The PG contributor details and plays through a handful of his latest noisemakers and tone annihilators.
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Archive for January, 2018
This respected relative newcomer delivers a drop-and-go preamp that’s enough to gig on any stage.
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IK Multimedia has teamed up with Hammond USA and Suzuki MusicCorp to bring the sound of Leslie amps and cabinets to its AmpliTube software and T-RackS mixing and mastering processors.
AmpliTube Leslie and T-RackS Leslie offer the authentic sounds of 5 Leslie amps and 6 Leslie rotary-speaker cabinets that can be used for recording or playing live. Microphone distance and position control, precise level balancing, different amp and cab combinations, circuit overdriving, width, acceleration and deceleration control of the rotary speaker, horn/drum balance and more are included to give tracks the shimmer, charm, growl and character that are an unmistakable part of the Leslie sound.
There are 5 amp models included: Leslie Type 147, Leslie Type 122, Leslie Type 122A—a new tube model—the Leslie 3300w and the Leslie G-37/Studio 12, the last two of which are new hybrid amps.
All the speaker cabinets are faithfully reproduced using IK Multimedia’s exclusive Volumetric Response Modeling technology. There are 6 rotary speaker models included: Leslie Type 147, 122, 122A; Leslie 3300w, Leslie G-37 and the Leslie Studio 12.
The virtual microphones in the AmpliTube Leslie and T-RackS Leslie can be repositioned. This affects the perception the listener will have of the rotation, or “doppler effect.” Users can choose between a 90° mic position, which is the most common, to the 180° mic position, which is less common, but heard on many famous recordings, and gives a more symmetric perception of the rotation. It is also possible to move the virtual microphones closer or further from the cabinet for even greater realism when recording. There is a full parametric EQ to further shape the sound to fit a variety of musical ideas.
Changing the rotation speed of the horn and drum is also possible allowing users to adjust the range of speed from slowest to fastest for their ideal performance settings. It is also possible to change the acceleration and deceleration speeds to control how quickly the speaker goes from “chorale” (slow) to “tremolo” (fast).
The AmpliTube Leslie and T-RackS Leslie are expected to ship in March 2018 and will be priced at $/€129.99 each. The Leslie Collection, which combines the AmpliTube and T-RackS versions, will be priced at $/€179.99. Upon release, the individual amps will also be available separately for $/€24.99 each and the cabinets will be available for $/€34.99 each. A single amp and cabinet purchased together will be priced at $/€49.99.
The AmpliTube Leslie and T-RackS Leslie are available for preorder at a special introductory price of only $/€99.99 and the Leslie Collection can be pre-ordered for only $/€149.99.
For more info, stop by ikmultimedia.com.
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John Petrucci recently stopped by the studio of YouTuber FamilyJules for a little video game-inspired guitar action.
In the clip below, watch the duo play a searing rendition of the classic Super Mario Bros. theme, each with an Ernie Ball Music Man Monarchy Majesty in hand.
“Ernie Ball hit me up and asked me if I would like to do a video with John Petrucci this month while he was doing his tour for G3,” FamilyJules said.
“John is one of my biggest influences of all time, I’ve been listening to Dream Theater for as long as I can remember and owe so much of my playing ability to his tutorials on YouTube as well as his DVD, Rock Discipline. He is one of my biggest idols of all time and getting to do this with him was immeasurably huge for me.”
Check out the video below, and for more, visit music-man.com.
John Petrucci is currently on the road as part of the G3 Tour, and you can check out the dates at johnpetrucci.com.
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At Winter NAMM 2018, Fishman debuted a battery powered version of its popular Loudbox Mini acoustic amp, and introduced its new Matrix Infinity VT and Matrix Infinity Mic Blend pickup/preamp systems. Watch the video above for more info.
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In this video from Winter NAMM 2018, Adam at Luna Guitars presents new models from the Henna, Gypsy, and Vintage series. Watch the video to learn more.
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Nashville’s alt-rock quintet Moon Taxi’s highly anticipated fifth studio album, Let The Record Play, marks the band’s first album for a major label. It’s an infectious, ten-track LP that includes their monster single, “Two High,” which to date has garnered more than 64 million streams on Spotify.
Produced and mixed by Spencer Thomson (who also happens to be the band’s guitarist), Let The Record Play lends itself as easily to home speakers as it does to the band’s dynamic live show.
We recently spoke with frontman Trevor Terndrup, Thomson and bassist Tommy Putnam about the band’s new album, and the incredible success of “Two High.”
To someone who may not be familiar with Moon Taxi, how would you describe Let The Record Play?
Terndrup: It’s a continuation of our story. For people discovering the band for the first time, it’s a great introduction, and hopefully, they’ll go through and check our back catalog. For fans who’ve been with us for more than a decade, they’ll appreciate that it’s a continuation of our songwriting and production skills. We’re always striving to become better songwriters, and we’re getting a more worldwide look with this record.
What was the songwriting process for this record like?
Thomson: One thing we tried to do a little more of on this album was to have a lyrical concept up front. So often, you end up having music that you like, but then you have the task of trying to put lyrics to it. It can slow down the process. What we’ve learned is that if you have an idea, lyrics or a title on the front end, it really helps the song move along and it makes it more of a cohesive concept to work with.
Terndrup: Spencer writes a lot of the lyrics, but everyone generally puts a stamp of approval on it. It’s all collaborative, so it has a pretty thick filter. Usually, it’s one person who comes in with the creative spark, and then the rest of us help push it to the finish line.
Let’s discuss a few tracks from Let The Record Play, starting with “Two High.”
Terndrup: The music and the lyrics both happened within a two-week time frame. The idea came from our keys player, Wes, who sent a text that was an auto-correct fail. He had meant to say, “too high” and it came across as “two high”. He told me about it and I immediately thought about the iconic peace symbol from the sixties. It was right around the same time the Women’s March happened and there was a lot of protesting going on. That’s really when the chorus started to shape up.
“Not Too Late”?
Thomson: That one was the last song we wrote for the album and was a little bit of an odyssey. There was an initial track we were working on that had a musical bed with a Police-style beat. I wrote most of the existing lyrics, but something just wasn’t jiving. So, we wound up scrapping the music but kept the lyrics. Because it was near the end of the album, we had a lot of musical motifs and chord progressions left over that we liked but hadn’t found a use for. We took a few things from different songs and it very quickly started coming together. In some ways, it’s a bit of a hodge podge of several things, but in the end, it was about finding the right tone to fit the lyrics.
“Good As Gold”?
Terndrup: That was our first co-write written with someone from outside of the band. Wes wrote the first push of the song with Kevin Griffin, who’s the singer for Better Than Ezra. Then we all sat down with it at Spencer’s studio and finished it. It’s a banging track.
What are the band’s tour plans like for 2018?
Putnam: New things seem to be happening daily. We’ve got a bunch of small runs coming up and then some festivals, like Bonnaroo. We’ll probably get back to Europe at some point in late summer and then we’ll do a nationwide tour in the fall.
What’s your preferred setup when you perform live?
Putnam: I’m using a Fender Rumble direct and I’ve also just got a Fender Elite Jazz 5-string bass, which is just gorgeous.
Terndrup: Spencer and I traditionally have played Fender Twins because they’re the same no matter where you go. But what we really wanted was to eliminate some of the stage volume. Fender has been great to us and came in with their Mustang GT series amps. They’re super-light and have a direct out in the back which allows you to turn the master down. But the signal isn’t some lame, guitar signal. It’s processed and has the body, presence and sound of a Twin. It’s really solved a lot of problems as far as too much stage volume. They’re awesome.
Thomson: I’ll speak to the studio. We’ve always done a fair amount of recording using direct in, and more so than ever on this album. There’s some amplifiers but it’s mostly direct-in guitar. For recording, I prefer to use computer plugins as much as pedals to balance the sound. It also allows us to record mobile when we tour. It opens up your creatively instead of being tied down.
What excites you the most about the release of Let The Record Play?
Terndrup: The success of “Two High” has opened up the world to us. Being on a major label has given us a reason and a platform for people to hear our music. We’ve had great records in our past that people may not have been exposed to before but will now be able to hear. We feel like we’re the best version of ourselves right now, and that’s very exciting
James Wood is a writer, musician and self-proclaimed metalhead who maintains his own website, GoJimmyGo.net. His articles and interviews are written on a variety of topics with passion and humor. You can follow him on Twitter @JimEWood.
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Guilford Guitars Ty Tabor 2.0 model
What is the hardest song to play live? That goes for King’s X or any of your other projects. —Christopher Goodwin
Well, a lot of the songs I’ve never played live, so I don’t know. There’s a whole lot of music on my solo stuff that I don’t even know if I can play it live. As far as King’s X is concerned, believe it or not, “It’s Love,” one of our biggest hits in the early days [1990], is one of the most difficult songs for us as a band to play. It just requires more coordination than most songs, as far as voice and hand coordination, doing things at different rhythms and times that don’t hit at the same time together. It gets confusing. So that’s a hard one for us to pull off and do it well.
I’m excited to hear your new solo album, Alien Beans. What can you tell me about it? —Dutch Schultz
It was an idea that started with my manager—to release a bunch of the stuff I had released to fans online, things that weren’t on a major label. He suggested I should release some of the catalog on a label so that more people would know about it. That was the original idea—but as we were putting some of the old stuff together, I also was writing new stuff, so I told Rat Pak Records, why don’t I write some more new songs and we can make it a bigger package, offering more than just the old stuff. The intention was to have two or three new songs, but as I kept writing I kept putting it on hold, saying I’ve got another one that’s almost finished and another one that’s almost finished, etc. I basically put the album on hold for about a year to finish writing songs to have a new album to release at the same time with the old. So we decided to make it a double album—old and new.
Is there a young guitarist or band that excites you? —Chris Healey
Death Cab for Cutie. I’ve been a big fan of theirs for years. Chris Walla, the guitarist that left the band after their last album [2015’s Kintsugi], he’s someone I always enjoyed watching play live and enjoyed what he does live. He’s just very atmospheric and different and quirky, but I loved everything he did and what he added to the band. And for a while I was into Billy Talent pretty heavily, but I haven’t listened to them a lot lately. I’ve actually been going back and listening to a bunch of stuff from the Seventies that I haven’t heard in a long time. I’ve been doing more of that than getting into new stuff. But any time Death Cab has something new out, I get it as soon as it’s available.
I’ve always thought your tone on [the 1994 King’s X album] Dogman was amazing. What amp and gear did you use? —Dan Coppola
I used more than one thing, actually. I had a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier that was real hot, and I also had a Marshall that belonged to [producer] Brendan O’Brien. It was basically a combination of the Dual Rectifier and the Marshall on a lot of things. As far as guitars, I think I was playing a Zion during that time and Strats also. So, kind of a combination.
King’s X’s sound changes so much on each album, from the reverb future of Out of the Silent Planet to the tremendous heaviness of Dogman to the warm tones on Ogre Tones. Which album do you think best sonically represents the band’s sound? —Fitch Proctor
Probably Gretchen Goes to Nebraska [1989]. There are others where I like the guitar sounds, but with Gretchen, somehow we had the mics placed perfectly. By the way, the way we got these guitar tones was by using very cheap [Shure] SM57 mics. Every time someone tries to use something expensive on one of my cabinets, I hate the way it sounds. I can’t tell you how many engineers I’ve had to argue with and say, “Just put a 57 by the cone and let me show you where to put it.” They would just be flabbergasted and say no way. There’s a special technique to using a 57 to get a killer guitar sound; it usually involves aiming more toward the outer part of the cone of the speaker instead of the inner cone. Most people point toward the inner cone. I hate that sound. The outer cone gives it a quirky, weird tone.
You pioneered the drop-D sound in rock. A quick listen to “Pleiades” [from Gretchen Goes to Nebraska] and it’s clear that no one was using drop tunings like you. What inspired you to experiment with drop tunings? —Wendell Lowder
The very first thing that inspired me to tune a guitar down was “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by the Beatles. When it gets to the end of the song, that big riff, you can’t play those notes in regular tuning. I was figuring it out and I was like, my guitar doesn’t go low enough. So I just tuned the strings down to hit the note. That was my first time doing a drop tuning—what was that, 1969? After that I started realizing that a lot of blues players were doing it on acoustic, and then I heard Brian May do it on a song or two and Eddie Van Halen did it on Fair Warning, but mainly Brian May on Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls.” That drop tuning seemed heavy. I had already started experimenting, but when I heard that, I said, yeah, that’s a pretty evil sound. I started writing things around that.
How do you get your tone? Better yet, how do I get your tone? What guitar, what amp, etc. should I get? Is there a “Ty Tabor kit” I could assemble? —Lance Daltrey
I wouldn’t recommend anything because people would buy something and say, “This doesn’t sound anything like Ty Tabor.” That’s just the truth. It doesn’t matter if I’m using Orange amps or Boogies or Labs or Marshalls or what. People tell me my tone doesn’t vary a whole lot depending on the amp I’m using, or the guitar. In general, the tone stays in the ballpark. Believe it or not, that’s always been a problem for me because my tone is, well, I’ll just say it the way [King’s X members] Doug [Pinnick] and Jerry [Gaskill] always say it: No matter what I pick up, it doesn’t sound like anybody else. Every time, Doug will shake his head and say, “It’s in the hands.” Brian May can pick up whatever it is, and it’s gonna sound like Brian May because it’s in his hands. It’s not the gear. There’s no easy answer. Just plug into something and be that. I wish there was, because I’ve spent my whole life trying to get other people’s tones, but it just doesn’t work that way.
What’s your all-time favorite song that you wrote and why? —Todd Teske
Probably “Ride” [from Tabor’s 2006 solo album Rock Garden] because it’s about motocross and racing, and those things are a much bigger part of my life than people realize and always have been. I’ve told people a million times: If I could’ve made a living in motocross, no one ever would’ve heard me play a note of guitar. It was my true, true love and passion. I’m still drawn to it, and I ache that I’m not physically strong enough to take that kind of abuse and do it anymore. I’ve broken too many bones, and now I’m paying the consequences of a life of racing. There’s no high I’ve ever felt in front of a crowd that can compare to the high of being in the middle of a race. The adrenaline, the focus, everything is so much higher because danger is involved. A mistake means bad things for you and others. Your focus reaches a place that fear puts you in that you can’t get to in normal life. That gives you a high like nothing I could explain. I used to tell people it was spiritual. I played in front of over 300,000 people at Woodstock [1994], and that feeling was lame compared to the feeling of being in a race. That’s the honest-to-god truth. The ultimate to me is being in a motocross race and flying through the air. I used to love, love, love flying through the air. I got into it to do jumps!
What was your first guitar and where did you get it? —Jade Mitchell
It was a little plastic guitar my parents bought for me. I was really young, like, three maybe. It was for my birthday, I believe. So they gave me this guitar and I knew it wasn’t real. It was a plastic acoustic guitar, and it didn’t sound right and I just got really mad about it and I went to the living room, put it on the floor and jumped up and down on it and smashed it into little pieces. I was just angry that it didn’t sound right! I mean, I was so excited—I got a guitar, but no, it’s not a guitar! But, instead of being very angry with me, my parents bought me a real guitar. They realized I could tell the difference—and that I wasn’t just a kid saying, “I want this, I want this,” but that I really understood it. I know my first electric was definitely a Telstar. There was a kid down the street with a Telstar and a little amp that had a three-inch speaker in it. He sold it to me—the guitar and the amp—for $25. I mowed yards for six weeks to be able to pay for it. My dad bought it and I mowed to pay him back.
Who are your top three guitarists of all time based on a combination of technical virtuosity, signature sound and influence on the world of music? —Jeff Tiongson
That’s tough. I don’t know if I could do just three, but I’ve got six! Brian May—ultimate style, tone, taste, choosing what to play and what not to play, it’s genius. He’s one of the most gifted guitarists we’ve ever had. The same goes for Allan Holdsworth. He literally changed my life. He changed everything for me—my view of how to play got shattered when I heard the first U.K. album he was on [1978’s U.K.]. The solo on “In the Dead of Night,” I was shocked. I was like, “What is this?” To me he was a god among men. Ace Frehley of Kiss because of his choice of notes—he had some of the greatest solos I’ve ever heard. Like on “Shock Me,” to me there couldn’t be a more perfect solo for that song. Robin Trower had a big influence for obvious reasons, that bluesy style, that touch. I saw him recently; it was one of the best shows I’ve seen in years. Number five is Johnny Winter, another life changer. When I heard him play blues on 12, it gave me permission, and it was life changing. Number six is Phil Keaggy. He’s one of the greatest players I’ve ever seen live. I’ve seen him countless times and I’m always inspired. It always makes me want to practice. The first few times I saw him, it made me want to quit.
When is King’s X going to record a new album? —Paul Walker
We’re looking at the beginning—some of the demoing and recording—of a new album this year, actually. We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years, and the plan is, if everything falls in line, to do a new album in 2018.
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In this video from Winter NAMM 2018, Rob McCoy of Gator Cases explains how the Stanley Guitar Foot lets you rest any acoustic guitar on the floor.
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In this video from Winter NAMM 2018, Richard Hoover, founder of Santa Cruz Guitar Company, explains their uniquely designed Parabolic Tension Strings. Watch it now for more.
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