Animals As Leaders - "CAFO"

[Arm0r]

Animals As Leaders - "CAFO"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmfzWpp0hMc&ob=av3e

Listen to the whole song, has layers like a fucking onion.   I'm interested in the type of guitar the dude is playing on lead, I might have seen one and not have registered it but I've never seen one with that many strings, any info people?

Plus....the dude plays the shit out of it, full instrumental band itself and they do very well. 

[quadz]

Appears to be one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-string_guitar#The_Eight-string_Electric_guitar

Seems different bands use different tunings; although from the looks of the string gauges, I wouldn't be surprised if it were something like:

F+Bb+Eb-Ab-Db-Gb-Bb-Eb

[|iR|Focalor]

Pretty interesting song. I can definitely hear a little bit of Satriani influence in the solo at 4:30.

At first I thought they were playing Conklin guitars based on the silhouettes of the headstock shape. Typically Conklin makes bass guitars, but every once in a blue moon you'll see someone with a Conklin guitar. They mostly make the more exotic and unusual stuff like 7 and 8 string guitars, and mostly they're custom made. They do have a few standard models, but they're so pricey that most people would rather spend a little extra money and have one custom built to their liking.

But alas, I continued watching the video and saw at one point that you can clearly see the first part of the Ibanez logo on one their headstocks.

I know that Ibanez does make a few models in 7-string. Back in the mid or late 90's, they brought the back the Universe 7-string model and it became kinda popular after people saw Trey Azagthoth of Morbid Angel using one and HEARD what it was capable of in his hands. I think it's basically the JEM/Steve Vai model without the handle cutout in the body, all the electronics are mounted on the pickguard through the front of the body kinda like how Fender Stratocasters do.



Then as those gained popularity, they made a few of their other models as 7-string versions. Like the RG7320bk. (RG is model/body style, 7 for 7-string, 320 I think designates body wood and other features, bk is for black finish)



I think a little bit later they decided to make an S series 7-string like this one, the S7420bk. The S series has a little more of a smooth contoured body, somewhat similar in it's silhouette to the JS Joe Satriani models but with flatter sides, also with an angled recessed front input jack as you can see in the picture below. Not too crazy about that feature, I'd probably get annoyed with having the cable jutting out there.



But alas, it looks like what they're playing in the video is the one and only standard 8-string model they make (at least according the Ibanez 2010 catalog I'm flipping through, perhaps they have other 8-strings models in their 2011 line), the RGA8. I'm not too sure if those are their personal guitars they actually use in the studio and for live shows though, it's possible. Usually Ibanez will sign these people to deals where they give them tons of money and free gear and shit if they pose for pictures with them, do Ibanez ads, and feature their guitars and products in music videos and such.



Usually when you see someone using a 7 or 8 string guitar, they're playing in a metal band, and the extra strings are ALWAYS for lower end tunings. I'm not sure if it's even possible, but I imagine it would sound quite unattractive to use standard tuning on the bottom 6 strings and then have the top 2 tuned up in standard sequence of 4ths. Probably impossible without some type of custom string gauges in use along with proper bridge setup. Typically people use about a .09 gauge string for the 6th string which is pretty damn thin. Using anything smaller than that AND tuning it way the fuck up would pop the string in half before it even got tuned properly.

I bet an 8 string like that one would probably sound awesome with some flatwound jazz strings. Flatwounds are wrapped with flat strips of steel or nickel, usually don't bounce the same as roundwounds and have a bit of a muddier darker tone, and have virtually no squeak to them as you slide your finger up and down the string.

[wallppen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1KbGbf46s
cool tutorial of that song

He gets down at the end.

[Arm0r]

Damn, good fuckin info.      Thanks for the run down man, pretty cool to see how things evolve.   I wish I could play the guitar, I'm told if I want to learn I should start out on an acoustic guitar until I build enough hand coordination to move to more complex things.    How did you guys that do know begin and what did you begin on?

[haunted]

At work and I don't really have time to read this... but the multiple pics of ibanez rg 7 strings caught my attention(and a 8-string RG? have not seen one before). Very fun metal guitar to play/the neck is very easy to move on.........for the price. Most fun I can recall playing a guitar at a shop was when I messed around with an rg 7 string tuned down to A.

[quadz]

I wish I could play the guitar, I'm told if I want to learn I should start out on an acoustic guitar until I build enough hand coordination to move to more complex things.    How did you guys that do know begin and what did you begin on?

Although my parents did own a nylon string acoustic guitar, I don't recall tinkering with it much as a kid.  They started me on piano around kindergarten, then I switched to trumpet in 3rd grade, then electric guitar in 5th grade.  (Much to their dismay!)

While I don't think starting on acoustic is a necessity, I can imagine arguments for doing so.  Beginning on acoustic seems likely to encourage one to focus on chords and melody, and on fretting chord changes cleanly.  There being no muted power chords and distortion and sustain to fall back on.

In either case, having some natural inclination for rhythm and an ear for melody and pitch will help tremendously, although these are attributes that can be increased through study (metronome, scales, etc.)

One advantage these days are the numerous instructional videos available on youtube, and the ability to locate reasonably accurate guitar tab for any popular song with a quick search.

Ultimately learning an instrument is more of an endless journey than a destination.  If you're able to enjoy the neverending studying/practicing part of the process enough for its own sake, you'll probably do fine regardless of whether you start on acoustic or electric.

Regards,

[haunted]

quadz and I have similar musical backgrounds in youth.

I think I had 5 years of piano lessons, starting in 1st grade. Picked up the sax in 6th grade and was exceptional in comparison to others, because having to only worry about treble clef just seemed well, easy(opposed to others who it was their first time reading music). Once I learned how to actually play the instrument / familiarized myself with it, it was easy to translate any treble clef(stuff played with your right hand on piano, mainly melodic) stuff I've learned on piano to sax. And not just songs, but random scales that I played on piano due to habit/style/boredom.

Acoustic guitar, or the genre most people play with acoustic guitar, definitely encourages focus on chords and melody(which means that you'll learn more about the interaction of melody and harmony).

Electric guitar I picked up late.. at age 19 or so. I can play acoustic, but I don't play it much.

[|iR|Focalor]

Well I was flipping through the 2010 Ibanez catalog again today while sitting on the shitter (because that's a fact you needed to know), and I notice that they also have an Ibanez Prestige series plain old RG 8-string as well as the RGA 8-string. The only difference I can tell in the RG and RGA 8-strings are that the RG has a basswood body and the RGA is mahogany. Looks like they both have the same neck shape, neck wood, electronics, hardware, etc. I guess it depends on the sound you're looking for as to which one would be better. I think mahogany is a little denser wood and will render a warmer tone probably better suited for rhythm playing, and basswood is a little lighter and brighter sounding, probably better suited for lead and screaming solos.

Guitar is actually pretty easy to learn in my opinion. Hell, I never had one single formal lesson and I do alright. If a dumb hillbilly like me can learn it, anybody can with enough patience and determination. Although... I don't have the patience for any kind of formal lessons, so it's amazing I had the patience to stick with it as long as I have. Because of my stubbornness, I'll probably never progress much further with it than I am now, but I don't really care. I play what I wanna play, that's all I've ever been interested in.

I started out when I was about 10 or 11 by plinking around on my dads old little child sized Sears & Roebuck western guitar he had rotting in the basement that he got when he was kid back in probably the late 50's or early 60's. It was ratty old junker, only had like 5 strings and was missing one tuning peg. He heard me playing some Jimi Hendrix song I heard on the radio on one string at a time and decided to surprise me with a full size Hohner acoustic when I was probably 12. I started playing on that some more, got a poster with chord charts on it and started figuring out how to play chords. Got a few guitar magazines and figured out how to read tabs and play parts of songs. Figured out how to take those parts of songs I learned and move them around until I discovered the most popular scales all on my own. Then I practiced doing scales to build up muscle memory and speed. Then when I was maybe 15 or 16, I got my first electric. An old used 1984 BC Rich Mockingbird with an old Peavey Bravo 112 all-tube combo amp. The reverb tank went bad on that amp, so I got a Crate GT80dsp 112 Tube MosFET combo. One of the coolest sounding little amps I've ever heard. But it was a piece of junk, broke down on me all the time, even while it was still in warranty a couple times. Probably the most horribly constructed amp Crate ever made... and they make nothing BUT shit honestly. I kinda wish I could find someone to repair it for cheap. It had your normal "so what" sounding solid state high gain metal distortion, but the switchable tube channel was really cool. On clean tube, it had a really nice fuzzy buzz to it like some classic Black Sabbath or a Big Muff Pi fuzz stompbox. Then in the lead channel, it had a really peculiar crunchy scream to isn't typical of most all-tube amps. To describe it, it was somewhere between an old Marshall JCM900 with the gain at about 7 or 8 and a classic Peavey tweed amp overdriven to hell. Dunno if that's a good description. It just had a very unique midrangey superfuzzy sound that ain't too easy to duplicate even with a really good Marshall preamp.

As I got older, I swore off regular amps and went with rackmount gear. I've been playing through a Marshall JMP1 preamp for about 7 or 8 years now. For effects, I don't really use floorpedals other than a Vox wahwah. I used to have a 1970's Morley phaser pedal with a rocker pedal on it to control the phase like a wahwah, but I guess I left it plugged in and turned on one day and now it won't work anymore, have no clue what's wrong with it. For every other effect, I have an old Digitech GSP2101 rackmount processor, it takes up about 2 rack spaces and has everything you could ever want on it. For my poweramp, I have this MASSIVE BEASTLY MOTHERFUCKING Peavey Classic Series 120/120 dual mono tube poweramp. Sumbitch is loaded down with 4 big fat heavy transformers (2 per channel) and a ton of 6L6 tubes. I dunno how much it weighs exactly, but it's enough that I fucking ABHOR having to move it.

[quadz]

WELL GEE WILLAKERS, WALLY

Here's what appears to be a teenage girl who from the looks of it still lives at home, covering "CAFO", including the 8-string guitar:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AS8cRCEGZg

[|iR|Focalor]

See, I told you guitar was easy. Even a girl can do it, and they can barely find their way around a toaster!

[Arm0r]

WELL GEE WILLAKERS, WALLY

Here's what appears to be a teenage girl who from the looks of it still lives at home, covering "CAFO", including the 8-string guitar:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AS8cRCEGZg

holy shit dude  look at those little hands move! I feel humbled, that's actually a little discouraging even 

[wallppen]

 Youtube tutorials are a godsend in my opinion for learning music.  But i don't play guitar so i dunno.

[|iR|Focalor]

I don't really think they're "tutorials" as much as they're just "videos of people trying to show off their guitar playing skills." As if anyone really gives a damn anyway. Well at least I don't. So some dork can play some popular song after practicing it 5million times, big deal. My parrot can SPEAK FUCKING HUMAN ENGLISH if you say the same thing to him enough times. I'm more impressed with someone that can just sit down and PLAY without it being something they heard and practiced before. Or if they're gonna play something someone else wrote, at least play it your own way and don't play along with the same fucking song in the background. If I really wanted to hear that specific song, believe me, I'd go ahead and listen to THAT song and I wouldn't be listening to some nobody from Buttfucksville Oklahoma sitting in front of a cheap webcam do it.

But then again, if they got tits, maybe I'll watch it and rub my dick on the monitor like a pervert. "YEAH BITCH! SUCK IT WHILE YOU PLAY!"

Why don't more people make videos of themselves rocking out to a real headbanger tune like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNiie_zmSr8

[|iR|Focalor]

Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly extra hardcore, I'll shoot about 9 fluid ounces of heroin into the vein on the underside of my cock, snort an eigth of a kilo of coke, break an empty liquor bottle over my own head for an adrenaline rush, and do a one-man mosh pit in the middle of my living room, ripping pictures off the wall, and blasting this shit on my stereo loud enough to make the cops come tell me to turn it down.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQeqmNbA2Hs

Hell yeah, I know how to party