There are few things more fun than playing loud weird noises live
with people dancing.
Last night, was the House Will Never be Finished Party at my house, a
house warming party. We had live bands, a keg of beer, and maybe 50
people. Wound up playing for about 7 hours, both with a garage band-
the Cooper Hill band doing cover tunes, and with the Electric
Starlight Space Animals, doing all originals.I'm starting to figure
ways of putting the AN1X into the mix.
The filter sweep effects are really good for song intros-yes this is
a cliche, but a good cliche. It's also nice to use these when the
guitarist is really wailing and all you want to do is to add to the
tension.
Any lead patch sounds great through a big tube amp. The Wonder patch
sounds good in a variety of settings. I set it up to morph from the
funky patch to a more sustained bell piano. Very usefull.
Playing with a real drummer is so much fun. We had two drummers
taking turns. Gordon followed the old school John Bonham, Ainsley
Dunbar school of pounding, while Steve was a real tight, from a punk
school of drumming.
When the volume was loud, I found long attacks weren't real useful.
Short attack, lots of times percussive leads worked well. I usually
played higher up to get out of the guitarists's range, but then
turned the treble down a lot to keep the sound from being too
screechy.
I turn off the effects when I play live. There's enough stuff going
on, the effects are more than I can handle. Too hard for me to get it
to sit in the music, and too hard for me to get a decent sound. I
originally thought this was the fault of the AN1X's effects, but a
guitarist friend who really knows effects said that all effects take
time to work. He said that effects can really take the oomph out of a
sound unless you have a lot of experience with the settings. Could
make for an interesting practice routine, learning effects
parameters. My wife might not think so.
With three guitarists (all too loud) and a drummer (of course too
loud) and a bass player all playing, I just had to play rudimentary
riffs. Playing and singing at the same time is huge amounts of fun.
Playing melodica during a thrashing punk tune is very amusing as well.
Finally, here is my absolutely favorite cheesy pad chord. Use this
for minor keys. If you're playing in C minor the left hand should
play C G and D the right hand should play Eb (right next to the D) Bb
and F. Fifths in other words. Instant tacky lounge ambience, suitable
for any outdoor soiree.
Shameless.
Rainbow Jimmy
http://www.spaceanimals.com
http://www.mp3.com/spaceanimals
