FeedCity

Here’s a little Monolord bass riff for you. Could never get this out of my head after I first discovered it. It’s good practice for my finger playing, which I’m still not fully used to (but which is a lot more fun than playing with a pick – for some bass parts at least).

And this entry is also a little test for my new video setup, which should look (and sound?) better than previous tries. And this new arrangement is also a little easier to set up, so I’ll hopefully record a little more in the future.

Oh, and I bought another bass. A 5-string this time. Because I ended up leaving my first bass in the rehearsal room permanently, I missed one at home.

Riding through Düsseldorf Bilk to and from the doctor where I got my Covid booster. Since it was during daylight hours, I thought I’d record another one of these POV cycling videos. And this time I did my little commentary in English. And it’s only half as long with 16 minutes.

For this recording “Sharpening” was set to “Low” on the GoPro. And I think that is too low. I think I’ll prefer a little “too sharp” over “not sharp enough and then needing to do that in post”. I also only uploaded a HD 1080p version this time. And I might just record in that resolution in camera. 4K results in such big files. And I’m again figuring out encoding settings and formats. And that seems like a science to me; maybe I should just use YouTube.

Join me in cycling half an hour around the Rhine. I start pretty much at home in Flehe, go through Volmerswerth, over the “Südbrücke” towards Neuss, then south, and over the “Fleher Brücke” back to Düsseldorf. And I even do talk a little. Santa brought me a GoPro Hero 10 for...

Started learning Dissection’s “A Land Forlorn” from “The Somberlain”. But it has too many riffs to learn quickly. But this ending riff and melody is fun to play using a looper. And I thought I’d just record that for now.

Recorded directly into the iPhone with the headphone mic in front of the Katana Mini.

Covering Bloodbath’s “Buried by the Dead” on guitar, having a bit of fun with my “Eyemaster” pedal. This album has definitely one of the most gnarly Swedish guitar tones out there.

Signal chain is:

• guitar
• Eyemaster pedal
• Apogee Jam Audio interface
• GarageBand
• Fender amp simulation with a bit of overdrive
• output to my Marshall Stanmore speaker – together with the original track from Spotify
• recorded into my Apple earphones’ microphone hanging directly in front of the speaker, recorded straight to the video filmed with the iPhone.

In case this video is not fair use, and you’re the/a copyright holder and object to this video, please let me know, and I’ll just take it down.

I recently learned the intro solo to Metallica’s “One”, so I thought I record that as well.

This bit lent itself well to looper usage – which I use in this video to record the rhythm guitar.

It’s just played freely, so it turned out a little slower than the original. Also, playing without metronome or drums shows here, as a few sections are rushed.

This time, it’s simply recorded together with the iPhone video using the headphone microphone – on my leg, and directly in front of the Katana Mini amp.

Here’s my take on the melody and solo part of Spiritual Beggars’ Look Back. I love that melody.

But I’m actually not a very good lead player, so the solo part is a bit so-so. And it’s only loosely based on the original anyway. But hey, I’m doing these mostly for fun, and to be able to look it up later again. So that’s my excuse for being lazy.

I used the Pitch Fork pedal to shift down my guitar by one octave to simulate the bass track underneath. And I used my looper pedal to record this and play it back as the backing track.

The lead uses the EHX Cock Fight plus expression pedal for the Wah, distortion, a bit of delay and reverb.

Oh, and this is played in standard tuning while playing all the notes like on the recording. It’s very likely they had their instruments tuned to C standard.

Pedalboard-shot:

I got a ukulele for my birthday. And here’s a little phrase I came up with recently.

Playing Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs” on guitar. It’s a bit improvised, though. Of course, I first got to know this song via the great cover version from Opeth.

And still figuring this video stuff out. This time, it’s filmed with my iPhone’s back camera and shared in 1080p with 60fps.

Update: Settings.

My cover of Death’s “Crystal Mountain”. I wanted to try out recording myself – both video and audio – and see how it goes. The playing is far from perfect, but I’m reasonably ok with the take. It was a first take after all, just to try out this sort of thing. I simply hit re...

This morning, I had time to play some basketball. So I went to the court to throw a few throws (like I said I would).

I was pleased to notice that my throwing hasn’t gotten completely terrible after years of not playing. I spontaneously recorded 3 minutes of it.