so i've got this fine leather whip here--- oh you mean actual work? geez!

This is a paul gilbert cover i'm working on. just for fun, as always. i'm putting more work into it that usual however so it should come out pretty well once it's done.

i'll let you guys listen and then fill you in on how minimal my recording gear is just so i can prove you don't need 500000 gear to record stuff that can sound nice enough.

The Curse Of Castle Dragon
[mp3]http://sbe.andrewingram.net/column/intro.mp3[/mp3]

oh yeah. note that it was kind of a pain in the *** to record each track twice. but i think i managed to get them well in time.

Its cool, nicely done, fill us in about the recording

Very nice, Seb.

two tracks layered one over the other played with a godin exit 22. one track is on humbucker mode and the other track is on parallel humbucker mod (a nifty mod to try out for the gearheads)

drum is all synth

bass is also synth (albeit a bit too groovy, something i gotta fix)

the tone is a simple fender princeton 112 solid state amp.

and it was recorded with an Apex 126 drum mic. just wonderous. some mixing here and there and voila. put the whole thing through Sonar and we're done.

Nice chops! And some serious tone! You used your ADA?

But I know you can get the mix to RAWK. It's pretty decent, but I still have all my teeth.

Si tu veux, je pourrais te donner un coup de main pour le mix. De quoi a te calisser ca d'in dents ostie! T'a les sequeneces MIDI pour le drum pi la bass?

haha. nope. just the fender and no ADA, the good old beast is at the band space and i definitely don't wanna move it around too much. thanks though.

and it's for fun and personal learning. and the drum isn't midied. i have this very unefficient way of working with fruityloops that works just the way i want so it's cool. i guess though since all the drum is bounced to a separate track per instrument (kick, snare, 5 toms, hats, ride, china, splash and crash), you could get your magic done with the mix, i'm hardheaded. you know how it is, when you start a project, you wanna do it your way the whole way

and i'm also going to use this to show people dissing godin guitars how much they can kick butt. only thing i hold against them is that they don,t have 24 fret models anymore so i'm stuck using my ESP for the solo since there's this tiny beety part that needs the 24th fret. bugger. i like my maple neck -_-

but you can help me in one way

FIND ME A TUBE POWERAMP. damn things are nowhere to be found and i really haven't been too impressed with the mesa stuff for the price tag it wears. I wish traynor would make power amps -_- their custom 100 kicks some serious *** but i don't want a head, i want a rack! i wish i could find an old ADA poweramp and then i'd have the best vintage gear ever.

and good to have you back around old bean, when are you going to see my shop?

That came out of a naked Princeton? Nice!

Godin guitars kick serious ***. I want a Solidac soooo badly. I was bent up on getting one but chose to upgrade my Ibanez instead. I switched the pickups (Duncan Custom and Dimarzio PAF Pro) and redid the electronics (2 push-pull pots for coil splitting), next upgrade is a Fishman stoptail bridge for some acoustic blendage.

Once you get used to the piano roll in Sonar, sequencing drums is just as easy as in FLStudio. Just clicking squares, but with higher note precision (up to 1/480th of a beat).

Just grab EZDrummer and the DFH expansion (most awesome metal/rock drum samples EVER), and run your sequence through it. It has an extensive MIDI loop library also, so you can throw up some really quick tracks for jamming to, and such.

For your poweramp, check out Craigslist for used old-school Marshall power amps for cheap. If they were good enough for Iron Maiden, they're good enough for you.

Oh, and bring your shop to Montreal! You're actually running a store now?

That's freaking spot on.

not really running. i'm not the owner, but there's only really 2 of us handling everything, so my boss does the finance/paperwork/payments and i just make the whole thing work. it happened as a "right place right time" thinger as i was already giving lessons for that place for about 2 years, and there was some ****storm between the old associate so i was there to keep the store running during that, and that was that. i'm doing all of the lutherie and repairs and classes and pretty much everything. and with all the P.R. and effort and sales i'm bringing into this shop, it's just like i'm running it.

as far as poweramps goes i'm really not picky, maybe i'll be able to find a sweet deal on a demo at the summer MIAC in toronto so i'm being patient.

oh. and the princeton sounds good because i can make it sound good. Countour all the way down. bass all the way up. volume at like 1.5, gain at 7 and treble flat. i got this thing for 100$ at a garage sale

the solidac is indeed terrific. i'm also loving the Triumph. i must've sold 10 of them since september. everytime i call my godin retailer he just answers "so, another triumph today?"... hehe, you gotta try this beast. it's just smooth enough for country guys, but rocking enough for heavy players that have some decent chops and don't rely on effects to "clean up" their mistakes.

as far as drums go i'm using a mix of the Sonor drumkit in DFH and the hats and cymbals from nskit and some china and splashes and max-stacks from DFH. and the bass is the midi from a Gpro file i found run through the 4front bass VST plugin and then put through amplitube for some more "rolling" treble. i don't wanna put much effort in building a killer midi drumkit since i already have a kickass drummer. i'd rather "invest" in real musicians you know?

I'm telling you, next time you record guitars, try to play one track with humbucker and one track with single coil. the single coil really adds more definition to the high gain tone. (parallel mode is just like single coil but with two coils running side by side instead of standard humbucker, it's kinda harder to play since the output drops by like 20-30% compared to series mode, but the tone is SQUEALING) the tiny rythm you hear behind the A minor blues is only 5th-root diads played with a single coil tone. it's just perfect, doesn't clash with the lead, but fills it up.

Cool about the store, props to you! I wish I had real musicians.

I've been scouting around looking for bands, but here in Montreal it's either death metal (meh) or indie rock (double-meh). Haven't found anything that interests me, yet.

And why do you think I put the coil splits in my guitar? I ****ing love layering single-coil and humbucker tones, cause it ****ing BITES. I don't have any clips ready though, cause I only did the coil taps about two month ago and changed the pups last month. I've fallen in love with my guitar all over again.

I'm working on a cover of Butterflies and Hurricanes by Muse, and I wanted to get Bellamy's sharp, cutting and beefy distortion. Split on the bridge HB works great for that, and then layer in some full humbucking to add in the extra oomph and beef. The PAF Pro sounds really ****ing awesome too in single coil mode with some thick distortion on it. This thick, disgusting sound with just the right amount of definition to it.

Here's a ****ty clip I re-recorded last year, I'll have to put up something new with my new guitar setup soon. I lost my project in a hard drive crash before I even got to work on a proper mix, so you'll have to deal with the lousy mix that I have.

[mp3]http://www.netmusicians.org/files/70-Still%20More%20Fighting.mp3[/mp3]

Oh, and I haven't tried the Triumph yet. I'll have a look at it next time I'm at Steve's. It'll be an excuse to try out the beautiful DSL 2x12 again.

Edit: I still can't believe you got that tone out of a Princeton. I ****ing hate the Princeton, but that tone is ****ing nice.