General Music Chat

Just funnin' a bit HJ. Actually I just go down to our local Irish Pub, http://www.keltspubinfo.com/ and have a pint o' Guiness when the mood hits.

Just funnin' a bit HJ. Actually I just go down to our local Irish Pub, http://www.keltspubinfo.com/ and have a pint o' Guiness when the mood hits.

Rat,
Sounds like my kind of place!

Did ya ever think of hittin' them up to do a solo gig?, You could cover some cool Irish songs like Finnegan's Wake, or Whiskey In The Jar, or Rockey Road To Dublin.
Howlin'

Rockey Road To Dublin? Sounds like a long Baskin Robbins delivery.
They have live music there, usually on a weeknight as they are kinda small and weekends are usually too busy to give up valuable customer space for lowly musicians. They don't ever pay anything but they treat musicians like kings. All you and your date can eat, and drink all night, plus they have a tip jar. Me an my bass player used to play there with a small PA setup and a drum machine. We used real drummers occasionally too. Even with the machine, we'd be pulling off Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Van Halen and all the rest of our stuff, just at a lower volume. Fun stuff!!

Philby - I've been experimental for a long time. Learned my first lead on an old acoustic, (Stairway to Heaven), used just about anything that might work for a pick, including Mexican 10 peso coins and matchbooks, everything that looks like it might be a slide bar, learned slide using a Zippo lighter, have used sockets, shot glasses, beer bottles, old medicine bottles, cutoffs of every kind of metal I can get, my trusty old favorite is a thick brass Mighty Mite someone gave me in the 80's, currently collecting antique medicine bottles for slides.

I've tried slide on a mandolin, and bass guitar, used a mic stand for a slide as an effect, I use my pinky ring for ultra high pitch squealies, anything I can think of that might get an unusual sound. Even tried rubbing two guitar necks together onstage once, makes a really gnarly sound if you can both be careful and steady. (Strings against strings, two cranked tube amps, Ted Nugent would be proud)

Always wanted to get my hands on a banjo just so I could try slide, I think it might just work.

Another one I used quite a lot is a paper funnel around the vocal mic. Gives you that megaphone sound like the beginning of "Magical Mystery Tour" and excellent for the vocals on "I Hear You Knockin'", the old Dave Edmunds tune. A paper cup is how the Beatles got it for the Magical Mystery Tour intro. That's where I got the idea, it wasn't my own invention, stole it from Lennon & McCartney.

Your only limitation is your imagination...

Heck, Pete, I've tried weird stuff, too. I'm sure most of us have. I'm all for it as long as it works.