13 Feb
2005
13 Feb
'05
5:59 p.m.
Last Sunday 13 February 2005 22:12, Shayne O'Connor was like:
Heh ;-)
I thought the valvestate was a valve pre-amp with a tranny power-amp. It's
rather good for recording with IIRC because you can get decent distortion
without having to crank it right up.
cheers
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
tim hall wrote:
Well, we've had some interesting discussions on here lately about tuning
guitars, check the archives. I've certainly learned how to improve my tuning,
I've been one of the worst offenders for being slightly out of tune all the
time. I'm beginning to understand that the western 12 tone system is innately
out of tune with the natural harmonics, so if you tune to harmonics, you'll
always be out of tune. The best advice was to tune every other string to the
A string or a harmonic of the A string. That works a treat!
Last Sunday 13 February 2005 10:24, Shayne
O'Connor was like:
i've been listening back to the song, and there is definitely something
ajar with the tuning ... tuning has never been my strong point - after
twelve years of playing guitar, i've only just started tuning the guitar
to the proper pitch. sure, whenever i'd play with keyboards or
something, i'd tune it to that ... otherwise, i'd just tune it to the
low e-string. ha ha, that'll make some of you cringe :) it's really
gotta stop ... i think i'm just so used to out-of-tuneness from this
sloppy behaviour, as well as most of the music i listen to comes from a
bit of a DIY philosophy ... no excuse for laziness, though. (i should say that, to me, this song has more than
a bit of a tribute to
the musical forms of Pavement ... and correct tuning in this context has
no more relevance than good singing ... )
OK, there's no such things as 'correct' granted. However, in my musical
opinion, this song would sound better 'in tune'. Dodgy guitar
sounds require
much greater production skills to sound right (c.f. World Domination
Enterprises 'Asbestos Lead Asbestos' or indeed their version of 'Funky
Town').
funny you should mention, because i've been listening to rough trade
shops no wave compilation, and "asbestos lead asbestos" is on there ...
also on there, and highly deserving of cross-referencing, is "the
raincoats" version of "lola" ... it's just so sleazy and scummy in
every
way ... and the tuning, oh my god it's awful ... the most brilliant
cover i've heard in a while :) Recording the
guitar through a miked up valve amp would help. 7th
chords on the guitar tend to produce uncomfortable and distracting
harmonics if they're not tuned right, you'll notice many guitarists use
open power chords for this reason.
i'll try this out - but i think my amp (marshall valvestate) only offers
a solid-state emulation of a valve ... i haven't had much experienc
miking stuff up, so it should be a good learning experience too :)