My New Guild Makes My "Heartbeat"!

Hey Nerdlies,

A couple of months ago I bought a new acoustic. Well, it's not "new" I guess, just new to me...wait a minute, now that I think about it, incidentally it was never played by its original owners, in the twelve years of its existence...so I guess it really is "new".

Well semantics aside, I found this beautiful all mahogany Guild D4 on craigslist and I had to scoop it up! So one January morning I traveled to West County and met the nice couple who had owned this little beauty since they won it in a raffle in 1999. Now I don't now very much about Guilds, but what I have learned is that 1999 is kind of a special year in the world of Guild because while Fender had indeed bought them by that time, their factory was still located in Westerly, RI and this D4 has the label to prove it. So I played the guitar for the first time in their living room and much to my delight it sounded beautiful; moderately bright with a good backbone of low-end...a solid strummer. But, I haven't told you the best part...wait for it...it's signed by George Strait! Yeah, I know I would be jealous too.

Anyway, back to the second reason for this blog post. On Valentine's Day night I decided to record one of my favorite songs as a sort of Valentine to all my friends. The following is the result; First take, 1 single RODE NT1A, my D4 and my voice. I hope you enjoy.



Til next time,
cutawaycurator

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?: TUBE SCREAMERS

Earlier this year, a good friend of mine let me borrow his Keeley modded TS9 Tube Screamer. Now, if you know me then you know that I LOVE PEDALS! It doesn't matter what it is, I want to try 'em ALL! Now, I have a TS9 and I've used it on my pedal board for a long time now, but I was really excited for the opportunity to give this mod'ed pedal a serious test. So for the past few months, I've had this Keeley in my pedal board. So what's the difference between these two pedals, you may ask? Well, I figured I had waited long enough to do a side-by-side comparison between my stock TS9 and the Keeley Screamer...enjoy.

see ya next time,

cutawaycurator

Inside the Crafter's Studio

Nerds,

I just got back from an evening session at an area studio. I had never been there before and it was totally SWEET! A great live room, super solid mic collection, and an awesome rack and board! What else could you want?! Here are some shots of my setup tonight taken from my crappy phone-camera. Enjoy!

Guitar:
Toni, my Fender Jazzmaster

Effects:
(Tuner)-->Keeley TS9-->Xotic AC Booster-->Line6 DL4-->out

Amp:
Epiphone Valve Junior-->Marshall 1x12 with Celestion Heritage 75W

Mic:

Shure SM57

Big ups to all the studio crafters out there MAKIN' IT HAPPEN!

you are truly "astronauts", explorin' that space!

'til next time,

cutawaycurator

What's the Difference, Bro?

Nerds,

Lately I've been rather intrigued by the guitar amp/effect modeling features in my version of Garage Band. In fact it inspired me to conduct a little experiment.

Would would happen if I tested Garage Band's model of a Vox AC30 with my AC30?

Check out the following clip to see (or hear, I guess) the results.

bye,
cutawaycurator

Britches keeps me in stitches!

Hey nerds,

So while Britches and I have been working on their Demo/EP, random antics have expectedly ensued (does that still make them random?). On this particular day Andrew and Marty decided to get "creative" during the notion of a spur-of-the-moment photo shoot.

hyphy for sure!

Recording Guitar with Britches

Nerdles,

So with drums tracked, Britches and I moved forward with phase 1 of guitar tracking. We decided to move the tracking location to Andrew and Marty's house where Britches practices. So we threw a couple amps into a downstairs bedroom and threw some mic's in front of 'em...ya know, no big deal. For this particular session we used Marty's amazing '52 re-issue Fender Tele through his awesome late-90's Fender Blues Deville 4x10 and my AC30. For mic's we decided to just stick with the old stand-bys, the SM57 and the Sennheiser e609. Stay tuned for more with those dudes!

until next time,

cutawaycurator

Recording Drums with Britches

Nerds,

This past weekend local noise rock band, Britches were at the SPACE cutting some drums. Andrew, the drummer, was able to knock out his tracks in pretty quick succession...a rather impressive feat if I do say so myself. Check out these photos, and this short vid of the session.

some quick specs:

Kick - Sennheiser e835

Snare - SM57

Hi-Tom - SM57

Floor Tom - Beta58

Overhead - Rode NT1A

All the mic's (except the tom mic's) went into a recording snake whose corresponding XLR patches went into channels 1,2,and 4 of an M Audio Fast Track Ultra which fed into Ableton. The two tom mic's went into a mixer where I EQ'd them independently, set gain and volume levels and then sent them via a mono main out into Channel 3 of the Fast Track Ultra. The Fast Track was also serving as the phantom power supply for the Rode NT1A.

But enough with the boring tech stuff, here's a little clip of the session...

Britches will be recording for their upcoming EP over the next several weeks. Stay tuned here for more info or check them out at myspace.

Until next time,

cutawaycurator

music in video by The Tender Tribe (myspace.com/thetendertribe)