Rated Blue Jam Vids

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GMaq
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Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

Recently we filmed a few songs at a rehearsal mostly for posterity and our own amusement, my son (the drummer) is off to Uni at the end of this month and we won't be playing or rehearsing for a while so we picked a couple of our favourite tunes to jam out a bit. We got decent basic versions down so for a little sweetening and 'just cuz' we overdubbed some stuff so these videos are a core live performance with some esoteric stuff added later.

The first song is our trio arrangement of Little Feat's fun and funky "Spanish Moon":
https://youtu.be/g88Qv-AeZc0

The second song requires a little more context.. If you're not a fan of Neil Young and Crazy Horse and don't dig long spacy stoner rock jams then this one may be a pass for you.. :D. Flat awkward vocal pronunciation, questionable tuning, intonation, note choices and other Neil Young anachronisms are to be found here in all their "ragged glory". I, like many went on a pretty long and enjoyable Neil Young jag in my developing years and I was pleased as punch when my son 'discovered' Neil Young this summer and this song "Cortez the Killer" is one we both are really into both musically and politically. For me the allure is the free form soloing and the fact that there are no comfy blues licks and safe scales to fall into make playing it a completely fresh experience every time which really forces me to be present and in the moment when we play it and that is where I wish my playing could be all the time... :(

Both songs also feature my MOD Duo for effects and I'm loving it's fizzy and smurchy Big Muff simulations and the lush Shiroverb which gets that spacious Neil live album sound into our small room..

Here is Cortez:
https://youtu.be/grS1F2fAIvo
Last edited by GMaq on Tue Jan 07, 2020 7:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by milo »

This is solid stuff! Excellent performances, both. You really nail those guitar solos, and the MOD Duo sounds great. Thanks for sharing these tunes.

Do you ever use the whammy bar on your Telecaster? Mine doesn't even have one. I found when I was a teenager that whammy bars are only good for detuning my strings in the middle of a gig. But maybe it was just the cheap Yamaha Strat clone I was playing at the time.
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by English Guy »

Superb
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by folderol »

Wot dem guys sed :lol:
The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by ufug »

Under-promised, over-delivered AGAIN. Excellent work sir.

The energy inspired me to plug in the geetar immediately after watching, thank you!
listenable at c6a7.org
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by turbidh20 »

Excellent indeed :) Nice vocal as well.
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

GMaq wrote:Flat awkward vocal pronunciation, questionable tuning, intonation, note choices and other Neil Young anachronisms are to be found here in all their "ragged glory". I, like many went on a pretty long and enjoyable Neil Young jag in my developing years and I was pleased as punch when my son 'discovered' Neil Young this summer and this song "Cortez the Killer" is one we both are really into both musically and politically.
:) bring it on

thanks for rekindling that great great song in my ears, fuel for the soul, needed that today

he cuts those cowboy chords that are in every song ever to the bone and leaves so much space between the lines

and he loves the music so much, it's not just the fun noodling and jams, really struck me when I finally heard him live, you could sense that he wouldn't mind going for another hour now that the amps were on and the music was playing (they finished with a 15 minutes A day in the life (Beatles), tore it apart nicely)

re. the politics...haven't checked for years and do share the dark colonial shadow reminder theme (something like 95% of all the 'native americans' was extinguished by sword, power or disease after the boats from Europe arrived IIRC) but there are some revisions to the image of happy children and women dancing in the sun under Montezumas rule, ie. war was certainly known, tribalism and human offerings and stuff like that (random non-musical rant out, sorry!)
GMaq wrote:For me the allure is the free form soloing and the fact that there are no comfy blues licks and safe scales to fall into make playing it a completely fresh experience every time and really force me to be present and in the moment when we play it and that is where I wish my playing could be all the time... :(

Both songs also feature my MOD Duo for effects and I'm loving it's fizzy and smurchy Big Muff simulations and the lush Shiroverb which gets that spacious Neil live album sound into our small room..
you nailed it! on vocals and tele and production, everyone is dialed in, the room and bass and drums in particular sounds so dry that the reverb on vocal harmonies and your lead lines really takes of, the Shiroverb sounds fan-tas-tic the more you burn it up

re. mixing, on 2nd in-ears listening only, so don't take it at as more than what some guy wrote on the web...I'd give the drum bus 10-15% more (vs. bass and guitar), his cymbals 10% less (too sparkly chimy for Neil :)) vs his kick and floor tom. And dial the panning between bass and guitar a bit more towards the center while still keeping that live recording stereo spread feeling and dragging some of that reverb with it

since you're throwing those nice m7 chord voicings in you might find these variations fun as well, to match some of the 9 and 11 intervals in the melody:

fret numbers, from top (low e) to bottom (high e):

Em7add9
0x4030
Em11add9
0x4035

D9add4
x54030

Am7add9
x05500
x05503
Am7add11
x05533
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

Wow thanks everyone for taking time to watch and comment.. :D

@milo

You are quite right tele's don't come with whammy bars, I bought that guitar in 1984 and my first band played 60's music (there was a mini-60's revival in the mid 80's). I wanted to get that surf kind of gentle vibrato sound and was too young and stupid to know about the classic Bigsby tremolo bars so I went and got a Kahler whammy bar installed which was so far beyond what I needed and was more for metal guitarists. I use it sparingly at most and pretty much to 10% of it's actual pitch bending capabilities. :roll:

@Fmajor7add9

Thanks for the detailed reply, enjoyed your insights! I agree wholeheatedly Neil is giving us more opinion here than actual history but it is a poignant set of lyrics told from the viewpoint of both an observer and protagonist so that in itself interests me as much as the story the song tells. I also appreciate the notes on mixing and especially the musical suggestions. I am a complete untutored savage when it comes to music, I don't know any theory or how to read a note and must sadly admit I often don't know the names of the chords I'm playing... on the other hand half the fun of playing this song is that I have no idea what the next note is going to be but of course it's always better to learn and go into it the next time with some new ideas to try.
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

GMaq wrote:I wanted to get that surf kind of gentle vibrato sound and was too young and stupid to know about the classic Bigsby tremolo bars so I went and got a Kahler whammy bar installed which was so far beyond what I needed and was more for metal guitarists. I use it sparingly at most and pretty much to 10% of it's actual pitch bending capabilities
I had a Korean Gretsch with Bigsby once and a very very hard time putting strings on the gizmo and keeping it in tune after twanging away....

But recently I've swapped a (great) Squier CV neck to a (decent) China strat with Wilkinson tremolo (2 pole thing, rock solid simple) and it has changed my playing somehow. As in more space and sense for sustain, less strumming and picking because you can always pull that lever for a beat or more. Can't imagine playing without one now.

Carl Verheyen: Whammy Bar Setup Secrets is next level wizardry, he uses it sort of like a b-bender on all strings, to be tested some fine day
GMaq wrote:I don't know any theory or how to read a note and must sadly admit I often don't know the names of the chords I'm playing... on the other hand half the fun of playing this song is that I have no idea what the next note is going to be but of course it's always better to learn and go into it the next time with some new ideas to try.
nevermind names and numbers, it's not supposed to be theoretical at all, just a clumsy way to try to write down which notes are in the chord

I just noticed your melodic touch on Em7 and Am7 and wanted to share some other chord positions with the same approach

thanks for the tunes again and your civil take on my brief politic-history rant,
keep on ROCKING in the free (and libre and open sourced) world
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

GMaq wrote:Both songs also feature my MOD Duo for effects and I'm loving it's fizzy and smurchy Big Muff simulations and the lush Shiroverb which gets that spacious Neil live album sound into our small room..
had to check your MOD and Shiroverb

seems great indeed:
https://wiki.moddevices.com/wiki/FAQ
"Are plugins free of charge?
Yes, currently all plug-ins available on the MOD Duo are free. We currently have close to 200 plug-ins in our library and new plug-ins are added every month. Soon we will also have a store where developers from around the world will be able to sell their effects plug-ins, encouraging these programmers to spend more time creating new and unusual plug-ins. "
Hardware quite pricy though but of course more road and punk jam ready than a Thinkpad with USB pedals and 1/8" jack cable output
  • No expression pedal jack in to be seen unless I missed something...?
  • the Arduino Shield is super neat though. Are there other builds going on, compatible with MOD's platform? Like Pi's and such.
  • the LV2 plugins can be used in any LV2 compatible DAW/host right? MOD are just curating these for their gallery?
  • no further ?s
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

The MOD is great, I got mine as an original Kickstarter supporter, there is no expression pedal input because they are at work (and VERY delayed) at bringing out their own expression pedal that uses their own 'control chain' connection system, the prototypes look very promising though!

Here's an informative thread on the availability of the MOD LV2 plugins outside the MOD, it should be noted many of the original MOD plugins already existed in the Linux world and are largely available in various repositories, in fact falkTX the amazing developer of KXStudio, Carla etc. is an employee of MOD Devices so many of his KXStudio plugins are in the MOD and ones like Shiroverb have been ported to his KXStudio repositories. @tramp the wizard behind Guitarix also has much of his work in the MOD and also has his own github sources of his extra plugins: https://github.com/brummer10/GxPlugins.lv2

See here: https://forum.moddevices.com/t/how-to-c ... a-daw/3489

To my knowledge the MOD Duo, the new MOD DUO X, the Control Chain footswitches, the arduino shield and the upcoming Expression pedal are the only supported official hardware at this time.
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by magicalex »

Sounds great, Glen. Love the tone on 'Cortez'.
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by psyocean »

Strong band, keep rockin! :)

"Cortez the Killer" - nice melody, excellent work! My respect and regards for you!

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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by Rainmak3r »

Looks like I missed this post at the time, amazing performance!
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Re: Rated Blue Jam Vids

Post by gennargiu »

Great Stuff Glenn....rock rules from electric guitar !!!! :D

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