Denverdave
Resident Ragamuffin
This song was my introduction to the British folk-rock movement. The whole album is amazing.
Jangle sound. Mostly in Rock/pop context. What guitars?
- Thread starter sunvalleylaw
- Start date
This song was my introduction to the British folk-rock movement. The whole album is amazing.
Help!I'maRock!
Mediocringly Derivative
Put the Nashville strings on the Ibanez. At first blush, I love it. All the octave/unison jangle of a 12 with none of the tension issues and sometimes necessary downtuning. I wouldn't play it as my only guitar, but I totally see how it works in a mix, and possibly live in a 2 guitar band.
Now to break out the Pitchfactor...
Now to break out the Pitchfactor...
Chad
Slender Hobbit
how did the lower strings work out?
Help!I'maRock!
Mediocringly Derivative
Ok so far. I think the G may be the buzzy one, but I’ll let it settle.
Help!I'maRock!
Mediocringly Derivative
Never did get to the pedal today.
This is now the weirdest guitar I own. It's a GC special Ibanez RG2EX1 hardtail modded with an Air Norton, AT-1, and piezo bridge pulled off a Peavey Generation EXP I bought from @mystixboi1. And now it has this octave string set. Bizarre.
Since the tuning only spans two octaves instead of three, you can play dense chords and upper extensions and it all sounds clear and jangly. Makes me wonder if you can actually make a mix denser than if it was a traditional 12 string because the octaves/unisons are isolated and it stays focused and uncluttered.
Totally worth the $5 it cost for the strings.
This is now the weirdest guitar I own. It's a GC special Ibanez RG2EX1 hardtail modded with an Air Norton, AT-1, and piezo bridge pulled off a Peavey Generation EXP I bought from @mystixboi1. And now it has this octave string set. Bizarre.
Since the tuning only spans two octaves instead of three, you can play dense chords and upper extensions and it all sounds clear and jangly. Makes me wonder if you can actually make a mix denser than if it was a traditional 12 string because the octaves/unisons are isolated and it stays focused and uncluttered.
Totally worth the $5 it cost for the strings.
Peen Simmons
Let’s Get Obtuse!
Oh, yeah. The UK folk revival and various acid folk things are a similar but different thing to my ears. There’s some shared approaches and values, but stuff like the Byrds or the Beatles or the other pop groups/beat combos latching on to Dylan and the US folk boom are basically still indebted to the Everlys and Buddy Holly. And a lot of the sound is the sound of studio pros or people seeking that level of precision. I mean, it’s the Wrecking Crew types backing McGuinn on the first (and maybe 2nd) Byrds LP. And that’s the same general group of players on the Mama’s and the Papas and Pet Sounds era Beach Boys and all the other kinda jangly California sound 1960s sunshine and lovey dovey stuff before the 60s became a bad trip. Dylan has Nashville cats playing on his folk rock albums. “Sounds of Silence” got turned into a mopey jangle pop number in the studio without Rocky and Bullwinkle’s permission/knowledge. A lot of the great sounds on US records in the 1960s are jazzbos and other serious players slumming on pop sessions. Whereas the UK folk revival and genre mashup stuff generally under the acid folk umbrella is made by folks who aspired to be like jazzbos or journeyman players or blues/trad scholars or people similar levels of sophistication.
That stuff might have some overlap in sensibility to jangle as she is played, but the results are way different—and the people doing revivalist or “inspired by” music down the line are coming from much different corners. I’m thinking about the early ‘00s freak folk types who would not shut up about the UK folk stuff vs. their 9th generation power pop revivalist contemporaries who invariably did at least one song that sounded like discount REM and/or one song that was the Beatles “Rain” arranged like the Byrds “Tambourine Man” and called it psychedelic.
Peen Simmons
Let’s Get Obtuse!
Maybe one thing for young @sunvalleylaw to think about is which other branches of the post-1965 Beatles/Byrds jangle pop family tree is he interested in.
There’s the whole hyper-embellished sunshine pop thing that moves the 12-string jingle jangle into the high end of bells and woodwinds and other orchestral-suggesting flourishes. Have you ever wondered why there’s so much fucking glockenspiel on Bruce Springsteen records? It’s because dude is a total nerd for 1960s (over)production and that’s why Born to Run sounds like a high school marching band’s rendition of a pop opera concept album based on a shelved Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley motorcycle buddy road movie set during the waning years of the Truman administration.
And then there’s the power pop thing. Which basically takes its cues from The Who and The Kinks and similar and drags along whatever sonic trappings were available in 1965-1966 before acid and hippies ruined rock and roll by distracting it from boy/girl matters and amphetamines. For example, this is a very copy of a copy of a copy until you reach theoretical perfection version of how jangle pop becomes part of uncontroversial, no arguments power pop (which is a genre that people love to fucking argue about because all the fans are trainspotting anorak otaku dweebs with no lives or friends and they #donotfuq).
Eventually this gets codified as skinny tie and striped shirt music and bands like the dBs or REM aren’t exactly not not doing stuff in this vein—because Big Star and the Velvets have a hand in this sensibility, and a lot of the ‘70s/‘80s US underground college rock shit is from that line. Same thing with the Smiths and their UK progeny. Basically you’ve got bands going back to “the source” after punk fizzled and the EVERYTHING NEW utopian/dystopian post-punk moment played out—it kinda happens all across the board with post-punk or post-punk adjacent music. There’s kind of a retreat to old ways—the Mekons discovering country music and doing cow punk. The Cure and The Banshees tempering their post-punk gothic gloom with candy psychedelia. Bowie becoming a Reagan-/Thatcher-age avatar of neo-50s pop nostalgia. Various other smarter observations that I’ll need more coffee to think of.
And then there’s the other main tangent of jangle moving forward which is based on a couple songs on the Velvet’s first record and the general vibes of their third and fourth albums. Basically the “pretty VU” stuff. Entire bands existed to mine this vein (Galaxy 500/Luna anyone?) and this often gets bundled up with the Ramones’ commitment to girl group melodies and with various levels of noise and sophistication/lack thereof and runs through “cool table” rock forever and ever amen. I mean, that’s what the Jesus and Mary Chain and Love and Rockets were working with. It’s in the Pixies. It’s in the margins of REM and GBV records. You can squint and hear it in MBV and shoegaze. And then, of course, all the bands that ripped those bands off. This is the stuff that is the least jingle-jangle sounding but the parts and melodic/harmonic sensibilities are there, just kind of fucked up and off kilter. You can hear it happening in bands like Real Estate or Mac DeMarco or any of those other stoner dad hat handsome grandson millenial indie rockers running their shit through a million chorus pedals.
There’s the whole hyper-embellished sunshine pop thing that moves the 12-string jingle jangle into the high end of bells and woodwinds and other orchestral-suggesting flourishes. Have you ever wondered why there’s so much fucking glockenspiel on Bruce Springsteen records? It’s because dude is a total nerd for 1960s (over)production and that’s why Born to Run sounds like a high school marching band’s rendition of a pop opera concept album based on a shelved Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley motorcycle buddy road movie set during the waning years of the Truman administration.
And then there’s the power pop thing. Which basically takes its cues from The Who and The Kinks and similar and drags along whatever sonic trappings were available in 1965-1966 before acid and hippies ruined rock and roll by distracting it from boy/girl matters and amphetamines. For example, this is a very copy of a copy of a copy until you reach theoretical perfection version of how jangle pop becomes part of uncontroversial, no arguments power pop (which is a genre that people love to fucking argue about because all the fans are trainspotting anorak otaku dweebs with no lives or friends and they #donotfuq).
Eventually this gets codified as skinny tie and striped shirt music and bands like the dBs or REM aren’t exactly not not doing stuff in this vein—because Big Star and the Velvets have a hand in this sensibility, and a lot of the ‘70s/‘80s US underground college rock shit is from that line. Same thing with the Smiths and their UK progeny. Basically you’ve got bands going back to “the source” after punk fizzled and the EVERYTHING NEW utopian/dystopian post-punk moment played out—it kinda happens all across the board with post-punk or post-punk adjacent music. There’s kind of a retreat to old ways—the Mekons discovering country music and doing cow punk. The Cure and The Banshees tempering their post-punk gothic gloom with candy psychedelia. Bowie becoming a Reagan-/Thatcher-age avatar of neo-50s pop nostalgia. Various other smarter observations that I’ll need more coffee to think of.
And then there’s the other main tangent of jangle moving forward which is based on a couple songs on the Velvet’s first record and the general vibes of their third and fourth albums. Basically the “pretty VU” stuff. Entire bands existed to mine this vein (Galaxy 500/Luna anyone?) and this often gets bundled up with the Ramones’ commitment to girl group melodies and with various levels of noise and sophistication/lack thereof and runs through “cool table” rock forever and ever amen. I mean, that’s what the Jesus and Mary Chain and Love and Rockets were working with. It’s in the Pixies. It’s in the margins of REM and GBV records. You can squint and hear it in MBV and shoegaze. And then, of course, all the bands that ripped those bands off. This is the stuff that is the least jingle-jangle sounding but the parts and melodic/harmonic sensibilities are there, just kind of fucked up and off kilter. You can hear it happening in bands like Real Estate or Mac DeMarco or any of those other stoner dad hat handsome grandson millenial indie rockers running their shit through a million chorus pedals.
sunvalleylaw
Yep.
I love the @Peen Simmons brand stream of consciousness inspired gibberish. 
Flamencology
You don't deserve koa.
Peen Simmons
Let’s Get Obtuse!
That’s a good book. I’m unfortunately part of an online book club that reads music books. I recommended that and got shot down. I then got them to read Performing Glam Rock and I think I’m banned from choosing books because everyone just wants to read chintzy pop star bios or scene haigiographies.
Flamencology
You don't deserve koa.
Pathography — especially that of ghost-written memoirs — is one of my literary pet peeves.
Right up there with the current trends for The Art of Getting F*cking Rich With a Title and that of 22 Reasons Why F*cking Idiot Readers Buy List-Friendly Self-Help Books and Zen and the Art of Things That Don’t F*ck.
Denverdave
Resident Ragamuffin
I need to get that one. I'll buy it after I finish up 'Under The Ivy', which is a Kate Bush bio.
rhino
Kick Henry Jackassowski
Just don’t let Mark Wein teach you too much re: expression and feeling. Because those sorts of things are bad news for jangle pop.
Seriously, there’s kind of a preference for stiff/expressionless clockwork action for jangley stuff (be it folk rock, post punk, paisley underground, etc.). Avoidance of swing. Less reliance on bluesy bends and note choices. Lots of straight ahead harmonies. A kind of performatively white musicality. Lots of diatonic choices when coming up with parts.
If you wanna go down a rabbit hole on what this might mean...
Amazon product ASIN 0754651908
Jangle pop and Byrdsian folk rock is kinda bound up with Anglophile stuff and imagined Eurocentric “folk” traditions and medieval cosplay and whitewashed bohemias.
After the first post quoted, I was thinking how useful @Mark Wein lessons on CAGED stuff would be coupled with a capo’d guitar. @sunvalleylaw if you don’t already have a shub capo or a G7 I would recommend picking one up. They work better than a Kyser because they don’t mash down the strings as much and throw your intonation off.
side track. Years ago I came across a James Taylor video that talked about how many cents off your guitar needs to be tuned at each fret to use a capo appropriately. Neat but a lot of work. I’ve had good success with a shub.
Dogsinplastic
avuncular to no one
That Pedal Show had an episode w/ Dave Gregory and there's a good discussion about 12-strings and the sounds that's a great watch. Here's where he gets his hands on TPS's Dano 12, the 59X12.
They have a few others, including the new higher-end '6612. One potentially important thing I've heard about the Dano 12s is that the necks feel far less cramped than Ricks. Along w/ them being a fraction of the price and supposedly sounding quite good, Dano is where I'd go.
They have a few others, including the new higher-end '6612. One potentially important thing I've heard about the Dano 12s is that the necks feel far less cramped than Ricks. Along w/ them being a fraction of the price and supposedly sounding quite good, Dano is where I'd go.
sunvalleylaw
Yep.
I have a Shub Capo somewhere around, with the rubber kinda broken. Not sure if I can get that rubber piece replaced.
rhino
Kick Henry Jackassowski
The rubber part that makes contact to the back of the neck always came loose on one of mine. I just put some rubber tubing over the whole thing and never had any more issues.
sunvalleylaw
Yep.
@Peen Simmons So as to not further jam up your build a kit thread, if I were to build, I might want to Warmoth up something like this. Someday mebbe.
Different pick guard for sure. But maybe blue. Maybe not that blue.
Different pick guard for sure. But maybe blue. Maybe not that blue.
Motorik
Kick Henry Jackassowski
Peen Simmons
Let’s Get Obtuse!
Those are MIM and about $1K and building one will certainly cost you that. Those are pretty nice 12s.
sunvalleylaw
Yep.
Was looking again, and thinking I would rather just go with the Airwave. Thinking that green color, and finding the tort PG it used to come with. When I do it.