Freak Show Excess - Steve Vai - Guitar and Bass Cover

18th February 2010

Lucky played me Freak Show Excess and we immediately decided to tackle it. It took us both a few weeks to learn, but great fun to play, especially on my new Status Graphite 5 string (currently tuned EADGC).

New Status Graphite Bass

29th January 2010

After a 16 week wait, my new Status Graphite S2 Classic has arrived. It's really nice I must say. It's a 5 string and at the moment I have it tuned to EADGC, but I think I might switch to a low B instead since this will be more useful I guess.

Here are some pics:

My Bass Pedal Board

14th January 2010

I thought I’d share some pictures of my Bass pedal-board setup with you.

Pedals on the board: EBS Multi Comp Compressor, EHX Micro POG, EHX Octave Multiplexer, Boss TU-3 Tuner, Xotic BB Preamp, EHX Bass Big Muff Fuzz, Boss CEB-3 Chorus, MXR Phase 90, Marshall Echohead Delay

The POG has a dry and effect outputs. I usually set it to 100% octave-up only, and send that to a guitar amp, which emulates a second guitarist on stage (Lucky suggested this for when we tried taking his complex music out as a 3 piece!). The Echohead is part of this "phantom guitar" fx chain. There is also a Bassballs pedal, which is an interesting effect, but I only use it as an on/off switch for the octave up effect.

I'll try to put a video on youtube demonstrating some of the sounds I can get from this setup. But most of the time only the compressor is on because I’m not big on effects...

Mandolin Chord Generator

14th January 2010

I made a mandolin (and any other 4 stringed instrument) chord generator a while back. It's got lots of options, and can be great for coming up with new voicings and even sparking new ideas.

Have a play around: www.MandoChords.com