Author: Jody Whitesides

  • FourFiveSeconds An Acoustic Cover

    FourFiveSeconds An Acoustic Cover

    FourFiveSecondsIf you’re like me, you caught FourFiveSeconds as a live performance on the GRAMMYS a few days ago. Its the new single by Rihanna that’s co-written by Sir Paul McCartney and Kanye West.

    I really enjoyed the live performance by Rihanna and Paul along with Nuno Bettancourt (Rihanna’s Guitarist). So much so that I decided to learn the song. Took about all of 15 minutes to commit it to memory. I posed the question on Twitter if tweeps wanted to see me playing the song and Bob’s your uncle. Here ya go.

    FourFiveSeconds

    YouTube player

    I think I’ve had enough, I might get a little drunk
    I say what’s on my mind, I might do a little time
    Cause all of my kindness, is taken for weakness

    Now I’m Four Five Seconds from wildin’
    And we got three more days ’til Friday
    I’m just tryna make it back home by Monday, mornin’
    I swear I wish somebody would tell me
    Ooh thats all I want

    Woke up an optimist, sun was shining I’m positive
    Then I heard you was talkin’ trash
    Hold me back I’m bout’ to spaz

    Now I’m Four Five Seconds from wildin’
    And we got three more days ’til Friday
    I’m just tryna make it back home by Monday, mornin’
    I swear I wish somebody would tell me
    Ooh thats all I want

    And I know that you’re up tonight
    Thinkin’ how could I be so selfish
    But you called bout a thousand times wondering where I been
    Now I know that your up tonight
    Thinkin’ how could I be so reckless
    But I just can’t apologize, I hope you can understand

    If I go to jail tonight, promise you’ll pay my bail
    See they want to buy my pride, but that just ain’t up for sale
    See all of my kindness, is taken for weakness

    Now I’m Four Five Seconds from wildin’
    And we got three more days ’til Friday
    I’m just tryna make it back home by Monday, mornin’
    I swear I wish somebody would tell me
    Ooh thats all I want

    Now I’m Four Five Seconds from wildin’
    And we got three more days ’til Friday
    I’m just tryna make it back home by Monday, mornin’
    I swear I wish somebody would tell me
    Ooh thats all I want

    Enjoy!

  • Phoenix Of Sound

    Phoenix Of Sound

    Phoenix of Sound
    The pedal to Phoenix

    Becoming a phoenix of sound. That’s my new mission as of January 1st 2015. I didn’t consciously make a new year’s resolution about it, but I’m definitely on the path.

    While in Las Vegas to play a gig in 2014, I was hanging with a good friend. He put on the TV while we were chilling and on came the show Austin City Limits from his DVR. It was the episode with Ed Sheeran playing some of his material as he does – solo acoustic with a looping setup. Instant inspiration struck me. Right then, right there. I pulled out my iPad to do a little research into what Ed uses to get his loops happening. It was a bust on the net with every site saying, oh he uses the RC-30 or some such little Roland pedal.

    No way was it a little Roland pedal that I saw on the screen. It was something much bigger, much better. My buddy Brian, who’s house it was and who is also a musician, obliged me as I freeze framed the show at the few spots that had his pedal board on screen. Unfortunately there was no real clear shot of the name, nor of the make. [not until early January did I find a little corner of the web that gave a good detail of the box: The Chewie Monsta, Ed’s custom board.]

    But boy did it hit me about how to approach the new singles I’m going to be dropping this year. Hit me in how to perform them live when I’m sans band. Thus began the process in my head.

    Phoenix of Sound

    I called another fellow tinkering musician late last year and asked if he’d be willing to embark on the mission with me. Mostly because he’s into making weird instruments and knew he’d appreciate it. So far its only been talk about where to get parts.

    It dawned on me in early this year that I have an old midi pedal that I had for my amp rigs, just sitting in storage. A real tank build of a midi pedal (image above). Lots of tap dancing happened on this device early in my career. It still looks the same. It’s a super solid construction. In fact I don’t think any other midi pedal controller was as expansive or solidly built.

    Leave to me to be the one person to find a flaw in it.

    [pause for effect]

    I know you’re thinking, what the hell is the flaw? Well, it has to do with the position of the expression pedals when you hit a patch change. Turns out that if an expression pedal was at a certain point in its range and I hit a sound change on the midi wizard. It would send the wrong expression pedal setting.

    How did you figure that shit out Jody? (you ask).

    Like any inquisitive musician with a computer, I hooked the midi wizard up to the computer and started stepping on the expression pedals and the midi wizard. What I found out was that if the pedal was between 0-60 in its range, it would get sent as 0. Above 60 and it was fine, the number would go out. Man what a pain in the ass that was on volume stuff. I did mention it to the people at Rolls who promptly told me, who cares – we don’t intend on fixing the issue. Ouch!!

    So I had to make due with it, meaning that I had to rework a whole lot of carefully crafted amp settings to work around it. Not fun when a company couldn’t give a shit about a product bug. I don’t think they make the midi wizard any more and now there’s a midi buddy. But I wonder if they kept the bug in that product.

    When I made the jump to using a laptop for recorded and live sound, I put my pedal board in storage with the rest of my amps. There they sat, unthought about. Neglected. Miserable. Not any more!

    Rebuild

    As of moments after this post goes live, I will start tearing apart the pedal board, assessing which parts to keep, and which to sell off. Then I will start tearing apart the midi wizard itself and thinking how I can take its guts and finding a new housing for it. See I’m thinking of doing something along the lines of the Chewie Monsta. Only a little more in depth.

    I want to be able to create multiple loops. I want to be able to erase takes if needed. I want to be able to turn parts on and off. I want to have visual feedback from the board. I want awesome sound quality.

    The first things come from the computer I’ll be tied to and its software. Right now I’m contemplating using MainStage along with Mobius. Mostly because MainStage can do almost all the things I need it to do with a full band setup. There are a couple of things I want it to do which will require a call to Apple. Thus why not use the same software for the acoustic setup, then its only a quick change of programs between which type of show I’m playing, full band or solo.

    I could still use Ableton, I have that all set up for the full band thing. But that takes the fun out of learning new software right?

    The pedal part doesn’t have all the feedback I need. Not the visual cue anyway. What I wish to do is put a laptop screen into the box on the floor. This will give me the visual feedback that I need from MainStage.

    The next step is to start pulling things apart and finding a metal worker. Actually I already know one. I’m hoping he won’t charge me too much money to create a custom case to fit all these pieces into once I get it into working order.

    Stay tuned, more pics and story about the journey will come.1

  • NAMM 2015 Recap

    NAMM 2015 Recap

    NAMM 2015Having escaped NAMMthrax I’m going to recount some of the fun I had at NAMM 2015.

    NAMM

    I’m a fan of NAMM. Its a bit like experiencing Guitar Center if it were on Steroids. A lot of steroids. The main reason I go is to see all the fun new gear. Usually I’ll go for 3 days, on occasion I’ll go all 4. This year I only took it in in 2 days. Partially due to scheduling and partially due to seeing if I could fit everyone in that I needed to in 2 days. Hindsight says it was too short a time for how much I had to see and do.

    For the cool new thing, this year I think hands down it’s gotta go to Omnisphere 2 by Spectrasonics. I already use Omnisphere, so this is a very cool update. Looking forward to when it drops.

    My surreal experience of NAMM occurred on Saturday. I was walking along when I hear “Hey Jody, do you want a pen?” I turn to look and its Dave Pensado offering me a pen while standing outside the Izotope booth. For the non music world, Dave Pensado is a premier top level mixing engineer who has mixed some of the massive hits you’ve heard on radio. The shocking thing was how tall he is. For some reason I always pictured him to be like 5’9″, but he’s easily about 6’2″. Nearly as tall as me. We chatted briefly and then he did a presentation for the amazing new Izotope plugins Ozone 6, Alloy 2, Trash and more. Super nice and friendly guy.

    The other great thing about NAMM is seeing certain people that for some reason I don’t run into other than at NAMM. Great time to catch up on what other fellow musicians are creating!

    I did happen to see a purple microphone by Sennheiser that matched the purple shoes that I’ve got. Check that featured image for this post where I’m posing with the microphone. Think I need to color coordinate my mic and shoes?

    I also helped to create a slogan for one of my endorsers. It’ll be interesting if Studio Devil starts using “Studio Devil, putting amps into storage for years.”

    Stay tuned, more musical stuff is coming.