ACDC Retrospective: The Lists

The entire time that I have been listening through all these albums, I have been keeping a list of "good" songs.  These are songs that I felt were a good listen and not something I would change the channel on if it came on with the radio.  In the end, not including duplicates or live versions, I came away with over 80 songs.  That is a surprisingly large amount of "good" songs for a band and further exemplifies why ACDC is the most successful rock band of all time.  I could easily to throw all these songs on a playlist and be done with it, but there's a couple of problems.  First, frankly I am a fan of well done, live songs.  Many times this adds a rawness back to the original studio song.  The complication added in with ACDC is that this is the only way to get a Brian Johnson sang version of the classics as well.  Then we have the "goof off" and super "sleazy" songs of the Bon Scott era.  I actually like "Big Balls", "Can I Sit Next To You Girl" for what they are, but its not what I listen to ACDC for.

Pass Number One: Mega List

So the first time I went through the huge song list with a quick listen to each song, lingering only with songs that I knew less of, I came out with a "Mega-list" of ACDC that is 60 songs long.  The Brian Johnson era was not immune from my culling, as I got rid of some of the very similar songs between "Ball Breaker", "Stiff Upper Lip" and "Blow Up Your Video".  Next I went through and substituted the "Live" versions of songs like Back in Black, Thunderstruck, and a handful of others.  When I came to a point, such as "The Jack" where the Scott and Johnson songs are different enough, or both had their own merits, I went ahead and doubled them up.

Pass Number Two:  Personal Favorites

The Mega-list serves its purpose; a whole collection of ACDC history right there for me to just randomly fly through.  I realized that I had songs on there that I do not necessarily consider my personal favorites, but are so iconic I could not leave them off.  Songs like "Sink the Pink" and "Riff Raff" are used in tons of movies and you might not even know their names, but chances are you've heard their riffs.  I wanted to have an even more personal list of favorites that I never get tired of, and I'd never want to skip ahead to a "better" song from.  I will share that list of 35 songs here in album release order:

*denotes a new song I learned or only learned to appreciate from doing this adventure

Its a Long Way to the Top
TNT(Live version)
Dirty Deeds(Live version)
Let There Be Rock
Hell Ain't a Bad Place To Be
Whole Lotta Rosie(Live Version)
*Rock "N" Roll Damnation
*Gimme a Bullet
Highway to Hell
*Girl's Got Rhythm
*If You Want Blood
Hell's Bells(Live Version)
Back in Black(Live Version)
You Shook Me All Night Long(Live Version)
*What You Do For the Money Honey
Have A Drink On Me
Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution
For Those About to Rock
*Let's Get it Up
*Rising Power
*Stand Up
Who Made Who(Live Version)
*That's the Way I Wanna Rock
*Meanstreak
Heatseeker(Live Version)
Money Talks(Live Version)
Thunderstruck(Live Version)
*Let's Make It
Hard as a Rock
*Cover You In Oil
*Honey Roll
Rock 'N' Roll Train
*Skies on Fire
*Stormy May Day
*Decibel

Notably absent would be "Ride On' in this list since I talked about being surprised by it so much, but one of the reasons it surprised me was how uncharacteristic it was of the Bon Scott era.  Its a detour of the rock sound and so while its in the mega-list, its not in my favs list.  I'll use both lists still depending on my mood.

And with that, I conclude my Retrospective on ACDC.  I have probably quadrupled the amount of songs I like from ACDC and learned many new favorites as well.  Several new songs are songs I would love to be able to play on guitar one day.  While my favorite ACDC song did not change over the course of this, I did discover just how many great songs are in the Bon Scott era that I never realized were his(I assumed there were only a couple of albums with him).  I found Ballbreaker is my new favorite whole album(though Back in Black is still my fav overall), and I gained an appreciation Razor's Edge and Dirty Deeds.

ACDC Retrospective: Album by Album

I'm going to go album by album and give a quick run down.  In the description I will put the predominate sound/genre/style, my favorite track, small review and a star rating.  I do not include compilations or live albums.  I chose the international versions of albums as well.

High Voltage(3 stars), Blues Rock
-This is the roughest sounding of the albums, but this also means its one of the most raw.  A big take away from this album is you will swear you've heard Chuck Berry or Little Richard play the riffs before.  Angus hasn't yet started doing his classic riffs yet.  My favorite is "Its a Long Way To the Top".

Dirty Deeds(4 stars), Blues Rock
-A direct continuation of High Voltage.  The mature parts got more mature, and the raunchy parts got even more raunchy.  They tried to up themselves and in general I feel they did.  My favorite is a hard choice... but Dirty Deeds is just iconic.  With Dirty Deeds we start seeing Angus take center stage in solos.

Let There Be Rock(3 Stars), Blues Rock
-We're getting more rock than blues by now.  A few of the songs start sounding like what you'll get for the next 20 years, but the band is still rooted in the bar room blues rock here.  My favorite song is easily "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be".

Powerage(3 stars), Rock and Roll
-This is the first strong "ACDC" album that will set the tone for the rest of the band's history.  The band will go back to some blues rock some, but this is where they start pioneering Hard Rock.  There are still some blues and some Chuck Berry influence, hence the Rock and Roll classification.  My favorite song is Rock and Roll Damnation, and marks the first "favorite" off an album that is a song I had never heard before.

Highway To Hell(4 stars), Hard Rock
-Powerage gets kicked in the ass by Mutt Lange and Hard Rock is fully realized.  The last of the slow and sleazy Bon Scott era songs appear here, and while other songs on the later albums might try and copy, they just don't get the feel like this era.

Back in Black(5 stars), Hard Rock
-Not much I can say about this album, it is the best selling rock album of all time around the world.  My favorite song?  Holy crap is this the hardest one to choose my favorite by far... In the end I have to choose "Shook Me All Night Long" because I've known it longer and love its video too.

For Those About To Rock(2 stars), Hard Rock
-The sound is there for this album, but this is the start of really repetitive  choruses that go a few bars too long.  This will haunt the entire Brian Johnson era.  My favorite is by far the title track.  The band brought it, the lyrics just sort of slipped by

Flick of the Switch(2 Stars), Hard Rock
-The band tries to reconcile the older Bon Scott era with the new Hard Rock era and success.  Its a decent album, I just wish the lyrical content was less repetitive.  I'm not expecting Shakespeare, but repeating choruses just grates me.  My favorite is Landslide.

Fly on the Wall(3 Stars), Hard Rock
-It really is a shared sound with Flick and Those about to Rock.  Only there are a handful better songs than Flick of the Switch.  My favorite is probably Stand Up.

Blow Up Your Video (3 Stars) Rock
-SO close to being an amazing album, but it loses its momentum after the first 3 songs.  The band was flirting with more "modern" forms of blues, giving them a sort of Rock and Honky Tonk sound.  My favorite song is Heatseeker, which I learned to like with ACDC Live.

The Razor's Edge(5 Stars) Hard Rock
-Brilliant.  They flirt with Arena Rock style guitar shredding, but stay grounded in the Hard Rock sound they established with Back in Black.  My favorite song from this album is currently my favorite ACDC song of all: "Money Talks".

Ballbreaker(4 Stars) Rock and Roll
-Really good.  The group revisits what they tried with Blow Up Your Video, but do it much much better and more successfully.  My favorite ends up being Hard As A Rock because the riff is so simple and memorable, like older ACDC.

Stiff Upper Lip(1 Star) Rock and Roll
-The only album I was disappointed in.  Its the closest thing to phoning in or doing the rock version of elevator music.  There is almost no change in the songs throughout the songs.  The problem of repeating chorus lyrics is finally matched by repeating instrument parts as well.

Black Ice(5 Stars), Hard Rock
-Brilliant again.  While there are a couple of questionable choices by the producer(Brendan O'brien), the band came back strong and rocked things hard.  Songs about wanting to rock, living like a rock star, and continuing to rock all the time.  In the end, Rock and Roll Train is addictive in lyrical content, and the guitars are memorable and catchy, one of the "perfect" ACDC songs.


The star ratings are my thoughts over all, but it doesn't mean the highest star ratings are my favorites.  For example, I like Ballbreaker better overall than Black Ice despite being rated 1 less star.  And even though I have Highway to Hell higher stars, I think I like the Dirty Deeds album better than it also.

Just for those that may be curious, while Highway to Hell has to be my most memorable cover, my favorite cover is on my least liked album.  I love the statue of Angus on Stiff Upper Lip and would like a small replica for my desk.

ACDC Retrospective: Why

The Start of the Journey

Over the past few months I have taken an ACDC record one at a time and given them several listens.

I guess the first question is ask and answer again is "why".

ACDC was very integral to my formative attitude towards things.  It was a constant reminder of what it means to have a little "rock and roll" in your life.  "Highway to Hell" was one of the first records(in actual record form too) that I remember, that and some Muppet Christmas record my mom owned.  I grew up on the essentials, and remember when Razor's Edge was new.  I remember when the videos for "Shook Me All Night Long" were done.

But not just that.

I have finally, REALLY, started on the road of learning guitar in a meaningful and lasting way.  While Angus was not the soul reason that I chose to get a Gibson SG, he's easily 50% of it.  I have all my life wanted to be able to play "Highway to Hell", "Back in Black" and "Shook Me All Night Long".  The guitar of Angus and Malcolm is a pure blues-rock style guitar that I have always enjoyed and thankfully is one of the first genres you can learn competently as a guitarist.  Even Angus' advanced soloing work is fun variations and tricks within the pentatonic and blues scales.

Then there are my black-out areas of which I did not have much listening experience with ACDC.  My Bon Scott era knowledge was larger than I had believed when I started this adventure, but it was still greatly expanded by listening to the era.  My biggest surprises came from listening to early recordings.  The "Fly on the Wall" and "Flick of the Switch" era was another blackout section, and to tell the truth I did not know much about the album before those two, or after those two.  Finally the last black out era was everything after the release of "ACDC Live", other than Harder than a Rock, Stiff Upper Lip and Rock and Roll Train.  That's 3 of around 30 tracks I had never heard.

Was it worth it?

Absolutely.  With the exception of a grand total of 1 album out of 18(or 14, depending on how you count them all) that might be considered "wasted" money, I would say that is a hell of a career.  Some bands get a handful of albums in under a decade to make a career on.  ACDC has had huge success in 4 different decades.  They have a 10x US Platinum "Highway to Hell" in the 70's.  In the 90's there was the 5x US Platinum Razor's Edge.  The 2008 "Black Ice" is 2x US Platinum.  The 80's Back in Black is the SECOND highest selling album of ALL TIME in all the world.  More than Madonna, more than P-diddy, more than any Beatles album.  All this means is that over all these albums, there is lots and lots of quality rock.

I kept a listing of my favorite songs on each album.  I have 29 new "good" songs that I never knew existed, on top of the over 20 that I already knew I loved.  The hard part will be to create a "must have" playlist without including all of those.  I have found that while I love many songs on a lot of albums, there are 4 albums that I feel are a cut above the rest.  I have learned that ACDC is influenced greatly by their producers.  When family or the band are in charge, they get more and more like their idols, when they get someone else in there, they tend to get pushed to be more the "hard rock" they helped invent.  In either case, I love what they do.

I have to say that my favorite memories while going through the albums were that of "Ride on" being a huge huge surprise.  I am also proud that they did not take the route so many harder acts do; when a softer song gets popular they don't put out a new album with half being soft songs trying to bilk it.  I enjoyed being able to hear Mutt Lange's influence and understand its him in there.  This is because I know my Def Leppard and my Foreigner songs from classic rock radio, and can tell the similarities from all those albums he produced.  I love a strong come back, and ACDC has had the most legendary ones.  "Back in Black" is what every band hopes to pull off when they lose an integral member.  "Razor's Edge" is the "we can show these young'uns how to rock" come back, and "Black Ice" is the "we ain't dead yet, we're still F*ckin' rockin", and with each I was so happy to hear them doing their thing.  I also enjoyed how "Blow Up Your Video" was an "almost there" kind of album, with a detour back to hard rock, but was revisited with Ballbreaker to great success.

So there will be a few more posts coming.

1. The Album Summations
2. The Ultimate Playlist

To everyone that stuck through and read my weekly updates and posts about this, and largely I've said everything I said here before in those, thanks for reading.

ACDC: The Mutt Lange Albums

Here we come at last, after over a month of listening to ACDC albums, in order, repeatedly, I get to the end of the Mutt Lange produced albums.  Three albums, 2 singers, and enough classic hits to fill a best of album release themselves.  Some of the most iconic rock songs of all time on are this list:

Back in Black
Highway to Hell
For Those About to Rock
Shook Me All Night Long
Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

Those Five songs alone would be enough to make a rock band millionaires for life and immortals in glory.  This is only the tip of the ice berg of this era.

Looked at sequentially, I think you can see the influence of Lange in the band quite well.  The first album they did had much more of the original ACDC feel to it, and not just because Bon Scott was still with them.  There's some genuine rock and roll mixed in with the pioneering Hard Rock sound coming through.  It is with Back in Black and Brian Johnson's introduction that we leave a lot of the Rock and Roll behind, and are full in to Hard Rock that will exemplify the successful albums and songs from here on out.  If there is a low point, we see it in the 3rd and last album, which is still a great selling, and overall good album.

Let's talk about that 3rd album, as its the one I have heard the least of.  I read that they went to France and had troubles with the technical side of their first chosen recording space.  That kind of things leads to tension and resentment in most cases.  They ended up scrapping things and heading to a place outside Paris.  I think the band was feeling the strain, and it probably lead to them parting ways with Lange.  Lange, himself, was a very busy man at this time.  The #1 album before and after "Those About to Rock"'s #1 stint was produced by Lange as well.  He was establishing what would be almost as huge a stint with Def Leppard, and would produce The Car's hit album: Heartbeat City.

Then, after the release, the band embarked on this huge, multi-million dollar stadium tour of the United States.  The stage had the now famous canons, the Hell's Bell, and enough pyro to wage a war.  It was a hard, fast, and physically draining tour.  After all of this ACDC decided they needed a change, and did a few stripped down, less successful, albums in the manner of their earlier career(of which I have not really listened to them yet, and I'm actually excited to be doing that soon).

For Those About To Rock has really great songs, but its hard to follow up the greatest selling rock album of all time.  I think what was most missing was some Angus solos.  Almost all the songs are pounding, head banging, driven songs, but they lack the "break" in the energy for a Angus soaked solo that is memorable.  The production is there... in a big way.  There's lots of overdubbing, lots of backtracks with chorus and echo effects, Lange is probably the strongest sound in the band outside of Brian Johnson with this album.  If Giving the Dog a Bone from Back in Black, or Touch Too Much from Highway To Hell were among your favorites, then you have an entire album of these kinds of songs in For Those About to Rock.

It is one of the greatest stints in music between a band and a producer, and it was one of the greatest eras of rock that influenced the genre's most popular albums for a decade after, and home guitarists for decades since, and it was great to listen to.  I feel like I hit a peak, but I know there are several hits that I have not gotten to yet, and I know the newest album as of this writing was freakin' awesome.

 So on I go through the albums.

Bon Scott: Retrospective

I am at the end of an era.  I have made it through multiple listenings of the Bon Scott ACDC era.  I've made a playlist of my favorite songs from this era and listened to it almost daily.

Bon Scott was every bit the rock and roll singer he sung about being.  I do not doubt his authenticity in leading the kind of life that is reflected in his songs.  These songs are sung from experience, a kind of life that by all accounts the entire band lived during this era.  The music of the band in the earlier days was very Chuck Berry inspired, but toward the end started branching into harder blues and Little Richard energy.  The latter part, I can only assume was Bon Scott gaining more influence in the band.  Bon Scott's rock and roll hero was Little Richard.  Scott's screeching howl makes more sense when you think about this fact.

My favorites that feature Bon prominently are the ones where he gets "real" with us.  I like "Its a Long Way to the Top", "Ain't No Fun", and "Let There Be Rock".  I also like the songs where he stretches his singing ability a bit, like "Highway to Hell", "If you Want Blood", "Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be", and "Rock and Roll Damnation".  Finally, I can't forget his sleaziest, most witty songs "Big Balls"  "Whole Lotta Rosie" and "The Jack".

Bon was also every bit as sleazy and dirty as I had heard growing up.  He does not disappoint, coming up with very smart ass and very nasty word play in his lyrics.  There is no making a saint out of Bon Scott, and that unapologetic attitude just makes him that much more a rock and roll legend.  The thing is, there are a couple of songs where he seems to bare his soul a bit.  An early example is "Its a Long Way to the Top", but the best example of this is "Ride On", and I feel like he was growing to have some maturity to him by then.  Like with all life cut short, I have to wonder what we missed out on when he left.

Growing up, without the internet around, I heard all sorts of stories about how Brian Johnson became the new lead singer of ACDC after Bon's death.  I had heard that he was a cab driver for them, and the band liked the way he yelled.  I speculated later that he probably was not a cab driver like we think, but was just driving them around from a studio or gig they both had taken part in.  There are some more less credible stories as well.  The truth, I found out, was that it was Bon that picked him.  One night Bon came back from watching a show, and told the band about this singer he had just seen.  He told the band that this singer really howled on stage, got on the floor and tore up on stage.  He told the band that this singer really had "it", he had that Little Richard mentality, he really knew what rock and roll was about.  It just so happened, that was the night that Brian Johnson got appendicitis and he was genuinely howling in pain.  Anyway, after the band realized that Bon would want them to go on after him, and continue being a band, the first name that came to Malcolm and Angus' mind was Brian Johnson, because they felt he had been given the "ok" by Scott all those years ago.

Mutt Lange, more than his marriage.

I wrote earlier that I was surprised that the "ACDC" sound was established in Powerage instead of Highway to Hell.  It may have sounded like I did not give Mutt Lange enough credit for the work he did with the band.  This can not be further from the truth.  Listening to the albums he did with them(Highway to Hell, Back in Black, For Those About to Rock) has given me a lot of insight.

In Highway to Hell I hear Mutt's influence in many places.  While the band seemed to learn how to play together in Powerage, Mutt had a huge influence on Bon Scott's vocals.  The lyrics are tighter and less loose, and there are backing vocals used in the background.  The songs seem to take on a less nebulous structure, and get even further away from the rockabilly sound that defined early ACDC.

The reason why I know this is Mutt's influence?  Because of Def Leppard.  You see, after his stint with ACDC, Mutt was hired to work for Def Leppard.  Their most important 3 albums were done by Mutt, and all the songs you likely know from the band had Mutt at the helm.  You can hear so much a similar tone.  The recording, the song structure, and most of all, the backing vocal tracks, are pure Mutt Lange.  You can hear it across all those ACDC and Def Leppard albums.  Def Leppard was a huge influence through the late 80's, as were the ACDC albums of his era, so you can hear this whole Mutt Lange style everywhere from Poison to Motley Crue.  There is a lot of hub bub over the Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" era of music recording, and I do not think Lange gets enough credit for his style taking over in the late 80's.

By the way, I know I have some good ole country folk in my social circles, I don't know if readin' this is your thing, but Mutt Lange is THAT Mutt Lange that married Shania Twain, and produced her biggest albums.

Powerage by ACDC

I started this journey through ACDC with a few preconceptions.  Many of them were true.  I thought the Bon Scott era was a dirty era with songs about wild rock and roll life; this was true.  Some preconceptions were not true.  I thought Bon Scott had only done 3 or so albums.  I now know that Scott was there for many more hits and albums than I had previously thought.

I knew that early on ACDC took lots of inspiration from the 1950's rockers, like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.  I had figured that the "middle" era of classic hits and THE "ACDC" sound came about largely as the influence of Mutt Lange producing Highway to Hell.  The first couple of albums only reinforced this, as these albums are very much rock and roll, and not yet "hard rock".

Boy was I surprised when I listened to Powerage.

Powerage is the album BEFORE Mutt Lange met up with the guys.  Powerage was produced and mixed by the same guys that had always did the ACDC albums before; Angus and Malcom's brother George, and his friend Harry Vanda.  From track 1 to the last, the sound is much more what I hear as "ACDC" than what came before.  Instead of quick power chords, the guitar tones are allowed to breath.  Instead of a bluesy sort of solo, there were some fast play, and unless I"m mistaken there was some tapping.  Instead of a Chuck Berry ripoff(that everyone from Jimmy Paige to Keith Richards have admitted to doing, its not a black spot to get lent a song by Chuck), there were ACDC riffs.  Its like Malcom and Angus finally let go of their hero's inspiration and started paving their own road.

This has surprised me and given me MORE respect that I already had for the band.  They have admitted that they are a band that need direction from a producer.  Famously they disliked Rick Rubin's approach.  Rubin made a career of getting put in charge of bands that have been dicked around by record companies, and using his clout to give them freedom.  Brian Johnson complained, "we hardly ever saw the guy".  This wasn't neglect, he was doing what he does, he was letting the band do whatever they want.  Anyway, I had assumed that the big transition from an early blues rock band to the biggest hard rock band of all time was because Mutt Lange had taught them a thing or two about recording, and the success of Highway and Back in Black lead to them keeping that voice.

Now I know they came up with the sound themselves as a natural evolution of their touring, writing, and chemistry as a band.

Legendary: The Funk Machine and day 44

James Jamerson.  Electric bass pioneer.

Some time in the 1960's, James Jamerson's 1957 precision bass was stolen.  By then he had been making money through his studio work, so he was able to purchase a stock 1962 Fender Precision bass.  It was a sumburst '62 with tortoise shell pickguard and a rosewood board.  To help deter any further thefts, he carved the word "Funk" into the heel of the instrument and filled it in with the ink from a ball point pen.  He dubbed it The Funk Machine.

James Jamerson was a studio working musician that played on more number 1 hits than Elvis and The Beatles combined.  Much of his work is uncredited, and a few other prevalent players of the time argue over who did what since the Motown powers that be used multiple takes from any number of  "in house" musicians.  The Funk Machine would be his favorite and most used, and many believe were used for The Temptations, including "My Girl", and  "I heard it Through the Grape Vine" by Gladys Knight.  It was used on virtually every song that Marvin Gay released.

Like any great story of loss, there are conflicting reports about how many basses Jamerson owned, and even when The Funk Machine was lost.  Some say before he went to L.A. and some say after.  Some say the bass did not even make it to the 1980's, and that he had replaced it long before he died.  Like Jaco's Bass of Doom, the Funk Machine was the most common color of its era, and because of its fame among bassists, many copies have been created.

The Funk Machine, to this day, has not been found.

Link to one possible list of Jamerson recordings.


Day 44

I'm on ACDC overload.

My solid state amp is not good at doing the slightly overdriven blues stuff, it pretty much goes into mild distortion, crunch right away.  Which is fine for almost everything ACDC does, but then there's the more bluesy sounding stuff, particularly "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution".  Well recently I dialed in as low gain as would click "on" in the crunch section, lowered the volume to around 8 o'clock, and cranked up the master volume.  It really really nails that Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution tone and I am just in ACDC playing heaven right now.  I can cut the volume on my neck pickup and boost it on the bridge, and go from that to Back in Black very easily.

Hmm.  Maybe I should do a post tomorrow explaining channel volume and master volume.  Its pretty much simulated in a Solid state amp but its necessary to know this stuff with a tube amp.  Maybe I should do a series on basic tone sounds and how to get them?  That can quickly escalate.  I have noticed, growing up, I rarely if ever saw people I knew that sort of played mess with amp settings.  They pretty much just guessed at a spot and stuck with it.  I change my gain and bass knob settings all the time.

As much as I love me some Black Sabbath, if I had to choose one band that I could play and be banned from ever playing another band's music aside from this one, I'd choose ACDC.  I guest that's why my best guitar friend bought me my AC/DC hat.

Protip: ACDC branded merchandise is a rock-boost of +15 db.

British vs American amp tone and Day 42

British and American tone

You see it practically everywhere when you are looking at instrument gear now.  Digital is pervasive, and since there are a lot of "amp modeling" going on, you have to describe the amp type without using proper nouns.  Even many tube amps now have a "American" and "British" switch on them to change their voicings.  What exactly does it mean?  Well the American amps of the late 50's and early 60's were clean sounding, while the British amps of the 60's brought in the more aggressive distortion.

(ACDC is a great example of pure British tone)

The Tubes:  A sort of, but not really, truth

Technical jargon ahead, skip if you want.  Marshall's first amps were essentially Fender amp clones.  They did not have the same tubes as Fender, but they did have similar ones that were sold surplus by the US military.  Soon they switched to more locally made KT66's.  By the time Jimi Hendrix was popular they were using EL34's because KT66's were becoming cost prohibitive.  Fenders almost exclusively used 6L6 Tubes.  The problem with this definition is that as you are aware, Marshall used 3 different tube types, and then Vox also introduced EL84!  Today it is accepted that EL84 and EL34 are the "British" tubes.

The Sound You Hear

The big Marshall change to their early "Fender" clones was that they tweaked the circuitry to distort much faster than a Fender.  These changes and the change of tubes essentially means that the "British" sound from a Marshall is a mid-pushed distortion that backs off on the bass and treble.  This is what you will hear with your ears, no matter what the tech jumbo says.  So "American" "Fender" sounds are boomy and chimey, with a smooth and light distortion.  Fender clean is very clear, very precise and ringing.  The "British" sound is mid-range aggressive, even the "clean" has a little bit of harmonic break up, making it described as "creamy" and "fat" and the distortion is stronger and grittier.

(almost always performed with a Fender Bassman)

Not so clear Anymore

When you see "British" vs "American" you really have to think about the music of the 60's.  Over half a century later, and there are amps from each side of the pond that do what the other is famous for.  Mesa and Soldano amps from America have distortion in huge amounts.  Vox, even in the 60's, made super clean amps in Britain that rivaled Fender.  Several amps now use BOTH types of tubes and let you switch between or blend them.  There are digital circuits and active equalization that can make the cleaner 6L6 tubes sound "British", and this is a common usage for them now.  Marshall even uses 6L6's in their big series amps because they are more even and you can EQ them to sound "British".


Day 42

Started out today doing the Palm Mutes and Hammer On practice tracks again.  It has been a while since I had done that because I was working up my skills through playing on the real amp.  The Hammer On is really more a timing practice for me, I'm pretty proficient in Hammer on usage already.  The Palm Mute practice track gets my speed and accuracy up.  I can kind of get into a relaxed, slow chugging mood with Palm Mutes.  I think Thunderkiss '66 is fast, and then I play the Practice track and realize I've got a ways to go before I"m "fast".

I keep alternating between practicing what I need to practice and practicing what I want to practice.  What I need to practice is academic and building of skill.  What I want to practice is all the song ideas in my head.  Both help with creativity and skill, but in different amounts.  I think academic basic skill building is about 70% skill building, 30% creativity.  Practicing my own stuff is 30% skill building, and 70% creativity.  Doing the academic gives me new skills to make more creative stuff, while doing my own stuff allows me to put my skills together in new ways, pushing me challenge my skill in ways that practice tracks just do not do.

For example: the hammer on practice track.  Its a ton of hammer ons.  Its me using hammer ons in specific ways at specific times, and pushing me to do them faster, more accurate, and in different combinations.  However, when I play my own stuff, I'm stringing hammer ons with bends and blending them with chords.  I'm saying to myself "can I do a bend, hammer on, then unbend, and slide?"  At first, probably not, but later on I work on it, and yes I can.

Its a balancing act, and I tend to fall on the "practice your own stuff" side of the balance a little too much.

Requests and Day 35

"Play something you've come up with"

That's what every newer guitarist would want to hear.  The reality is that when you sit down to show someone that you're learning guitar, they instinctively want to hear something they recognize.  Its only human nature, they want to compare you to something they've heard to be able to judge your skill.  If you can play something they perceive as a good song, they're going to think "oh wow, my friend can play this popular song!".  I'm guilty of it as well.  I used to ask "can you play Sweet Child of Mine" and in the later years, "know any Pantera?"

I've been on the other side now though, and I regret being that way.  When you're new and you're learning, you're focusing on technique and practicing.  In all reality, you probably know some pretty good sounding things to play that uses the techniques you know, but you might be missing one technique to be able to play ACDC, or Guns N Roses.

You also might know a few genres.  You might be tempted to say, "well I can't play that, but if you tell me a genre of music you like, maybe I can play something in it for you in that style".  Seems like 90% of the time they're going to say "I like J-pop" or "know any Skrillex?", or something equally as un-guitar or something you just don't know the style of.

That's just how life goes.

So if you're reading this, and you have a friend that is practicing and learning guitar, remember what I've said.  There are 10 million-billion songs out there, and chances are your first 20 you can come up with aren't going to be something they can play.  Look at them, smile a little bit, and say "just play something you know or something you've come up with yourself".  You're going to hear something new, don't be scared, you might be the first person ever to hear a new piece of music that never existed in the world before.  It could be great.


Day 35

I have pretty much decided on 4 "tone" categories that I like to play in.  Clean for acoustic/chords work, light overdrive for bluesy stuff, British Crunch(my favorite) for ACDC sounding rock, and high gain "High on Fire" tone for metal.  Today I played with the Tone shaping section to try and get two of these:  high gain metal and low gain overdrive.

I have to say that low gain overdrive is the hardest to get "right" with the sound in my head.  I think that's why there was so much fuss over the Tubescreamer pedals that Stevie Ray Vaughn popularized.  He sort of gave everyone a "base" to start from.  There's a billion tubescreamer clones and light overdrive circuits in the pedal world.  Am I happy with what I"ve done in Rocksmith to get the sound?  I'm about 75% happy.  I would like my natural tone to get out a little bit more, but none of the low gain pedals have a mix built in to run a dry signal through.  I may have to go to the regular drive category and just really roll off the drive.  My real Marshall amp does not do this sound very well, I need to break out my amp modeler and test out some stuff.

I am about 90% satisfied with my high gain metal tone I have though.  I looked up Matt Pike's amps and found that there might be a clone of it in Rocksmith.  So I chose that amp, maxed the gain, and then put a high gain distortion pedal in front to boost it even more.  Its pretty awesome sounding metal bliss.  There's a lot of Matt Pike inspired metal guitarists out there these days, so I can cover a lot of ground with his sound.  Take away some bass in the signal and you can get a lot of Mastodon's sounds, for example.  I'm not a squeally diddly diddly dealeo doo kind of metal fan.  I'm more of the Black Sabbath heavy riff kind of metal fan, and Matt's tone is sort of an Iommi on steroids kind of sound.

Spotlight Guitarcade: Scale Racer and Day 31

Scale Racer

Scale Racer is a game where by you steer a car through lanes of a highway by playing scales.  The highway has cars you must avoid, and also you are being chased by the police.  If you wait to change lanes till the last moment, you can make the police cars crash into civilians.  This scores you extra points on top of whatever it takes to finish the course.

I would say that this game most resembles and sounds like an old racing game that all my cousins and I played tons of: Rad Racer.  There are elements of the newer Need for Speed: Hot Persuit, and also a bit of Sega's Outrun.  The colors used on screen and the car chosen to represent you makes me feel that they mainly used Rad Racer.  The music also more reminds me of the Nintendo's sound effects than any arcade game.

Scale Racer is probably my pick for the best average between learning and fun.  Scale Warriors wants to get your used to switching between scale parts, but you're memorizing enemy patterns more than scales, while Scale Racer more easily teaches you the scale shape.  This is, of course, just my opinion.  I have barely touched Scale Warriors, but I have played the hell out of some Scale Racer.

Additions, criticisms? Aside from being able to edit your own parameters, which is lacking in most Guitarcade games, I think the main changes to be made would be cosmetic.  I think it would be really cool that if your choice of headstock, inlay, and amp skins would affect how your car looks and sounds.  Just a cool thought.

Day 31

I'm over the 1/2 way point?  I'm having such a fun time doing this blog that I'm not sure I'll stop updating at 60.  I'm getting encouraging feedback from friends, and thinking of stuff to post above the memoirs gives me a sort of satisfaction that I've missed since highschool(I'm a nerd).  I have some ideas on what I'm going to do.  We'll see how it goes.

Instead of messing around with the in game Tone Shaper section, I ended up playing with my actual amp for much of the day.  I found that it actually has a pretty good hi-gain setting that allowed me to nail "The Beautiful People".  Yesterday was the loudest I have had the amp up while doing palm mutes, and I have to say that I see why high gain amps are popular for metal.  It is not just the howl that they give, it makes palm muted notes sound amazing.

There are a few tones I'm having a problem getting set up though.  The lighter overdrive settings pretty much do not exist in this amp.  I am getting addicted to the tiny bit of dirt when doing blues inside Rocksmith, which is funny because I have always disliked the "Tube Screamer" pedal clones, and now I think I want one.  Tube Screamers are named more aggressively than they really are, its actually a low gain, low dirty overdrive sound.

The amp I do have is really good at getting the ACDC tone, which is my favorite guitar tone of them all, so its not like I have fallen out of love with my amp.  I've had this thing for over a decade now, and its worked flawlessly.  At the time I got it, there just was not the low watt tube amp options that there are now.  I do have a mid-2000's amp modeling digitech amp station, which is kind of like a less advanced "Tone Shaper" from inside Rocksmith.  I will have to look at getting that Tube Screamer tone with it.  Nu-metal and Triple Rectifiers were all the rage then, so it abounds with high gain amp sounds, I don't know how much low gain stuff it can do.

The Teacher's Warning and Day 25

There is a warning that I hear a lot from videos on youtube and from teachers giving free advice to players in general.  The warning is "if you focus so much on learning 2 or 3 songs, then all you're learn is 2 or 3 songs".  This does speak to me.  I have a few songs I obsessed over on guitar as a teenager, thinking "if I learned to play this, I'd know I'm a guitarist".  It is dangerous because if you devote months of time to such a small set of skills, you will absolutely learn those 2 or 3 songs, but the risk is that you have left yourself with no new goals.

Well, I feel that I am past that point of danger, but my songs are still there.  I still have that list of "I want to break this out in case I'm playing in front of Cousin A" or "I want to play this one for my sister because she and I enjoyed listening to this song when I was little".  The warning still creeps in, and I'm worried I'm not advanced enough to do them without getting caught up in them.  But I think acknowledging the risk will help get over and past the risk.

So what's my list?  Here's a few.  I may add others to other posts later.

ACDC Highway to Hell.  I've mentioned before that this song shaped my music tastes, forever putting me on the path of pure Rock and Roll.  Plus all my cousins will love the hell out of hearing it.  All my cousins come over on Easter, so I can tell anyone thinking its inappropriate, "Catholic dogma says that Jesus descended into hell to rescue the righteous of the past".  So there.  Highway to Hell is appropriate for Easter and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Sweet Child O' Mine is a song I used to ask my cousin to play all the time.  The beginning just seemed so amazing to me as a young kid.  I hear that it is not all that hard to play the whole song.  I do have to contend with the whole E flat tuning though.

Yellow Ledbetter is a song that got me back into wanting to play guitar after learning bass.  I've learned that this song is basically a love letter from Pearl Jam's guitarist to Jimi Hendrix.  This got me back to listening to Hendrix and several songs of his that I had never heard before.  After Angus Young's style of playing, Jimi's bluesy stuff is the 2nd style to have the most influence on me.



Day 25

It was a Sunday, so it was a late practice.  In Rocksmith I did the guitarcade, and for a second time went completely through Return to Castle Chordead.  This game really does help.  In fact, I was going through the chords I had in my memory today and wow, I have actually learned quite a few that I can name while changing between them.  They aren't the super useful ones, but they are chords and I am able to practice with them.

I practiced tuning to drop D without a tuner.  I'm making headway.  I know there is a way to make a harmonic of a note and tune correctly using that by using your ears, but I need an example of that with some lessons.  There is a "special" lesson section in Rocksmith, and one of them is "Tuning by Ear" so I need to mark that for watching tomorrow.  I'll let you know how the video is.  Its rather unfortunate that its at the bottom when you sort by "recommended".

Regression and Day 20

I posted before how my decision to play what is fun to me helped me become a better bassist(and eventually a better guitarist).  The other way that broadened my horizons and improved my playing was finding my influences and looking at their influences.

Some of the players over at Talkbass have some amazing talent, and they show it in youtube videos.  As I began watching them I noticed that there were probably 2 real camps of play style that I liked.  There were the slappers, which I already knew their influences.  I really don't have a knack for it.  Another was the jazz bassists.  They idolized Jaco Pastorious and the artists influenced by him.  I had tried to listen to Jaco several times, and I just never "got" it.  Later I learned more theory, and I learned about more technique, and one day I listened... and it hit me.  It was one of the most game changing days of my musical creative hobby.  I understood what his fingers were doing, and I understood his techniques and I understood what was amazing about him.  There was still a lot of "elevator" music I could not stand to listen to, but I eventually found songs of his I liked.

I listened for more music that featured this sort of fast play "busy" bass playing.  Yes, finally, I heard John Paul Jones, frequently down mixed in songs so that Page got the spotlight, but I could hear him back there, going nuts, making great music.  From John Paul Jones I looked at those that he influenced and found Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots.  I had their first 4 albums, so I go back and listen and holy crap does it sound like John Paul Jones' style.  Stuart Zender of Jamiroquai was kind of doing funk slap with this "busy" bass style too, Virtual Insanity has some great bass.  Many of the artists I found playing like this never cited John Paul Jones as a inspiration though, so I dug around and found that JPJ and many others idolized Motown.  I learned of James Jamerson, who played on more #1 songs than the Beatles and Elvis combined.  Songs like Bernedette by The Four Tops, What's Goin' On and Let's Get it On by Marvin Gay.  My Girl!  Heard it Through the Grapevine, I was Made To Love Her, Aint Nothin' like the Real Thing.  ALL JAMES JAMERSON.  I listened to these songs over and over, and learned the parts that I was good enough at the time to play. 

Guitar is like that too though.

Like ACDC or The Rolling Stones?  Angus Young and Keith Richards love Chuck Berry.  Even their tone is similar to the stuff Chuck was doing long before either were in a band.  If you look up Chuck Berry playing on TV you might see something familiar.  Angus Young's antics on stage.  The way he walks when he plays and the way he struts when he does solos, it is all an homage to Chuck.  Well if you want to play like Keith and Angus, Chuck Berry is a great way to start.  If you can play Back in Black or Highway to Hell, chances are you could play anything Chuck Berry has put out.

"aliens have found our voyager spacecraft and have sent a message, I will read it as it comes in... it looks like it is only 4 words long... the words are; Send More Chuck Berry"

Watch his solo in that video.  There's a lot of famous guitarists that got their start seeing this on TV and thinking it was the coolest thing they had seen when they were kids.

Rocksmith actually has this built into the game

I was talking to someone about punk.  They really like Greenday.  Well, Greenday has their influences as well.  I told them to listen to bands like The Clash and The Ramones.  Rocksmith has a Ramones song, and learning that would help with learning Punk in general, Ramones is a great lesson in punk rock's basic music origin.  I told this person that they could look outside of punk as well.  The Kinks is where a lot of the punk sounds came from, particularly the punk leading up to Greenday anyway.  Dave Davies pioneered the whole fuzz type of distortion, and if you can play several of the easier Green Day songs, then you have all the tools you need to play The Kinks' earlier stuff.  The Kinks is on Rocksmith 2014 as well.  So you have 3 good generations of "punk" music each separated by about 20 years, but each close enough that you could tell the influence.

This kind of lead to talking about genre mixing bands that are still taken together as a whole, but that's another post for another day.

Day 20

Today I figured I would do the Power Chord lesson.  Green Day's "Brain Stew" was a simple song I learned early on.  It was easy to play and it was recognizable by people I knew.  It was not until much later that I realized that this was the perfect introduction to Power Chords.  I practice Brain Stew even today, to keep my finger's memorizing that shape.  Power Chords keep their same shape all over the board, so unbeknowst to me, I was learning skills that would help me on about a billion songs.

The lesson was pretty well explained.  The problem I have with the lesson is that they do not going into the finger positions very well.  You start telling new players to use their pinky on something as simple as Power Chords and they are going to get sore, tired, and stop doing it.  I use the old blues man's left hand techniques.  I rarely use my pinky finger because I gotta be ready to bend strings at any situtation, so I learn to stretch my ring finger for that.

There is perfectly good ways to learn to use your pinky finger, I just don't think power chords is a way of doing it.  I have never seen anyone use their pinky finger on Power Chords in a real life applicable way.  I built my strength of my pinky playing My Girl on bass.  The version I played was based on the minor pentatonic scale and it turns out I was learning that shape without knowing it... so bonus.  But the point is, on bass the frets were so wide I had to use my pinky in that song.  I see people use their pinky while doing minor pent stuff all the time.  If you're going to give someone an exercise to build up physical conditioning, make sure it is going to be useful.

Anyways.  I feel like I have taken the lessons that have really interested me and stayed doing session mode stuff and improv way too much.  So for the next couple of days, I am going to focus on perfecting the lesson tracks of the last few lessons and even getting academic about the minor scale positions.