Scribbled Audio World » Playing

Practice 1 down. Many to go

Matt Darcy — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:42:16 +0000

I had my first jam/practice with two new musicians on Thursday. I had a really good time. We worked on some stuff I had already written and they both really got what I was trying to play and put their own parts in. The tracks sounded so much better with a good drums and bass player, even that first play through was much more organic and rich sound, much fuller. We also worked through some tracks I’d started but hit a bit of a block on, on we turned around the bare bones in about 30 minutes, which considering I’d been stuck for about a month on it, was fantastic. We recorded the practice on the drummers iphone so we didn’t forget what we’d worked on. Yes, ok, I’m getting a little excited over one practice but it went so well, and with really talanted musicians and nice guys too I’m very much looking forward to our next run through, which won’t be a for a few weeks due to an absent member for a holiday. While I’m waiting I best get on with trying to put some more structure into the tracks we’ve worked on and work a little harder on the tracks we’ve not yet worked on.

I doubt they will read this, but my two new musician’s are Martyn (drums) and Brandon (bass) and I really had a good time and feel inspired again after playing with two quality musicians.

Band Mates Ahoy

Matt Darcy — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:07:37 +0000

After splashing a little cash on some website and sending out some contacts to people in the area I had some really nice responses, mostly wanting to chat about playing some music and liking the idea’s I was pushing for a band.

I’ve got to sit down and type responses to them now to see who’s really interested, but its exciting to get a positive response (thanks to any who replied as I know some of you read this site) I hope to meet a few of you ASAP and see if there is anything we can do together.

Good positive post for once.

Movement, Positive

Matt Darcy — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:49:57 +0000

My recent posts have been all based around my musical work and my struggle to find the right people to play with. Not having the right people to play with can stifle the desire and skill of writing music, as no purpose makes you a bit slack, I’ve had to drop a few songs or ideas because I’d allowed myself to write sloppy or lazy parts.

This weekend I’ve taken a step forward, a friend who is a singer in band decided to part from his own band, one of the reasons I’ve never spoke to him about it. I’ve sounded him out about the project and he seemed interesting, great news. With a singer and front man who you know you can play with that’s a hard box ticked. I’ve also manged to track down the drummer I had lost due to a crappy musicians website, when I say tracked down, I’ve found a phone number which should belong to him, but he’s not got back to me yet. I’ve also decided to contact a known excellent bass player to do some session work and help me write proper bass lines for the tacks I’m working on. As I’m trying to put a 3 component band together for the music the bass line is a really core part and needs to be beyond what I can write, so hopefully he can help progress some of these songs to be ready to be played by a band.

Nothings done yet, but it does seem a lot more positive than it has been for a while in terms of working with other musicians.

Ipod and inspiration clean out

Matt Darcy — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:54:21 +0000

If anyone is actually reading this blog they will know how hard I am finding it to find a regular musical flow. I’m writing music and songs left right and center but I am spanning this out over a crazy long period of time due to other commitments. This is not an ideal way to work. As I’ve got over an albums worth of songs now close to being finished but still in a fair state of flux, I thought I’d try to look at a different take on music. I’ve cleared down my ipod apart from a few key “must have” albums and chosen some of my lesser listened to and certainly lesser influenced music to see if it helps me finish some of the songs in progress but also maybe find a few new and different ones. It’s music inspired from my youth mostly, stuff that was fun to listen to in a pub or club but not much fun to play as a fast fingered long haired progressing guitarist, but may now give an older and better player a different avenue to look at.

I’ve also filled my normal ipod with a lot of music that I listen to on my gym ipod, this is stuff that I would never really play or listen to outside of te gym normally due to poor musical content, howver I’ve found that there can be some good hidden gems in there with interesting rythems and lyrical progression, I’ll probably delete these soon, but it’s certainly worth exploring.

Gig At St James Wine Vault Bath

Matt Darcy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:56:11 +0000

Did a fun little gig on Tuesday at the St James Wine Vaults in Bath, once again backing Ed Cesar doing some solo acoustic gigs. Quite an interesting night, from a personal point of view it wasn’t the best I’ve played due to a real lack of practice of the songs and a few slight changes to them about 2 minutes before the gig and a real problem for the first half of the set with the monitors not working so not being able to hear a thing. That said it was fun and a little dissapointing that as the night got on a fair bit of the crowd had left, but it was an acoustic night on a Tuesday night not in the centre of town, so I can’t complain.

I enjoyed some of the other people playing, in particular Simon Allen, who did a fun set on the night and really engaged the crowd. His EP is worth a listen to, he gave me a copy free – so thanks Simon, if you have a few quid buy it and check out “Shooting Star” – I think it’s a really really good simple song. He doesn’t do himself favours by not putting any of his strongest songs (in my opinion) on his myspace page so don’t judge on that (or do if you like them).

More positives the Taylor now sounds fantastic live, a little play with the EQ and the right selection of cable and it really is a great sounding acoustic when plugged in as well as unplugged. I think there are some photos on facebook and myspace of the gig, I’ve not seen them yet

Musical Lethargy

Matt Darcy — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:17:31 +0000

It’s been a while between posts, hopefully this messasge will explain. I’m currently suffering from “musical lethargy” where I cannot seem to inspire myself to complete musical projects in hand. I’m still writing songs, I’m still recording, but I’m not finishing what I start, I find myself just messing around or playing someone elses tracks for pleasure. The main problem is no reward for the work so far, so I’ve lost focus, at present there is no-one to play these songs with, or record them with, I am not, nor do I want to be a solo act, I get the thrill from writing and then playing with other people, receiving critisism and input from the people I play with to make the songs better. Currrently my options for musician kinship is very limited so without the end goal in sight of playing and recording I’ve found myself getting side tracked. I’ve got double the songs written since my last post, yet the over all finished product of the song (not recording) is not as good as I’m not spending the time to put the re-work in to make an idea a track, I’m just making THE idea a track, which is lazy. This weekend I will try to revisit all work in progress and give them the attention deserve.

I’m hopeful that publicly noting this down will drive me to find the people I want to play with, while also giving me a kick in the arse to finish the work in progress and not allow myself to get distracted from the writing process just because of a lack of imediate gratification.

Gig at the Porter Celler Bar

Matt Darcy — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:42:32 +0000

Played an impromptu acoustic gig last night at the Porter Celler Bar last night with Ed Ceasar from the Dusty Stars band and some of his friends. quite a lot of fun, we had about an hours practice before hand and then just played the gig. It was a support act for a Bath band called “CuteLoony“. Turned out quite well and some nice comments of randoms. Quite nice to be playing out and about again but playing simple songs with easy parts, not having to come up and polish clever/complex parts to fit in with a band or fill out a sound. Nice to sit down and play the songs and not worry about making the guitar parts good – just play the songs. Few awkward moments playing, the monitor in front of me failed about 2 seconds after we started and for such a small venue I’m shocked how little I could hear without it, had to play a good portition of the set watching other peoples hands/movements, mostly due to not knowing the songs %100 and not being able to hear where we where up to.

Nice evening, few drinks and met some new people, plus it was nice to give the Taylor a run out, it’s been getting rusty sat on the shelf not being played. I’ll see if anyone has any photos, but I don’t think they have.

Fender Amp Sound Modification

Matt Darcy — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:28:02 +0000

I’ve been playing with my Fender Blues Deleux amp for a few weeks now, and I love the sound, it’s great, however I’m finding that it breaks up a little easier than I would like, and only really works with the guitars with the low gain pickups, specifically the strat with the MD spec custom wound bare knuckle pick ups in. I wanted to keep the sound but just give my self a little more headroom and also allow the guitars without the super low gain pick ups in a chance to play through it, so I’ve followed the following updated.

First, I’ve started playing through input 2 – not using input 1, this makes a good difference but doesn’t really effect the head room.

Following some advice I’ve decided to change one of the pre amp valves.

hot fender pre-amps

Upon looking I found out that my amp has the Fender “Red” or “4″ spec premp valves in, which from reading are the most agressive Fender spec valves for break up.( From what I’ve read they are also just re-baged Groove Tubes). The plan is to pop out valve one on the far right of this picture and replace it with a valve that will maintain the same sound but give a little more head room before break up.

For replacement valves I was advised to get 12AY7′s

12AY7 options

I found a few 12AY7′s in terms of makes and models and of course costs, ranging from £40 to £9. I found electro-harmonix and groove tubes to have the best sounds and also value for money, however the Groove Tubes where out of stock in pretty much every shop I wanted so I decided to get a pair of electro-harmonix (always good to have a spare if you pop one) but I also found two different models of 12AY7′s a black “stock” version, or a gold smoother version. I bought 2 black stock valves for spair and one gold spec, just to try.

Gold - is it special, I think not

I decided just to give both a shot just for interests sake. Both where excellent and did the job fine and to be %100 honest I couldn’t really pick up a sound difference between black and gold spec, with the low gain guitar pick up’s the gold one did seem to maintain the clean sound better than the black ones, however I’m also half wondering if I’m looking for that in my ear rather than actually hearing it. I’ve tried both and stuck the gold valve in, and put the pair of blacks to one side as spares, as removing one of the Red Fenders gives me a spare for the Fender pre-amps and now I’ve got a spare for the one off elctro-harmonix valve. This modification has really added to the sound I was looking for, it’s made the amp much better, kept the clean tone but also made it easier to maintain the clean tone. I told you I was going to work for this sound and I think it’s there now for the moment. I’m still playing with amps, but this is a really good update to make and can really recommend it if you’re looking for a little more headroom in your amp. (this will probably work on the Fender HotRod amps too).

The amp opened.

New Amp, New Sound, New Recording

Matt Darcy — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 22:02:50 +0000

After many years my vintage clean amp sound from my Peavey Classic has now been dumped. It’s been a great work horse but was no longer giving me the sounds I wanted for how I’m playing currently. After talking to my trusty amp tech Trev at TipTon amps he suggested look at the Fender Blues Deluxe range.

Bit tatty but sounds great !

Fender amps have never really been one of my favourite amps partly down to an old school teacher I had who had a Fender amp, and his tone was awful, it was like a more trebble based Hank Marvin sound – yes, it wasn’t good. The sound suited him and his playing but it still haunts me to this day. Based on Trev’s advice I went to my local music shop and tried the Fender HotRod Deluxe amp, and the Fender Blues Deluxe amp, I was lucky as they had both in. I liked both, but prefered the Blues Deluxe amp, it had a better gain channel and I prefered the clean channels sound, it seemed warmer. I’m sure you’re aware that guitar amp prices are through the roof now thanks to our weak pound, so I decided to hit the second hand market. I found one for a good price local to me, when I turned up to pay for it the amp was battered to hell and had a few obvious faults and potentially a few less obvious faults. I lowered the price down to what was almost robbery due to the condition of the amp but it still sounded good. I took it to my amp tech at Tipton Amps who find out there was more problems than the obvious battering. After some solid repair work, the amp is now back in my hands sounding better than ever. Expect some new recodings, I’m already working on a sound that this amp is perfect for.

Fender Deluxe Amp Top

The Helicaster is born. Are you scared ?

Matt Darcy — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:52:03 +0000

my own guitar design project “17 Guitars” had it’s first official release created last week. 001BA was created. Ok, so this isn’t exactly a design revolution, but it is something special to me. Firstly it was a test model for a new truss rod design, the truss rod design worked great, but the hassle needed to make and install it wasn’t worth the effort it saved for adjustments. The second concept was a paint idea I wanted to work on. The idea came from wanting a telecaster with a mini-bucker pickup in the neck position. I’ve got tele’s and that fantastic telecaster twang is amazing, however I wanted a middle ground between a full on humbucker P90 style sound and a telecaster neck twang. Fender do a model with a mini-bucker in the bridge, however it’s not cheap and it’s very limited in options. It only comes in butterscotch, which I’ve got two teles in butterscotch already, and it only comes with a maple neck, and I wanted a rosewood neck. My option was a return to the Fender custom shop, or use it as a test bed for my truss rod design. I chose the latter. I put a Seymor Duncan mini-bucker in the bridge and had a rosewood neck made from a telecaster design but with my truss rod implementation in. The paint job was the idea that inspired the name helicaster. The idea was to have a dark wood body, which I chose a mid alder wood for, not as dark as I would have liked but I couldn’t go as dark as I wanted due to how hot the mini-bucker is.

Tremble at the Helicaster

The paint job was supposed to be a red base coat, with a black top coat and a nitrocellulose layer. The guitar was then supposed to be relic’d leaving the red as a fade to wood finish (Helicaster because of the black and blood red colours.) This didn’t quite work out as I couldn’t separate the black and red solid enough so the red has turned into an outline between the wood and the black finish. It looks cool, but not quite the look I originally planned. An added bonus is the red base coat has bled through into the wood body so has gentley stained and coloured the wood. When light shines on the guitar there is a red glow to the wood, while not effecting the actual obvious colour of the wood, it’s quite good. The guitar plays better than I could have imagined and %99 of the credit for this must go to my guitar tech Andy Manners at Vintage and Rare Guitars who is just first rate in terms of skill and first rate in knowing my personal setup. The sound is superb I can get a great hot sound from this telecaster, really fat and warm, %90 of a pure humbucker, but because I’ve use 250K pots on this, I can roll off the volume and take it back to a standard telecaster sound but with a little more bottom end, which is fanastic. The bridge pickup is a Bare Knuckles pickup called “The Boss” which again is a slightly warmer telecaster standard bridge pickup. I’ll take a moment to praise Tim from Bare Knuckles picksup who is just amazing at working with his customers, I first worked with Tim when he did a custom wound set of pickups for Fender Strat, called MD1. His attention to detail and knowledge to help you find the tone you’re after is second to none. Overall the Helicaster is a great sucess and plays fantastic and sounds superb, it has a few deviations and changes from the orginal design that where forced upon me, but this is all part of the learning process. Now, I’ve got to write a song with it to do it justice, I think I have one in the making already.