Chumly wrote:RexRed wrote:Chumly wrote:RexRed wrote:Chumly wrote:I am a guitarist, I am a Dorian mode man.
I don't consider myself a guitarist but just a guitar player. A guitarist is more dedicated to just that instrument I don't rise to that level. Most guitarists wonder how I finger pick so fast though. Although guitar is my main instrument I play and own acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, mandolin, harmonica, ukulele, violin (which I am terrible at), lap steel and piano/organ/synth. I program MIDI like a doctor. I am mostly a singer (tenor from hell) and a writer though. I have the gift to sound like virtually any male and some female singers but I have (over time) found my own sound too. I accompany myself like Cat Stevens type style. Very percussive and rhythmic, aggressive. My leads (when I play them) are slow but with feeling, as in modes, I am all over the place with harmony, purposeful melody and haunting song signatures.
Cool, I do a local high tech solo act, pubs, weddings, etc. I have used MIDI since day one. I know my db's from my quantizing too. I use vocal harmonizers, guitar synth, headset, IEM's, loopers and......
Very Cool Chumly!
I bought Cakewalk for DOS... I had a DX27 synth hooked through master tracks to a commodore 64 way back in the dinosaur age... All on an 8 track Fostex 80 with 1/4 inch reels.
Now I use Reason and Emulator X (by E-MU)
Cakewalk Pro Studio and an old Yamaha TG500...
I have a Yamaha keyboard master contoller and the E-mu 1820m bundle with gigs of samples.
http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?category=505&subcategory=491&product=13552
For live use I started with a Roland TB303 and TR606 (pre MIDI), went to a Yamaha QX1 and Yamaha DX7 then to a Korg M1 and Roland MC500 II, but that was all years & yesr ago.
For live use now, I go for my Axon AX100 guitar synth, Brian Moore i2.13 guitar, IBM laptop (for MIDI I/O), digital mixing board, a bunch of Roland Rom'plers, Electrix Repeater (looper), Pod XT, Lights, AKG C420 headset, TC Helicon Voice Works Harmonizer, lots of multi-effects processors Lexicon, Roland etc etc all racked up in SKB cases. I have some brand new EV mains and various beasts for power amps QSC, Peavey. There is lots more but you get the drift; play and sing popular tunes of the day, have them dance, go home happy!
I have tons more great stuff floating about the house Fender, Ovation, Gibson Korg, Roland, Yamaha but the above is what I mainly use live.
.......toys for the boys..........
Wow I bet you sound nice there.
When I sing and play guitar I am probably a purest in the sense that I use only a little reverb and big peavey SP2 monitors BW equipped. I don't EQ my acoustic guitar to sound thin and midrange (like MTV unplugged)... I keep a full sound. I break about six strings night.
I have had people tell me that I sounded like a whole band from outside and one guy who came into a port I was singing in he was doing the Blue Nose Ferry gig from Bar Harbor to Nova Scotia (I hate boats), he said my guitar thundered from outside. Another guy came up to me and told me ever time he heard me singing in the bar he couldn't stop himself from coming in to hear me. There was the woman who dropped a twenty into my hat and hollered over the crowd in my ear, "Your nights in white satin did something for me".
Then there was the anonymous note I found in my tip jar... "I want your hmm hmm in my haa haa..."
hehe
I have had a person come up to me and tell me they finally knew what an acoustic guitar really sounded like live. I had a lady drop a diamond and black onyx ring in my hat and tell me "I just have to do it, it came from Switzerland!"
I have had so many memorable nights with such wonderful people that I can tell Einstein that the stars are like a blur across the sky... the people are the real stars. I have never played for a dumb audience.
I've played in trains, performing arts centers, coffee houses, bars, cafe's, big bars and dining areas outdoor all day and night jams. To name only a few. I have had standing ovations of over 400 people twice in my life... (I almost fell over and died during one of them.) ha
Then there are those special people who really listen. I wouldn't exchange being an entertainer for nothing.
There is being a music performing major in th university of Maine at Orono till I got bored and left for work in the private sector. (I attended college while I was in high school and before I graduated high school I had already finished fundamentals, harmony, history of western music and appreciation. I didn't need to be taught perfect pitch...
I have never been able to achieve in the studio what I have done out live...
I have been booked before as "the man who knows a thousand songs..."
And I can play a thousand songs I guess.
I have toured Canada and Vermont and sung from the choir loft at Notre Dam church in Toronto Canada . (Yes, there are hundreds of dragons painted on the ceiling.)
I have so many stories it is like Jackson Brown's lyric.
"It's just another town along the road..."
And the beat goes on...