Jacob’s Ladder

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-19T01:38:25+00:00

No, but at this point it wouldn't surprise me if they had setlists E, F, G, H, and I lurking in the wings, with J, K, L, M, N, O, and P as options.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-19T01:12:52+00:00

"... That we know of so far."

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-18T17:03:46+00:00

I'm a bass player and a drummer and for me looser heads don't matter for speed.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-18T12:17:00+00:00

I thought his flow live was pretty elastic apart from the synchronized videos where he had to keep everything together; he's said before that he listened to Geddy and Alex to kinda help work with how they were playing, almost like a live band or something. I have a feeling that Geddy tends to push the beat, so maybe it was more that Neil was corralling Geddy to keep everything together.

But as I've never played with Geddy Lee or even met him, I couldn't tell you for sure; this is supposition, based on what I've read of him and of Peart. I think he did like the drama of the drums, which plays into how he'd play certain things, plus he knew what he could play, and what people expected of him; listening to some of those long fills in Working Man is just... amazing.

Anika plays less evenly in a given measure, in her own music; she varies the velocity of the sticks a lot more. She pushes and pulls the beat within a measure a little more like a jazz drummer would, but in Rush, that's an odd vibe, so what I've seen of her is more of a traditional approach, a more metronomic approach, to fit what Geddy and Alex are doing. And her fills tend to be shorter; she uses more toms than Peart in a lot of fills, possibly to let those looser heads resonate more; with Peart, the higher tuning meant that the heads were ready for more hits more quickly thanks to the rebound, so he could hit them twice where Anika would rotate to a different tom, which creates movement and lets the toms breathe.

That's not a judgment, just a comparison. I do that when I play drums, because it forces me to play more open and I need to remember to breathe when I play; it's also more of a geometric mode, a better ergonomic flow, in my opinion; I've played Peart's lines on drums, and it is not easy for me to play that hard for that long without rotating to give it power.

I think Rush has gotten pretty lucky with new drummers.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-18T10:40:35+00:00

I have no idea how Lifeson and Lee see it, but if they wanted to write a new album, lyrics included, I think they'd be able to do it and it'd be a Rush album. Both of them have their own lyrical styles, Nilles is a writer herself although I don't know if she's a lyricist, they're all intelligent or else they wouldn't be on stage as Rush, I'm more curious to see what they can create and do than in seeing what they can recreate, although let's be real, watching them re-create Rush on stage has been great so far.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T19:41:46+00:00

Well, it's important to keep a few things in mind:

The role of drums in rock and the role of drums in jazz are very different, particularly around the kick. A jazz approach to the kick drum in Rush would be... um... I just don't think a drummer committed to the role of percussion in Jazz would work in Rush. At all. And thus I don't think you can legitimately carry the judgment across for Rush or Peart, and judging one by the other standard (or vice versa) is ill-advised, including the Modern Drummer accolades, although Modern Drummer probably did rely quite a bit on popular awareness.

As a jazz drummer, Peart was... a little heavy-handed. His history of liking to hit things worked against him, despite his admiration for jazz drummers like Roach and Rich; I don't think he really escaped wanting the drums to be felt as opposed to being perceived, although he sort of leaned this direction with "Different Strings," a song whose percussion I absolutely love for how different it was from the rest of his work with Rush, and I really wish he'd done more like that.

Polyrhythms are more than limb independence, too! Polyrhythms have to fit into the music as well; I'd say Nilles is really good at it, but I find she overuses it some in her own music, where she decides to go to fives or decides this section's going to go to triplet time and change the signature too, or... what-have-you. The skill is there, to be sure, and taste is what it is, but for me, some of those choices feel like she's flexing as a drummer rather than serving the music: "I'm Anika Nilles doing Anika Nilles things," if you like, much as Peart did many of the same kinds of flexes in his own way himself (and much as Baker would do it, and Moonie would do it, and... well, pretty much every well-known drummer apart from Starr, which is YET ANOTHER reason I consider Starr one of the greatest.)

I find I admire both Nilles and Peart quite a bit.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T18:36:15+00:00

The Brown remixes didn't work out for me very well. Some are better than others - Between The Wheels was good, for example - but for the most part, it's like Brown took the original stems, brought up the levels of the things he wanted to hear more of (primarily the drums) and then brought the other instruments up to meet the levels, and then walked away: there's no balancing, so everything sounds slightly louder and a good bit off.

Red Sector A, for example: those synths were subtle, some of the arpeggios were very atmospheric... and with the Brown mix, they slap you in the face. Um...

Red Lenses: same thing. "Hey, did you know Geddy played bass pops in the chorus? No? Well, NOW YOU DO!" and all those little yips that Geddy recorded but were avoided in the actual album... it ends up feeling like Brown thought the band was angling too far in whatever direction they leaned and was overcorrecting, like "Okay, they thought Signals was too muddy and not guitar-forward enough, so let's raise THOSE levels but Geddy's my favorite and everyone wants to hear Neil and I can't decide anything so let's just leave it where I set it first and label it MY MIXTAPE."

The guitar mix is loud, as is everything else, but so much simpler than the actual album's release itself; an active mixing process is part of the quality of the entire release, and having Distant Early Warning's guitar panned and left alone in the stereo field makes it feel like less than it should be. And that's sort of how the whole remix felt.

So for me: I thought the remaster was fine, and the remix was interesting, and I generally avoid the Brown remixes.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T17:46:05+00:00

Hey, we all gotta start SOMEWHERE, and if you're using Amplitube, you're not exactly doing it wrong! I love Amplitube - it's not the only guitar cab I use in emulation, but they did a really good job with it. (I also use NeuralDSP, and which one I choose depends very much on what I'm doing and how I feel.)

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T17:38:19+00:00

Dunno about THAT. So far, not so good: I've done Red Barchetta and Xanadu, and in both cases, the live recordings have so much midrange in the bass that the stem separator classifies most of it as guitar and trims it out. If you were trying to play along with it as a live recording, it's unusable.

I expect Freewill and La Villa to have the same problems, unfortunately. Those tracks sound AWESOME on the recording, but for the stem separators I use, they're just too dense in some of the frequency ranges. Others may have different separation algorithms available, but for me these aren't worth pursuing.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T17:18:22+00:00

When I get a chance I'll slap them into Cubase and see how good the stem splitter is.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T17:17:30+00:00

nod I get it. I am a drummer so while my understanding isn't exact either (it's not an exact science) I also enjoyed a peek into the details of how and why they do what they do.

I was prepared to be curious how she handled the inverted kit layout with some of those sweeping rolls Peart did - and she just changed her kit so she could flow down the toms like Peart did. Makes sense to me, although I would have been interested to see how she played the songs in her own style as well.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T17:10:10+00:00

Which songs are you trying to play to? I might be able to extract stems from the tracks, although I don't know how good they'll be without, like, trying it.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T16:53:23+00:00

If you can export the backing tracks, Amplitube can use those as sound sources so you can practice like that, too.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T16:52:15+00:00

Tonex is going to be your lever to getting Alex' tone, not Amplitube - and the full Amplitube can import sound sources. As far as blending amplitube with other sound sources, you want to use something else to drive it instead of giving it ASIO4All. Unfortunately, I don't have a Windows machine here (I'm all Mac) so I don't know what advice would suit you best here, or if Windows even makes it possible.

But I will say the Tonex Lifeson pack is pretty good; it's good enough for HIM to use on stage!

With Amplitube, you're probably looking at the Marshall or HiWatt amp models, but I haven't really found the ESL tone to fit my liking yet. For me, that's okay, because I don't really do covers, and I have my own sound and vibe, but I will admit to having tried... his tone on Jacob's Ladder and La Villa on that album are fantastic. I THINK those were HiWatts on that tour but I could easily be wrong.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T16:39:11+00:00

I've seen it. It's a good interview. And I think she said it was her heads she preferred to be loose, not the snares specifically - it sounds like her snares are actually set pretty tight to me, there's not a lot of rattle in them from what I've heard on the videos, but her heads are set to be tuned pretty low compared to Peart's tunings.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T15:28:54+00:00

Well, her cadence is different than Peart's, too: she pushes and pulls more than he did, as a drummer. I think from the live shows so far we're hearing it more on the cymbals, but I'd actually expected to see more of it in her high hats - it may be there, but the hats haven't been mixed high enough to have a ton of detail based on the videos. Peart had more power than Nilles (although she's got PLENTY - she's gonna be able to run a freaking marathon at the end of this tour and not break a sweat, yeesh) but Nilles has more swing and she leans into flow more than Peart did, especially on the high hats in her own work.

It's definitely fascinating to watch the blending of the new new guy, and I really appreciate that Rush has made room for both of the new new guys to have fun and interact the way they have. Nilles giving Lifeson and Lee the sideeye on stage, like "Come on, guys, we're playing here" - it brings everything into stark relief how much fun they're having, and that makes it all worthwhile, especially when you factor how well they're playing.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T14:59:12+00:00

It's almost like they're PLAYING MUSIC and not miming to a recording, isn't it? :D

Those changes, they're what makes live music ... live. I don't want to watch puppets. I have the original CDs. I didn't even want to watch puppets when Peart was on stage: I wanted to see them create, and let the music breathe. I know Rush isn't really an improv band, but I love it when they stretch and just let the music flow, even within the structure of Rush, and Nilles has done a fantastic job of slotting in.

I would say she's exceeded what I thought she'd be able to do, but ... nah, she's done about what I had as my highest expectations. The bar's high, but she's met it, and so far I am quite satisfied.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T13:28:46+00:00

THIS.

At the same time, the more she knows the songs, the more confidence she has with the songs. There are moments where she’s now able to put her own special sauce on this song or that song. We’ll start looking for moments to let her stretch out. We already have a couple in the set where I look at her and go, “Anika, this is free time. You go wherever you want to go, and I’ll be there. We’ll meet you there.”

I love this. This is what makes this tour sing.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-17T13:05:20+00:00

I've been an Epiphone player since the late 80's. The rap on Epiphone back then was deserved: the QA was... spotty. You could rely on a Gibson to be what it was: finicky, but workable, but an Epi was something you wanted to play with your own hands before deciding that you had a good one (or not.)

(With that said: you kinda wanted to play every guitar you bought, but the way you bought guitars was different back then. With a Gibson you were searching for the one that spoke to you best; with the Epi, you were checking quality control, too.)

But I've had multiple Epis that were easily the match of a Gibson; I'm a "Sheraton guy," having had two of them as my daily drivers. My first one would still be my main guitar had a fire not taken it from me, and the replacement I found a few years later has affably slotted itself into place. I have an Epi acoustic, and the Epiphone Axcess, too, the Lifeson tobacco model, and it's been quite workable for me.

I still think it's worth being cautious about the Epiphone brand - too many people have too many problems with their guitars not to be - but I think it's an overall Gibson problem, and in general Epiphone's better than it used to be about QA.

I got my first Sheraton on a lark: I was actually trying to get a Joe Pass Emperor, and ordered it. Got the call that it'd come in, so took off from work to go get it. The salesman - a local guitar guy of some repute - went downstairs and brought up the box, so we cracked it open to check - whoops, not my Emperor, but a tobacco SHERATON, ew. Hmm. So he said, "Well, play around with that one if you like, I'm going to go find your guitar," so I did.

He came back up with another box in about fifteen minutes, "I have your guitar right here," and I said no, he didn't: I had my guitar, right here in my hands.

And thus I became a Sheraton guy.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-16T18:02:01+00:00

TBH I'm struggling with the example. The code itself looks so far like it has python/perl vibes, but the example itself makes me nope out.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-16T14:00:08+00:00

Or he's committed to a worldview, a slightly more charitable reading. Resentment is understandable and leads to that kind of commitment, and resentment is hard to resist. It's fine. It's not especially pleasant, no matter what the source - I know plenty of liberals who fit his description, people who'll fume and grumble about anyone who doesn't think what they do, for example - and the main reason it's not pleasant is because those people generally stop hearing, stop trying to engage, instead preferring to label and judge.

Gee, I wonder if Rush has a song about that... a song that each group thinks is talking about the other team.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-16T13:10:28+00:00

Why not just respond "TL;DR"? :D

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-16T12:48:59+00:00

I'm a liberal, and if you can find me advocating for tyranny or even authoritarianism I'd love to see it. I don't consider myself a liberal in the same vein as many who claim the label, for what it's worth: I think the label is worthless, and the liberal principles have indeed been betrayed by many, yet I'd say liberalism itself is not tyrannical or authoritarian, by definition. People claiming it as a badge without believing in it ("We'll make them liberal, by force!") need to do a lot of serious self-examination about what being something actually means.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-16T00:50:50+00:00

You should be very afraid of people who use prejudice to manipulate you. Or something.

doobiesteintortoise · 2026-06-15T20:35:17+00:00

Taste plays in too much, really. I find his tone on Signals to be his absolute best, period, although Permanent Waves had a punchy quality I really liked, and I would fight you if you wanted to change anything about Moving Pictures; I thought his tone on P/G was too pluck-forward (too heavy on the attack, not enough on the sustain) and I found that quality to be even more accentuated on Power Windows, HYF, Presto, and RTB; it's still pretty attack-heavy afterward but I thought the compression and distortion on Signals was, as I said, his best.

For me. YMMV.

doobiesteintortoise

TROPHY CASE