The Spectrum Road show at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on June 16 was intense. Jack Bruce, Vernon Reid, John Medeski, and Cindy Blackman-Santana channeled something extraordinarily large, loud, dark, and beautiful—and even if Medeski hadn't been playing a Mellotron—which he was—it would still have been one of the heaviest progressive rock performances I've ever seen (the band's Tony Williams tribute origins notwithstanding).

Tinariwen, a guitar-driven band of desert nomads from North Africa, currently featuring Elaga Ag Hamid, Abdallah Ag Lamida, and Ibrahim Ag Alhabib on guitar and vocals, Eyadou Ag Leche on bass and backing vocals, and Said Ag Ayad on percussion and backing vocals. (Don't miss producer Ian Brennan's feature interview with Alhabib in the August 2012 issue of GP.) They performed on June 10 at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco as part of the SF Jazz 2012 Spring Season.

I had the honor of performing a live-looping arrangement of “Third Stone From the Sun” at the Thanks Jimi Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, on May 1, 2012. This is a video demo showing what I did and how I did it, shot in my studio. I used a Boomerang III Phrase Sampler and the accompanying Boomerang Side Car pedal, which adds several additional footswitches and other capabilities.

Trivia question: What extremely famous guitarist said the following: "We put my Les Paul through a direct box, and from there into a mic channel. We used the mic amp of the mixing board to get distortion. Then we ran it through two Urei 1176 Universal compressors in series. Then each line was triple-tracked. Curiously, I was listening to that track when we were reviewing the tapes and the guitars almost sound like an analog synthesizer."



Give up? Okay, it was Jimmy Page, who gave the quote in a Guitar World interview about recording the song "Black Dog." Tone Fiend blogger Joe Gore recently cited this and other examples to point out that recording guitar directly into the mixing board without any regard for making them sound "amped," can yield amazing tones.

 

You can read Joe's blog at http://www.seymourduncan.com/tonefiend/recording/adventures-in-direct-recording/#more-7599



 

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