jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

Terry, your analogies keep getting more and more entertaining. And the your 90s one-hit-wonder reference? hahaha, totally funny and I can only ehr you singing it in teh voice of Dr Evil

You're like half Jesus and half George Carlin with this 'Little girl who lives at home..." parable.With the OP being a serious christian the rambling parable style is incredibly meta... and because Iw as just talking about the way in which great music references itself playfully? Its like you just turned this thread on ts ear, going double meta. The conversation is not only taking on a life of its own, its like tis become sentient.

the toen fo your comment said "I don't care about this stuff you mentioned, how big a deal is it if I never heard of it?!" and that cheesed me off hardcore

you need to start by maybe just taking my suggestion you lsiten to the Beatles and Cole Porter tunes I mentioned and focus in on the areas I referenced for their dexterity reinforcing lyric with harmony... also, you might really want to explore their catalogs. in the pop song realm that most hymns inhabit? These guys own it. Porter and the Beatles were like a one-two punch to songwriting dragging it kicking and screaming into modern, glocbal musical context and at the same time bringing the wetern system to the east (where you live) as well as revolutionizing and reinvigorating western classical music which ahd gone off on an 'art for art's sake' tangent through teh 1st half of the 20th century.

you need to go out there and lsiten tos tuff that's not played in your church... much of this will be religious, not secular music. GO check out Bach and Handel,. Mozart dude, He did Secular and Church music. His unfinished Requiem mass for chorale willt ake your head off and stir you deep inside! But he also did lots of great tunes for opera thatr ange the gmaut of emotions, not to mention his symphonies and otehr purely isntrumental music....

go lsiten to soem Cuban music, some African traditional drumming... check out George Gershwin and Duke Ellington's big band jazz pieces and the check out marhcing band music and the blues where the roots of this enw art-music were grounded. GO LISTEN

well, your words say that, but your dismissive tone says somethign else to me, professor Jim likes it NOT

you've never heard of the Beatles? I'll give you cole porter and JS Bach, Cole is 20s music and Bach is an 18th century church composer....but you don't know who the Beatles are? nothing you like would exist without the contributios of these people. That said, okay... you're from another country that only recently merged with the western msucial tradition I'm from (thanks to the fucking Beatles I might add, they rought western msuc to India in a way that british colonizers failed to and they also brought Indian music back to europeans and americans, okay?)

I find your reply to be dismissive, not of me, but of musical tradition. Music is too good for someone with your attitude. If I could amke you quit I would ebcause you don't appreciate the pwoer of music for its own sake nor do you delight in the subtleties of it. You love it but for reasons I fidn to be aesthetically and philosophically distasteful and incomprehensible respectively.

every so often you say something that makes me lose my cool with you... this is one of thsoe occassions. I'm so pissy about your cmment and tone that I can't even be bothered to swear at you. Frankly, I wind up replying to your requests for help as a means of clarifying my own thoughts to myself. I know you're not getting much out of it, not ebcause you're unable but because you're unwilling. You are so sure of everything you've assumed about music based on your TASTE that you are only interested in advice that fits in with your preconceptions. That's a lot of people actually, in a lot of fields. Be open minded. The world is full of ideas and most of thema re better than anything you or I wille ver come up with on our own. You have to stand on teh shoudlers of giants to reach the stars and this cumulative cultural and scientific acretion is a defining trait of humanity. Monkey use sticks as tools, humans show eachotehr the trick and thenw e improve on it every generation. Get in or get out. I am giving you my INSIGHTS but theya re allg rounded in a long sonic tradition that you seem disinterested in exploring. its sad really.

I think that if you want tog et really good at this you will need to lsiten to a lot more music from different eras, places and in very different styles. And really think about it.... try to figure out why you like the peices you like. What's tickling your ear? Learn that and add it to your arsenal to exploit the next time tis appropriate. Get familiar with every stylistic covnention out there from gregorian chant to drum and bass music. Leave no stone unturned. Then elarn the methods behind those styles and forms and go looking from tricks that the ebst writers borrowed from otehr styles to enhance their work. Learn to know when you're referencing other music (for sitnance, one of your first tunes was patently like a children's nursery rhyme, but it was clearly not your itnent to evoke chilhood, so it didn't work out, but that trick in anotehr context can be rgeat, its used in a coutner-intuitive way in horror films cores to add a creepyelement, gow atch a horror movie andas the suspense builds listen for tinkling celestes and pit percussion playing snippets of childish melody against menacing harmonic drones and think about how effectively that makes the build up to the big scare so much more foreboding... this technique of juxtaposition first innovated in Hitchcock's Vertigo is so effective that it went from innovative to conventional to cliche in only a decade as did the use of solos tringsand minimalist techniques from Psycho... both these methods were the diea of one brilliant guy and they juxtapose cocnepts from different musical styles to create soemthing that evokes conflicting emotions leaving us disconcerted, but you can juxtapose any 2 non-related devices to evoke all sorts of new musical feelings through contrast) and make sure that you only do it whith intent.

Go forth and listen.... listen as hard as you can and learn. You aren't intuitively clever with music like some people are (making good musical decisions all the time when they write but without any sense of why it works), but you really seem to love it and really loving music is the msot important attribute of a musician. You can develop your intuition and in doing so you will also elanr how it works and build a skill set that can help you keep up with and even outdo many intuitive musicians with no education.

just want to know I am not wasting my time here... this is the exact sort of thing I have been trying to avoid when you ask me questions because tis not easy to explain this stuff ground up to soomeone coming in cold (and I am not a good music teacher, that's why I don't give elssons anymore), but since you're not going to take a class or read up on your own and youyou also won't stop making music? I just went for it this time and poured all my thoughts and knowledge out

hey, kiddo, are you follwing any of this or justs cratching your head?

okay, the 2 example arrangements you linked me are diametrically opposed... the first is rubbish that holds the peice back while the second is really rather ineresting and engaging and if I spoke Telugu I would be compelled to consider the lyrical content... both utilize techniques I have mentioned in my last post that you have throoughly ignored in your arrangement. The first applies them hapahazardly and with no logic while the second applies them with sensitivity to the melody, meaning, languafge and cultural origins of the lyric producing a pleasing and cohesive overall effect. The difference is night and day and if you can't hear it I am worried about the state of the human race. Its not genius but its thoroughly competent whereas Iw ould be ahrd pressed to refer to the first version as listenable.

Listen carefully and critically. We aren't talking aout powerfully complex music like a Bartok piece here, this should be easy for a novice to absorb and udnerstand.... an element that I ejoy about the second arrangement is the pentatonic phrases played with string slurs that mirror the non-tempered scales of classical Indian music while remianing mainly within the European 12 tone tempered tuning in which the peice was written. Its an Indian hymn and invoking the non-western Indian tradition the arranger has managed to invoke an ancient spiritual tradition in service to a younger one. the cultural references are both musically and aesthetically pelasing. Alla rt is shaped by its time and place, the arranger of example 2 recognizes and embraces this and additionally references modern pop music through his agressive shoe-horning of Indian music into the western idiom like George Martin did for the Indian inspired compositions of George Harrison of the Beatles. Its not the ebst executed attempt at this but its not shabby and the menaing shines through.

I prefer your tepid arrangement to teh first example because you made no attempts to be clever out f vanty and therefore didn't fall flat on your face... there's no room in composition and arrangement for vain invention, the overriding motivation for ingenuity is respect for and empathy with the theme and if you aren't there then stop and go get yourself there. its more important to good music making then knowledge of our musical heritage. There si no art without craft but there's no point in attempting craft OR art without empathy.

okay, on a nonwriting level? stop singing or take lessons, you are not terribly good at it right now. Its okay. Neither am I. Even with isntruction I am still a shitty singer. Some people are singers and some pople are instrumentalists and/or composers and a lucky few are great everything. That's probably not you. Try lessons if you haven't taken any, but if you have? Just give it up, man. You can definitely be a better guitarist, but if you have had lessons in breath control and worked on your pitch and this is what you can do??? just nah man. Ask someone to help you who is an accomplished vocalist in a style you think will suit the music.

The arangement is not terrible but not inspired. you are NOT working with a brilliant piece of music so its somewhat excusable when i factor in your total unfamiliarity of western musical conventions. Nothing special here if you want to be wrote and slavish to this boring and unmoving piece... this ain't Bach's church music and if iwere God iw ould be offended that someone wrote this dreck in my homor and strike them down Job style. hell, it ain't even as fulfilling as McCartney's "Let it Be" which utilizes ideas from baroque and classical church music (through a sort of gospel filter, but gospel is like classical church music eltting its hair down and getting bluesy, the dieas are very churchy) to express and underpin a non-denomational but thoroughly spiritual message through familiarity with sublime fluency. This song doesn't have that and as a result i don't spite an untrained amature for failing to bring that to his arrangement. With an overtly specific christian hymn the composer should have accomplished a much more moving peice with a lot less effort than Paul needed. Epic music writing fail here.

There are melodic transitions (what we call refrains or turnarounds in songwriting and that could be called cadences in classical music or that rockers would call choruses when they become repetitive, though the the section that is structurally in the place of a pop music verse is more chorus like by its repetitive and pseudo-anthemic nature) in the song where you are struggling to maintain the fabric of the arangement, you can't decide how low tot ake the dynamic and you can't seem to decide which registers sould maintain, decrease or increasec. I think you're dropping the wrong instruments and the right answer may be different ine ach refrain. Perhaps for the first refrain you might drop almost everything but voice but each time you repeat that section you could add in a little more. Perhaps the refrains could progressively introduce new timbres to represent the ahrmony while you play less and less harmony on the main synthesizer patch that's responsible for the chords filling up the mix? Consider an ostinato based around the notes in teh melody, a repetitive phrase that repeats unchanged or with minimal changes over top of the harmony and melody in a coutner rhythm to the driving march like figure that drives the music underlaying it. Coonsider playing with syncopation, the relationship of certain arrangement elements to the pulse of the song. Both ragtime and jazz evolved from marching band music as did carribean and latin music (which pervavdes modern pop's bassline and melody figures). When using syncopation for tonal elements certain isntruments will anticipate or lag the steady, marching pulse of the tempo. The amount of deviation will give the song an emotional character ranging from legato swing's laconic and disinterested 'cool' to the rpecise syncopation of ragtime that gives a jaunty and cheerful feel to march figures all the way to the latin anticipation of Sol music and its antecedents in which melodic and bass elements will lead the beat with a dotted 8th or 16th note to produce forward motion that adds propultion driving people to get up and move (it was also drawn on along with african polyrhythm by Igor Stravinsky in the groundbreaking classical piece "The Rite of Spring" and si ehaily features in Bernstein's influential and underrated 'musical' West Side Story).... all these forms of syncopation and any other one might iamgine can be utilized in a single arrangemnt to direct the physical response of the lsitener and give the piece added weight and forward or abckward motion. Also think about the melody versus the harmony. There are notes in teh vocal thata ren't in the chords though they are notes in key drawn from an appropriate scale. Yu may consider thickening the harmony as isntruments rest by incorporating these apssing notes into the chords as originally written. These are extensions and these harmonies in a song like this will not be disonant but will be beautifully dense and will add an ethereal quality to your chords. its like playing a Dsus chord isntead of D, that G takes it somewhere else but the D is still there. Now, if you want add a wistful element you might look at those passing tones and create a coutnering diatonic harmony, one might do this on a one-line isntrument or maybe incoroporate the notes into the chords on the isntrument holding them down, so if you're using a 1-4-5 progression but the vocal also cover the 2 and maj7 you might harmonize those notes within the existing chords as 5ths or 3rds in their respective keys as chord extensions or apssing tones to add fluidity or tension (depending on wether said note is accidental to the key) to the existing harmony... try to mirror and answer the melodic line on an isntrument, perhaps MODULATED into a related scale at a 4th or 5th remove but maintaining the relative itnervals and rhythm and also considertrying this in cut time so that the relative duration of notes remains proportionally constant but at half the tempo to accent a subdivision or multiplication of rlative pitch or ti COUTNER it (pitch goes up a 5th and 8th notes become quarters). these are basic devices you SHOULD KNOW. Think about key words in the lyric and try to find clever ways to use arrangement elements to reinforce them. Yesterday by the Beatles and Every TIme We Say Goodbye are 2 incredibly famous examples of this technique built right into the chord changes of the song to a point where amny other chord substitutions another arranger might try to effect would water down the lyric. But one can work the OPPOSITE way like Nelson Riddle who regularly used chord substitutions and/or clever instrumental melodic phrases that evoked words and ideas in the lyrics in a very definite way in the arrangements of the popular show tunes for the dayhe created for Sinatra's band. Go lsiten to yesterday and notice that in context the first 2 chords feel a bit abrupt going from F to Em even though the rest of the harmony is a little smoother even when its doing a down progression. The song doesn't really have tos tart on that oddball F for the melody to work, but it does. Wonder why? Now skip to the second verse. The first word of the second verse is SUDDENLY and, you know what? Going from F to Em right at the beginning of this tune really is sudden and it makes the second verse all the more satisfying to have that abrupt dump dowm a semitone and shift to a minor... it also helps him get out of the chorus since the F is a great change following the cadence at the end. Okay, go listen to Every Time I Say Goodbye, anyone's version, doesn't mater. When you get to the bit where the lyric says "how strange the change from major to minor" you may notice the chords cycle more than one would expect udnerneath (2 chords would do the trick). This is ebcause Cole is deliberately changing the ahrmony between various major to minor relationships as the phrase progresses mirroring the lyric (or maybe with the lyric mirroring the music in this case, tough to know with Cole, he was wiley... the whole song goes between major and minor as its primary harmonic device and the lyric might have come later, the music inspiring him to use that change as a metaphor for going from happy to sad when separated from loved ones, and this was during WWII so a lot of couples were split up by the war, some forever). Its an incredibly satisfying section that adds an extra layer by fusing harmony and lyric, elevating a pelasing melodic phrase into pure musical gold. But as I said, you cna work the other way, taking thsi existing song and clevering it up a little where the lyric need some musical muscle behind it... and then aybe take that little idea and make it a counter theme so the song becomes self referential... grab a melody phrase and playy all the notes at ocne as a chord in places to add some close ahrmony as passing tones. Maybe there's an interval thathas some sort of verbal relationship to the words that you cna exploit? I don't speak Telugu, but there's usually soemthing clever you can do with music that has words.

think that over and get back to me... I'll get to to the examples you kindly provided in a sec, this is just brass tacks.

I'll brace myself and give those versions and yours a listen at some point int eh not-to-distant futre. In the itnerim, go write a song of your own again.

I really shoudla looked at the link, the Hagstrom in queston isn't a Viking, is it... disregard everything I said...

if tis a 'cover' of a traditional hymn please include a link to a version with the most frequently peformed arrangement for reference

the d'angelico are as versatile as any 335, they just look the part for jazz

yeah, the yamaha is the same as the thinline d'angelico in conception, loving 335 homage with some slightly different appointments. its only as versatile as you are which is really true of any suitable jazz guitar.

If I seem tog et a wide variety of sounds when you've heard my music its a number of factosrs at play. One is that I really do know how to get a million and one sounds from gibson wiring using just the stock controls. There's a lot of subtle shading to be had from 2 pickups, 4 knobs and a 3 way selector if you can work them like a champ. Learning requires patience and time. Anotehr reason is that i have a ludicrous number of guitars and am not afraid to swap them out throughout a studio recording even on a song that only utilizes one gutir a time in the arrangement. And the other is that I also use different amps and even when using my prefered ac30s I tend to use wildly different settings on teh top boost channel or elan on the normal channel which really highlights the personality of different guitars. Even different teles sound dratically different through the vox normal channel. There's almost no circuitry homogenizinf things. But the variety is just that I have a lot of stuff and when ti coems to guitar gear I don't look for versatility, just stuff that does its thing in an exemplary fashion to my ear. I shoot to build up a variety of isntruments not one guitar and amp that cna do a variety of thigns passably well. The only swiss army knif I have is my old warhorse white strat that's modded with an incrediby versatile pickup switching setup. Ironically after modding it I started using it elss and elss once I was done aptting myself on teh abck for the clever wiring job.

To me a great jazz guitar really only needs a neck pickup and one knob. Its all about the wood, dimensions and msot importantly the player!

okey doke, I have anotehr bite on it... shame toe lt it go, but the guitar collection is silly huge and I want to buy a new synth

if you find a good price on shipping I would be happy to sell it to you if the guy in Oregon backs out.

PS: I would stay away from the ahgstrom stuff. I have tried some Vikings and thought they had a lousy feel and 2d sound that really wouldn't be helped subtantiall by a good setup and mods. They feel like cheap guitars in my hands and are uninspiring. The affordable d'angelicos are a much ebtter option. Another good option in a thinline semi hollow for jazz are the eastman guitars. Iw as terribly impressed with teh amount of tone and playability the eastman's bring to the table for such a low price. hard to beleive they are chinese. A distinctive cut above.

also, go on youtube and look up Howard Goodall and then watch all his BBC music documentaries. Start with "Howard Goodall's story of music". Then do the brief, basic and informative "how music works". The four 20th century masters episodes will also likely open your mind. yes they include pop musicians. The Beatles and Cole Porter. They also include film music (that happens to be the first electronic music) and the mighty and udnerappreciated West Side Story, work of genius that defies genre and tckles very adult social themes in its libreto setting the stage for the rock opera, concept album and even presaging some modern pop punk you might just love, like American Idiot. Oh, and you will be surprised how much the coreography influenced music video. justw atch the film with an open mind.

Even without the theory background you can grow as a musician just by lsitening to some of the music Goodall talks about in these shows witha fresh set of ears and his insight on what to listen for.

I'm thinking of selling ym alte 70s Yamaha for 900 bucks US shipped anywhere in the lower 48 if you're itnerested.

that is sucha great story and I really liked your 'foreigner who doesn't speak the language' metaphor which is apt for sound design, recording and mixing as well as classical music theory. The thing is, if you really delve into how we got to the western musical system and developed the repertoir of techniques and terms we all rely on whether we know it or not? Its pretty damned interesting.

Its hard for people to wrap their head around how important the language is and WHY everyone got on board with it for hundreds of eyars because we live in an age where recording is availaiible toe veryone who cna afford an instrument to create music with. Even for odler guys like me, Terry and Zaq this is true because for getting ideas down without knowing theory or ebign able to read notation we came from the age of cassette tapes. Even if you didn't have a 4 track everyone had a tapedeck or a boombox and blank cassettes were cheap. You have to imagine a world where there was no sound recording to really get inspired about notation, chord names, scales and the general theory of music. Imagine a world where people don't have TV and the only way for them to hear music was by going to hear it or performing it themselves. This was a rgeat situation, ahd technology developed faster than music theory I don't think we would have such a rich musical tradition. The needs of pre-modern musicians spurred all this rich development that each of us has een so lucky to inherit. Try to appreciate it and be a broader part of it.

has it ever occured to anyone that perhaps the ear-based approach and lack of in depth specialist knowledge amongst rank and file musicians has contributed to the current disrepute of musicians? Yes Napster and predatory big labels helped destroy the music business but at the same time it beacame suddenly unimpressive to be a musician as the industry went downhill. The social cache of being a musician seemed to fall right off regardless of skill level... there's this 'anyone cna do that' mentality to lstieners now. And a lot of this stuff anyone COULD do if they got ableton or bought a guitar and a copy of garage band... so they have a point. But I defy a novice to do what i do. I defy someone with musical experience but little to no training to do what I do. it may nto eb to your liking, but I dare a theory-hater to write and record a peice in my style, aprticularly harmonically. I don't mean copying ( although i wish you luck figuring out my parts if you don't udnerstand music), I eman sit down and knock of a 3 minute pop tune that isn't the run of the mill 1-4-5 BS and that goes in a little journey with ltos of tension and unexpected turns... and make it WORK. Where I'm not like "that feels like a different song jammed on there at bar 16)

I'm sitting at home finishing a product review for Equipbaord today and I am all bothered by the world of music. Popualr music that is... especially punk rockers. I lvoe punk rock but its like a free ticket to do soemthing generic and shitty these days and sell it with a pair of Vans...

I'm not sure I follow you.

I also know you're litwrally fifty million times better at songwriting because of theory.

I never said that. I do feel that in all artistic endeavors, no matter how modest, its a good idea to have a lot of resources in your tool bag... that way you don't come out of it looking like a tool bag.

HEY! Boom and Evil and other music theory naysaysers, your opinion is that people who have studied think they're better than everyone who hasn't. This is seldom the case. Usually people who have serious musical training aren't snobs, its people with a little, spotty education who are the snobs (this is really prevelant amongst metal-shredders, which probably infuences Boom's perception since that's his sphere). These type of people with a little bit of info and less udnerstanding want to wave the flag all the time that they've done a little learning. "Oh, that's a Lydian mode, dude! Don't you know ANYTHING?" gets annoying for people with training just like tis annpoying for ear players. But people like you guys who are PROUDLY ignoring thousands of years of western musical traiditon going back to pythagoras start to piss me off. You're far cockier than people who learned to read and understand (and musical notation is one of the msot REMARKABLE invsntions in the arts, buys! before recording all sogns would be forgotten if not passed on from oen generation to another, which is why music used to eb so simple like gregorian chant.... try memorizing all the parts to a big choral piece melody-by-melody! notation is a big deal). Basically what you theory naysayers are telling me every time you mouth off is that your decent ear is better than 2500 years of musical tradition built up by a lot of very smart and talented people. You don't like math? well quit music. The tempered tuning you use every day you pick up a guitar or bass is mathematically derived. Those 12 tones are not arbitrary. It took a lot of cleverness to reduce the western scale from having a sharp and flat at clsoe intervals to the system we have now that allows for key changes (although it makes your B string sound a bit wonky when you play a C chord if you're really listening, but at elast you don't have to return every tiem you want to play in F isntead of C or G).... yeah, key changes. But not just changed within a song like the Who's my generation. I mean that without the theorists and just with ear playing you would have to retune a stringed isntrument EVEYR TIME you wanted to play in a different key. When the village idiots got together at the pub in the renaisance all the sogns woulda been in whatever key the lute was tuned to until people wanted to take a rbeak from dancing and chat. Yes, all the songs might be in G.... like a 90s green day show! But there was a hope, a lot of smart musicians were consulting their geometry textbooks and working on a solution that everyone could agree on. The very same people naming all these chords and scales were also inventing equal tempered tuning abck then making your whole musical existence possible. Everything you hear today, even modern eastern music, has adopted this mathematically-derived 12 tone tuning system which used pythogoras's ideas from way abck when to divide the unwieldly ancient scale into fewer, uniformly spaced tones and semitonesand the inspiration for this groundbreaking innovation you are taking for granted WAS HARMONIC THEORY. The same theory behind writing a good chord change and all thsoe cales and modes you think aren't important.

I am not saying you two aren't talented. I am not saying that without music theory you cna't make music. I am asking you to stop mouthing off and souring other people to learning a little about the math and hsitory that got us from the first faltering attempt to jot down the melody to a plain chant up to complex sequencing software like Logic. I mean, they didn't calll their software logic because music is arbitrary and illogical! You don't like amth? well, its all around you and there's noe scaping it. i am not good at math but I love and respect the power of numbers and the logic of equations without which I couldn't enjoy and udnerstand the world around me beyond a caveman survival level.

For many of us learning about music theory and the hsitory of how our music 'grew-up' is really addictive. When I was little I just wanted to learn tor ead well enough to pick out a tune from a song book on my crappy little synthesizer or my viola, but it was a total rabbit hole that ahs informed my life in a way that isfar more enjoyable than if I were just writing one four five tunes on a guitar.

been there on physical! its the oney recouper!

hey, send me the wav files from the masering session jim marchi 1 @ gmail . com

no spaces obviously(fuck you spam robots) and Ill send you soemthing cool back in return

depends what you're trying to do with it... I'm fussy, but I'm not chugging and chopping away like a member of green day

EPs done? sold 500 copies? I was ahrd pressed to sell that many of my band's LP even shilling thema t shows, Is till have a crate of them in my attic! LINK ME? I wanna hear it

how's your record going?

I would guess 50 to 100 less than average ebay value if you're going to behonest about the damage, and you should be even if its not obviously visible... that said, when moneyw as tight as a kid I would be a bit sneaky selling gear that had been msitreated as long as it was stable and working at te time of sale. I always felt bad and worried that soemthing would go wrong for the new owner though so I don't do that now. If I have a damaged guitar or an amp thats in ened of serious service I can't provide myself then I sell it with full disclosure and take the hit. Often the amount you lsoe ina sale is less than professional service would cost you thus netting you mroe money in the long run but YMMV

all thsoe oddball shaped guilds are cool, I have an S300 (similar whacko shape but with buckers) that I should really sell, but can't elt go of. She plays and its the Guild-bucker version versus the S300D that ahd dimarzios. The guild buckers are so woody and fun. Cna't sell it even though tiw as purchases to make profit out of. Gotta sell the Yamaha instead. I really shot myself in teh foot this year with guitars I thought I would sell for a profit around Thanksgiving as the x-mas season goes nuts, but that i just don't wanna sell.

amp's an ampeg v4b with teh amtching v4 cab

thanks man! I'm 75% done teh review by the way. I cna probably show you the rough draft before the weekend and I plan to have it edited, profread etc by Monday.

these guys are giving away9 TR-09s https://www.adsrsounds.com/giveaways/win-1-of-9-roland-tr09s/?lucky=98345

I didn't hear anyone knock Roger.... he's one of rock's best 'bigpicture' musicians

anybody? great guitar, but I can't keep two 335 type guitars when I need another flavor of polysynth. Jim does not live by guitar alone!

the vintage Orange grill is just a plain tan 'basket' weave

I won't need to sell it by christmas, sorry. That's a long time from now. It'll either go out via ebay or reverb or I'll keep it and just wait until christmas to get a Novation Peak.

I am thinking of selling one or 2 of my more affordable guitars. I know there's been a lot of tlak of affordable semi-hollows. I am considering selling my 70s Yamaha SA1000 ES335-style. I could sue the money and the space ;-) I paid about 7 or 800 USD quite a few years ago I think. I said I would never sell this guitar, but two 335s may be over the top. I need to at least break even but I would prefer to make a few bucks on her. My asking pice is $900 including shipping within the USA. I'll give her a fresh setup before sending her out. I'll include an epiphone 335-size case. This guitar is 'persimon red', features traditional 335 style wiring with nice sounding Alnico II humbuckers, an ebony fingerboard with dots, 60s gibson nut width and medium roundback neck profile that's neither chunky nor slim (reasonably deep but with minimal shoulder).

If anyone shows interest (Blake? weren't you looking for something like this?) I will post some pics. This is a fantastic all-arounder that's seen a lot of action with me, but I really want to offset the cost of a novation Peak synthesizer so tis either this or a keybaord going out because I also want to make some space in my house.

I've had a real mosrite fuzzrite during my vintage fuzzz colelcting phase, I found it to be a one trick pony but that trickw as really amusing soemtimes.... I made a lot of money on that one because there wasn't a reissue or many proper clones at the time. At any rate, the Tone Machine and Univox Superfuzz camp of octafuzz that uses germanium diodes to create the additional octave are really better alla rounders to me. Personally I prefer the univox, but its an apples to apples comparison and I was into the univox because the signer in my old band gave me hers as a birthday present.

oh, the UFO, like Filltone's aultiamte octave its a odified Foxx Tone Machine, the original double footswitch epdal of the 70s ;-)

what'd you wind up buying amp-wise? I wanna say those arctic monkeys are a vox band. And I seem tor ecall they play REALLY loud to get their drive and fuzz.

I think we need to prevent new members from posting to pro pages and the forum until they meet a minimum number of gear IQ points. Just a few from building a profile and adding maybe 1 item to their own equipboard.... spammers and teenagers looking to post dildos to famous artists are ruining equipboard.

did you ever rbeak your writers block and finish your punk record, Evil?

we're definitely a target for spammers, spam-bots and... actual users who are idiot teens, posting submissions to Gavin Rosdale about him being gay. I mean, its entirely pissible Gavin is gay, but I'm not sure what that has to do with his Jazzmaster. Or that kid who kept posting dildos and stuff to famous artists. Its outta hand and I am wondering if we should force people to have a minimum gear IQ from building their own board ebfore they can add to pro pages and psot in the forum.