Monthly Archives: March, 2009
I`ve been lucky enough to spend an entire gig standing next to Jeff Beck, drink a few beers, chat awhile and ask him some questions about tremelo and the performances I`d seen at Hammersmith Odeon. I also saw him at The South Bank in London and he played with John McLaughlin and The White Stripes. It`s quite strange when you find yourself at a small local gig drinking beer with your favourite guitar player.
Yesterday we had a look at valves or vacuum tubes and today I`m going to take that thinking to echo. What kind of echo do you like? Crisp clear and digital? I`ve got a Line 6 echo park under my desk but that`s just because I use it for fun at work – it`s not really got the flavour and the behaviour I really dig. It`s just not tasty enough. If you really want to get fat rounded sounds then these are the echo units you should consider having a look into.
Gibson Echoplex
Roland Space Echo
WEM copycat
Binson Echorec
Blue coconut echoverb
The absolute beauty of tape based echo units lies in the fact that tape itself is analogue – moving the tape across a tape head polarizes the magnetic domains in the tape in proportion to the fluctuations in the audio signal. The granular nature of the magnetic material adds noise to the signal and because the magnetic characteristics of tape are not linear tape exhibits a characteristic hysteresis curve, which causes unwanted distortion of the signal. Any analog signal must theoretically have noise and a finite slew rate. It`s the imperfection in tape that makes the sound so delicious.
Whilst having a jam outside in the hot sun one year the copycat tape began to melt, decay and whither and this lead to some pretty crazy sounds coming through the p.a. and across the Surrey Hills. If you want to hear some Space Echo then maybe have a look at Adam Ants Table Talk from his unbelievably mind blowing 1979 release Dirk Wears White Sox. If you haven`t heard it buy it. It`s incredible IMHO.
Vacuum tubes?
…from outer space ?
NO, this is not a post about replacing the corrugated suction hose on your vacuum cleaner or hoover. If you have a valve (vacuum tube) guitar amplifier consider yourself lucky because according to conventional guitar wisdom your tone will be rocking !!!!!!!!
Paul has written in asking about the best practices in replacing the vacuum tubes in his amp.
Try and replace old tubes with the same models from a new manufacturer simply because these tubes were more than likely built into your amp in the first place and from a part of the amplifiers response, although experts can probably help with using different tubes to gain differing tone characteristics.
Here are two great places to buy replacement vacuum tubes and find out more, including how they work. The tube store have a really handy page that can help you choose your pre-amp gain factor through using differing tubes.
Best regards,
I said yesterday that I`d write about Robert Johnson; there`s a lot of hoodoo wrapped up around the man, in particular that he sold his soul to the devil down in Clarksdale. Originally, Son House suggested, Johnson was not regarded as a good musician but after the trade with Satan he returned with the blazing skills and blues mastery of a demi-god.
I`d like to post a video here in which Eric Clapton talks about Robert Johnson and plays “Stones in the Passway”. It`s a great place to start exploring what Robert Johnson has to offer and why he is who he is. It also illuminates the sheer technique, the impact of the unusual, that is often confused with something arcane, mythical, metaphysical, divine and otherworldly and more specifically in the blues with superstition, an encounter with the Devil. It`s also interesting to note that the cross tempo section Eric Clapton discusses is a technique that Johnny Winter has used in varying degrees throughout his career. Johnny Winter`s Progressive Blues Experiment album from 1968 is chock full of blues.
A longer version of this post is available on my blog www.jakeedwards.net. it`s worth reading if you want to begin your search to play blues from within a context of initiating an understanding of the history, the language and with some interesting links.
For those of you out there who are keen on Pink Floyd I thought I`d write a little post that connects Pink Floyd to a certain part of guitar history, english music and associated styles. At the beginning of their career Pink Floyd were a quintessentially English sounding band led by songwriter and folk singer Syd Barrett who had named the band after two Piedmont Style blues players Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Barrett`s contribution to music is highly evident in the poetic, lyric and sonic expression of The Pink Floyd`s debut album Piper at the Gates of Dawn which ranges from avante-garde through to folk and used electronic sounds, Binson Echorec echo and tape editing.
It`s interesting to note that the early manifestations of the band, playing psychedelic song based music, were markedly sonically different from their later Roger Waters or David Gilmour driven sound and through name alone affiliated with a geographically and stylistically distinct guitar. Little Pink Anderson, the son of PInk Anderson is still around and I spoke to him via email a couple of years ago. It`s interesting to note that Little Pink played in some of the last remaining Medicine Shows when he was a boy. The piedmont style of guitar is a blues music characterized by a fingerpicking approach on the guitar in which a regular, alternating thumb string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melody line played upon the treble strings. Now that sounds complicated but it is in fact one of the simplest ways to articulate separate bass and lead lines on your guitar, almost in the fashion of Rag Time piano such as Scott Joplin and achieve a richness in sound. I recommend listening to Mississippi John Hurt to begin with as his affable and melodic approach, or check out the awesome Elizabeth Cotton for a technique that`s highly unique. We teach a basic fingerstyle lesson on our Songpond. And once you`ve tried that check out the amazing and uniquely percussive and melodic songs and techniques of our tutor Paul Ubana Jones, they really are absolutely something special.
Tomorrow I`m going to try and find a little time to look at the highly distinctive and wild playing style of Robert Johnson, something that even Eric Clapton acknowledges as being immensely challenging. Im off to listen to John Hurt, Sonny Terry and Brownie Macghee…and Paul Ubana Jones…London styles!
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