New really good discovery!

Hi!

I stumbled on a band called DGM yesterday in the sofa in front of the TV. Well, DGM was not on TV. I was surfing youtube with headphones and the rest of the family was watching the normal Friday night TV shows. I don't know why I have not heard about DGM before! I really like progressive metal!!

In the beginning for me there was only one group, KISS!!! They opened the world of hard rock for me, I had never heard anything like it. After that came AC/DC, Saxon, Iron Maiden and the rest of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. So my world was classic HM all the way. The progressive thing all started for me with buying a tape on sale with an (to me) unknown group called Rush. The album was Permanent Waves and it was released 1980. I guess I bought it around 1982.

I remember that I thought that the album was strange but somewhat interesting musically. The vocals was really strange or unusual. I think I must have listened to the cassette a couple of times before I threw it on the not-good-heap. But somehow the album grew on me subconsciously so I gave it another chance after a couple of years or so. I found that my first impression of the album was all wrong. The music was not strange, it was different and satisfied other parts of my musical, so far uncharted, knowledge. The vocals also sounded much better. I don't know why I did not like it from the beginning.

So more Rush followed, also other progressive music. In the beginning it was just longer songs with more arrangements by bands like e.g. Iron Maiden. Then came Dream Theater!! I just love Dream Theater for their ability to make super complex songs that really does not sound complex and has nice and catchy melodies. Progressive in secrecy :-). But don't get me wrong, then can sound really complex as well!! After Dream Theater I have discovered a lot of good progressive bands, but I have also discovered some that are truly progressive but they can not deliver something that grabs me musically, i.e. a good song!

Back to yesterday's discovery, DGM. DGM is an Italian band that played instrumental music in the beginning but nowadays includes vocals. The album I stumbled on was their newest creation "Momentum". The best albums for me are the ones that gets good after listening to them 10 times or so. The ones that I like from start I usually gets tired of really quickly. But I have listened to Momentum for about 10 times and I still really like it! The songs are rather fast but really good musically with good vocals, strong melodies and excellent performance. Progressive power metal in it's best! I can't wait to see them on Sweden Rock Festival :-)

Here is DGM with Momentum on youtube!

Rock on!!

New direction

I have now made a decision that will make my facebook friends happy. I have decided to expand the content of this blog from only talking about guitars, amps and other guitar related devices to even include music and general stuff that I normally bore my facebook friends with :-).
The reason for changing scope of the blog is that the Axe-Fx has really reduced my gear chasing needs. My world is all inside the Axe-Fx now. As I grow more familiar with it I might start to talk about that here in more depth, but for now I settle with the more general things. This leads to fewer blog posts and by expanding the content of the blog I hope I have the need of doing more posts.

Please give me some feedback! Is this good, bad or don't you care. Please let me know! It would be nice to know with whom I am communicating...

Rock on!

No live clip yet

Hi there!

I have now tried the Axe-Fx live some time ago. Unfortunately I did not manage to get the gig recorded. But as I've heard from people in the audience that the sound was really good, but that the level of the guitar was too low. What can I say? It was not the first time and you can not really have too much guitar :-).

Another discovery I made is that my sounds got really drastically changed during a jam party that I organized about a couple of months ago. I actually thought that someone fiddled around with the settings and accidentally managed to save them. But after upgrading the firmware to the newest version a couple of weeks ago I discovered that this really changed the sound of my presets. That must have been a reason for the change during the jam party since I did a firmware update just the day before. It was actually mentioned in the release notes. So lesson learned. When I perform a firmware update in the future, I will do it and than go through all my presets and scenes and check that they still sounds the way they should.

Rock on!

Soon live with my Axe-Fx II

Hi again!

Now I have really started to get a really nice sound from the Axe-Fx II! It sounds smashing at rehearsals. It is really like playing an amplifier but the sound is clearer. I am not talking about the amount of gain here, it is enough! What I mean is that what I play comes across much better even when I use the heavy distorted sounds and with full band. The monitor is also working great. It is maybe not totally constant across the whole frequency spectrum, but it's really suitable as a guitar monitor. I mean you do not need a perfect sound in the monitor, you need to hear what you play! What is really nice is that it is really easy to get controlled feedback when using the monitor. YES!! :-D I thought that would be one of the things I had to sacrifice when moving from amp to simulator, but I was luckily wrong.

I have not used the unit live yet but next Friday it is time for the premiere. The gig is a small gig nearby so we use our own PA. The place is not built for band performances, but it works. We have played there before. It is one large oblong room with one smaller room on the side connected via a removable wall. We used the smaller room as our stage. Strange, but it worked really nice. It will work even better now when I take up much less space :-). I'm really exited about this and I'm really convinced that the sound will be awesome!

Okay, I leave you now with a video clip from a performance with my cover band Fire in the Basement. I really like the sound from my guitar here, quite on the edge of feedback every now and then. This is my ENGL Powerball singing :-D. It is for sale here and here now.

Rock on!

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to wish you all a heavy christmas and a hard rocking new year! :-)

Almost there!

I've started to get really comfortable with the feel and sounds of the Axe-fx now. I have made some disappointing discoveries, but almost all of them was because I did not understand the unit good enough. As an example I did not get the delay spillover to work at first. I enabled it but it did not work. After some reading I found out that it was not enough to enable delay spillover, you also need to set spillover behaviour on the actual effect in order to get it to work. 

The only disturbing thing left now is that I still get a short delay when changing between some scenes. I don't like that at all. I would really like this switching to be instant without the short volume drop. I actually had the same problem in the "real" world with my ENGL-rig due to relay switching. But the volume drop during scene switching in Axe-fx is much longer, when it happens. When it does not happen the Axe-fx switching is seamless. 

I don't fully understand what couses the slow switching between certain scenes, but I think one candidate can be switching between A-B Amp when changing scenes. A new firmware was released just recently so I upgraded the unit, but unfortunate the problem was not solved. The struggle goes on...

I have to go to bed now, so happy trails and see you later!!

Rock on!

Not dead!

Hi!
I just wanted to say that I'm still alive! I have been fully occupied with normal life stuff like home improvement, sickness etc. I've been rehearsing normally with my bands, but there has been no additional time for practice at home and improving my Axe-fx setup. Actually I have been using my old rig for rehearsals for a while. The idea was to improve the Axe-fx settings at home during this time. I have drastically improved the settings, but I need some more time to finish off the fine printed stuff. But now I have ran out of time...  I will put out my old rig for sale shortly, so then I have to start using the Axe-fx actively again. You can fiddle around with this unit forever, so maybe it's time to say good enough and start to use it :-)

Please feel free to comment my posts! I still feel that I'm sending out messages into the void. Some feedback would be nice :-)

Rock on!