The Madman’s Diaries - The Blues Chapters - Chapter Two - Updated 161023 New Recording Added

[nzmetal]

Hey Toby, I’ve been holding off going through this until I had time to properly follow the whole thread through, it was well worth the wait!

Acoustic Blues
So cool! Thoroughly enjoyed each piece, with much for me to take away and consider with regards to my own (very early days) journey into blues. Delta style blues I’ve become drawn to, however finger style playing is not an avenue I’ve explored, so may have to rectify that in the future. I am impressed by the steadiness of the bass note momentum throughout all three recordings along with the effortless navigating of the melody with the remaining fingers (despite the RBS stiffness you’ve mentioned!). #13 was my favourite although all were very enjoyable listens.

Electric Blues
Again, many things for me to take away. Impressive playing on both set pieces, much for me to aspire to! Nothing further to add to the many great points above, just a hearty congrats on this excellent progress!

Improv/playground
As others have already said, this was a special treat! Very entertaining listen and many cool little moments sprinkled throughout, with the repeat bend which Rick pointed out being a highlight to me also. More of that please!

Don’t think anyone else mentioned this either??! A new addition!! Story?

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

Hey Jeff

Thanks for taking a listen, I’ll start with your astute observation first. Yes a new addition to the MMS gallery but I think he made a sneak appearance when I sat on the audience for OM 18 or 19. Back story is, after some discussion here on AI, I dropped on a AI art website Nightcafe Studio and started playing around. One of the ideas was to use it to create our OM posters but I’ve not cracked that. But being into bikes, science fantasy art from the 70s and especially sci fan landscape I experimented a bit and develop quite a portfolio.
When we started the OM Steering Group I had a bit of fun trying to create some images based on this text prompt

Artificial Intelligence confrontation. Seven man Heavy Metal Rock Band on stage with guitars post-apocalyptic mad max

Resultant images were along these lines

I’ll let you figure out who’s who but that could be Justin in the background keeping a watchful eye !

Anyway, for some reason the prompt threw up this single “person” image which I thought was pretty cool, so added him to the MMS frame, so good spot.

On the playing front, thanks for the comments. The acoustic Blues has been a lot of fun and very satisfying. I never quite gelled with folk fingerstyle in the early BC & IM days but did the ritual Everybody Hurts and Can’t Help Uhu Uhu Failing in Love then dropped it.
I’d bought Justin’s Solo Blues Course but hardly looked at it since. Listening to the old Bluesmen of the 30s & 40s rekindle the interest. Went back and learned Justin’s first two songs then found some material on Truefire that I really liked. This is the end result.
Like most things its learned in layers, the bass line, the melody line then combining the two. Its funny that with only 12 notes, you start to recognise phrases in the melody that you’ve heard so many times before. So it actually works well with improvising and adding to the vocabulary, mainly finding other areas (octaves and unisons) to speak the words.
Definite worth looking at from that perspective.

The electric stuff is more ongoing development, following from Justin’s Blues Lead but I like the end result having some studies which apply what’s been learnt. More to come.

The impro was just winging it and totally unplanned. But as I mentioned elsewhere its that one is just a cool backing track to jam with, so it was a real moment of madness. But I even surprised myself as its not something I work on.

But if you’re looking for some extended tracks to work on your improing, here’s my normal go to place, away from the course material. Easy to get lost in these 10 minute tracks and a smorgasbord of styles to choose from.

https://www.youtube.com/@ElevatedJamTracks

[stitch]

@TheMadman_tobyjenner

But I even surprised myself as its not something I work on.

This is where your wrong Toby. You’ve been working ln this since we met 10 years ago. Remember me telling you and David there is no such thing as improvising it playing things you know very well in a different context. Well you’ve arrived, your fingers know what will sound good with what your ears are hearing without the brain screwing it up. This is what improvising is. Now all you need to do add to that bucket of tricks.n

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

Thank you for the vote of confidence Rick. I often think you have more belief in me than I do myself. A reason why I have shied away from some of these “challenges” over the years and lent toward a more safer steady path. About time I step out of the shadows while there’s still time !

[stitch]

@TheMadman_tobyjenner

A reason why I have shied away from some of these “challenges” over the years and lent toward a more safer steady path.

You need the safe steady path to learn what will come natural later but you also need the challenges to use the things you’ve learnt. Without pushing the limit you’ll never find your musical personality. Think of music like a sport, you practice the skills you need to play. When playing a sport you have to go with what the other team is doing. It’s not scripted, so the skills you learnt when practicing just come naturally, you don’t think you just react to what’s happening and hopefully you win.

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

UPDATED THREAD 161023

Hamburger Recording #12 - Long read never a dull moment

OK this has taken a bit longer to post than planned and was actually in a recordable state a week ago while #15 got its finishing touches. What followed could only be described as a mare of a week on the recording front. And not on the playing side, that came later !

So after a sunny Saturday ride out on the Low Rider 8 days ago and some reasonably captured helmet cam footage (testing new batteries), I planned to drop some Elevated Jam tracks goodies over the footage and share here abouts. Only to find that Reaper playback was stalling when using my Xenyx AI as the audio souce. Also OBS could not see the output channels, so something weird was going on, as everything was ok the week before.

When OBS or Reaper were set up using my UMC1820 and driver all was fine. Setting the Xenyx up as a non-asio device, all was fine. So I spent a week trying to work out what was going on. All the usual settings were in sync and I ended up uninstalling Reaper, OBS and ASIO4ALL and clearing out the Win Registry settings in case something was under the covers. Still no joy but I eventually got the Xenyx working in OBS and Reaper using FlexAsio !

I would guess the ASIO4ALL problem is a buffer issue, as the only way to get some semblance of playback in Reaper was to set it to 2048 and it still stalled every few seconds. I was previously running at 512 and FlexAsio is happy at 256. Freaking mystery but I’ve moved on.

So on Saturday the plan was to record “exercises” #12 and #15 on the T-Bucket, with my standard Xenyx set up and a bit of verb (for Mr Larasen of course). Then the RBS kicked in.
What should have been a one take weekend, turned into a sixty take Saturday and still nowt to show in the can.

Come Sunday afternoon I decided rather than go for another recording drama, I’d use my two acoustic Blues WIPS, a couple of folk fingerstyle pieces and my Dust In The Wind slow burn as vehicles, while I set up a couple of Acoustic Presets on the POD Go, been meaning to do it for a while. So a good couple or three hours was spent selecting components swapping guitars and endlessly recycling the tracks I’m working on. And the bonus was #12 and #15 were beginning to play themselves on autopilot. Cushty

So post the morning riverside walk, I set up for what I thought would be a 15 minute recording session, then carry on learning Hamburger #16 that’s half under my fingers.
Should have know better. Another 90 minutes of crash and burn before finally getting this one recording down, yee ha !

Hamburger Recordings #12

Self critique - there’s the odd missed thumb on the beat, a couple of weak hammer ons and a few muffled melody notes but it will do for now after what has been an epic 9 days !
Whether I’ll get #15 recorded this month I am not sure, #16 features lots of thumb over bass notes that’s proving a challenge on the acoustics and will need some work to be consistent.

On the workflow front for those who are interested.

The recording was made in OBS using the POD Go via my UMC1820 AI.
Guitar into POD Go -
Interstate Zed amp (based on a Dr Z Route 66), 2x12 Interstate Cab (based on Dr Z Z Best V30) and Ganymede Reverb (Line 6 original), preset has delay and chorus but not used.
OBS video/audio imported into Reaper as two tracks, panned 10% L & R for a little width.
Reaper master track was treated with Waves Scheps Omni Channel and the Andrew Scheps “Clean Up My Acoustic Gtr” preset. ReaLimit to mitigate clipping and meeting YT thresholds.
Final video/audio mix rendered to MP4, job done.

If you’ve got this far I applaud your patience and hope that you will have forgotten all about the recording.

Finally, today marks the start of week five of my focused fingerstyle master plan. And despite the fact I am continuing to work on the acoustic Blues course, the folk fingerstyle pieces are coming together and chord changes I took for granted seem to be working again.

That will do for today, let see what the rest of the week brings.

Be safe and well peeps !

[SgtColon]

@TheMadman_tobyjenner

If you’ve got this far I applaud your patience

Thank you.

Nice playing Toby and a sweet tone. Sounded like an epic but I’m glad you managed to get a recording down. I thought tech was supposed to make things easier?

[jkahn]

Nice playing Toby. And what an epic journey to get there. Curse that RBS…

Tech issues aside, if I can’t get a good recording in the first few takes I abandon ship for the session as it just goes downhill from there. Not sure why practicing something over and over again is ok but recording over and over again never seems to work.

Nice tone btw, and also great work on that thumb. Looks tricky!

[brianlarsen]

Yer doin’ me head in, mate-
A bit of waffle over wine or headcam biking footage would have sufficed, but no- read my memoirs…
Nice steady thumb there, Boss
And sweet acoustic tone, verb an’ all. Feel free to message me a screenshot of your settings when you get a spare moment. I need to start twiddling my knobs a bit.

@TheMadman_tobyjenner

(for Mr Larasen of course)

Non-tag-tagging is terrible étiquette. Keep it up and I’ll tell the teacher on you
I see AI still has difficulty counting fingers. That’s so weird.
(You might want to add H.R. Giger to your description, as that seems to be the direction it’s going in)

[sairfingers]

@TheMadman_tobyjenner

UPDATED THREAD 161023

Kinell Toby. It took me longer to read all that than it did to listen to your piece! Fortunately I’m currently on holiday in Spain sitting on a hotel roof terrace drinking wine so I have nothing else to do but try to follow all your tech speak. Sounding good though. Super guitar tone on that recording too. Well done in the end.

Also have to add. Despite changing the topic titles these multi add posts are very difficult to keep track of.

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

@SgtColon thanks for listening Stefan. Yeah the POD surprised me with what it could do for acoustic tone. And yes the tech side is suposed to make it easier.
Still none the wiser why asio4all had a thromby. But at least all is stable now.

@jkahn thanks for the feedback at the end. The RBS seems as bad as it was when I first started recording in 2015. Go figure. Still can’t work out why I can run through these tracks with no problem until that damn light is on. I think of it as the negativity spiral, as the recording count goes up the errors seem to get worse. Definitely an issue to resolve with more recording, hopefully.

@brianlarsen hey it is a diary after all, you had the chapter now the verse. On the non tagging see that as a typo. On the AI front both Giger and Luis Royo are in the frame. That aside glad you like the recording. Will send you some settings for sure.

@sairfingers Gordon I’m with you on the multi recording monthly post issues. Glad you liked the tone, took a while to find that, thank you. Now if it hadn’t been chilly these last few days, a bottle of red and a courtyard video diary would’ve had that story banged out in a few minutes. Anyway all part of the service. Thanks for listening and enjoy the holiday.

[stitch]

Well played Toby

@TheMadman_tobyjenner

I think of it as the negativity spiral, as the recording count goes up the errors seem to get worse.

When I played in a band what we found was once everyone knew a song and we where practicing it to get everything tight if we couldn’t get it in three tries move on to something else and come back to it later. It seems the more we’d try to get a song up to performance level the more you fail. Usually in the same spot of the song

Your probably suffering the same problem. So I’d suggest on your next video if you don’t nail it on the first or second take go for a ride on your Harley then come back and try again.

[Socio]

As soon as I saw the boy scout had posted Piece #12 I’ve been looking forward to getting some time to give it a proper listen. Firstly, well done on overcoming the tech issues and getting this one recorded. I thought you played the piece really well. You showcased good technique played in time played with feel and played with a sweet acoustic tone Well done, Toby

@stitch

I’d suggest on your next video if you don’t nail it on the first or second

move onto some of that JD fingerstyle to loosen up a bit

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

@stitch

Well played Toby

Appreciate that Rick. Hardest thing about this one was hammering into a melody note on the beat and playing the bass note. Took me a long time not to automatically pinch the two notes. One of the earlier recordings had a slide rather than a HO and was equally tricky. Always something new to learn.

I need to strategize my recording but 3 strikes makes sense. If I rotate the 4 things I am working on chances are one will turn out ok. That or grab one of the electrics and one of those 10 minute BT and noodle away the negative mindset ! Weather is turning here, so Dyna time is going to be rare but I get your drift.

Thanks for listening.

@Socio James good of you to drop by Thank you for all the positives comments on this one. It actually sounds much better at a faster tempo but I then trip up on the section before the final walkdown But the plan once all 20 have been learnt will to push them all to a faster tempo. Maybe some Wild Turkey blooze would work as well ?
For now taking it a day at a time.

[Mari63]

Your playing is sure getting interesting, Toby! It’s nice to see you working on both acoustic blues and electric soloing in these pieces. I especially loved your playing on Guitar George

[DavidP]

That was great, Toby. You are making steady progress. Soudned excellent as well, natural tone plus the reverb.

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

@Mari63 Thanks for listening Marie, interesting is putting it mildly but it good to be learning old and “new” skool Blues, you can certainly see the origins of some the common licks and phrases when learning the more Delta style pieces. Appreciate the comments on the GG solo, boy that took some time to get up to speed but a real confidence booster, as I never thought I’d play at that kind of tempo.

@DavidP That natural tone took a wee bit of dialling on the POD but a worthwhile experiment. For reasons I mentioned earlier #12 has been a right pita to get down and has been a true example of the “learn it slow” approach. Have made good progress on the next three this week but may save them for a Diary Chapter next month. Watch this space.

[roger_holland]

Hi Toby,
Great
I’m trying to catch up on the last remnants of my holiday after a wile …but is it possible to catch up on everything??? I don’t know pfff, but I’m glad I heard this one once this style gets going, it just pops out, right?
Greetings

[TheMadman_tobyjenner]

@roger_holland

is it possible to catch up on everything???

Noooo and I don’t take holidays ! Thanks for listening Roger. yes its a nice sub culture of the Blues and great fun to play - learning is the hard bit. When I saw your post I was just running through the first 10 tracks again and for sure it pops when you get in the groove. More to come sometime soon !

[tRONd]

You have come a long long way on youre acoustic blues journey Toby.
That sound and style suits you!!
Nice playing there mate!!