Update unceremoniously lifted from website.
Time
for an update. I tell ya I really have to get back into swing
of things with the site.
Anyway,
as I'm searching the deep recesses of my currently dessicated brain
matter I've come upon a couple of faulty synapses that I hope you
may find enlightening. As I fall deeper into the trap of trying
to become a better guitar player I've come across the following.
Practicing is hard, tedious and a bit unrewarding.
Don't get me wrong, I love playing, but I have some fairly lofty
expectations of myself. (don't we all) I pretty much want
to be the best at the stuff that I want to do. For instance
who wouldn't want to have the legato prowess of the great Allan
Holdsworth or Greg Howe? Or how about the pinpoint accuracy
of Steve Morse's alternate picking technique? Or the effortless
sweeping of Frank Gambale or Michael Romeo? The sheer speed
of Rusty Cooley anyone? How about the sincere melodicism of
Brett Garsed or Scott Henderson? This is where my moronalogue
ensues. I think this is where YouTube can become a bit of
a detriment. As an anorexic gazes into the mirror only to
see a candidate for Jenny Craig us guitar players gaze into our
computer screens and are dumbfounded by players like Guthrie Govan
who is absolutely frightening on all fronts. We see all our
faults through another player's greatness. I know I do.
I find that this can really alter the perception of ourselves as
a players. We begin to lose our identitiy as we jump on the
eternal treadmill of playing catchup to all these great players
who we idolize. These idealist fantasies can lead to some really
serious incidents of depression. A shame really. I find that
it really comes down to maintaining a healthy sense of who we are
and how we want to express ourselves through our playing.
Now I'm not saying that we should ignore everybody else and become
isolationist because we really do learn a lot from eachother.
I just think that learning/memorizing a bunch of other people's
music is somewhat counter intuitive to developing your own style.
Lets face the facts, as instrumentalists who create and play challenging
music we probably won't be on Clear Channel or MTV anytime soon.
You might as well stick to your guns and express yourself
your own way and not through someone elses's licks and ideas...but
I digress. Personally my goal for myself has been that I
want to be able to play whatever I want. I don't want any
technique based crap holding me back from expressing my ideas.
If I hear something in my head, I want to be able to replicate it
on the guitar, period, end of story. And over the years through
practice and sheer masochism I think I'm getting closer to that
goal, but man is it slow going.
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I'd
like to talk about a new piece of gear I picked up a while back.
If you play guitar and your a bit of a gear nut like me I'm
sure you have heard about Fractal Audio's AXE-FX. Very interesting
piece. Essentially its a preamp with built effects.
The thing that's extraordiary about it is the integrity of the amp
simulations. They are absolutley light years ahead of any
other modeling gear out there. This is truly an amazing preamp!
I use it only for direct recording, not for live purposes so I can't
attest to its performance in a gig situation but I am comfortable
touting it for studio applications. The layout is very intuitive.
You basically have 12 columns of 4 routing blocks that you assign
a particular amp, cabinet, or effect to and you chain them together
in any order you wish. That's how it works in its simplest form.
You can set up two amps with two different cabinets each with their
own effects and either sum them to mono at the output or go stereo.
It has the obligatory analog and digital I/O and effect send and
returns if you want patch in your favorite box. In addition
midi and 1/4" I/O for assorted controllers and foot switches.
For me the real treat are the amp simulations. These are super
high quality, high fidelity sims that really sound authentic to
me. The tube behavior and essence I feel is represented very
well. The list of amps is extensive and has all the biggies
with a ton of boutiques as well. Each amp's interface is well
thought out from a guitar player's perspective and you can go deep
and I mean real deep into tweak city with these things. You
can even adjust the bias of the tubes in the power amp section.
The cabinet and mic simulations are awesome as well. My favorite
mic is the Royer R-121 ribbon mic which offers so much detail its
mind boggling. I feel bad for the competion, they have quite a bit
of catchup to do to even be on the same planet as Fractal.
Also the support is fantastic. Cliff is always on the forum
and is constantly updating the firmware, offering new simulations
and effects for free. Yep for free. No model packs here.
Once you're part of the AXE-FX family its like Christmas with these
new updates!
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In
other news the new cd is humming along well. Working on the
seventh tune, currently laying down bass tracks. No solos
cut yet as I'm always trying to improve so I can do a good job.
Some of the changes are going to prove challenging to play
over and I'm pretty excited about that. Like I said before
the tunes are heavy, very progressive and melodic. I want
the songs to carry their weight even before any solos go down.
I feel that quality songwriting is paramount in instrumental music.
So I'm doing my level best to make sure that the writing is adventurous
and fun, I'll leave it up to you to form your own opinion when its
done. I'm thinking of maybe uploading some demo quality rhythm
tracks as a bit of a preview of what's to come. I don't know
if that would be a good thing or not though so the jury is still
out on that.