aholidayatthesea wrote:Might be something worth looking into then.
The octatrack is supposed to be a beast. All the reviews I've read are something akin to "once you go through the months of laborious training, you can do anything your heart could possibly imagine and everything it wasn't creative enough to imagine on its own."
Yeah that's a whole other can of worms.
I've never been as excited by a device before.
I'll be treating it as my secondary instrument going forward.
I've been super busy at work, so that doesn't help. I used to go in the basement and fuzz my brains out, but Fuzz is so boring to me lately. I don't know how this even happened.
I do have a huge erection for delays and reverbs now, but how do you lose the fuzz boner?
I want the new Frazz Dazzler, but I'm worried it will just get thrown on the shelf.
Been there man! It's pretty easy to get underwhelmed by fuzz when there are so many and for the most part they all sound the same! LOL!
When I feel like that, I just take a step back and stop using them.
I went on a huge OD kick when I stop liking fuzz for a bit and found out that I fucking love overdrives with my active bass. So crunchy and just meaty and awesome!
Just don't do anything stupid like sell them all. I've done that shit and regret it so bad man. I want so many pedals back that I've had, it sucks.
So just don't fuck with them for a bit and come back to it later, you may find you'll love them again.
OH! And try to play without headphones. If you really do have to play like that a lot, it will fucking kill your love fast man.
"I do not have the ability to think rationally 90% of the time and I also change my mind at the drop of a hat".
Gotta slam air, is all. Headphones make me feel disconnected when playing, which is odd considering how personal and intimate they can be when you're focused on listening.
As for fuzz frustration...I think it's best to go back to basics.
I've developed a method to keep myself stimulated and interested, with simple circuits that have no tone stacks.
Choose 2 fuzzes, one bright and nasally, one woolly/warmer and beefier. I've landed on a tonebender mk2 and harmonic percolator at this point in time.
I set both fully open or thereabout, and use guitar tone+vol knobs to get as much out of them as possible.
With a single pickup guitar you've got a wide range of dirt. With dual pickups your range increases exponentially.
When you stack a filter like a cocked-wah, flange, vibe, phaser...Pretty Years etc everything falls into place and seems to make sense once again.
Choose your pickup, dirtbox and filter. Using only 1 of each. Stick with it for droning, noodlez and riffies. All it takes is finding the right basic mix for the mood and a half hour goes by in a blink, thinking about stuff that otherwise might keep someone awake at night.
Lather, rinse, repeat with new selection. Best therapy, at least IME.
Otherwise it gets boring if I try extended playing with everything-on all at once, tempting as it may be when surrounded by much prime gear.
rustywire wrote:Gotta slam air, is all. Headphones make me feel disconnected when playing, which is odd considering how personal and intimate they can be when you're focused on listening.
I need this so bad. At my current place I can't play with anything but headphones, and it's so small that I can't really move around when I'm playing. It's driving me nuts and makes me wanna avoid playing altogether until I move somewhere bigger where I can at least turn up the volume a little.
"I've heard of stepping outside one's comfort zone but this is ridiculous!"
I find myself in a similar predicament. That claustrophobic feel can be terribly unproductive. But being able to turn up for a brief window allows me to channel such angst in a more productive/less frustrating way.
Talk to your neighbors, find a time or range of the day when they aren't home or you can turn up for a half hour while they run appliances, use headphones etc. Say you don't want to disrupt any meditation or nap time etc because you understand their importance and value a peaceful environment to unwind as we all do. A little bit of that good will goes a long way. Unless you live around complete busters.
