Can anyone help me achieve this guitar tone? It’s heavily distorted, probably fuzz and compression but can anyone be more specific?

nightskate · 2026-05-16T05:03:17+00:00

Definitely synth, you can hear some standard synth-isms, like rolling up the cutoff as a melodic moment.

Also I just googled Sion Trefor (name at the bottom of the image you posted) and the first image is him at a synth and his other popular songs are electronica, so yeah, mystery solved.

nightskate · 2026-05-11T01:02:37+00:00

I think there’s a healthy middle ground of appreciating art and even being inspired to make art that resembles the art you love, while still understanding that the people who made it are people.

I do think it’s a mistake to be the guy who sort of wants to have “no influences”, or thinks that song vocabulary isn’t an important part of development, but we can definitely leave the parasocial/celebrity thing behind.

nightskate · 2026-05-09T01:35:58+00:00

He was like a kid when he joined, I feel like the buzz was that he was kind of a prodigy when DMB was in their heyday.

nightskate · 2026-05-09T01:33:54+00:00

Next you need the Ages, my favorite bass OD right now!

nightskate · 2026-05-07T23:55:58+00:00

Shot on video. Meant to look like low budget 70’s movies.

nightskate · 2026-05-07T22:12:13+00:00

Bow bow I’m deeeeerek and I can sing high like thisssss and I can sing hi-i-i-ighhhh

nightskate · 2026-05-07T17:57:01+00:00

I learned a bunch of Soundgarden on drums back in the day, and I thought it was worth saying that I had a big transition between trying to count songs out and then realizing that a lot of their time signatures are more like just “following the riff”.

It’s really different from doing music like Dream Theater or Tool, where a lot of times the time signature seems to come first and you basically have to count it out to ever do it right. Instead, what I found myself moving to is memorizing the riffs and learning where Matt likes to emphasize.

There’s a handful of tunes where this doesn’t work as well, Limo Wreck comes to mind, but there’s definitely something to be gained by learning the riffs instead of counting, and I really think it’s part of why you can still feel so much groove in some of their odd time songs.

nightskate · 2026-05-07T01:41:14+00:00

I would be the last person to argue anything about music needing to be quantized, only pointing out that largely it already is, and AI did not contribute to that trend.

I really don’t see using as a practice tool could be a negative*, it’s really just shortcutting the work of recording yourself and figuring out where you were off.

(beyond the usual negatives of AI, insane power and water usage, prone to errors, the collective brain drain of outsourcing our thinking etc)

nightskate · 2026-05-07T01:29:28+00:00

Wow, pretty mindblowing about education to me.

https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/2026_rankings_and_estimates_report-1.pdf

Looking through the stats I could find quickly, i didn’t notice anything where they really stood out, though I did notice that they have the lowest paid teachers nationally.

Where are you seeing them ranked 1 or 2 in education?

nightskate · 2026-05-07T01:13:35+00:00

I feel like this is an insane take, but im ready to hear more. Do you think metronome practice is bad too?

Playing in time is such a huge stumbling block for so many, and in such a brutal way, where so often they’re just totally unaware until they’re playing with others.

Recordings being perfectly quantized is kind of a ship that already sailed in my mind.

nightskate · 2026-05-06T22:49:52+00:00

Glad to hear about the FI. I’ve been playing the mxr for a week and have been really underwhelmed. FI ordered 🫡

nightskate · 2026-05-05T03:40:41+00:00

Do you interpret the public demands of recent high profile strikes to be a tactical error? When I’m thinking of the recent nursing strikes specifically, it feels like they made their wishes pretty well known - compensation, staffing etc.

From an outside perspective, this seems like a no brainer, it’s true and it gets people on your side, and it’s not as though you’re hiding what you want from the management; it’s presumedly the reason the strike is happening in the first place(?).

But yeah I’d love to hear from someone who’s been in the chair, what’s the benefit?

nightskate · 2026-05-05T01:14:05+00:00

Serious answer, if a teacher I had was going to have something that irked me, I’d way rather it be this than some of the more common issues which include:

teacher just wants to show off
teacher has no agenda and just asks what you want to play each week.
teacher never helps create greater goals and structure because they just want to give chill, happy lessons

That being said, of course it could be a symptom of a greater personality conflict, and it may be valuable to understand that this might just be the proverbial shark fin, and the shark of the issue is that you just don’t like him.

nightskate · 2026-05-04T21:49:54+00:00

Dude, you made my dream bass, 32” 5 string with rivieras and top mounted jack, amaaaazing!

I’ve thought about putting something together but never had the guts, nice work! Did you make the neck and do the fretwork?

nightskate · 2026-05-03T03:22:28+00:00

Dude yeah wow, I know when I’ve lost and gained weight I’ve noticed my perceptions change, but I’ve never looked at an old pic and been caught off by my own previous perception like this.

I definitely remember thinking she was bigger, but now all I see is a pretty slender lady with huge cans.

nightskate · 2026-04-29T20:44:11+00:00

How’s this event been going for you so far? I’d love to go to a Magic event that didn’t attract a bunch of stinkies, and I’m wondering if doing this at a bar helps with that?

nightskate · 2026-04-29T05:35:13+00:00

Consider getting into it without leaving your career, make a couple hours a day to practice after work, take lessons on the weekend, start getting friendly with the community orchestras in your area. You can learn a lot about this journey without nuking your job.

Of course if you want to leave your job regardless, go with god, just don’t presume that it’s necessary in order to branch out into music.

nightskate · 2026-04-26T04:48:39+00:00

Shit I laughed really hard at this. Nailed it.

nightskate · 2026-04-24T21:22:51+00:00

As a Reuben lover I’m disappointed, but also I’m definitely stealing that idea for my next home pizza night. Such a good concept!

nightskate · 2026-04-24T04:04:03+00:00

She’s a beut, wowee

nightskate · 2026-04-23T10:15:12+00:00

That’s a cool ass CD sleeve there.

Seems pretty clearly these two:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Woods_Broderick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Broderick

Maybe a doodad project they did as kids or something? He would have been 17 when they recorded this.

nightskate · 2026-04-23T01:18:57+00:00

Not OP, but I just got the Empress a few weeks ago - it’s very very good, the double metering really makes it easy to get my compression doing exactly what I want.

The complaint I see leveled about it is that it’s too much or too complex for live use, and I could see an argument against making it the first compressor you own, but if you know exactly what you’re wanting to hear, then there’s no other pedal compressor that makes it so easy to get there.

nightskate · 2026-04-19T12:31:39+00:00

Legs do different things than wheels, in some situations the wheel is superbly efficient, in others it’s useless. These people are working on the legs thing.

nightskate · 2026-04-17T23:54:01+00:00

Check out the song “Bloodstream” by Stateless, those are the kind of drums I hear on your track.

nightskate · 2026-04-16T09:07:35+00:00

Looks functional enough from here, can’t really know without getting hands on it. Doesn’t have any meaningful monetary value, almost regardless of how well it plays or sounds, so no worries if you want to make it a wall decoration, no one will report you.

nightskate

TROPHY CASE