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6K views 32 replies 13 participants last post by  Darin 
#1 · (Edited)
Darin's Music Thread **UPDATED** 11/9/07

Hey ya'll!

I've seen all kinds of thread titles. I'm not sure even how many Jemsiters check this wing of the forum.

I think that, just like the rest of the guys, and couple gals around here, we all want to be heard when we record something. Even if we know it's not so great. Which I'm guilty of. But then, when I record something that I'm rather proud of, because I spent some time on it, and not just improvising, I REALLY want to share it. It's probably best not to start a new thread for every little clip, but if I post in on another thread, it may get passed over because everyones already seen that thread. A dichotomy, even a conundrum if you will.

So, to help with not hogging up the forum with a bunch of new threads. I'm going to just post my tunes right here. On my own self titled thread. Some tunes will still be improvised gibberish. But not all. I'm planning on actually doing a 6 song CD this summer....(update, NEXT summer '08). I've been talking about it for years. And I'm in the process of getting it going.

So... here we go.
Thanks for listening. I hope more of you start your own thread dedicated to your own music.

Here's my Youtube page

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=MrDarinWarren
The video, G&L Jam is probably my favorite.

And here's my Myspace. Be sure to add me when you get there.

http://www.myspace.com/hookknife

A plethora of my songs on page 2 of this thread.

Some of the link you might see on this thread are no good, if it has "chriswoodwardmusic" in the address, it's an invalid link, skip it.

Later, Darin
 
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#3 ·
Country ain't my passion brother. It's just a vehicle that gets me out and on stage. I've tried to squeeze in noodly stuff into the country songs. But it's just sound silly. So I gave that up, now I pluck and double stop as best I can. It's good enough to get me by.
 
#5 ·
Thank you.
I really saw that as a weakness for years. I couldn't pick to save my life, so I did the legato thing ALL the time, thinking is was lame actually. Then I worked on my picking. Which is coming along. And come to find out. I like doing the the legato runs after all, and am thankful I have that in my bag of tricks.

I have the JP instructional DVD which I need to pull out and start with his very cool picking exercises to get it up to speed and fluent. I'm looking forward to see the progress.
 
#8 ·
Sweet stuff Darin!

On a side (and random) note, how do you like your action on your guitars?
The guitar in that 1st clip is my 2620 but with P90 in the bridge and tele in the neck. Which I'm diggin the heck out of. I may switch back to hums someday. But if I do, it'll be the Timmons pickups.

I used to like my action REALLY low, and with light strings. Now my action would probably be considered high by some of you. It's not very high. I'd say moderately so. When I was into alot of tapping, I liked it lower. It was easier to make those goofy tapping runs sound good. I started to get away from that though when I thought it was cheating. People would think I was playing fast, and I guess the notes were very fast. But I knew I was relying on a technique to make me sound better than I really was. I dropped the tapping all together for years. I only do in now occasionally, when I think it fits what I'm trying to play. But I'll still pull out a tapped run or sweeping arpeggio when I'm at the music store just to see if anyone looks. :)

I find that, for me anyway, I tend to play noodly stuff when I have nothing else to play. I don't want to rush right to the noodly. I'd like to find a nice melodic phrase 1st. But I'm not trained to think like a singer, or a melody writer. So that comes very hard for me. I have to spend an enormous amount of time with a chord progression before I find something I'm happy with. Which make song writing painstakingly slow and discouraging. Which is why most of my 'songs' don't get very far before I kick em to the curb in frustration.

Melodies and phrasing come natural for some people. For guys like me, that sat around and ran scales growing up, the first thing we do when we get a chord progression in front of us is to run scales. That's only interesting for mere seconds. Then when the song isn't "going anywhere", it just sounds like jamming, and not 'music'.
 
#12 ·
Hey Darin,

I think your an awesome talented player ... Im going to try be brutal here ... and obviously this is all my opinion... and being some anonymous internet guy who clearly isnt a professional musician... you can take my opinion with two handfuls of salt...

Im definatly liking some of those riffs ... but I can hear your influences very clearly ... and you seem to go through small phases where you sound exactly like Satch , then Timmons and even Petrucci for a few seconds.. I know its hard not to sound like these guys sometimes ... because growing up as a guitarist weve learnt their riffs and adopted them into what we do.... but tiny changes in pick attack, small pauses or melodic sequence change can make a night/day difference between someone saying "he's just an "X" clone" and "that was original"

I love pinch harmonics as much as the next guy but ... but for me yours are way too obvious and so completely at odds to the rest of your playing when you use them.... they need to be more tastefully (and less often) done ... and you commited my most hated crime against pinch harmonics but always putting them at end of a phrase or on a pause in the melody and using really wide vibrato... This is one of the really really really cliché and outdated not at all melodically interesting or "organic" things that turns people off guitar music and one of my pet hates ... if you can sneak one in the middle of a run or phrase without calling attention to it then you can still stick loads in but it wont be bludgening the listener with the constant end of phrase pinch harmonic with wide vibrato...
 
#14 ·
Your right man... its entirely a preference thing... I hope Darin doesnt take it too seriously... as I probably went a bit overboard ... but they really bug me ;)

I try to make my guitar lines sound vocal so your average listener can get a grip on them... and to me a pinch harmonic at the end of a phrase sounds like a full blown scream into the microphone... it would sound odd to me if a singer ended alot of their phrases with "YEEEEEEEEEAAAAaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHH!"
 
#15 ·
Well, this certainly touches on the debate of personal preference. I wanted to consider my reponse before posting.
Regarding the harmonics thing. I think we are going to just have to agree to disagree. I like them. I don't intentionally play them. It's like a vocal inflection. I don't think I could NOT do them. I never said to my self, "hey, you need to add those goofy harmonic things to your songs". They are a natural voice in my playing style. Brad Gillis from Night Ranger is my biggest influence. You may hear Vai or Satch influences in my style. But before those guys ever came along, I was learning Gillis riffs. Who still is my favorite guitar player. He played with Ozzy in the 80's before Night Ranger. If you listen to Brad Gillis, you'll hear were my influence originated. And just like anyone learning a craft, you need to study and imulate someone at the top of the field. You have no style of your own in the beggining. Once you get going, then develope your own style.
Regarding personal preference. I'm not opposed to constructive critisism. But, I'm going to put personal preference in a different category. If you had said, "try moving the mic closer to the cone....." I'd put that in the cont. crit. category. Is the harmonics thing cliche'? Not sure. I guess I haven't heard enough of them to feel that way myself. My market for my music is anyone that will listen to it. But I'm trying to play it for people that might not normally listen to guitar instrmental. Being emersed in the instrumental culture, it's tough to guage what outsiders will listen too.
With all that said. Thank you for taking the time to listen, listen carefully enough to let it bother you, and post a response.

Thanks for everyones kind word.

Later, Darin
 
#19 ·
fair nough... I was having a bit of a rant... but I was kind of addressing your statement that "I am trying desperately not to fall .into the trap of playing "riffs" and "scales" though all over the place. And limiting the "shred" to a reasonable level. I want the average person to listen to it."

... throwing in loads of end of phrase pinch harmonics is another one of those guitar traps...

On a more upbeat note your double stop work was very cool ... and the seperation in the mix is very nice ... but again as personal preference I would boost the bass 1 - 2 db and take some more of the low end of the rhythm guitar...
 
#20 ·
I'm not sure if this will interest many of you. But, since this is "Darin's Music Thread" :) I will be posting songs in progress. I'll try not to post sucky stuff. But when I finally get something headed in a direction I like, I get pretty excited about it. Just finding the direction a song should go is a huge leap forward. From there, it's finding stuff that fits and maintains the original direction.

Here's a song that was TOTALLY different before I muted the guitar track. The ryth guitar was forcing the lead guitar to go where I didn't like it. But I like the bass track so I just played along with that. Then, after recording the lead. I un-muted one of the buried tracks that was backing up the ryth. Again, it's in the early stages, but for what it's worth, here's the beginning of the evolution of this song.

http://chriswoodwardmusic.com/Rare Thoughts.mp3

Any "pinch harmonics" were there before I got busted on by Devo. :)
 
#22 ·
i have to disagree with the pinch harmonic comment. i think you use it quite tastefully and it punctuates your phrases extremely well. but then again 2 of my favorite players have oodles of pinches in their playing (zakk and george lynch), so it really is a personal preference when it comes right down to it.

i really like your style in general, i can hear you searching for melodies in your phrases. i'd say for me, you really sound good when you are playing phrases with diads/double stops. anyway, look forward to hearing more stuff :)
 
#27 · (Edited)
Ok, here's a bunch of stuff. Some of it's better than others, so if you don't like one song, perhaps you'll like something else. It's all very different from each other.

Thanks for checkin it out. Hope you enjoy it.
Later, Darin

*JSX Jam (Tone testing recording) I love this track, very Andy Timmons like.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/JSX Jam.mp3

*Flowing Happiness: Easily one of my favorites. Theres an arppegio toward the end that reminds me ALOT of a Satch song on the Time Machine studio CD.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Flowing Happiness.mp3

A New You (JSX) Just rhythm tracks. Feel free to add lead tracks and upload it. But the JSX is kickin butt on this tune.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/A New You.mp3

*Playing with the Boss. (Boss DR-5 tracks with me jammin over them) 2 versions. Some of my better playing.
#1 http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Playing with the Boss 1.mp3
#2 http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Playing with the Boss 2.mp3

*G&L Jam (G&L, BOSS drums and Pod 2.0) I had just learned an arpeggio, so I had to record it.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/G&L Jam.mp3

*I Can Only Imagine. (acoustic w/drum machine) Not shreddy, but pretty usable tones.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/I can only Imagine.mp3

*Jam with a friend playing drums. I always thought this would make a good "bumper track" for a talk show.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Jam with Drummer Chris Paul.mp3

*Just one Chord! What happens when you write a song with just one chord? This. I plan to revisit the idea someday.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Just one chord E.mp3

*Layered (Rocktron Taboo Twin and RG 550) This was my first time ever layering guitar tracks....lots of them. It's pretty cool. It gets better once it gets going.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Layered.mp3

*Long Gone. (Pod 2.0, PRS Custom 24) It's a bit of a long tune. We had just bought a dig. piano so I wanted to record something with it. This was the song that resulted.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Long Gone.mp3

*Maroon Ballad. Badly hampered be the fact i was on dial up when I first uploaded it. So it's poor audio sample. But the song is pretty darn cool. It was inspired by a Maroon 5 song I heard on the way home that day.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Maroon Ballad.mp3

*New Beginning: Probably my own "signature song" And one of my best.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/My New Beginning.mp3

*New Twang. (JSX with Tele)
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/My New Twang.mp3

*Older Twang: Same song with Pod 2.0 and Tele.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Older version on Tele Twang.mp3

*Theres a Piano in there: Another song inspired by my poor piano playing ability.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Theres a piano in there.mp3

*What Happened. Was trying to go a for a Satch vibe on this.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/What Happened.mp3

*7 String (Pod 2.0) Very noodly.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/7 String.mp3

*Drop Out (Valvetronix, G&L and JS100)
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Drop Out.mp3

*Gettysburg (JSX) Old version Me sucking on the drums. This was track I was working on and just needed to get it recorded so I wouldn't forget it. A bit choppy, but I still like it. One of my more "shreddy" tunes.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Gettysburg.mp3

*Rug Dog (JSX) Another rhythm track needing soloing over.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Rug Dog.mp3

*From somewhere: One of my first multi on a PC. Probably around 1998 (wow, that's alot of gain)
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/From Somewhere.mp3

*Flowing Happiness: Easily one of my favorites. Theres an arppegio toward the end that reminds me ALOT of a Satch song on the Time Machine studio CD.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Flowing Happiness.mp3

*Evergreen: I spent alot of time working this tune out with Shane Regal. We played this tune at Jemfest. About half of this is supposed to have him playing. But he moved away. So it's just me on this take. There's a vid of me playing this on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=MrDarinWarren
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Evergreen.mp3

*3 Piece Jam: The end got cut off somehow, and I lost the original track. Again, me sucking on the drums. When I'm the only one around, I have to do it. Cool tune though.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/3 Piece.mp3

*Just some JSX test tones
Rippin distortion. The Ultra channel before I had it modded. It sounds great, But I don't generally play with this much gain.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/JSX different levels.mp3

Testing the Clean channel
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/JSX Clean.mp3

Prestige with Tele pups, I think.
http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/JSX cool tone-01.mp3
 
#28 · (Edited)
New tune. Sorta. It's actually the drum and bass tracks from New You.

It's the tune in my "Jemsite Commercial #2"

My weakness as a player is bending to the perfect pitch. Though I try, I don't hit it 100%. Other than that. I rather like this tune. I recorded the guitar tracks with the POD2.0 and my G&L Legacy. I like the tone alot on this one.

I think it has an 80's flavor. Am I wrong? I've been emersed in 80' vids on youtube the last week.

http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/Jemsite Commercial-02.mp3
 
#29 ·
New tune...not REALLY new, actually, it's sorta of new. I've been recycling the drum tracks for alot of songs. There's a song on my player called A New You, this is the drum and bass tracks with new ryth and lead track. I spent a bit of time on it today, I really like what happened with this song. It's a short 1:20, so it wont kill ya to hear it. :)

Later, Darin

fyi: Guitar played on G&L Legacy (strat like) through POD 2.0 into Lexicon Omega on Cubase. Drum loops downloaded, bass is Warwick Thumb through Avalon U5. Mixed on Alesis M1 Actives..... all in my bedroom :) fun fun

http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/music/JSC.mp3
 
#30 · (Edited)
btw: Played on G&L Legacy through POD2.0 into Cubase through Lexicon Omega.

Here's the vid I just did tonight. *almost* the same. Sometimes I have a hard time duplicating solo tracks. I like this song enough to develop it into something longer.



You might find this interesting.... I posted in another thread some time ago, I cut of part of my ring finger a while back. I can't use my 3rd finger for soloing, just chording sometimes. I just noticed you can really tell in the vid.

I wish Youtube wouldn't kill the quality of the vids. This was a nice 15 meg clean and uncompressed audio and pretty darn good vid before youtube made it a flv.

It's funny, the more I watch the vid of myself playing, the more critical I am of myself. I never really see myself playing from this view. I look weird. At first glance, my pick hand position is goofy. But I know why it is. I use the side of my thumb ALOT 'with' the pick on alot of notes. I remember spending alot of time developing that technique to get note to sound like that. I just didn't realize it was make my wrist point almost straight down. I don't think I've seen anyone else play like that. And when I do the quick run of notes, my hand look alot stiffer then it feels. I also don't think alot of players dangle their fingers down on their picking hand. I also just noticed..after watching it again, that I pick the string in different places for different tones. Sometimes further back, sometimes closer to the neck for just one note. I didn't realize I was doing it. Must be from years of playing I started doing it subconsciously. This is what happens when you video tape yourself, you get all goofy watching every aspect of your own playing. I don't know, I'm going to have to watch some more Youtube vids to see how strange I really look. Well, it's all my style and lends itself to my own personal 'hand-tone' which is what make us all unique sounding. I love recording, and playing this stuff. I wish I was more creative. Often I sit down and...........nothing....... I can't come up with a creative phrase to save my life. Then other days they just come flowing out. It's completely unpredictable.

Jam on brothers, Darin
 
#31 ·
Welcome back to my music thread. :) Thanks to all of you who take a few minutes to check out my music.

This post is titled:
"The Evolution of a Song"
I'm working on a new tune. It's a work in progress. Here is part of the song. I thought it would be easier to find things to play over the ryth. I'm doing a lot of searching on this improv looking for stuff I like. There's a few gems in there that need dug out and polished. I like where the song is heading, it holds a bit of promise. give it a listen and see what ya think. Keep in mind, it's improv and rather too noodly for my taste, but it's how I accidentally find stuff that fits. I sent the guitar track to a drummer who is going to put real live drums on it for me. That'll give me alot more ideas when I get it back. I tuned the guitar CGDGBE. It's a little to low for 10-49's. And it throws the intonation out. I've never written a song with this low chunka sound before. This should be fun.

I WILL be recording it with my JSX soon. This is the POD and PRS. I'll likely be recording the solo with my G&L as well.

http://www.christianbattleofthebands.com/For George-01.mp3
 
#33 ·
All I had within reach of my computer was my Takamine acoustic. So I plugged it direct into my Lexicon Omega and this is what happened. I was lending my acoustic to a 12yo girl I'm giving lesson until she got her own guitar for Christmas. Anyway, I had put 9's electric strings on it for her to learn to finger chords without to much pain.

http://christianbattleofthebands.com/masonroofing2/clean.mp3
 
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