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GMC Forum _ PRACTICE ROOM _ What Makes A Musician Have Punch?
Posted by: Daniel Realpe Aug 9 2010, 09:04 PM
This video was recently posted by instructor Stephan Lucarelli
It's just a great example,
I think for drummers, it's not only how they hit the drums but most importantly the TIGHTNESS with which they relate to the pulse,
and likewise, the other musicians "give the illusion" of having a lot of punch by just playing very tightly together with the drummer,
Posted by: Fingerspasm Aug 9 2010, 09:13 PM
I was just at a clinic given by Paul Gilbert and he talked about this so much... He gave numerous examples and even pulled out a set of bongo drums for part of the demo! I had always noticed how Paul played right on top of the snare in alot of his songs and how the drums really play right on top of his riffs. Anyway Good stuff! Thanks for posting this!
Posted by: Daniel Realpe Aug 9 2010, 09:19 PM
wow, that's cool...
I don't think it's a coincidence but Paul Gilbert's concert here in Bogota has been like one of the best in my life,
I was just very close to him, I just thought "well, that's how you play a guitar, I need to learn"
he's truly unique, I don't think anyone ca play like him
* On a video Steve Vai also talks about this a lot, on youtube
Posted by: Fingerspasm Aug 9 2010, 09:29 PM
I don't think it's a coincidence but Paul Gilbert's concert here in Bogota has been like one of the best in my life,
I was just very close to him, I just thought "well, that's how you play a guitar, I need to learn"
he's truly unique, I don't think anyone ca play like him
* On a video Steve Vai also talks about this a lot, on youtube
Not to change the subject of this thread. But I have to say that I just got Paul's New CD. Fuzz Universe and it is his best ever! His tone has gotten so good. His tone to me sounds more old school blues and rock and less 80's metal and neoclassical. I got a chance to look at his pedal board and its just overdrive, flanger, Detox Eq and a marshall Vintage Modern.
I keep hearing more and more about thinking about a good drum beat when you play rhythm and then try to play that same rhythm with your solo. Paul gave good examples of that. He had a good bass player and a good drummer and they just played a slow groove and he just went Off for like 5 minutes! All the hair on my neck just stood up and I was totally awed by his ability to play around that groove.
Posted by: Azzaboi Aug 9 2010, 09:49 PM
That's some really good timing, I need to work on that... but I still believe...
Facials really make the musician!
Posted by: Daniel Realpe Aug 10 2010, 01:15 AM
I keep hearing more and more about thinking about a good drum beat when you play rhythm and then try to play that same rhythm with your solo. Paul gave good examples of that. He had a good bass player and a good drummer and they just played a slow groove and he just went Off for like 5 minutes! All the hair on my neck just stood up and I was totally awed by his ability to play around that groove.
I didn't know he had a new album!!!
gotta check it out!
I like it that way, simple set up...effective
Posted by: Fingerspasm Aug 10 2010, 01:57 AM
gotta check it out!
I like it that way, simple set up...effective
Here is a link to a high quality recording of it on youtube. This guy has all of his songs on his site. I listened to it on youtube for the last month until it was released here in the states. I pre ordered the CD on Amazon and got it last week.
Posted by: Daniel Realpe Aug 10 2010, 02:06 AM
nice stuff!!!!
wow, I can see what you meant by the change in his tone....
I can't believe how he can play like that with that little distortion.....
Gotta keep on working on that
Posted by: Fingerspasm Aug 10 2010, 02:16 AM
wow, I can see what you meant by the change in his tone....
I can't believe how he can play like that with that little distortion.....
Gotta keep on working on that
Make sure you check out his other songs on there. I really like the song Olympic. About the middle of the song to the end it gets really good. He has some killer bends and vibrato that just make my hair stand on end. Also Plastic Dracula and Will my screen door stop Neptune are really good..... and he also does a classical piece Bach Partita in Dm. He said at the clinic that he transcribed it himself. Anyway its all really good stuff.
Posted by: Daniel Realpe Aug 10 2010, 04:37 AM
I'll definitely check it, I'm a huge fan of his,
Thanks!
Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Aug 11 2010, 11:56 PM
I agree entirely. Achieving tightness is very important, lot's of people don't think about that, they think it doesn't matter. It's one of those things that makes a good band.
Posted by: Mudbone Aug 12 2010, 01:23 AM
The best band to answer this question is Five Finger Death Punch 
Zoltan Bathory is one bad ass guitarist, Zsolt and Mate, this is your homeboy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8el3niTD0O4
Posted by: Vasilije Vukmirovic Aug 22 2010, 12:55 PM
This is excellent!
Posted by: Daniel Realpe Aug 22 2010, 06:41 PM
Zoltan Bathory is one bad ass guitarist, Zsolt and Mate, this is your homeboy!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8el3niTD0O4
there you go! tight as......very tight
Posted by: Staffy Aug 22 2010, 08:27 PM
Hmmm, since we had this discussion in various topics in & out since I've been a member here, I want to point out some interesting issues.
- Tightness is not as simple as play straight on the beat. Drummers knows exactly what im talking bout here - a good drummer can play WITH the beat on the bass-drum but delaying or forcing the snare for instance. Ideally, every musician shall be able to play both on the beat, behind it and in forward - then mix it up according to phrases, parts of songs, styles etc. Of course we must learn to play ON the beat first....
- In my experience either the bass player or the drummer must keep time - if both of them are struggling round the beat it ends up messy. The real nightmare is to have both a "slow" drummer and a "slow" bass-player, then everything is going slower and slower and slower... same goes the other way round. In the first post above, the organ/bass-player keeps time while the drummer has the freedom to communicate with Matt and do some funky stuff.
- Certain music styles and songs requires different type of tightness/timing. Blues/Jazz for instance has a total different approach than straight rock - which makes it incredible hard to program with machines. (and also play)
- We are going towards a more machine-like timing due to that everyone is using metronomes/sequensers nowadays. In the 70'ths when I started out with music, it was very common that the songs were a little up & down in tempo and some phrases we're neither triplets or eight-notes - but all the musicians played it the same way so it sounded somehow tight anyway.
- More sciently, the tighness we think we hear is really depending on just one thing - the attack of the instrument played, not the tone, not the sound etc. If we so should be really picker-nickety here, all the instruments on a recording must be in phase - eg. it takes longer time for a bass-sound to travel than a treble sound. This means that if the sound-engineer compensates for that the recording itself gonna sound a lot tighter. A common trick here in the recording- world is to use side-chaining to get the attack of the bass drum & the bass at exactly the same spot. Good live-technichians also compensates for this by delaying the the treble part of the PA in contrast to the bass-modules.
- Besides all the junk I wrote above, the most important to make it sound tight is to play with attitude 101%, if You're not convinced and totaly masters what You are playing, it gonna sound like crap anyway.....
//Staffay
Posted by: Fre Aug 22 2010, 08:38 PM
Interesting topic and posts. I agree with Staffay about the attitude.
+ The album of Paul sounds really tight/cool!
Posted by: Daniel Realpe Aug 23 2010, 03:31 PM
- Tightness is not as simple as play straight on the beat. Drummers knows exactly what im talking bout here - a good drummer can play WITH the beat on the bass-drum but delaying or forcing the snare for instance. Ideally, every musician shall be able to play both on the beat, behind it and in forward - then mix it up according to phrases, parts of songs, styles etc. Of course we must learn to play ON the beat first....
- In my experience either the bass player or the drummer must keep time - if both of them are struggling round the beat it ends up messy. The real nightmare is to have both a "slow" drummer and a "slow" bass-player, then everything is going slower and slower and slower... same goes the other way round. In the first post above, the organ/bass-player keeps time while the drummer has the freedom to communicate with Matt and do some funky stuff.
- Certain music styles and songs requires different type of tightness/timing. Blues/Jazz for instance has a total different approach than straight rock - which makes it incredible hard to program with machines. (and also play)
- We are going towards a more machine-like timing due to that everyone is using metronomes/sequensers nowadays. In the 70'ths when I started out with music, it was very common that the songs were a little up & down in tempo and some phrases we're neither triplets or eight-notes - but all the musicians played it the same way so it sounded somehow tight anyway.
- More sciently, the tighness we think we hear is really depending on just one thing - the attack of the instrument played, not the tone, not the sound etc. If we so should be really picker-nickety here, all the instruments on a recording must be in phase - eg. it takes longer time for a bass-sound to travel than a treble sound. This means that if the sound-engineer compensates for that the recording itself gonna sound a lot tighter. A common trick here in the recording- world is to use side-chaining to get the attack of the bass drum & the bass at exactly the same spot. Good live-technichians also compensates for this by delaying the the treble part of the PA in contrast to the bass-modules.
- Besides all the junk I wrote above, the most important to make it sound tight is to play with attitude 101%, if You're not convinced and totaly masters what You are playing, it gonna sound like crap anyway.....
//Staffay
Very good post!
I know what you mean about not being ON the beat all the time....it's true, I guess what's important is how on time you are WITH THE OTHER MUSICIANS...Metallica is a great example....Lars, the drummer, almost never keeps a strict beat but they all follow him very well so it sounds very punchy, most times
Posted by: Aleksander Sukovic Aug 23 2010, 05:54 PM
Definitely one thing a professional band could not be without!
Posted by: Staffy Aug 23 2010, 07:55 PM
I know what you mean about not being ON the beat all the time....it's true, I guess what's important is how on time you are WITH THE OTHER MUSICIANS...Metallica is a great example....Lars, the drummer, almost never keeps a strict beat but they all follow him very well so it sounds very punchy, most times
Yeah, thats one of the points. To clarify what I said above a little bit, I can again take blues-players as a good example. Guitarists and singers tends to "hang" very much on the beat without beeing untight - since the first note and mostly the last note is tight. Gary Moore is another good example, he can start a phrase slowly and then build up the speed and end it perfectly in time on the beat - but You cannot really transcribe it according to normal meters. What is most interesting is that when You play with older musicians (yeah, even 20 years older than ME) they have a totally different relationship to the pulse than musicians today. Thats why it is so hard to try to cover music from long time ago, since we dont FEEL the music the same way that they did back then. Personally I find the music of today fairly easy to cover due to the machine-like timing, except for that the technical level is far much higher today. To play like the guys in the 60'ths / 70'ths is much harder in my concern....
//Staffay
Posted by: Daniel Realpe Aug 24 2010, 01:30 AM
//Staffay
I would agree to that as well,
What comes to my mind is Slash and Joe Perry...they are not from the 70's or 60's but to me to cover these dudes well is very hard! mainly because of their rhythm approach when soloing,
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