hello old JBL and RWBL friends -- check out my new album!
 

shameless self-promotion spam.

www.myspace.com/andysamford23

and just wanted to say hey to my buddies marmel, schmidty, bsak, swaggs, shorty, and all my other old JBL and RWBL friends. hope everyone is doing good!

you want me to host this crap and you can't even include me on the fucking list?

hey bitch, you know you'll always be more to me than just my old RWBL buddy.

now what's that ftp info.

Welcome back man.

I will have to check these songs out when I get a chance.

I haven't forgotten. well, maybe I did. I'll try to get it running tomorrow. cool?

Cecil made me sad :(

Hey Andy! Glad things are going good. I need to talk to you about making some music for the podcast that Swaggs, Vtbub, easymac, and I do.

damn, neuq, i'm a pothead, i couldn't remember everyone on a whim like that! I had to make sure I mentioned the important people. and shorty.

hahahahahahaha.

pm me or e-mail me and let me know the details and what you need.

Nothing porn-sounding, please. :)

Get a haircut.

Sam Hesser was overrated. He's no Edwin Ryan.

Hey Andy, it's great to hear you're doing well!!! I wondered what the hell happened to you.

I might be getting the JBL going again, although I don't know if you'll have time for it. I'll let you know if something happens. In the meantime, I'm going to be checking out your album. :)

some tips:

1. nice vocals. very David Grohlesque
2. mix up your bass lines. don't have them shadow the guitar all the time. i refer to it as "doubling up". you write bass lines that sound like a guitarist wrote them. when you play bass and write bass lines - be a bass player. don't be a guitarist who happens to be playing bass. i've heard doubling up on two songs so far (light shine down & blue and green)
3. i can hear Black Sabbath in your music, and i mean that as a compliment.
4. your guitar sound is somewhat vanilla, it's missing a tinge of something. perhaps get some more balls on your guitar. that's more of a mixing thing than anything. the playing is solid, just the sound is a tiny bit simple.
5. all in all it sounds like you're going for a Queens of the Stone Age vibe in your music. i like where it's going so far. keep writing songs. vocally you got a nice sound. good luck.

This is something that I hear all the time with up-and-coming bands. It's not a straight-out song killer, but like you say, sometimes the bass needs to just sound like bass - or at least run counter-point to the guitar line if you want to be fancy.

well, whenever I record the bass parts, I am basically a guitar player playing bass... LOL.... I'll have a link pretty soon to a zip file with the complete album, there's a bit more variety and you'll probably hear some more adventerous bass work. But the only time I ever play bass is if I'm recording bass parts, so I can accept that criticism pretty easily.

There will always be some Black Sabbath in every thing I do. It's in my DNA or something. So, that's definitely a compliment. :)

HA, have you never heard my band? www.myspace.com/qualone --- I thought I pimped it pretty hard to all my leagues back when that album came out, but maybe you were on one of your RWBL vacations at the time.



Anyhow, thanks for listening and thanks for the compliments and constructive criticism.

Fuck Edwin Ryan.

My new band has a new album coming out in a couple of weeks...


4 songs here
www.myspace.com/telestrion



Schmidtykins, did you ever start up the JBL again? I want in. At least let me back in the RWBL or sumthin.

Who the fuck is this andy guy

don't you have some pictures of half-naked women to post?

We bassists are always happy to criticize guitarists who think that they can play bass ;):mad:;)

I think the reason it's hard for guitarists to play bass is that guitarists are always thinking in terms of chord progression, so when they pick up a bass, they naturally play it like a rhythm guitar. Chunk chunk chunk. But the best bassists usually try to set up some sort of meoldic/rhythmic/harmonic counterpoint to what everyone else is doing. If you can do that, you can add a whole other level of interest to a song.

Should've never sold my Rickenbacker :(

exactly. that's what happens all the time. i used to write songs and record them on my 4 track that i no longer have, and i would always try to make a conscious effort to make the bass lines more "notey" and unlike what the rhythm guitar was doing.

the best example of what a bass player should be doing (and the least a non-bass player should attempt to do) is the verse section of KISS' "Strutter". listen to what the bass is doing, that what you should be striving for. for guitarists who are recording their own music, bass lines are always an afterthought, so that gets the least amount of treatment. of course, if bass isn't your primary instrument you certainly don't want it to take away from your meat and potatoes, so it's easy to just gloss over the bass parts and just double up on what the rhythm guitar is doing.

So anyway, are you going to join the RWBL again, Andy?

I like the second and third tracks the best. "Beneath the Trees" seems to me to be the standout--you might want to add even more aural weirdness to make it really freaky, but it definitely can hold a listener's interest. "Blue and Green" I liked a lot too, although the guitar solo struck me as a touch out of place: maybe too heavy rock for a song that was a bit poppish. Song four sounded a lot like Pink Floyd circa 1971/1972. (That's not a bad thing.)

Holy crap, randy andy! How's it hangin', boss? :)

I'll definitely give your album a listen. Hope you're doing well.

If you guys upgrade to 2007 and have an opening, then I want in!!!

well, if you want aural weirdness, check out the Telestrion stuff.

www.myspace.com/telestrion

that's stuff's way out there!

anyhow, I agree with the bass playing assessments in the earlier posts.... my two favorite bass players are Gene Simmons and Paul McCartney, so I definitely understand the concept of creating a melodic bass line that doesn't just follow the guitar line. I wrote and recorded the Beneath The Trees stuff pretty quickly, so I probably didn't develop some of the ideas as much as they could have been. Although if you download the entire album (available for free thanks to our good friend Draft Dodger's generous bandwidth donation) I'm pretty sure you'll find some places where the bass is doing more than just following the guitar along. I think....I hope.....!!!

If you dig my stuff, check out the Telestrion stuff... I wrote all those songs as well, and we spent a lot longer crafting and developing the parts and sounds on that one.

Thanks for the nice comments and for taking the time to check it out.

I've got an opening right here for you, pal.

Leave your sick fantasies at home...damn Canadians

Hey Andy!