Thanks dude.

Reinhardt is pretty inspirational stuff. He makes me feel a lot better about my knuckle on my right index finger, which I bust punching a bin in rage mode after a family fight. Damn thing feels fine for ages then goes all awry and bruised after doing certain movements for a long time including guitar, gaming, using a mouse etc. Wonder if it will ever recover fully. But I do have fully movement of that finger and better guitarists have tolerated far worse. It seems to have moved place a few millimetres but it took no time at all for me to adjust to that, if I even needed to - it's hard to work out. There's that guy who had the tips of his fingers cut off as well.

There's gooseberry fool tonnes of other jams I could post up. I think I've recorded about 85 sessions (over mostly 2 but up until now, 3 years), most of them several hours long.

This one's pretty interesting as far as weird ambient noise stuff goes, kinda jazzy. Definitely one of our more interesting fusions:

http://www.thegreengecko.co.uk/tbs/trac ... 140310.mp3

More that controlled feedback stuff mixed with tapping style, slide, harmonics and whammy.

I play all this fingerstyle by the way. I never use a pick.. which is probably a lot to do with the "warm" sound you liked.

It goes pretty mental towards the end and turns into this dissonant metal thing. I think that riff is meant to be based on the image of a demonic psychopathic clown But then goes back to the ambient style at the beginning, if only for a moment, so formally, it kinda works I think. The more I listen to it the more detailed I find in the interplay between the instruments.

As far as basically getting wasted and murdering our own musical conventions goes it's a lot of fun. Is amazing how much a band like that slowly conventionalises itself and then has to destabilise those conventions to keep it interesting. And there's the massive irony in trying to challenge a particular convention or style of music, and by doing that conforming to it by doing the opposite of a set of rules and therefore inadvertently subscribing to what it is that you are trying to challenge; a set of rules cannot exist without a set of "wrongs" against which those rules are set. So the best thing you can do if you want to try and write "original" music is to not think about it at all. Preferably don't even talk about it or play it to anybody else. But obviously, that's a pretty depressing method. And it can be depressing enough creating music that the vast majority of people won't understand or automatically hate when you know you could easily step up to a microphone and play a 100 year history of guitar recital to respectful nods if not rapturous applause. The life of an artist, eh?

Speaking of irony though, that's the fun part. No wave noise punk live set interspersed with classical guitar sonata solo? Just look at their faces.

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PM is your friend.

I do do music. Not in a band anymore but still like to jam on the guitar quite often. Made up this riff and licks today:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=10150376801015343

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strawberry float's sake, I suddenly really want a Marshall JCM 900 after watching these old school raw-as-fuck Muse videos from Astoria 2000

http://www.youtube.com/user/MuseLiveVid ... 812FC30556

That amp has all the high gain crunchy to sailing sounds you could ever want. God-like. Great for punky raunchy heavy bad ass mashings and HUGE riffage. Always happy to see one when I rent a studio.

This is back when Muse were interesting and surprising (and not only strawberry floating epic) to see live. Wish I wasn't 11.

I know the more versatile option though would be a Vox AC15 or 30 though. For stupidly loud crunch (120W) I have Sound City B120 but that's only useful for gigs / when I don't mind pissing off the neighbours. But then I would love to own a JCM900 to swap with that on the same 2x12 cab (4x12 would be immovable and therefore pointless).

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PM is your friend.

Muse before they became a glam rock outfit, eh?

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www.samgwilliam.com

I made this 'dancefloor' tune recently, yes it's not proper music as such but i think it's my most clubby booty slapping crunked out tune to date.

http://soundcloud.com/jigsoreriffs/dont-leave-ur-girl-round-me

it's professionally mastered, so turn up the bass yah

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I like it. Did you put the kick drum (pre the drop at 1.10) ever so slightly behind time?

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Thanks mate, and no I didn't put it just out of time, although that is something I do when I make tunes to make them sound less rigid.. the kick samples in that tune are just a bit rough and clunky.

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I fully recommend Marshall. I used to have a Peavey 5150 II but fairly quickly I decided it wasn't for me. At the minute as I am not playing ina band anymore I just have a Marshall combo in my room, which is an old MG30DFX. If money weren't an object and I had more of a use for them than just playing as a hobby in my room I'd go for an Engl Powerball if I could get one. Even this would be a bit of a 'buy it and see how it sounds' type of purchase but I have heard them before and they give a great tone. I think Marshall is always going to be the safe bet though, they can be made to work well with any style of music..

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Already posted my thoughts on Marshalls but I really don't think their DFX series competes with a low power valve amp, which is all you need for bedroom/practice use and can even be micced up for a gig or rehearsal (maybe even loud enough for a quiet band rehearsal if you go for 10w).

A 30w power rating is pretty meaningless unless you really need the power and your budget is really quite low. I'd never expect to get a better than average overdrive tone on a DFX, I honestly just don't really like their sound and will always opt for pedal overdrive instead (Big Muff / Crybaby / Boss MegaDistortion, although the latter is ridiculous so I rarely use it).

To me DFX amps' overdrive sound thin and fizzy with poor clarity in the mid and bottom range; they sound overly trebley or if you roll off the treble (again at the expense of clarity) you get this kind of floaty underwater sound. The clean is okay but they kinda lack punch and "viscerality" - they sound stale and dull in comparison to valve. Marshall's higher end all-valve heads and combos can sound fantastic though, if a little generic. They are good all-round amps but sometimes it's hard to get away from that "classic rock" / metal sound. Very satisfying if you want that though.

I rate Peavey solid-state amps better personally. Marshall just seem to cash in on their names with cheap DFX amps sold to an audience that want the Marshall badge and want 30 watts and higher for no justifiable reason ("louder is better", they think). I find the Marshall brand strength tends to blind people to other options, even if they clearly sound better.

I'm somewhat spoiled by the range of valve amps available at Brighton studios and my (all but uselessly loud) vintage amp though, but for me its more the case that something like a DFX spoils the tone of my S2170SE. The input literally clips with a nasty crackly sound seemingly beceause the output from EMG 81/85 is simply too hot for it to handle. I've used other people's DFX15 and 30 for a couple of years. Conversely an excellent amp can beef up a lower end instrument. I've played my Pacifica 112J through a Marshall JCM 800 (or 900, can't remember) a couple of times and that sounded bloody amazing, surprisingly, so it's always worth investing.

You get this wonderful shimmering, full-bodied yet tight sound with a valve amp and the overdrive is unbeatable by solid state amps, generally speaking (although I've never found a solid state that sounds better than a valve amp.. probably because apparently all the higher end amps are all-valve). You get a soaring, highly dynamic sound with fantastic sustain; the clarity really articulates every note you play and brings out the detail (and weaknesses) in your technique.

I don't want to sound like a snob or something but sometimes I feel embarrassed playing through a cheap solid state amp now; I just feel there's something missing I can't add in myself, which is disappointing.

I've never even bought a guitar amp yet, despite having been playing on electric for about 8 years now, as I've spent years trying other amplifiers belonging to other people before committing to spending serious money on one I know I'll love. I've been looking for me own since about 2007.

Personally I'm interested in the Vox Lil' Night Train as a portable tone box, which I can always plug into an extension cabinet for more output:

http://www.dv247.com/guitars/vox-lil-ni ... set--78498

Only 2 watts and sounds great from what I've heard on YouTube (and I've tried the standard Night Train - it really is very good). It's more than loud enough for practising at home and again can always be micced up.

Then I might pair that with a Vox AC30 CC1X (Celestion NeoDog Blue speaker is gorgeous but about £180 for the speaker alone) or something similar, I might try some lesser known brands as I'm far from done trying others yet. The problem with the Vox for me is a lack of a switchable overdrive channel and I could really use an FX loop to cut out tone-sucking pedals like Digitech Whammy. Also the cheaper Chinese model more widely available are taking a hit in the valve arena with solid state rectifiers and generally cheaper contruction.

Personally I'd never choose to use a solid state amp anymore, given the choice. Not with such affordable alternatives available. Cheap exported labour has brought the price of valve amps crashing down in the last 3 or so years, so this doesn't even apply only to the upper end of the market anymore.

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PM is your friend.

Just ordered myself that. Excitedness ensues.

So I'm looking for a new guitar, as I start a new job soon and should have some spare cash. I already own a Telecaster and find that it gives a great clean sound with the candybar pickup, and a decent overdriven sound for general rhythm, but I find it can't really handle lead metal sounds. What would be a decent choice? I'm looking at the 200-300 quid range, and I'm not really a huge fan of Les Pauls or Ibanez'.

I'm looking to learn some Mastodon, Fall of Troy, Protest the Hero, and other modern rock stuff. Reccommendations would be much appreciated

I'd agree that tube amps are better than solid state but I don't think they are practical for bedroom use. You will obviously find yourself needing to fork out to replace the tubes every now and again and I think that that is unecessary hassle and expense for a hobby player. The Marshall does my fine, love the tones I can create through my boss gt6. If I was going to look for another gigging/ recording amp - I'd probably go with Marshall or Engl this time around.

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Me doing some Bon Jovi riffs, I personally like the tone very much, it's like a half way house between rock and metal...

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Hey, I do music.





If you check my videos out, I'll be much obliged.

I've recently got back into playing with Ableton Live, but I can't help it feels like cheating when I use the built in instruments. I try to make some with Operator, but it's bloody difficult to make something worthwhile. At least I'm having fun, though.

Operator is great, it's quite simple to use, just strawberry float around with each oscillator and all the different waves.

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It's no FM7.

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www.samgwilliam.com

It doesn't try to be though. I like Ableton's approach to producing simple devices with huge amounts of potential should you wish to go that far. And then there's always the presets.

Ableton's all about modularity, side chaining, MIDI mapping etc. You really can chain it up to do whatever you want - it's almost as flexible as Max, especially considering that, well, it's based on Max and integrates with it.

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PM is your friend.

Breakcore-ish mashup of some tracks I did a while ago, only just got round to practicing and recording a video for it (I feel seeing someone play it gives the track a bit more context. People who understood what was going on liked it, but people who weren't as up on music or drumming thought it was just insane noise). Let me know what you think.

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http://www.thekarmaparty.co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/thekarmaparty

Sweet man, you're a good drummer, we have a similar style, i've even got the same electric kit as you.

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