Category: lizardfish

Remember the Lizardfish

The singer from Lizardfish is in Maine right now, I think. Apparently bars are open because he’s out someplace where a band is playing.

I would be way too scared to go to something like that without being vaccinated first, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point is that the band has a set list full of songs from our set lists! Like, get you’re own cover songs, you thieving jerks! Only Lizardfish can cover long forgotten 80’s one (or two) hit wonders!

Stop stealing our clever ideas!

What did This Teach Me

Now that I have done a little experimenting with using an extension speaker cabinet in place of the built in speakers on my Bassbreaker 18/30, what did I learn?

I don’t know.

First, as expected there wasn’t a ton of difference in volume. The 18 watt channel, with the volume as low as it could go and actually produce sound, through the two built in speakers was peaking at around 103 decibels. Surprisingly, the 30 watt channel, under the same circumstances, was peaking at about 101 decibels. Through the 1×12 extension cab the 18 watt channel was peaking at about 98 decibels and the 30 watt channel at about 97. So quieter, but not enough to make a difference.

Both channels sounded really nice while plugging in direct and going through the extension speaker. Maybe not quite as nice as through the two 12 inch speakers, but it was good.

When I started pushing with pedals everything changed. The Ryra Klon clone into both channels sounded pretty good, though super trebly through the 30 watt side. I have made that complaint about this amp before. The 30 watt channel is SUPER toppy. With the Ryra it was noteworthy but I tend to keep the treble high on that pedal anyway. I turned it down some and it was a smidge better.

The Ryra was set with the overdrive very low so it was mostly a clean signal. When I kicked on the Malaise Forever Black Lives Matter on the 18 watt I had a pretty rockin’ distortion level but it wasn’t all that great. When I switched back to the 30 watt channel it sounded like garbage. It was fizzy and thin and it sounded like I had all of the bass and mids off and the treble cranked. I didn’t. I had the treble set to about 1, the mids set to about 7, and the bass at about 9. I turned the Ryra off so it was just the Malaise Forever and it was a little better, but not much. I ended up turning the treble on the amp to 0 and diming the bass and mid, and then turning the tone on both overdrive pedals to about 9:00. I switched back to the 18 watt channel and fudged with the tone pots on the pedals and found something decent, but the whole idea of using this amp was to have the 30 watts worth of headroom.

I then switched out the Malaise Forever for the Wampler Plexi Drive Mini and it still made the high pitched hum that it had when it was going through the two 15 watt amps, but that is due to the shitty power supply I’m using. Playing it with the Ryra and through the 18 watt channel was much better than it had been through the 15 watt amps. That little increase in headroom helped a lot. If I played power chords down low on the neck I still had some of that over compressed mushiness I was bitching about during RPM, but for the most part it was better. I switched to the 30 watt channel and all of that compression was gone. Granted, it still sounded like toppy dog shit. Ugh.

So what did I learn. I learned that if I want to record with the 1×12 extension cab bypassing the built in 2×12 then I will probably have to rely on the 18 watt channel. Once the little speaker soak attenuator arrives I will hopefully be able to crank up the 30 watt channel a ton and maybe get a less shitty tone without blowing the roof off of the house. I know I sounded very trebly when I was using this amp with Lizardfish, but it wasn’t this bad, was it?

I think the final lesson may be that I just miss my Deluxe Reverb even more than I already knew. Oh for the end of the ‘rona.

Cautious Optimism

The United Kingdom has approved one of the Covid-19 vaccines (Pfizer’s? I think?). They are starting to work on actual distribution.

There is suddenly a very tiny pin prick of light at the end of this long, black coronavirus tunnel.

The United States isn’t there yet. I’m not sure what the FDA’s timeline is, or even if they have a timeline yet. I’m not sure what Pfizer and Moderna need to do to proceed. I’ve heard that first responders and elderly folks in homes will be the first Americans to receive the vaccine. I’m good with that. After that, I don’t know what the rumors are. I hope my step son and his immune deficiencies will be near the front of the line. My weight problem puts me at risk too, but I want him taken care of first.

It’s still going to take months for that tiny pin prick of light to grow into an opening big enough for us to walk through, and it is WAY too early to start making plans. Still, we have a high school graduation in the Spring. We are hoping to go back to Disney World in the Summer.

I’m spending my lunch break today listening to a podcast where two part time musicians are fantasizing about getting their bands back together in the Spring and what that’s going to be like. I don’t want to look that far ahead. I don’t want to get optimistic. I don’t want to start fantasizing. But… that first band practice is going to feel like a victory parade. We’re going to play like garbage and it’s going to be the most enjoyable rehearsal in the history of rehearsals. The first gig… when we can fill up a room with friends and family and music lovers and people from all walks of life… that is going to be a celebration like no other. That is going to be an amazing experience. I mean, yeah we’re just a silly cover band, but it’s going to be a wonderful thing.

Don’t get cocky, Robert. Cautious optimism is all you get for now. Maybe stop thinking about that tiny little point of light at the end of the tunnel. Try, at least.

“Happy” Seven Months

It’s October 13th. Happy (I mean that sarcastically) Seventh Covid-Quarantine Monthiversary.

This fucking sucks.

Last night one of the guys in the band floated the idea of having a mask-wearing, spread out all over the room band practice. Another guy immediately said yes. The third guy commented but didn’t say yes or no. Then I was the asshole. I’m really tired of being the asshole. Like… really tired of it.

I was going to mix one of the songs last night. I replaced all the bass and drum parts and made sure everything lined up correctly. There was one spot toward the end of the song where the vocals sounded weird. I had two tracks singing the same thing. I’m not sure why I did that, but I did it for the first three songs I recorded. In this particular instance there was a drop out that cut a whole word out of one of the takes. How did I miss that?

I listened to just the vocal tracks, one at a time, and there were little drop outs all over the place. What the hell? I was mostly able to comp together one full track out of the two that I had, but there was one line where both tracks had a drop out. Fortunately it was in a chorus so I was able to fly in that line from another part of the song.

It really pissed me off though. How did I miss that when I was in the car? I knew I was having signal loss issues that day but I thought I was catching them as they happened. I’m so mad at myself. I did the same thing with the two other songs I recorded that day and they both had a drop out or two, but they weren’t nearly as bad. I comped together a full take pretty easily. I then did the same for the four songs I recorded yesterday, when I wasn’t doubling tracks, and everything was fine. I don’t have to redo anything, but it still pissed me off like crazy.

I also had my first bad news on the exercise front, though it wasn’t unexpected. When I started this I said I was going to do the intermittent fasting and 30 minutes of exercise each day and see what happens. I explicitly said I was not going to screw with what I ate, just when I ate it. I have been weighing myself every Tuesday morning and I was losing weight. Today was the first weigh in where I was up. Only a pound and a half, but I was not happy. Not even a little bit. I told myself that weight loss wasn’t my primary goal, but now that I’m up a pound and a half I think I have to face the reality that maybe it actually is my primary goal. Crap. I thought I was more evolved than that (that’s a joke, I didn’t really think that).

The good news is, last time I cut the grass I would do about 10 minutes of mowing and then have to sit for half an hour to recover. After a month’s worth of multiple little “work outs” each day, when I cut the grass this weekend it was more like 20-30 minutes of mowing with little 5-10 minute breaks to recover. That was my original goal for all of this shit. I consider that a small success in an otherwise garbage universe.

Kiss my ass, Covid-19.

Small Business

I just received a notification on theBookFayce* that made me laugh.

Yeah, Lizardfish is a small business all right… really small. Loud, but really small.

*note: I say Bookfayce because I have this clear memory of Strongbad saying Bookfayce, but I can’t find any documentation to back that up. I think it was in one of the posts where he reads his email. I’m going to have to watch them all now so I can find it… assuming it exists.

That’s a Lot of Noise

I played a lot today. More than I expected.

When I finished playing on Thursday night, June Music had nine songs with all of the rhythm guitars. I had an idea for a 10th song, but it was just a single chord change. On Friday after work I found myself wishing that I had more to do. I’ll have to do leads eventually, but I like to save that for last, and I still have to write and record the vocal parts before I get there. What to do?

I wrote out music for two more songs, that’s what. I invented new stuff for me to do. Today I recorded the rhythm guitars for those two. Neither one is the 10th idea I had socked away, so now there are 11 songs with guitar/bass/drums and one that’s still only a snippet of nothing.

When I finished the second song today I saw that my MacBook’s battery percentage was still above 70. I didn’t want to stop. That’s when I remembered there was a song left over from April that had everything except lead guitar. I brought that up, finished it off, and now I have a song that’s ready to mix.

There was also a ton of battery left, and I still didn’t want to stop. What to do next?

I’ve mentioned about 100 times that in 2015 I started a project where I would re-record the least awful songs from all of my prior RPM Challenges and stuff. Every so often I try to get some work done but I never seem to finish anything. Screw it, thought me. I picked a song out of that batch, scrapped all of the guitar parts that were already done and did ’em again. When that was done I picked a second song. When that was done… my battery was below 10% and I had to help cook dinner.

In the grand scheme of things it’s all stupid and pointless and silly but damn if it didn’t feel good.

For the June and April songs I didn’t use my pedal board. I played the 335 into the RYRA The Klone and the Keeley Super Phat Mod. I had the gain dialed pretty far back on both, but with the Bassbreaker 15 that was enough for some good, chunky distortion. For the lead on the April song I just upped the gain on both pedals a smidge

For the 2015 Project songs I only did rhythm parts and I switched back to the pedal board. The most recent plan for this project was to use the same setup I use with Lizardfish. I followed that rule for the pedals but that’s it. Technically the 335 is still retired and not allowed to leave the house, so it’s not a Lizardfish thing. The Bassbreaker 15 has never been used with Lizardfish, though I still have the idea of pairing it with a Vox AC15 and using that with the band. Guitar Center’s website has a listing for a used AC15 for under $500. I am really tempted.

The signal path today was 335 to Klon KTR to Keeley D&M Drive (just the Dan side) to the Bassbreaker 15. The problems I was having when I first switched to that have been fixed. As expected, lowering the output level on the KTR by a ton really did the trick. No more mushy compression. Everything sounded clear and dynamic and great.

I noticed one other little detail. For one of the 2015 songs, a song that was written for the 2014 50/90 Challenge, I had previously added rhythm guitars to it. The song requires a clean sound and a distorted sound. When I recorded them before there was a little weirdness in the transitions that I hadn’t done on the 50/90 recording. I didn’t catch it until a couple of days after I finished the takes but it was reason enough to redo everything. Today when I finished each take I listened back to just the guitars, with everything else muted.

I don’t think I’ve done that for any of the recordings I’ve done since March, and I’ve only used the 335 on the most recent songs, so maybe it didn’t happen… When I had the distorted guitars solo’d and there were no other tracks playing, I realized that the microphone is actually picking up a little bit of the acoustic sound of the guitar. You can hear the pick hitting the strings. It’s really subtle, and you can’t hear it within the full mix, even when the guitar tracks are cranked. Either I was bashing the guitar really hard, or the amp isn’t as loud as I thought it was. I might go back to some of the old songs and see if it happened while playing a solid body guitar. Interesting.

Anyway, here’s a picture.

287/365

Fulltone Free

The Fulltone OCD has been replaced by the Keeley D&M Drive and the Fulltone Clyde Deluxe has been replaced by the Dunlop Cry Baby.

My pedal board is Fulltone Free* and while using those two pedals that I had already owned for years prior to Fuller’s bullshit** made no difference at all to the universe as a whole, dumping them soothes my conscience and maybe it’s even the karmically correct things to do. Most important, no one is ever going to come to a bar where I’m playing and see any of that guy’s work in my gear.

I’m not doing business with some racist who thinks that storefront windows are more important than the public execution without trial of a man whose crime was allegedly passing a bad $20 bill while black, and while in his eyes my support for life and equality over business might mean I am both underserving of using his products and unable to piss standing up, I stand by my belief that his words mark him as a piece of shit and I don’t want to have anything to do with him or his company or his products ever again.

I feel better.

Fulltone free, at last.

*My little/backup/stay at home pedal board is over Mike the Bass Players house and has been since January. I understand the irony of the stay at home board not being at home, but that’s irrelevant. That board currently includes a Fulltone OCDge (complete with Fuller’s signature on it). That board still needs to be cleansed, but I promise it will be before I actually use it again. For now, it’s staying where it is until the coronavirus crisis has passed.

**I’ve written about this over and over again, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about here is a story from Guitar World, and here is another from Guitar.com.