Mike Poss' Rock Guitar

MATCHBOX COLLECTION

admin — Sun, 18 May 2008 07:27:04 +0000

Do you like stomp boxes ? I do. I have heard many times, that guitar players with stomp boxes under their feet are cheaters who pretend playing by jumping on various effects instead of doing something with their hands. I do not agree with this statement. Jimmi Hendrix was a freak of stomp boxes and he loved to try them an use them. Almost every plyer who is known for his „natural“ sound use a row of boxes to shape the tone. Well, you even might not do too much with the tone and you have something on the floor already. A/B switch, tuner, noise gate, Samson wireless receiver and you already need a pedal board even nothing is done to your tone.

When I was 5 years old I started to collect Matchbox car models. I loved that colorful box with various models of limousines and supersports. Probably since that time I have been having a weakness for a collection of small fancy things. Anyway – for my playing with an unique folk-rock band Lightfoot I need a long, clean/crunchy sound. A type of not much distrorted tone however with a long sustain and absolutely clear articulation. So I need compressor and booster, wah as well, noise gate as well and some chorus and echo. If you put that together you have already a small Matchbox collection. And what to do not to lose time at the gigs ? You need a pedal board with pre-installed stomps. I bought a new one from SKB called Stagefive. It is worth of couple of bugs to store your collection safely. Lot of fun by playing and collecting !

COVERS - YES OR NO ?

admin — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:32:50 +0000

By adding my new video with Satriani´s cover I thought about the dilema of making covers. I know people from both edges. One extreme are the guys from revival bands who are trying to be – means at least play a and look like – somebody else. The second extreme are those who say „no covers – we are what we are and music is to express ourselves“. Well, I am probably somewhere in between. I think that every musician has a nondelegable life experience from which his music comes from, first of all if he is a songwriter. So nobody else can play and feel exactly like him. On the other hand – if I like a song, why not to learn it and try to play. Exactly from this reason I formed a cover band called Backtimer (www.backtimer.cz) to play some stuff we like and we grew out on from time to time. My conclusion would be: do not be scared of covers, but always remain who you are…

NEW SONG

admin — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:17:29 +0000

I added a new song recently which my son Martin called Love Her. I wanted to name that Love Song, but he things that would be totally chest-nutty He might be right. It is a kind of softcore tune and I tried to make something more gentle and melancholy for those who understand the unspoken words. I used Variax to take the acoustic-like guitars with alternate tuning and then I went from Engl 530 preamp this time directly to the recorder. I used some compressor for the clean parts as well. I hope you will enjoy

Check it at last.fm: Mike Poss – Love Her

MUSIKMESSE FRANKFURT - MORE THAN NEW STUFF

admin — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:01:56 +0000

I love the atmosphere of music exhibition in Frankfurt. Certainly you are surrounded by top guitars, amps and other gear, but that is not the main impression. Much more exciting is the fact that you can see so many ecxcellent players on one place within couple of days (by the way, for one ticket price). And you can see them playing so close to you ! No bodyguards, no barriers. And you can even speak to some of them about their technique, gear etc. This year event was really full of prime guitar players. Not only signing posters like Slash or Kerry King, but some of them playing live. Nobody smaller than Paul Gilbert or Yngwie Malmsteen, for exemple. Paul Gilbert was my Nr.1 show this year. Brilliant skills but also very nice music you like to listen to regardless weather the guitar is fast or slow. Many other guys showed their unique styles – like Mattias Eklundh and Chris Godin by Laney, Michael Angelo and Vinnie Moore by Dean, Rob Marcello by Roland, Greg Koch by Fender etc.etc. Amazing how some people can play guitar ! And not only guitar of course. The same level applies for all instruments and the bands playing live were mostly also great. See some photos from the event at my Flickr photos.

Website is ready for action! Any suggestions on how to improve it?

admin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:14:28 +0000

Welcome to my brand new webspace made by web design agency called madeo . There is a lot of new audiovisual stuff about to come periodically. If there is anything you might want to see / hear / read here in the future, let me know.

Mike

OVERDRIVES? DISTORTIONS? I was asked many times what kind of overdrive/distortion pedals I prefer or if I use them at all.

admin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:37:54 +0000

I was asked many times what kind of overdrive/distortion pedals I prefer or if I use them at all.

Yes, I do use them even the main portion of distortion in the sound comes from the tube pre-amp. Basically I think the choice should be done first according to the style of music. There could hardly be one pedal used for both death metal and country. Then the next is the style of playing. If you prefer to play chords there must be something different compared to playing tapping, legato licks etc. And the last thing is a personal taste. Every player has (or should have) his dream sound and should get to it as closest as possible in the reality.

That was the boring theory and now about some models. I have started with Boss Overdrives, which are not bad, afterwards I disovered the Ibanez TS group of products which is beside Marshall Bluesbraker the only pedals that work with my relic Fender Super Reverb (anything else even much more expensive was a big buzzing shit). Since a like a smooth singing sound with a long sustain I always put some of the pedal in front of my pre-amp to get a smoother and „longer“ sound than just simply plugging in to the amp. For this purpose I use today 3 various stomps – Fulltone OCD, MXR GT-OD and Proco Solo. Each of them is slightly different but all are very good. Fulltone is more like driving an amp, MXR is a fat rich overdrive and Proco is an edge sound with a tendency to a feedback.

It would definitely be great to try some boutique stomp boxes like Landgraff, Clay Jones, Tim and others, but it is almost impossible to find them in continental Europe.

Some friends found out that I use a lower tuning from time to time and asked if it is a Dropped D tuning or whatever else…

admin — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:35:31 +0000

…Well, I use Dropped D as well as couple of others. First the lower notes may come from 2 sources – either a 7-string guitar that I use quite often for recording or from Line 6 Variax which is a helpful tool for recording in differen tunings. The advantage by Variax is that you can program different tunings in the computer and save them even if your guitar is in the normal E to E shape. So I sometimes put it all down to C or even experiment with some very strange combinations to get intereting chords.

Playing some blues stuff with the band live I program open tuning for a slide and use Variax even live for this purpose by some songs.