Welcome back, guitar geeks! Well, here's my latest confessional. I need to get a few musical thoughts off my mind.
In the past month or so, I've been doing a fair amount of practicing and improving in some areas of my guitar playing, but my unrelated plan to go out to the pub more often so I'm not stuck at home so much and maybe drink less while I'm out, has sort of backfired. Weird, huh? While I have been getting out more and feel more confident about doing so, I'm now basically drinking three times as much each week. I don't have a problem with this, on principal, but it's had a knock on effect not only on my purse and health, but I've not been playing guitar as much. And that's the real tragedy here. Although maybe not for my neighbours. So I'm going to go back to my old drinking habits of going out once a week and take it from there. My block of lessons with my tutor has just ended, so I'm going to take a break for a while to digest what we've been doing for the past few months. I might start up again after Christmas, but I'm starting to think that I have all the knowledge I require now. I just need to practice my skills, and not being in the pub so much will definitely help this. Anyway, here are some of my random musical adventures...
TORNADO OD
I've been slowly falling in love with my Rothwell Tornado overdrive pedal, which I impulse bought a few months ago. My reasons for buying it? Well: I'd never heard of the brand before, it looked super cool and it was at that sweet 2nd hand price where it meant it wasn't going to be junk, but wasn't an extravagant purchase either. It's got a solid but immature growl to it that has become great for developing my power chord skills. I'm not sure how "immature" works as a sound description, but it kinda does. Or maybe the pedal's basic yellow casing makes me think of a playschool toy. I dunno.
ORANGE MICRO TERROR
I've currently swapped over to my Orange Micro Terror head from the Crate PowerBlock. The PowerBlock seems to be stuttering a bit, so I'm worried it's on its way out. Or it could just be bad signal chain wiring by me. We shall see. Both mini-amp heads are lovely machines, so I'm glad I have the option to swap over when I fancy a change. I'm also thinking about buying my first cabinet, as I currently play quietly through headphones. It's very rare for me to play through my combo speakers these days. I'm very shy. And live in a flat.
DRUM MACHINE PEDAL
A month or so back, I invested in a drum machine pedal to help me improve my rhythm and timing. It's the Micro Drummer by Mooer, a company that makes cost-effective, no-frills pedals that I'd recommend to pedal noobs like myself if they're wanting to test the, erm, pedal water. But the Micro Drummer is really quite special! Not only does it have loads of beat styles, but you can speed them up and slow them down as you so desire, and it also has volume and tone controls. Most importantly, though, it doesn't sound like a synthesised drum machine - it legit sounds like you're sat in a room with an acoustic/analogue drum kit. Damn, do I feel like a badass when this thing is pounding away and I'm grooving to some power chords! I've put it near the end of my signal chain, just before my looper (before it all goes into an amp). So if, like me, you're a bedroom musician who's looking to discover what it's like being in a band but can't be arsed to search YouTube and sit through ads to find a backing track you can't modify, then get this puppy! It really has opened up a new world of playing possibilities for me.
SIGNAL CHAIN - CHORUS
So I'm hopefully going to be picking up my new first chorus pedal soon, but I'm wondering where to place it in my pedal signal chain. Apparently, atmospherics should be placed AFTER compression and distortion, but I'm not sure whether chorus counts as an "atmospheric", like reverb and delay. I don't know why it wouldn't, though. I'll end up searching for advice online, of course, but if you fine folk have any ideas or preferences, then let me know!
Ok, I think that's enough for now.
Rock on!
P.S. Yes, you read right, I actually thought that that pub plan was a good idea. Now stop laughing.
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