Another collaboration with the poet’s co-op.
www.poetscoop.org/archalphatitle.htm
Sounds often work like seeds, and so I found Kathryn Bass’s poem a natural subject for a sound setting.
Also, I found her spoken reading quite mellifluous and musical in it’s own right.
There's also a pagan thrust to her words: "you must have faith ... and luck".
In terms of my own treatment, I have used a more transparent texture here, compared to my more heavily loaded tracks: at some points there is just guitar bass and drums.
I tried some different guitar pick ups on this. The lipstick pick up on the painted guitar in the track pic is used on some of the chordal/chiming stuff. The long solo in the second half is on a guitar loaded with Di Marzio stacked buckers. That guitar also has a scalloped fingerboard.
The bass is a Yamaha 5 string as I gave my TBird a rest.
nice work, great sounds
nicely weird
: I know what you mean - there's nasty weird, and there's nice weird - I prefer the latter, too!
Some of the best vocal guitar I've heard... Bill
- I guess the scalloped fingerboard does help to add inflections and so on
Some very creative playing here!
good choice of poetry, well treated
- I think going to exhaust the poetry co-op at this rate! - no poet is safe from the scallop!
excellent solo
- it came out quite well, and the DiMarzios on the scallop have a nice bite and edge to them.
no... that's the scalloped board
: Yeah - that's another track of the scalloped board, on the bridge pick up, and this track mixed to the fore. I expected to have to adjust to the scallop, but I didn't at all - as if I had always been playing 'em! It stands to reason that the scallop gives you a bit more scope for bends and finger vibrato, from microtones to very wide bends, and that comes through here. It gives you that from the lowest to the highest fret and right across the strings
too.By that I mean that an unscalloped board is less friendly to bends in the lower part of the neck and on the lower strings generally, hence most bending is done on the top 4 strings and around the middle and upper neck area. A thorough scallop evens that out strangely enough and makes everywhere and every string bend friendly - so a good thing for an aerial bender like me.
is that the scalloped board?
: Actually it is, on the neck pick up, that track further down in the mix
so full, yet with so much air in it
- With this one I bridged the gap between my sparser pieces and my fully loaded ones. I also think I'm getting fussier about my sounds, and good sounds always have some air around them somewhere ... unless you want to deliberately make something claustrophobic
: "good sounds always have some air around them somewhere"… so true.
: In a way that's a truism, as sound is the result of moving air ... It was Furtkamp who pointed out to me that the best metal guitar sounds have lots of reverb on them .... believe it or not, I hadn't even noticed that up to that point. I thought reverb was only for spacey or clean sounds. In that metal sound it is an ingredient that you wouldn't notice, but it provides the all important air
One day, the warping will come!
That 'one day' refrain in the poem is spooky - yeah, jazz it then warp it!
It is all spot on, can't say there's a moment thusfar that wasn't cosmically right.
- that's always a source of concern: does a certain section work on its own? If not, does it set up the next section and make that work? Really, you want everything to work so if you took a random slice out of the cake would it stand up on its own?
: Yea, that one is harder to answer simply because it's so much an evolution as it goes. I listen to the progression of things, and how they lead into other things - standalone segments might work in some cases, but I'd almost argue the best songs wouldn't simply because they're more than the sum of their parts.
: Yeah, I was groping towards that realisation ... and it brings in the concept of all songs are one song - all these sounds we are creating fit into a cosmic totality of all sounds at once that only the gods can hear ... and the gods allow us to tune into that totality very briefly ... that's when we feel the rightness
Yea, I spent some time in that space earlier - I honestly don't know how the sounds came out of what I was doing, but there they were!
Almost Beefheart-fusion hybrid there.
Yeah - sudden bit of Zoot Horn Rollo!
I had visions of all things if Hendrix was in UFO.
I can't believe you wrote that! I was going to write something like "Robin Trower jamming with X", but I couldn't think of a right X ... it wouldn't have been UFO, rather more of a free form combo, so actually coming from the opposite angle, but the connection between Hendrix and Trower is obvious. I've been digging Trower this past week - have you listened closely to his solos? He often jazzes it and warps it, even when playing in conventional contexts, almost a free form approach - remarkable player
He's never done a whole lot for me, I'd often rather just listen to Hendrix. Live it's different, I've heard some bootlegs where he's on fire - but the studio work leaves me pretty cold.
Yeah - it was the live albums and a recent You Tube live gig with the late Jack Bruce which raised my opinion of him.
The warping solo kids are alright!
: The whammy bar is a ready made warp kit
Press down for hyper-space!
The balance between everything is spot on - deep without crushing.
- it is weight - or rather gravity - in many respects
Yea, that bass was definitely the right choice for this!
It has the right amount of growl. Growl is the essential thing when it comes to bass tone!
I cannot disagree, but my baseline for "what makes me happy" with electric bass is somewhere between Lemmy and Jaco.
That's a wonderful scope and telescoped juxtapostion - of course, Lemmy in Hawkwind days played differently to Motorhead - I prefer Lem's more lyrical growl with the 'Wind. My favourite electric bassists are Chris Squire and the guy from Back Door, Colin Hodgkinson - oh, and the guy from Brand X, Percy Jones ... oh, and Geezer Butler .... oh .... You give the best A to Z ... Lem and Jac ..
Yea, in Hawkwind I prefer him as a bass player, in Motorhead he's more *everything*
While the Tbird is a thing of mean beauty, it would have been wrong for this, you chose wisely, sir!
The TBird has helped to put my 5 string in a niche and hierachy. Tbird > 5 string bass > 8 string guitar > 6 string guitar > lap steel ... and variations thereof
Makes sense, every new beast is a cause for re-examining all the other ones. Not just "why are you here?" but...."if I want X, which is now more meaningful", even if that X is "which will take me to unexpected places the most?"
That last quote is profound ... you often get a new axe with certain expectations ... and then it thwarts them and takes you somewhere else .. I'm looking at different pick ups now; I just changed my Tokai Tele's pick ups - Seymour Duncan vintage in the neck and a Kent Armstrong in the bridge - the sound is so completely different - it's a unique colour now
THE AGONY!
: it's got to hurt!
so... I have to ask... what is that cool looking guitar in the pic?
: I'm not sure what it is - I bought it second hand last week, and the seller seemed to know little about it either. What made me buy it is the decoration on the body, and the lipstick pick up in the neck position. I was expecting the guitar to be a dog, but it played nice and sounds great. The name on the headstock is 'Sakura' but that isn't the brand - it's been painted on and means 'cherry blossom' in Japanese. I like the whole Japanese vibe with that race's tendency to make great psychedelic and noise rock.
The guitar has a lipstick pick up as aforementioned which I had developed an irrational craving for after seeing pics of Syd Barret with a Danelectro. But those guitars seem silly expensive to me. The sound of the pick up is very different to the usual. It has a very open sound with rich harmonics and a bell like response. No sustain and quite soft, but a beautiful sound. The middle pick up is a Strat pick up and the bridge a humbucker. It has a Strat type trem.
Have you been watching the new series of Twin Peaks? Each episode ends with a different band playing. This would perfectly fit the closing titles of one of the episodes. It has that surreal, dreamlike quality that is a Lynch trademark. Excellent track!
I'm not up on Twin Peaks, but quite influenced by Lynch, particularly by Blue Velvet. And that general feeling of finding the weird in the normal, and vice versa.
I am enjoying this, Bill. An imaginatively painted soundscape over which to lay the vocals. The painted guitar looks interesting - is it a Japanese flag motif? Is the fretboard painted, or is it a very, very, very dark wood (to paraphrase Father Ted)?
According to the guy I bought it from, the fingerboard is ebony [he could have been a priest, and it might be very very very dark blue instead!]. The position markers are actually inlays in petal formation - the guitar is called 'cherry blossom', after all. The graphic power of the flag motif is done really well, and the rising sun is overlaid with Japanese lettering and blossoms. It might be superstitious but I think there is a mojo about decorated guitars - I think it is close to tattoos, but real tattoos in the tribal sense.
interesting textures
- I like to bring in that slice effect and pan it, varying the speed of the slice
great guitar sound
- Di Marzio pick ups add an edge here - I double tracked the lines at various intervals too.
