infinitenexus: Kind of hard to keep up with playing guitar or what not then. Did you choose to go or where you stationed there?

I have kind of a say. As for going to Korea, I had no say in that, my particular job was needed, so I was sent here. As for Maryland, that was a bit more of my choice: I called up the guy who handles that stuff (where I go next) and asked him what my choices were, he told me, and I requested Maryland. It wasn't guaranteed, but he put in for it and I got it. I still keep up with my guitar playing pretty well over here, I have a few with me. Unless I'm sitting in a HMMWV or on top of a mountain for a week, I usually get to play my guitar every day or so. But my wife is in California, and I really hate that.

I hope the same, that everyone will have more time to work out the material.

Excellent, responded to your email.

back home and i'm currently mixing all the shit i did for the doom challenge. now if anyone is going to even listen to it. lol.

Once I move to Maryland and get an apartment I'm going to use a spare bedroom as a studio. I have a bunch of stuff bookmarked to purchase when I get there, acoustic tiles, a new desk, etc. I can't wait.

I joined a band. Big step for me

Now to figure out the whole work/life/band balance thing.

Seriously, I'm very excited. It's been a long time since I have played with others.

Sounds cool, got a link to any material?

As for the balance thing, as usual it's a time management thing. My bassist has super odd working hours and has to miss half of our rehearsals. Even so, he's always the tightest and most spot on in the band playing-wise. He takes videos of our rehearsals and uses that to practice at home when he has to miss rehearsals. On top of that he has a wedding to plan. Anything's possible if you plan it well.

I'm in the armed forces myself and that doesn't leave me with a lot of time for band stuff either. Just gotta make the most of your time.

Just ordered a Vox Metal Amplug, basically a headphone amp. Once it comes I'll be able to squeeze in those extra hours deep into the night hehe. I was skeptical of this product initially cuz it looked like the typical trendy gear aimed at teenagers on a low budget without an ear for tone, but some opinions on this board have convinced me otherwise, along with this demo of it right here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0b6EqqT4jg

The guy in the link uses the same tuning I do so that's a plus (although his chugging/palm-mutes is a little weak for my tastes)

I have one and I love it.

Cool, how's it do for the dirtier end of death metal? I suppose there's enough gain and punch to even do death metal, right?

i have one as well and it's what I write a lot of my material for Draug and Filtheater on cause it's perfect esp if you tune down. best 20 bucks I spent so I can jam at home. my raking across the strings still annoys my wife time to time.

Haha, tell me about it. I've taken to playing unplugged just to get some late night practice in and on more than one occasion my mom and girlfriend have complained about the pick noise(that I love to punish the strings doesn't help:D)

I know! It's like you just can't fucking win at all.

Our guitarist quit today to focus on his own project. Although it's a bit of a bummer, it's not as great of a loss if say the drummer would have quit.
Guitarist grow on trees anyway.

Yep, here's a youtube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=511iORgH_tk

The vocalist and bass player left to pursue other interests. Should be fun. We'd like to keep it thrash, retro, and simple. Local focus. There's some good musicianship in the band, so I'm excited!

We are also going to try doing the file-sharing thing to bridge the gap between practices. Getting together on weekends, not much in-between.

That sounds simple and fun indeed. The playing is pretty tight too! What are you on, guitars?

Getting together on weekends is enough actually, if everyone does their homework. Gotta whip the slackers into shape too!

My stoner band was lucky enough to be added to MDF 2013 (Asthma Castle). Still shitting my pants over it. Writing new music while our drummer is overseas with his real band(s).

Just released a project I did with a fellow forum member (doktersatan)! Morbid Footnote is the name. More info over here, please check it out... historically-themed death metal:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=94372

I was bored the other day, so I made a demo of one of my bands songs. It sounds a bit different than the rest of our songs, with almost a bit of a metalcore influence:

http://soundcloud.com/bruce-morgan-bale ... strumental

We aren't a metalcore band by any means, but I really felt like that breakdown was needed there, you know?

http://axisofmetal.com/2012/11/oshiego- ... interview/

My band got interviewed on Axis Of Metal recently and I for one am really pleased with the page layout/design and interview questions overall. The writer's a young 'un but damn if he doesn't know what he's doing.

Guitars, yes. We are officially looking for a bass player, in the Milwaukee area.
http://www.reverbnation.com/mortalmess

Hope I'm not violating any board rules by posting that

Anyway, we have fun rehearsing. No flakes in the band, everyone has been through all that before. Just some honest good thrash, wanting to eventually play out.

Working on a one man DSBM band...
doing good

Is it just me but you guys also experience huge lack of drummers and bassists and overflow of guitarists? I mean there is just plenty of guitarists! Not much I can say though as a guitarist, just motivating instrument to play and gets only more and more interesting to play as you learn. Doing solo project and play all instruments is something I don't consider because I just feel I can't master those instruments good enough. Not me doing dem Kai Hahto blast beats. No way!

My long time joke and dream is to play something nifty like one of Gorgoroth's demo song live. Sexual Bloodgargling would be nice. I love the drums. So creative ;P

That's usually has always been the case of any genre or scene in an area.
Tons of guitarists and huge lack of drummers and bassists. hell i started as a guitarist but had picked up bass and drums along the way cause the combination of enjoying playing them and the desperate need for them allowed me to jam with tons of other musicians and bands in my area. hell at one point I was playing drums or bass in 5 full time show playing bands.

The overflow of guitarists is usually partly counteracted by the fact that only a couple of them will be really decent and a few of them will probably have huge personality defects that make them impossible to work with. Like me with my procrastination.

And my current activities as a musician include procrastinating from recording my Songwriting Challenge entry after procrastinating on writing the thing for about a month (It doesn't help that I've come to think my idea sucks anyway).

None of you would happen to have a way of overcoming interminable procrastination would you?

There are some tendencies that separate the good and not-good guitarists. Lots of guitarists pick it up and jam a few riffs, lots of guitarists who are casual players who aren't really familiar with other instruments, and lots of guitarist want to sing, solo, and be the center of the band. A lot of them are borderline incompetent in a band setting because they focus on guitar all the time and only scratch the surface of knowing how everything comes together. This is often simply inexperienced guitarists, but the problem is driven by a desire to learn guitar, not music as a whole. The guy who can rock "Smoke on the Water" but thinks of the bass as the thing that fills in the low end by following the guitar and the drums as the timekeeper who get to hit other things to signal the next section. This stereotype also loves Death - the band where the other guitar, the bass, and the drums follow the guitars and basically put most of the focus on the guitars, which is a lot of fun to play along with since not much is lost, and it's easy to figure out. I used to be one of those guitarists but then I learned how to work with other instruments, learned a lot more about music as a whole, and started practicing... less, oddly enough. More focused on creativity, less focused on technicality.



Work with someone more productive than you.

I've left Sorrowseed as a live member. I'm performing one more show with them this Friday in Somerville and then I'm focusing entirely on studio work with the band. I've grown to really not like playing live most of the time and bad stuff happened at the end of the tour that greatly influenced my decision to leave.

I agree with this for sure.



Don't know anyone within a reasonable distance of me with similar musical interests who plays an instrument.

Subrick, are they going to still keep you as a studio member? Cause usually once they find a live drummer that pulled off what you did... most likely they will replace you with him cause why have 2 drummers and usually the 'live' drummer will end up getting annoyed he isn't on any recording.

Xanzotire, interminable procrastination? No. That's all in your head and you just need to get over it. And I'm not sure Zodijackyl's advice would help cause I know if I jammed with you and this is how you are... I won't be working with you anymore.

Going to try out a vocalist today. Hopefully, the impression will stick even though he's more into thrash metal vocals. I'm not dead set on guttural vocals only anyway.

I'll let you guys know how it went later tonight.

This. Ten out of ten times, I'd rather work with a hardworking mediocre player than a talented bum.

Nobody likes an asshole...

Anyway, the guy did pretty well. He loosened up more towards the end and we will continue and see where things lead..

Planning on moving to Germany in a couple years after I finish my degree. I will look for work over there.

Picked up a white strat knockoff by some company called Synsonic for $100 at a used guitar shop down the street. I wasn't expecting anything when I picked it up in the store, but to my surprise it sounded decent unplugged. So I plugged it into an amp and, lo and behold, it actually sounded pretty damn good. It was also of solid construction - nice and heavy, not light and hollow feeling like a lot of knockoffs. For $100? I picked it up. Arctic white finish.

I was instantly pleased I picked it up as the adrenaline that kicked in from getting a new axe psyched me into writing some of the best music I've written in a while.

A drummer and sax player asked me to jam with them on Saturday. I'm pretty excited for it. The drummer worships Tool, and the sax player is a seasoned jazz cat. I'm a Zappa wannabe (though I sound more like a cut-rate Ler Lalonde), so the end result will be interesting to say the least.

I'm still waiting on my new bass to come in the mail. I know it takes a bit to get to APO addresses, but fuck I'm getting impatient.

I agree with this heartily, I've always been huge on procrastination, till they had a game on grindcore.com, I pushed myself to do guitars and it was a pain in the ass, the mod there really liked my playing and asked me to play for his next album so I recorded over what felt like ten metric titloads of his drum tracks, ever since then I've got probably five or six folders of anywhere between 5-30 each of potential album material.

So guess a better piece of advice is "put yourself into a position where you'll look like a total fucktard unless you go through with it, also you should totally download my album, like really, it's really good, and free"

Sorry EvilSocky, not really into Grindcore, nice try though

I guess I could offer to do instruments on other people's projects for the next Songwriting Challenge, but I don't think there's much call for guitar players. The only other thing I have access to apart from programmed drums is an electric grand piano with a really limited number of presets. One of them is a nice church organ sound though, that's pretty metal I guess.

CURSE'S!

But for real I would also suggest taking baby steps at first, baby steps are the chronic mast...er, that is procrastinators best friend, don't sit down to record songs just record like short maybe 10-20 second jingles, they don't even have to be good, just as long as you're making music, then once that isn't ahpita anymore, start dressing them up a bit, add a little more stuff like some big swells on your church organ, after about a month or two the ideas should start being too big for even a minute to hold, they might even stop sucking too!

grindcore.com is really a bunch of clueless idiots. Tried posting there, they loved my bullshit but goddamn they had no clue what grind was and didn't like me schooling them otherwise.

oh on wed got a few things recorded. so that was neat. 2 54R songs 1 Kp song 1 VP song. today recorded another 54R song and put together a song for a full band that i'm ressurrecting with some new members.

I started a one man Funeral Doom/Black/Ambient project that I'm pretty satisfied thus far. It's called Horizons, and my goal is to create a really expansive, atmospheric mix of funeral doom metal and black metal. I know it seems silly to have things this planned out already, but I intend to write a self titled debut of about 75-80 minutes in length across 4 tracks, so pretty lengthy tracks.

I've already recorded a rough demo of the first track titled The Primordial Rising, and I'd really appreciate if you guys let me know what you think of it, or if you'd be interested in hearing further songs. I'll point out that I'm not experienced in mixing/mastering, so the production might be a bit shite, but please judge the music and not the production, as this is in demo stage. Also, I feel the song isn't done justice unless the whole thing is heard in full, as the beginning of the song is pretty slow. I'm already working on another track, so I'll post any further work.

I think I've finished the mix for my solo doom EP. Going to have a final listen back tomorrow, then bounce down and master. Then going to go write some stuff with the main doom band. And then get very drunk.

Standard.