Bass looping can be used in many styles of music. Funk, fusion, jazz, metal, reggae, you name it.

How well an audience receives your looping depends on several things. To start with, how to use each pickup for each loop. Try laying down a percussive track using the neck pickup in order to give it a drum-like tone. Next roll on to the rear pickup for the addition of chords. This allows you to solo using both pickups, which gives you a much smoother tone for creating melodies. You can now move your picking hand over either pickup to achieve the sound that works best for you. Once you’ve created a song using this method, completely change the pattern.

Continue reading “The Art of Bass Looping Part 1”

With all the information readily available on the Internet, and the plethora of discussions on forums like the Seymour Duncan user group forums, a lot more people are interested in tinkering with their guitar’s electronics. Many people are experimenting with different pickups, wiring combinations, and various modifications to the pickups themselves. It all sounds like a lot of fun, but there is one thing that quite often puts some people off this sort of experimenting – soldering.

Continue reading “So you want to experiment with pickups, but are afraid of soldering…”

On the song “Surge Of Pity” I wanted to make a song that combines the ethereal chords of a ballad mixed with melodic lines and some cool riffs with major minor, 7, sus 2 approach to them so they fit the overall vibe of that particular song.
It’s one of my favorite Nightrage songs and I’m using again wide vibrato on the way that I’m playing all the melodies and that makes the song a bit more rocky and interesting.
Continue reading “Learn Metal with Marios Iliopoulos of Nightrage Pt. 3”

Recently, we asked our Facebook fans what they thought the greatest album cover of all time was. We decided to take a look at ten of the most popular album covers that were brought up.

1. Dark Side Of The Moon
Pink Floyd
Easily the most popular was Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd. With nearly 50 million albums sold, Dark Side of The Moon became one of Pink Floyd’s most successful albums.
Continue reading “Greatest Album Covers of All Time”

When it comes to Rock n´ Roll, Motörhead are gods. No question about it. Don´t even try to argue with me about it.

Having worked for a lot of years in the music industry, I am lucky that I can call guitarist Phil Campbell a friend of mine. Phil joined Motörhead in 1984, which means that he has been on Lemmys side for more than 30 years…

If you ever have been backstage at a Motörhead show, there are two things that never changed in all the years: Lemmy’s passion for whiskey and gambling, and Phil Campbell’s everlasting love for Strongbow.
Continue reading “Motörhead – Seymour Duncan, Cider and Rock n´ Roll”

Almost a decade into his career, having travelled to countless countries and entertained hundreds of thousands of fans, Mikeydemus finds himself four studio albums deep and surrounded by guitar gear. Skindred are a multi award-winning British band who recently completed several legs of a tour (including the UK, Europe, and Australia) supporting their newest offering, ‘Union Black’, out now on Sony BMG. Their sound comprises of an unlikely yet infectious mix of Metal, Reggae and Punk. Mikey sat down with us at Seymour Duncan to chat about his take on tone, technique, toys, and what’s next for his band.
Continue reading “Mickeydemus, guitarist with Skindred creates a stew filled with Metal, Reggae, and Punk”

This song incorporates clean type appreciated chords played with distortion, and I can tell you that I was very inspired from acoustic guitar when I was composing the song. The verse is very in your face and they sound even cooler with the addition of some melodic lines behind it. The clean acoustic break in the middle of the song was just composed in one take, when we needed to add an acoustic theme, I just played this and it naturally fit with the overall feeling of the song.
Lots of different chord variations here except the usual fifths that all metal bands are using. Minor 7 and sus 2 chords for an example. You need to play alternate picking on the beginning of the song with palm muting and then down picking with your right hand, combined with alternate thrash picking on the verses. The pre chorus section is one my favorite themes of the song and I’m playing alternate picking riffs behind the melody that on the end of the section becomes powerful triplets riffing.

Here is our new music video, This song contains all the Nightrage signature riffs and has those brutal riffs against ethereal melodies, the kind of thing that we are always using on our music. We filmed this video during the last Greek tour we did, and the place was at Eightball club in Thessaloniki – Gabriel Psaltakis was the director. He came there with 5 different cameras and a nice crew, and did an awesome job.

Delirium Of The Fallen has a lot of cool chords and a kind of Thin Lizzy vibe on the way the melodies combines with the chords, I’m using major minor triads and also wide vibrato on the way that I’m playing the melodies, kind of reminiscent of how Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden and old Alex Scolnick used to do on the old Testament albums.
There is also an acoustic break in the middle of the song that Apollo Papathanasio from Firewind makes a nice vocal guest appearance on and then the leads breaks in.
Thanks to my friends at Seumour Duncan and the Blackouts active pickups, I’m able to produce this nice and warm in your face metal sound.”

When people hear about Monte Pittman the first thing they usually think is Madonna AND Prong? Monte has established himself as an incredibly versatile artist and his primary secret weapon is the guitar he designed with Jarrel Guitars called the MPS. This guitar gives a ton of tonal combinations with our P-Rails, Vintage Hot Stack Plus & Custom Shop Dimebucker. From Tel Aviv to Istanbul, Monte has been travelling with Madonna to provide powerful guitar lines to her hit songs. Not only was Monte using a guitar loaded with our pickups but Madonna was also using a guitar loaded with special Custom Shop pickups as can be seen in this video.

After the show, we asked Monte how the pickups have affected his tone during the tour.

“The ’78 and the Greenie have been an important tool in both mine and Madonna’s guitar tone on the MDNA tour. If they work for who they were made for, then they work for us. Having my Jarrell MPS guitars fully loaded with Seymour Duncan pickups has pushed beyond the sky being the limit for all of the sounds I can achieve.”

Seymour Duncan’s Evan Skopp just recently returned from seeing Monte Pittman play with Madonna in Israel and had this to say:

“Watching a show like this was really amazing, even for someone who spends a lot of time attending shows. Everything, from the dancing and choreography to the lights, the video, the multi-media, the staging, and, of course, the instrumentation and guitar tones, were extraordinary. These were the highest production values I’ve ever witnessed and this was the first night of the tour. Oh yeah, and Madonna was amazing in her own right. I was really proud to see her playing a guitar with our Custom Shop pickups. And then there was Monte. He played his Jarrell MPS throughout the show, except for a couple of numbers which he played an acoustic or a Jerry Jones sitar. His guitar was clear and present, right up front in the mix, and he had an incredible variety of tones, from classic rock to sludgy metal to synth pop sounds. It was amazing that one guitar could have so many voices.”

Evan Skopp & Monte Pittman

“But the best highlight was after the show when my wife and I met Monte at his hotel and we walked down to a cafe on the beach. We sat in the sand drinking beers and watching the near-full moon setting over the Mediterranean. Eventually Brian Frasier-Moore, the drummer, stopped by and joined us. Then came the dancers and the video crew and the sound guys. And we sat there, all of us, chatting in the warm sand in the moonlight until 4:00AM going over the highlights of this amazing spectacle. For the band and crew it was the beginning of a long journey together and some were just getting to know each other for the first time. Then Monte left, and my wife and I walked back to our hotel. And the next day the band and crew took off for Abu Dhabi where they got to do it all again.”

For more on Monte & the MPS, check out the links below:
http://montepittman.com/

http://www.jarrellguitars.com/Jarrell-MPS/

Back in 1974 I was working in London at the Fender Soundhouse where I was doing guitar repair and modifications. One of the benefits of working at Fender was that I had a chance to meet so many great guitarists that rehearsed on the third floor sound studio. Continue reading “The Story of the Tele-Gib”

Jeff Morgan has been ripping it up on guitar since he was 14. As the blistering guitarist for for the progressive metal band Conducting From the Grave, Jeff is known as a guitarist that will rattle you to your bones with his barrage of frenetic riffs that also features stirring melodic harmonic content.
With an expected new release of Conducting From the Grave’s third album (to be released on Sumerian Records), we sat down with Jeff for a few of his thoughts.

How did you develop your speed technique? Are there any particular scales you use to develop speed?
“As often as possible I try to sit with a metronome starting at a slower tempo picking quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets and 16th notes, mixing them up in different patterns, then slowly increase the tempo on the metronome. I’ll also sometimes run through scales in all 16th notes and amp up the tempo as I get warmed up. Usually I play through natural minor or harmonic minor scales since that is what we have mostly used in writing over the years. It’s what I have preprogrammed in my brain, but recently I’ve taken to some scale and mode books in an attempt to try new things. I find that on the days when I am able to warm up by sitting with a metronome first, my playing is far better and precise when I get around to practicing songs or writing.”
Any advice for beginning guitarists?      
“Use a metronome! I can’t stress enough how much it will help you. I blew off the idea for too many years and I really regret it now. Also, try to play with other musicians who are better than you as often as possible. It’s something I have always tried to do and it is the only way I’ve gotten to point I have. Playing with John (Abernathy) has had me constantly challenging myself for years.”
Why did you change out your stock pickups?

“My Dean RC-7 came stock with active EMG pickups. While active pickups are great for straight brutal heavy riffing because they are so hot, they lack the dynamics I want when playing pretty much anything else. For my RC-7 I use TB-6 in the bridge and SH-2n in the neck. I’ve also had an Ibanez RGA Prestige for years with the same pickup setup (only with 6-string versions.)”
“The SH-2 works great for leads and single-picked clean tone stuff. I get good sustain and a much more smooth and warm tone than I was able to get with an active pickup. The Duncan Distortion has a great aggressive high-output tone yet maintains the dynamic necessary for character and accents to still shine through. With my Seymour Duncan pickups I am more aware of the subtle nuances in my playing that were invisible to the ear when I played on active pickups. Seymour Duncan rocks!”

“Both the Ibanez and the ESP played in the video are equipped with Seymour Duncans and recording of the song was done with them as well!”

How would you describe your music?

“I’d say my band plays primarily melodic death metal, but we mix in a few other styles as well. We have a lot of melodic leads and I’m also a big fan of mixing in clean-toned interludes with a slightly jazzy feel. To hear the band, you can stream it from here. Some of my favorite tracks would be “Improper Burial” (one of the first songs written when I first started playing with the band where I got to showcase a good amount of material I had written), “Marching Towards Extinction” (always a fan favorite and one of the most epic songs we have), “Unholiest of Nightmares” (a very well written song in my opinion that exhibits a whole spectrum of styles we like to use.)”
“As examples of the opposite end of the spectrum of writing for us, on the not-so-metal end, I’d recommend “What Monsters We Have Become Pt. II” and the outro portion of “When Legends Become Dust.””
To see when Conducting from the Grave will be performing check here:
https://www.facebook.com/conductingfromthegrave?sk=app_123966167614127

To visit with Jeff and Conducting From the Grave please visit:
http://facebook.com/conductingfromthegrave