego stored in smaller containers in his room so I stole a duplo tub for dual triode storage!

Dude, diminished and 7b5? Powerful. The flat 5 is the devil's interval in classical and the devil's interval demands resolution. Generally a passing tone in americana, but when used as a primary harmony it creates massive tension....

EDIT: you guys know I'm a jazzer by training, so even when I play piano I just pick this stuff out and go for it even when another chord will do... what I love about the change I copped in this stupid pop tune is that the pretty walk up would be a half step to a major7 (C to C#), but you flat the 5 in that C#maj7 and it introduces a cool modality that instead of being beautiful is moody without being too jarring thanks to the common G in both chords.

can I con you into playing a piano line for this song? I know you will do a better job than I could. As simple as the part is, every time I run through it on piano I am dissatisfied with my mechanical performance.

Joe Walsh agrees with BOSS.

I agree with anything that sounds good in context.... I have owned and enjoyed many boss products, then another project comes along and they don't cut it because they don't fit the context of the songs and I need to figure out what does

not being a Joe Walsh, I can't afford to keep everything, so I tend to do a lot of buying and selling to get the sounds I want, but given my druthers I would keep every effect and amp and continually build my tonal liabrary

Haha, yeah. I guess I just don't like to have people waiting until I get something done.

You will go very far in Life, young padawan.

as long as you prioritize... you can't dick around with your primary source of income and you can't blow off your kids unless its a decision between giving the kid what they want short term and providing for them long term in the hierarchy of needs sense... all music stuff for me has to take a back seat to those concerns. People can and will wait, sometimes waiting opens creative doors.

I used to always have an agenda, anymore I go with my approach to songwriting in general when I write lyrics, wait for inspiration and then shed until I finish something I can call a 1st draft. If its not what the song was about when I wrote the music? Oh well. I might work on the melody and harmony to a song off and on for a year before getting to lyrics, so it can be ahrd to look back and get in touch with whatever you were feeling or thinking when you started.

I also drink my bourbon neat. Must be a dad thing.

The resale on lesser known boutiques is kinda crappy, I don't know why.

LOVE the Fuchs stuff, built to survive a war... I don't know why more builders aren't doing single ended EL34 amps.... I always want a little it more from my ac4 when I am jamming with a drummer.... You see single ended 6L6 amps, but they don't crunch up like a 6V6, EL84 or an EL34. Nothing wrong with 6L6es, but regardless of the circuit design if you are getting most of your breakup from the power tube(s) they are a totally different distortion character.

I have to say I do NOT like Dr Z's amps other than the Route66. That's his thing and it really does the business, I would buy one. But my experience trying a mini Z was a total let down, and the mazerati I owned? Took it back. Total bedroom player's amp.

So does the Lockard have a bassman/plexi cathode follower tone stack shared between 2 channels feeding maybe a single ended 6L6 for 8 clean watts?

very funny, can't see your face in this one though

I haven't done a dance track in years, I could think about it... can you sing as well as do club music? I can't really, so I am always looking for someone who can sing.

at the moment I am kinda focused on trying this tune through the internet because I feel really good about the bones.

EDIT:

What version of FL are you in? I just opened my FL files and found a very undeveloped synth thing with cool chord changes that would lend itself to being the core of a dance track and it only uses one vst that's not stock in FL producer 11, which you should download and try anyway because its freeware and everyone needs a roland juno emulator

I remember helping the singer from my band pick herself a mustang, she wanted a strat but her hands were just too small.... that guitar is nice as hell, but when we were trying all the short scales I found I couldn't play them that well, especially some rhythm stuff, because my hands are too big.... and I have skinny fingers, but they are long and anything less than Gibson scale is confining. I am not sure how tall guys like me who play jags and stangs carry it off. 24" scale is SOOOO small!

That scale is more or less a chunk of major scale by the way. Eb the relative major.

that's style baby... its kinda like the phrase shrinks and grows in places to allow the melody to expand and bring on the key change to Em, errr Fminor

yeah, it is 2 chords per bar, my bad... I don't think about all this stuff that carefully all the time until I'm arranging.... writing is like free flow

m7b5 chords as I played them in the recording:

D - X5656X or capoed at fret 1 X56X00, A - 5X554X, G - 3X332X

maybe I should do a sparse piano version to a click this week so we can all build on it

heads up, I capoed up to F because I liked how it sounded, I originally wrote in B minor but when I took it up to C with barre chords it lsot a little something, got too jazzy, but I just prefer the song in C minor

any other chords you want inversions for?

like I said, the acoustic is just a scratch line, if any instrument will hold down the whole chords it'll be piano... it was just quick and easy for me to play it on my beat up epi acoustic

you think its a lot of chord changes? its like a chord a bar with a lot of repetition... most of the Fminor bit is the same as the Cminor bits, just down a 5th under very similar melody bits so its barely a chord change LOL maybe its a point of view thing. Feels simple to me by my standards....

Are you kidding? That was pretty cool, it almost looks like a songsheet with just chords and lyrics... Strange that that was added, yet no one has utilised it until now.

its cool except no matter how I tried I couldn't get it to maintain the formatting through the last verse... weird

its nominally in C minor... but it has 2 key changes, no wait, 3 I think... I just was playing around with the harmonic relationships around the repetitive vocal line and got carried away seeing what I could do with modulating it repeatedly, I am not sure what I even did anymore.

there is no chorus though, it just a refrain.... people forget that there are other song structures besides verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus. so its maybe not what you are used to, but for all the changes in this song it only has a few harmonic ideas and I am not going to add more, it will clutter it... I did a double refrain after the 2nd verse though, 1st time in Eb minor, 2nd one modulates back to C minor like the single refrain at the end of verse 1

if you listen again you should hear it, just transpose the refrain chords, its pretty much the same thing in Eb minor

check out mjt guitars

holy formatting issues.... EB got WEIRD THERE

here's the changes if you want to putter around:

Are you tired of

         Cm        Dm7b5

fighting for the sun,

          Cm       Dm7b5

that you never knew you missed,

           Cm           Am7b5

until your trials had begun?

           Ab           Bb

When you take a breath,

          Cm            Dm7b5

do you take the time,

          Cm          Am7b5

to remember all

          Ab           Bb

the incidents and evidence of why

          C#           Eb

you got all the blame

          Fm           Gm7b5

for this circus of deceit,

         FM            Dm7b5

though you want to be the ring master

        C#             Eb

the bear's still got to eat.

        Abm7        C#7

Already getting late to choose.

Cm D+/A Gsus/Bb Abmaj7

F Ab Cm Cm7/Bb

that's the basics from verse 1 to refrain

I started this tune last March if my original notes and rough ideas demo recording are dated correctly, so it can take as long as it takes. It only tightened up and got better with time. Forgot about it until a melodic tweak that dictated another chord change variation popped into my head on Tuesday while I was vacuuming....

'59 es345 mono, preferably in natural

that's more ambitious than my timetable, LOL

I don't play the piano, but if you send me a MIDI file with the chords you want I can try to program the piano manually.

I can do that... or play the piano like a robot because I am not as expressive as a pianist as a guitarist... you may be on synth duty if you like the tune

not set on the structure, but the components are there harmonically and melodically... lyrics need work.... bad singing, but I basically hit the notes

anyone want to play this on piano as a core track to hold it down then we can get making with the guitars and synths and.... well, you get it.

I was thinking something less disco (a little Maroon 5 goes a long way, a very long way), when I post the acoustic guitar demo in a sec you'll get why its not maroon 5 suitable. Its ballady and needs to be rocked up and synthed up. Scratch guitar line needs to be a piano line too.... or electric piano. I have something else in mind for electric guitar.

That was a good one. I miss that show.

You need to add a photo of your 325 to your gear porn today so we can all gaze at it when we feel like it. Y'know you opened up a kettle of fish (can of worms) with this guitar purchase because now you NEED a vintage or boutique amp to enjoy it through....

70s Gibson T-Top humbuckers sound really good driving a vox you know...

I take back what I said, get the train to Anderton's. Call a sanity day. Pawn the kids off on your folks for a visit, tell your wife to find something to do with her friends for the afternoon and kick it up there (down there, out there, over there?) with your guitar. Try the Laney and try a bunch of other amps in that wattage range at every price point. Have them break out a DS1 and a muff fro you and have at it at full volume and bedroom levels too. Allow at least 3 hours of store time. If you are happy with the laney then buy it. If not head home and think it over. And when you get back take your wife out to dinner and a movie to keep the homefront in order. She'll say she's cool with you taking the day to try amps, but always hedge your bets with music shit because wives say a lot of things. I know about these things.

But who counts New Zealand? Don't they all have 2 heads there? Or is that Tazmanians? I forget. I haven't hung with any Australians in awhile. They know this stuff.

wait, where are all these guitar experts? I just know a bunch of guitar music lovers on here.

Well, you don't have to go try it. You could just buy it online from somewhere with a no wuestions asked return policy.

That's the plan. Hard to find the time, but i am trying to start an EB interweb collaboration in 2016...

And i'm 35 years young, thank you. You're just really young in life experience. Oh the shenanigans i got up to at your age.

But seriously. If you have the facility to record or to write a few lyrics or dicker with a song structure anything, literally any contribution could be valid in context. Or not, but if you blow it off due to less gear than you wish you had or a feeling of inadequate skills even though you really would like to do it?! we will never know. I have always believed that if you feel like doing something you should try to do it as long as you aren't hurting anybody. Worst thing that happens is you fall on your face and feel embarrassed. You get over it and you gain life experience. Next time it might go better. You wanna work on a song with me on the web? Go for it. Worst case scenario i don't yse any ofyour ideas.

This is what happens when i boycott as ocial life, but its hard to fit in being a responsible dad, making music and trying to have a good time. Ya always drop the ball somewhere.

Nevermind narcy, live you can tell its a guitar layer interacting with the bass sound which is fuzz and flange against some kinda fuzzy octave drop on the guitar. They are both panned center in the studio recording and are intentionally mixed together a bit. So you are right abouth the pickle most likely though the secret is gelling the bass tightly with a guitar doubling it to create the funky intermodulation effect. Badassery. Way cooler than if it was just a bass pedal.