005: Rehearsals and Technicals

Been rehearsing again, and it has been a while since we were in this zone of loud playing and having fun. Its only after a few months (really) of not playing/gigging that you realise how it keeps you fit! But good to get back on the horse. We've forgotten lyrics, tempos and all sorts, but after 30 mins we were back on track like we never left.

The pic above represents my semi-circle of pedals, and while its not THAT impressive compared to some others, its a little playground for me. If anyone is interested, heres whats going on up there.

Guitar goes into that zoom multi fx at the left. Its not very good and pretty old, but it comes equipped with a startlingly good -2/+2 octave shifter. That noise of the guitar winding down at the start/mid of lights out - thats the puppy there. It also has a decent delay on it, which i can control the time/volume of with the expression pedal, for some funky on/off delay antics.

From there we go to a boss multi fx (me-50). Its not bad, and has the harmoniser, delay, reverb and compressor that I use a fair bit. It also has a pretty little ring mod attached to the expression pedal, which the new re-mixed version of Easy Money (on the album) has in the second verse. Its like a synth on a guitar.

And then from there, my best friend, the looper. I rambled on about this in the past, but it allows me to record something live and play it back, while playing over it. Not just guitar too, but vocals also - hence why I now have 2 mic's live (it's not just wankyness). Perfect example would be in the chorus to lost in the mess, where I play the high guitar part and sing away into 'loop mic' as normal. Then come chorus no.2, i play that back, and play the chord backing and harmonise with myself. Its quite interesting! One guy said i was cheating and miming, but i'm not, everything you hear (bar 2 samples because I dont have an organ or a symphonic orchestra on stage) is recorded live and looped at some point, so its performance in a way, not cheating!

And yeah, thats my pedals. I'm gonna get another that I plug my loop vocal into so I can distort/delay/pitch my vocals for some more weird effects, which could be fun.

Gone are the days where I set up with 1 cable going from guitar to amp. Now its a mess, but a nice sounding one!

Gig @ Edinburgh on Saturday - Wee Red Bar / Edinburgh College of Art - come along.

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