Back in January 2008 (when I first started doing the blog) I recorded my own version of an Indian track which Alex originally wrote back in the day. I’ve forever been tweaking with it and find it very relaxing to play.
CLICK TO PLAY TRACK
Whilst scanning through my hard drives tonight for some bits I came across the video below which was recorded about 6 years ago.
It’s fairly rough but I quite like it and thought I’d share it. Actually, I thought “aaaaaaaaaaah sod it!”, and then I thought I’d share it.
Hopefully you can hear the similarities behind the ‘idea’.
The tech boys over at Electro Harmonix are gods, for they have produced the holy grail of guitar effect pedals; The Ravish Sitar Pedal.
I was lucky enough to cut my teeth on a few original Electro Harmonix pedals when Alex purchased a few back in the nineties, the Big Muff (fuzz), Polyphase (phaser) and Electric Mistress (flange) were used on a couple of our tracks, ‘The Otherside’ and ‘You Stink’ immediately spring to mind!
I stumbled upon the Ravish Sitar pedal by accident whilst searching the net for an idea that I had for a song; having watched the youtube promo video, I went out and bought myself one along with my own Big Muff whilst out in the States!
For those unfamiliar with the brand or for those of you who are are just starting out to experiement with your guitar sound; I’d really recommend Electro Harmonix pedals because they are the absolute puppies privates when it comes to guitar FX pedals. They are without a doubt the best made products on the market and are highly customisable to get unique and brilliant variations in sound.
The Ravish Sitar pedal is incredible in what it delivers, you can tweak and set up your sound by Key, delay, modulation. You can also fiddle with several knobs (technical term!) to adjust the sympathetic settings, lead and delay; all of which can give you very different results indeed!
I got mine out the box, played around with the settings for about 30 minutes with the guitar tuned to C Major and this is the result I got! As you can see, anyone can sound like a shit Ravi Shankar now! So go out and buy one immediately! Antikrish commands it!
Our day of music went rather well; my new Cort acoustic was put to good use and ideas for 3 or 4 good songs came out of a pretty relaxed and lazy session. Emphasis on the word lazy……but rather funky.
I do agree with Alex though, in that it’s so much simpler working with acoustic instruments. You can sit down in the kitchen and ‘twang’, pop to another room and ‘doo doo diddly doo’ and even sit in the bath with it if you want and ‘skee woop pingggggggg brrroooo ziiiiiing flying machine!’. And that’s pretty much what we did for most of the morning; without the bath bit obviously.
Alex showed off his rather snazzy rock/surf guitar effort which I now have to try and learn before we meet up again for our next recording session. It’s bloody good.
There was also a nice jazzy thing which we ended up digressing into during a quick jam. Great.
‘Jam-fest’ (fair trade jam, made without the exploitation of white farmers) eventually inspired a rather nice instrumental that I put onto the Tascam. I found 3 really simple chords to go with something Alex had found and put 3 overdub guitars on top of that with a bit of percussion; all the while Alex sleepily provided musical direction whilst slumped into a very comfy looking chair.
INSTRUMENTAL – Take 1 (CLICK TRIANGLE TO PLAY)
I stupidly left home without a microphone stand which lead is to improvise somewhat and come up with what is quite possibly the greatest studio innovation of all time; Alex Micman (picture below!).
Al literally sat holding the AKG microphone during the whole recording process which was rather funny from my point of view as he kept nodding off; at one point I realised the sound had gone a bit shite and Alex eventually realised he’d turned the mic around the wrong way. Saying that, how many song writers do you know are THAT good that they can record in their sleep eh?
Some footage below showing me playing the chords.
Parental Guidence – Use of the word ‘Bollocks’ is involved during the recording of this video.
Today saw me mark my 31st birthday; It got an A+. Ho ho ho………….
I write this particular entry having spent my day revisiting an age old tradition of mine; spending it with Alex scoffing profuse amounts of food and writing/recording music.
I was very graciously received by my hosts (big shout out to Alex’s bird, Josie for the rum induced Guitar Hero entertainment) who quickly bestowed upon me the very finest homemade pizza and chips I have had the fortune of consuming; I am still rather full now (photos of said pizza to follow courtesy of the bird shortly!).
After Josie nodded off, Alex and I retired to the lounge with the acoustics and sat working out the ‘Marvin’ riff with the original chords from ‘Carry on’. My post on the 7th October centers around a quick recording I did of the original chords coupled with the riff; click on the sound sample below to get a rough idea of what we’re moving way from. Apologies for the dodgy guitar FX sound; I used one built into my Tascam and it’s a bit pants but I was in a rush!
Both Alex and I became bored of the slow tempo and also how rigid the arrangement was, Al then proposed a new direction and fortunately we found it pretty quickly, a change of rhythm and a slight change to the riff produced a Latin version of ‘Carry on’.
I have uploaded several videos (my favourite is Alex and the bassline due to the banter) onto youpube (please see below) which were taken at various points in our little session, I was really glad I had my camera because we worked out several guitar ideas, the bass, and also a new vocal line. All in all I’m really excited about this track; hopefully we can get something recorded down properly onto the desk in the coming weeks.
Thanks again Baldie and Bird for a funky day. Areeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeba!
I should add that I am the main guitar player on video here (it’s a little dark) and Alex is generally out of shot but playing as well or providing percussion etc.
How the Marvin riff has changed
The first take using the new riff and arrangement
Alex’s new idea for the rhythmn, caught on camera!
Baldie comes up with the bass line
A reasonably good idea of how the song sounds at this point in time
Just a very quick snip of me sodding about with my Danelectro through the Fender twin reverb ampalong with an original MXR phase 100 pedal for the sheer hell of it during the second bit of the video.
I’m just playing the main verse of a track called Fairytale which Alex put together in the late 90’s, I like it a lot and imagine we might do a new version to stick up on the site soon.
The Antikrish 
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