Gadgets & Mods & Pickups & Effects...Oh my...

This morning whilst driving in & listening to parts of songs I had an epiphany. I have plenty of examples of intros, leads, rhythms, swirly, clean, crunch, & overdriven in my set of songs in .mp3's on my smartphone. I have in my head categories of types of sounds to create. And the epiphany is that I have to first sit down & slow down & describe in words what it is a particular sound is. If I can't do that then I can't sit down with the knobs & buttons of gadgets & just turn & push aimlessly hoping to recreate that sound and then shape it to be my 'purple' sound. For some this might be "Well gee, duh John, what did you expect?" As I listen to a lead or rhythm on Halen I or even something on a Satch album I find myself asking myself things like is that a Flanger sound or is a Phaser or is it both. Heck I realized that a sound I so desperately wanted to recreate long ago on one of Satch's songs was due mainly in part to a flanger setting that has no sweep making the guitar sound like it's in a tunnel. And as I listen I hear more & more how overprocessed Vai & Satch are for some of their stuff. Would you like some guitar to go with those effects? It's interesting to listen to early Halen & then move to their subsequent pre-1984 tracks to hear how EVH moved from that simple & classic VH1 sound to becomming more processed then 1984 was great & after that....uhm Eddie dude what happened? Sheez.

I listened to a bit of some intros & leads from Slash on G n R's Appetite & just hear rock & I hear slash & not effects. Friend Jeremy, mad dog, wanted me to learn a song called Peace Dog by The Cult. I listened some clips from their Ceremony album & it's just simple & good sound. So peace, dog.

This would be interesting...Take Brian Setzer(Stray Cats), Trevor Ravin(Yes), Alan Holdsworth, The Edge, John Sykes(Whitesnake), Vivian Campbell(Dio), Eric Johnson, Ace Frehley(Kiss), Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Gilmore, Slash, EVH, Vai, Satch, or whoever I'm missing that should be included here, & stick them each in their own studio by themselves with the same 4.5 minute drum track, with their fav guitars & amps but they are only allowed to use reverb & digital delay to record. No stereo effects, no phaser, no flange, no chorus, no overdubs, no harmonizer's & no mixdown effects processing except for necessary standard EQ settings to shape the sound after recording. What would each come up with for their sound.

There was a song that sang "Video killed the radio star." Effects have sure have had quite the influence on axemen throughout the world & throughout history. I know guys like Satch & Vai are constantly driven to reinvent their sound from song to song or album to album. Is this their desire or is it driven by the business of music & marketing suits who just want album sales & the only way to do that is to always sound new, fresh, or different. Just give me my four or five or ten go button settings in some box hidden somewhere. I don't care what the details are of the box. I don't care what the amp settings are. An example I thought of also this am was that I thought about Halen & boys prepping for a tour. Makes me wonder if Eddie just goes to techies, Ok here's my main amp(s), here's my rack of stuff, Here's my guitars, I'll be back in two days. Make it sound right. Or does he piece together everything himself thing by thing & cord by cord. It boggles me how a national or world tour for such types of bands get prepped for the 1st show.

So as part of the Epiphany & describing sounds, this is the first step. What do I want to find & then make 'purple'

Sound concepts I have in my head:
Classic surf clean
Classic surf crunch
Clean surf swirly sound
Classic Rockabilly such as Brian Setzer
Classic Hendrix clean such as Hey Joe or Wind Cries Mary
Classic rock like Chuck Berry Johnny B Goode
Rocking surf rhythm such as Pipeline in hard rock style
Overdriven surf lead like my Pipeline cover I do how Dale & Stevie Ray V did together.
Clean stereo kind of sound that doesn't sound overprocessed for both leads & rhythm
Clean swirly sound
Crunch rhythm stereo wall of sound like The Cult's intros or EVH in Beautiful Girls or Purple Haze
Crunch rhythm swirly sound
Heavy hard rock rhythm stereo wall of sound that's Halen's Panama-ish or Hot for Teacher-ish.
Heavy hard rock rhythm swirly sound that's Gilmore-ish
Overdriven screaming stereo, in your face harmonics, sound
And something that's classic "The Edgish" that is all over Joshua Tree album.

The stock default patches in my Quadraverb 2 will probably cover a lot of these already.

And as U2 sings "I still haven't found what I'm lookin' for" but I seem to be gettin' there. I'm acutally going to buy strings for my electrics today & boil 'em. And once I find what I'm looking for in the coming weeks & get some tunes down I'm going to make an attempt to find some fun & good wholesome & morally sound peoplez to form some kind of instrumental surf to hard rock band to have fun with first but perhaps play weddings & such. But first I must find my 'Purple' & get to the basics with a metronome. I guess I could get things together & go play at an open mic night thing. I'm not so paranoid about my tremolo system now that I know about boiling strings & such.

Until later comes, turn it up to purple & swirly.