Getting THE tone

Tone... Oh tone... I'd say the hardest to obtain in the world, is good tone. Ya you might get a decent tone through your headphones with your Line 6 POD (that's me!) but the next second you plug your POD into an amp, everything's lost, and you have to start tweaking again.

So I have this PODxt Live which rocks still (steel... anyway does anyone have a zoom g9.2tt to trade?), I can get a nice tone through my headphones. Brought it to the music room, plugged it into the Line 6 Flextone III (wtf POD into Flextone ki siao), everything changed! But luckily I could still fine tune everything by tweaking the Flextone's eq on board without having to tweak EVERY SINGLE PATCH in my POD. And that's going straight into the guitar input of the amp. So what about by-passing the pre-amp and go straight to the power amp? I tried this. It sounded ok at least but was a tad muddy for my taste and I didn't have a 'global eq' to fine tune everything since the pre-amp on the Flextone was by-passed anyway. I thought it might be the speakers on the Flextone that were changing everything. Then I plugged my POD into a KEYBOARD amp which was supposed to be neutral sounding and, this is madness, pure harshness. Playing songs on my laptop through the keyboard amp sounded awesome but my tone! Everything was lost. Everything had super high mids and treble! I turned down the mid and treble in my patches to 0, turned down the keyboard amp's mid and treble to 0 as well, everything was still super harsh sounding. Bad. There ain't no tone. That made me sad. I think I will just do the normal way next time by just going straight into the guitar input of the Flextone.

Anyway, 1 thing to note is, your tone might be awesome in bedroom level, take it out for a jamming session or gig and it might be the worst tone ever. When you play loud, your ears really feel the mids and highs in your tone which in some cases isn't that pleasant but you can't just turn everything down! You will sound like mud and be lost in the mix! How to make good tone loud? I don't know yet. I'm still learning. I need my tone! I want it warm but I still want it to cut through. It's a tough learning process but, it's worth it when you finally get your tone. Life without good tone is not worth living. Get the right tone, and the world will be a beautiful place.

I'm back n00bz asdfasdf

Argh long time no write sia. Why did I go missing? (no one wants to know dude...) Cuz I was like so busy and stuff... (ya right...) You know la here Singapore ma. Stress ma. Everything need rush ma. Need kiasu ma. (lotsa excuses sia...) Ok I was lazy.

So where did the older posts go? (last post was 2008 sia) I so long no check then just now ho, saw that I actually took some one's picture without permission and he/she said want sue me (but that's like a year ago) so I scared and just deleted everything la. Lesson learned. It's time for something new anyway! Changed the address to a more appropriate one and so on. It looks so much less (???) lame now.

Since I'm starting to write again (and dunno when I'll go missing again), let's just be random. Life in Singapore? How do I put it... Stressful? Dunno la. Sure got stressful and relaxing times one ma so you get the idea la. Stress 24 hours meh? I'm not that crazy to put myself in that state. So I'm always slacking in Singapore? Of course not! I had been through a very stressful 1st year trying to get awesome results but the output weren't as good as I would've expected so I've lowered my expectations and go with the flow. See open a bit! (you lazy bastard) Ya ya I know...

The 1st sem of 2nd year was a scary one. Changes were everywhere. I met people that are related to my dream, I joined an awesome band, I became emo etc.. (you emo? emo what o?) Emo need reason? Of course I'm not those emo kids who put eyeliner and mazaka (???) la. I no make up one. I emo in heart only. (wah emo very unhealthy o) Not say very unhealthy la. I realized that being emo helps in my guitar playing. I can now squeeze out more feeling in the notes I play. I can play faster as well. No matter how happy the melody I'm playing is, it still has a hint of emoness going behind that makes it sound more interesting buahahahaha! *can you feel the emoness in this laughter?*

Ok enough for that 'intro'. I'm going to make this blog (provided I don't go missing again!) more musical inclined by sharing songs that I like (give youtube link only la), posting some musical tips (mostly guitar related) and whining (emoness is essential in music!). If you have any question music related, just drop me a message and I might consider writing something about it here. Of course you are welcome to ask anything! Just don't too private or political la. (dude we have nothing to ask! just write and we read!) O like this ah... Ok la then please stay tuned for the next update! (JUST WRITE AND WE MIIIIGHTTT READ IT!!!) Don't like this hurt me la... Low sia...