Ok you asked for it….

Don’t worry.
This is still 100% a photography blog, but sometimes I also think it’s cool to get to know a different part of me.

 

Many of you might have picked up that I’ve started playing again.
After more than 17 years it’s pretty hard to start again, it’s a frustrating process of knowing what you could play and hearing what you now can play… let me make it short…. I’m now app 2 months in and I’m slowly getting my “groove” back 😀 but it’s a lot fun.

But a lot has changed.
When I was younger I spend a lot of time recording material.
First with a 4 track recorder where you could only hear the first 2 tracks while recording on 3 and 4, you can’t really think of that anymore, but we recorded 2 demos that way, and they sounded…. well ok not good 🙂

Later we ran a recording studio with a friend of mine and I finally had a good recording room, proper mixing and a 8 track tape recorder with external effects, WOW. Now don’t think too much of it… but it was pretty cool.

Fast forward to 2018
My laptop runs the free Cakewalk by bandlab and I use a Behringer 4 input card and this gives me way more effects, tracks, options etc. than I ever had in the past, in all honesty it’s addictive as can be.

Now when I played in the past I actually sold my tube amps for a tube pre-amp and valvestate poweramp and a Marshall SE100 attentuator and speaker emulator, this way you could cranck everything up to 11 and still play at house level. To be honest I’m a bit sad that I sold my Marshall tube at that time because now it would have been worth a boat load of money. And that’s the other thing… everything I now play is vintage 🙂 which brings me to the following.

When you see what’s possible now with amp modeling etc. it’s mind boggling.
Just connect your guitar to the PC/Mac and you can dial in whatever amp you want, add effects and it sounds pretty convincing.
I still own a Roland VG88 for which I saved a long time, this box makes it possible to make your guitar sound like a nylon string, acoustic, marshall, mesaboogie, fender, humbucker ON the neck… all no problem. At that time I loved loved loved this, the more digital the better. So my 18 year old self would sell everything and just plug in.

However somehow I have changed…
At the moment I have my guitar straight into a Line 6 Valve 212 amp and use nothing else, I don’t even use the effects in the amp. The only thing I added is a small analogue delay for the lead sound… so you could say I went from going all digital to all tubes and very basic.

So anyway…
You guys have been asking me for something I played and I’ve been avoiding this so far…….. with good reason. Let me state that I’m FAR from satisfied with what I recorded (although I love the progress and outcome) it’s full of small and bigger mistakes, my phrasing is totally off at the moment (phrasing means being able to create fluid melodies) but it’s just a lot of fun, and I see progress almost weekly. So I thought it was time to give you guys what you asked for, a small recording.

All instruments were played by me, except the drums where I got a little help from the computer, but I still arranged everything myself.
The best way to learn when you want to progress is to record music, and loads of it…. so that’s what this is, one of my recordings where I play with rhythm, simple cord progressions and fillers and just drop a small solo on top. The idea is to build from these ideas and that way learn to play better, faster but most of all learn counter rhythm and phrasing. You can mindlessly run scales all day, but this way you learn 100x faster.

So here in this blogpost you find my recording that I made today for practicing purposes.
Now I immediately take advantage of the situation….
With todays digital options it’s incredibly easy to collaborate on projects, you can for example record a “sketch” and send it someone else who changes it, who sends it someone else etc. you can work with a singer from the states and a bassist from the Netherlands etc. it’s awesome…. if you’re up for something like that… just drop me an email, I love to work together with others to create something.

Ok, thanks for reading and here is my practice recording.
please judge as it is… playing a short time again and it’s not meant as a professional recording, it’s just for fun… so no flaming 😀