lmao

Training NAM models of my amp today!

Will chicks dig 8 string djent I don’t wanna go the singer songwriter route and blues is too saturated and I can’t play jazz

Remember, 20 years since I've done any serious study. Factor that in and the mystery disappears, given I solved the question even after the lack of context. Just don't see the huge deal, but anyway.


Thanks for the book recommendation. I'll see if the university library has it. If you've got anything like a comprehensive guide to guitar scales and modes and doesn't hold back on even the most exotic stuff, I'd like that too.


Never heard of him, even during my shred obsession days. Cool sound though, IMO a Greg Howe kind of sound.

To my ear he had his own thing going on and it appealed to me a lot more than the Yngwie clones. Debut album on Shrapnel was in 1990 right before grunge hit — came along a few years too late.

You could quiz people on math they learned 20 years ago at school and they'd probably draw a blank although ii-V-I, backdoor ii-V, and tritone substitution is basic stuff you learn right out of the gate. I haven't followed the back and forth but I do remember it started when discussing Holdsworth. Just my 2 cents but when Allan played the Synthaxe using the same Oberheim and DX7 patches as his keyboard player Steve Hunt you'd probably struggle to tell them apart. It was his approach to the instrument that was different to most guitarists. He didn't like the percussive sound of the guitar which is why he was shredding with legato at a time when everyone else was picking. His biggest influence was Coltrane. He wanted his guitar to sound like that.

Listen to that then Steve Hunt playing around 2 minutes in. It's all coming from the same place. He didn't have his own language. He sounded unique when he applied it to guitar with his tone (which he could get out of almost anything) and the way he played it. His music definitely had its own aesthetic and by all accounts never told his musicians what to play. When I saw him live I walked away thinking it was unique because you simply wouldn't find anyone else playing that style of music like he did. Today of course there are many clones, the internet made it easier to work out exactly what he was doing, and Fractal, etc. makes it easy to copy his tone both the single note lead tone and his 8 delay line chordal sound.

When he drops in at 2:40… no one sounded like him back then. Everyone knew it was him after a couple of notes. That's what impressed me most. That he was completely self taught and he'd just hang his massive nuts out like that never holding back — he never tried to sound like anyone else. He didn't follow trends. He had such a big sound too even with light strings. It sounded huge when I saw him.

I'm absolutely blown away.

Crazy.

You're using the free software?

https://www.neuralampmodeler.com/

https://github.com/sdatkinson/neural-amp-modeler

What amps do you have?

Srs, brah? I already addressed this. If you're an advanced player and took a 20-year break from guitar, would you forget how to play an open B7 chord? A backdoor progression is like an open B7 chord. It's a common jazz progression like a B7 chord is a common open chord, but I like Dom's analogy better: if you studied abstruse mathematics in school, you're not going to forget how to multiply if you took a 20-year break off serious mathematics.

The only mystery is why you keep rationalizing… you just didn't know what a backdoor progression is. None of us did at one point, so no big deal.

Already addressed this in my last post, too. The context is the sequence of chords, which was provided. Other context, like the key and/or what comes before and/or after, is irrelevant because the progression stands on its own. In other words, there is no other context that could have been provided that would have made the question easier to answer .


Are you looking for a plug n' play book for guitar that includes exotic scales with keys, charts, and application suggestions, or are you looking for an abstruse scale book that has every possible scale contained in it but wants you to do all the work and talks like this on page 1:

If you're not familiar with set theory, then you'll probably want to opt for a plug n' play book, or first take a good gander at the textbook, Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory by Straus, while you're still deciding which guitar to buy.

Yeah, I have no doubts it will sell well, but it's probably overpriced by about $500.

Yeah, that guy was part of the standouts from the Shrapnel crew in both tone, groove, and approach, but no pick + legato + bluesy = no shine during that era unfortunately.

As soon as that drum intro hits, you can tell it's a Mike Varney production with his signature poorly gated verb and "turn knobs and don't listen" EQing technique on the drums, lol. His brother Mark hired engineers that could dial in drums (or just listened to their warnings).

Shrapnel production was definitely weak sauce and the pressure to nail solos in a couple of takes must have been immense back then with the cost of studio time and the calibre of session guys laying down the rhythm tracks. Today they could piece together the best takes in Pro Tools at home with an Axe-FX and upload them with zero anxiety or red light fever.

Another thing that worked against Firkins was he played a fugly Yamaha. Getting on the tightly packed Ibanez roster = more exposure.

All that is freely available online. You don't need to know many scales to write interesting music or improvise over changes. Major + modes. Melodic & harmonic minor + their modes. Half-whole/whole-half symmetrical (altered and diminished). Bebop scales which just have a chromatic passing tone added. That's a lifetime right there. You could play around with harmonic major, Neapolitan and Hungarian minor and major, and other exotic scales, but now you're out in the weeds. Focus on the bread and butter.

I can't stress this enough. Hear a note, sing it, play it. Every single scale I just mentioned and most of their modes (at least the ones I use which are all just alterations of Lydian) I can sing up and down and instantly identify every scale degree. I'm at a stage in my life where I don't even need chops to feel content musically. Writing music and improvising melodic solos gives me more of a buzz. We're all different and I love hearing people shred on their chosen instrument but the stuff that really stays with me is memorable music. Interesting harmony.

One of my favorite Holdsworth songs is Sphere of Innocence — no shredding on that. Just effortlessly beautiful melodic playing on a 36" baritone over a really moving (for me anyway) sequence of chords. Evan Marien played with Allan right up until a week before he died. He knew the man and it moved him.

LMAO dying from passing this 6mm kidney stone currently but still lol'ing at Bodhy getting non-stop ass-raped on the misc

Yep!

Just the free stuff and I'm doing the training locally because Google Collab restricts GPU access.

My whole setup is Linux based, but there's a barebones Linux plugin that works seamlessly with Ardour.

https://github.com/mikeoliphant/neural-amp-modeler-lv2

For training, I installed the Python package in a virtual environment. I upped the training to 1000 epochs and each capture takes about 30 mins to train

My main amp is a Mesa MkIVb (with EL34 and 6L6 in simulclass). I use all three channels and sometimes use a boost (Timmy) on the clean channel. I captured my 4 usual configs and set up a "practice environment" session in Ardour (NAM, IR loader, tuner, reverb, metronome, backing tracks).

Silent and convenient practice any time!

Just explaining. I don't think you know what it's like to take a 20 year break, sounds like you've been playing seriously the entire time, which is great. Just that the multiplication analogy isn't perfect, since we all multiply in everyday life so it's a skill we never stop using. Not so with music playing or theory.

I probably wouldn't be able to play a B7 immediately if you popped a guitar into my hands right now. The shape wouldn't come naturally, I'd have to take a minute to find where B, D#, F# and A were and find a voicing. Likewise if you put a key signature in front of me with 6 sharps and asked me what it was. I'd have to look it up.

But yeh, no biggie.



Thanks for the recommendation but I have no idea WTF your quoted passage is saying. I don't suppose it is Slonimsky's Thesaurus of scales and modes? I don't know if you heard of it , but the book I was fond of back in the day was Dan Haerle's The Jazz Language. That had loads of scales and modes but also applications and chords to use with. Something like that.

Not joining the pile on, just sharing my perspective. I took a long break, not that long, and while the chops were gone my knowledge of theory hadn't evaporated. I actually drew a lot of confidence from that because I knew the rest was just muscle memory, repetition, and getting the calluses back.

As for the bolded text this further confirms why books that go balls deep into jazz theory, Slonimsky, etc. would be pointless right now even though you should be saving all the free information z4v4 is giving you for future reference. Go back to the fundamentals. There's so much you can work on away from an instrument.

Save that on your phone and look at it every day until it becomes automatic. Relative minor is a minor 3rd down (C-A, G-E, etc.)

I took piano lessons for a couple of years before I started on guitar and play piano as much as guitar today so what he said made perfect sense. In C#/Db, F#/Gb, and B major he's automatically thinking of all the black keys in play with C-F, B-F, and B-E, on the white keys respectively for each of those keys (see below). The key signatures are ingrained because that's the way you learn on the instrument. You memorize fingerings for the scales in every key with an accompanying key signature for each clef. Unless you read music it's not as important on guitar since most guitarists just commit shapes and patterns to memory.

Which tube pedal are you using?

So FM3 wins again. I bought the iPad Pro M2 11" a few days ago and installed Logic Pro. Got my usb-b to usb-c cable today and hooked the FM3 directly to the iPad Pro where Logic Pro instantly recognized it and I hit record and immediately started laying down fantastic tones.

Also have a little Akai LPK25 that hooks up to the iPad Pro and is powered through the usb-c port, just very mobile and convenient. The plug-in libraries that comes with the new mobile subscription based Logic Pro is actually pretty impressive.

I bought the Magic Keyboard which charges the iPad Pro wirelessly freeing up the usb-c port for peripherals which is also super convenient.

I may be still in the honeymoon period with this iPad Pro but for music creation this thing is awesome.

Is it your contention that you used to know what a backdoor is 20 years ago and forgot it but at the same time are somehow able to remember very lucidly what a ii-V-I is?

Remember, we're going by "I studied the most abstruse elements of jazz theory" and not "I was a rocker that took one semester of jazz theory."


You sure? I'm not talking about a middle-set drop 2 voicing in 3rd inversion B7 type of chord but just a simple cowboy B7 chord. How long has it been since you've played guitar, brah, and how long did you play for?


It's from The Complete Thesaurus of Musical Scales, by Yamaguchi. He permutated all combinations of notes from the 12-TET system; over 300 unique subsets (scales) and over 2000 derivatives (modes).

There is not a single note written on a staff or as a letter nor any suggestions or diagrams - it's all formulas listed in normal form order and interval-class vectors, and it is up the the user to understand its uses.

It's really more of a complete reference for modern composers wanting to delve deep into abstract composition or jazz improvisers with a good command over all the basic scales Dom listed and want to dig into and discover and be inspired by new and unique sounds.

So answer this:

1 #2 3 #4 5 b6 b7

What type of 9th chord from the root (the 1) would the above scale work over?

Otherwise you can get Alternative, Exotic, World, Synthetic Music Scales for Guitar, or Guitar Grimoire Scales and Modes. That would limit it to the most typical scales and common exotic scales and its applications with charts, etc., but as Dom mentioned, all that shiit is online and there's plenty of the staples to keep you busy.

Lmao.

Also lmao at Dom telling Bodhy "Okay so this is a Circle of Fifths, Mr. Abstruse Jazz Guitar Master".

See!!!


Sounds like a great setup!

Got it in 2016 back when there was no wait list for Kingsley pedals so it really came down to a coin toss. Tube selection makes a big difference.

I alternate it with this on a loop switcher:



No tubes in the Bogner but it's definitely got that touch sensitive thing going on and doesn't feel at all like a pedal. With vintage output pickups it's a little low in gain so I push it with a Greer Lightspeed.

Kingsley = ultimate cork sniffer pedals.

Nothing wrong with handwired tube pedals built on classic circuits. Things just became stupid when That Pedal Show took a liking to them a few years back and the guy who builds them (Simon Jarrett) could make any drive pedal sound good. All the planets aligned for unbridled corksniffery.

If that 2 year wait list stupidity is over I'd be interested in trying one however what I already have ticks the boxes so there's really no need for something that might make a tiny difference.

To be honest that Bogner pedal + delay into a Princeton is all I need.

Lmao at a 2 year waitlist for a fukking pedal. Ethos pedals probably sound just as good.

It might be an outdated recommendation, but I really liked Mark Levine's Jazz Theory book. When it comes to chord scales it reduces everything to just 4 types of harmony based on 4 scales: major, melodic minor, diminished, and whole tone. I'm still not sure how easily it translates to guitar, but on piano dealing with scales like lydian augmented, altered, half diminished, etc gets a lot simpler when you're just thinking of those as modes of the melodic minor. With that approach, you only need to learn 4 scales (and their respective modes) and you'll have a pretty good foundation to improvise over any of the chords that you'll encounter when playing jazz.

I'm sure they do. Just explaining why at some point it wasn't corksniffing. If you wanted a couple of 12AX7s running at real plate voltage (200V+) and handwired so it's something you could repair/mod yourself then Kingsley would have been on your radar. Many guitarists swear by a $40 used SD-1 into a Marshall.

Thanks!

That looks cool