Out of Pod Experience

a 'Custom' Fender Telecaster - a friend had all the various parts of an old telecaster laying aorund, put them together and BOOM got what I was looking for, it is custom also that it is geared towards Hank Marvin / The Shadows Style, I also have a Schecter Diamond series Omen Extreme 6 for when I want to get a little heavier.

Unfortunately I have problems with some of my joints and recently that has spread to shoulders, arms, and wrists so getting harder to play, debating whether to sell, but last time I did my joints miraculously got better..

Amp? Fender Mustang 3... why? just love all the effects and they had sold out of the smaller cheaper, Mustang 1 and 2..

I would love to make some new tunes, based on vocals of some more recent songs like The Shadows / Hank Marvin did, but due to being hard of hearing, playing by ear is pretty much impossible!

Watching and playing by ear sounds like a great learning technique. I'll check it out. I've finally got enough of a handle on music theory (just where to find the next note I want on the freboard, really) to do it. I'll bet the song gets soaked pretty solidly into your brain and fingers if you learn it that way.

Cool about the singing. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to operate a guitar and sing at the same time though. David Gilmour says he composes his solos lines by singing them first, then trying to play them on guitar. Which might be why they don't really sound like 'guitar solos.'

@Jamwara DelCalicoe Ashley

Been singing on and off for past month, recording myself etc. I do see litle improvments now and then. Still haven got a grasp at breathing but will get there. Enjoying it soo far but want to learn more songs in my knew.

On guitar note atm learning Borsanlino, such a good song. Too bad only thumb pick i have is too tight and thumb goes blue after 5 mins :D

What mixing? Seriously, the entire thing was done on a shoestring budget, from studio time to mixing. It's the brainchild of my drummer; he's the multi-instrumentalist, played all the parts, sang all the parts, paid for everything. I joined the "band" right as he was going into the studio when he sent me a rough demo of it. I soon learned all the songs and ended up having to play and sing live while he handled the live drums and synths on the Mac (the Mac being, he just pressed the space bar and all the Reason tracks would play through the P.A., while he would sit behind the kit and I would play guitar and sing and tapdance with effects). Consequently, we decided that since no one was either able to play this type of stuff or was too much of a selfish prick to just shut up and play what we told them to, we decided to keep the band a studio-only band. We got a few really fantastic reviews from music magazines and webzines saying we'll be getting signed soon, blah blah blah, but it never happened, of course. It's just not a marketable type of music. We can't tour either because musicians are a bunch of dicks for the most part. It really sucks because we just got invited to a big electro festival in France (we live in Italy) this summer, but we had to decline because, although there are tons of great musicians here, they're all a bunch of prima donna posers who have no idea how a band works.

As far as the sounds go, the guitars, drums, and bass are all live and the effects and synths are of course done with Reason. The mix has a thin sound to it because he wanted that cold, inhuman feel to the album. We don't like warm sounds in this type of music; we wanted a cold, clinical, cyberpunk/cybernetic atmosphere. That's why the drums are so loud and the guitars are actually with the synth, and the bass is just underneath. Every album tells a story, and Artificial is an epic journey; there is even a short story we wrote for it but never put it on the site or anything. After years of struggling and trying new guitarists, new singers, I moved from guitar to guitar and vocals to just vocals and now back to guitar and vocals. If we play live, we don't want to compromise and we want it to be done well, not just slap anything on there to go around and be able to play. It's very difficult to play in a band like this because the biggest hurdle is simply the logistics of the whole thing. You need the right people who will focus all their energy on something like this, and that's just hard to come by these days. Everyone just wants to jump on stage, bang their heads, play a solo for the crowd and get drunk and get laid. We're not a death metal band, we want to make the live show an experience. We did it with just the two of us but it ended up being too much of a burden on both of us so we decided to just write for the new album.

For "The Distance", our upcoming album, he wanted more input from me for the guitar parts and vocal parts. I wrote a lot of the vocals along with him, but I quickly realized that since this is his grand vision that he needs to be the one to write the music. We complement each other, and we have similar styles for playing (us being big Meshuggah, Fear Factory, Anaal Nathrakh and Emperor fans), but I felt too much input from me would compromise what we were trying to achieve with it. Fortunately, I was right: The Distance came out ******* BEAUTIFUL. I can't wait to go into the studio and track vocals for it, and I can't wait to put some stuff on here for you guys to hear it. It's breathtaking. I even told him to play all the instruments. I'll come in with ideas and play off of him with guitar, but in the end, I'm learning the parts he has written. Like I said, I feel the band comes first and what we're trying to achieve as a whole is much greater than the individuals. The vocals will be much less black metal and much more of an aggressive clean sound with black screams here and there.

I just saw Meshuggah live last night, and although I'm a competent rhythm player when it comes to strange rhythms, meters and such, Meshuggah just completely humble you and make you realize just how much there is to learn. Emanuele (my drummer) is a perfectionist and a drummer first and foremost; however, I have learned so much just from playing with him that I now feel that more guitarists should learn from drummers. Since I joined Skylab in the beginning, I play cleaner, faster, and more precise than I ever have. I'm not talking boring-ass sweeps and Finger Olympics, I'm talking making the guitar sound PERFECT...every note, every accent counts and you cannot afford to make even a single mistake or else the rest of it goes to ****. I learned more about my playing from a drummer than any other guitarist out there. Of course, I've studied under a great guitarist who taught me so much about theory, harmonization, and improvisation, but those have all been a means to an end.

I wish we had the title track, "Artificial" on Youtube...it's my favorite. It's so very Eve. It's about the first man becoming completely cyborg, leaving his flesh and bone weakness behind. My favorite line:

Forget his name
He is the first one, a robotic dynasty
A monument to science
Made of synthetic fibers

He will voyage, he will look, he will hear he will remember
This new armored kind doesn't sleep, doesn't rest at all

--

A grey flame, it burns inside
In veins flows cold liquid fire
Weakness of man has been retired

My soul is stored internally
You'll find a man with human dreams but
This silvered heart was not born...it was built
Artificial

Hehe, I'm actually American, I just live in Italy.

Where you from and what took you to Italy? Service member or student would be my guess...

Speaking of which, If they'd be open to it, we'd actually like to have CCP use our music for either promos or spots even the new tv series they've got planned, even if it's just a snippet. We write this music as a soundtrack anyway; they're songs, of course, but we write a lot of instrumental and ambient stuff that would be perfect for Eve. It's got a little harder edge, though, so battle sequences and such would be perfect. We even have a battle sequence instrumental in Artificial called Autosequence of Death. It's got heavy drums and guitars with the sounds of railguns, miniguns, and other armaments in the background. We had images of mechas and humans and cyborgs battling when we did it. It's actually really cool. I dunno how to propose such a thing to CCP, however...any suggestions?

Hello there Guitar Players :)

I'd like to share with you something, and I apologize in advance for my bad english skills..

A few month ago, i bought a guitar from a friend, around 50euros, the brand is Whale, i don't really know where it's from or how much it costs, but well, it's a good guitar.

But it was all black, and since my Yamaha was allready like this i wanted another style, so i went to a friend and asked him if it was possible to paint it.. And we decided to do it, thinking if we failed 50euros is not a big loss..

So let me show you, and of course any comment is welcome.

Before it looked like this.

Some white paint so the black won't come out.

Then red paint.

A little black "smoking" effect.

And here is the result.

So here it is, let me know what you think about it, i put a lot of work and time to do this, i hope you'll like it as much as i do ;)