One of the things I love about this band is that every member feels like a front man. I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that 3 out of 4 members are lead singers and Keliher sings backing vocals as well as the fact that they all write the songs together so when they get interviewed, they all have insightful things to share about the songs and the riffs.
Hey, on your page, where Bills pickups are, there are 3 pictures. The third one is Bill playing his signature Sparrowhawk with... Lace sensor pickups. I guess you might wanna change it up :)
So many good nuggets of wisdom for guitar players in this video, if people pay attention. So many of those are lessons I learned on the road with my band. I only wished I learned them earlier. Also, while I know almost nothing about mastadon, I’m a big fan of his choice in typology of gear. A great Marshall inspired amp circuit with a great speaker cabinet and a good hotter, articulate bridge humbucker with strong singing (not overbearing) mids is the key. I’m slightly more Van Halen camp than him in that, I tend to not use an overdrive in front and use less gain, as I like to use the volume control to clean up (though suppose if I found a good OD I like, I guess I could always turn it on and off at will). Another great guitarist to study in similar ways is Alex Lifeson in the latter third of Rush’s career. His sound and choice in gear was incredible, and he had extra uniqueness in that he had to find a solution as the only guitarist in the band. He had the best of every sphere: beautiful dreamy ambient cleans, great hard rocking rhythm guitar, and screaming leads. My personal favorite is his sound on the Snakes and Arrows Tour. He had this subtle stereo modulation on everything, but it didn’t have a cheesy 80’s chorus sound. It sounded huge and aggressive, something that’s hard to accomplish as the sole guitarist in a band.
You wanna learn more about mastodon, you must listen to Blood Mountain, front to back, in one sitting, through headphones....then go back and listen to all the rest.👍👍
@@williamlowe7718 I'm finishing up packing to move tomorrow morning, so maybe I'll throw that on real quick while I work. Thanks for the recommendation.
The tone is incredible...basically SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH the whole time.
@@warrenstemphly5756 James Hetfield famously called And Justice Metallica at their most anal. Everything is trying to be excessively tight and it sounds a bit anaemic in places as a result, doubly so with the inaudible bass tracks. I reckon most people would say Master of Puppets, Black Album definitely have better tone, probably most of their other albums too tbh. Ride the Lightning at least for me.
@@sEaNoYeAh I think it has to do with eras/phases of life, when I first heard AJFA I was pretty new to metal and to me it sounded so completely different from anything else at that time. I was a sophomore in high school and that album totally imprinted on me.
blows my mind away the amount of local live guitarists in metal that don't understand that if you boost the mids you'll sound better when playing with other instruments. sure it doesn't sound as great in your room playing solo but it will sound great with a full band. game changing info right there.
i wish bill was my dad, hahaha, such a cool dude! imagine a sitcom with 2 dads, bill and brent as the dads and it's jam palace, uncle troy and aunty brann come over all the time to keep the house ship shape, lmao, that'd be soooooooo good!!!!
Saw these guys almost a decade ago at knot fest 2015 and they had a good set I wasn’t too into them just recently started getting into them and as a giant old school black metal, death metal fan and also into old school thrash and modern metalcore and basically any and every genre this band is really impressing me such massive fucking tone yet clarity. Damn man if any of y’all wanna recommend me songs or albums please do.
Dude is sick and has grown up into a mature man since his side swoop stretched ears but always the sickest rifffs. Blood Mountain is in my top 5 metal albums Of all time.
Decent gear makes all the difference. I almost gave up on playing. I thought i just sucked. Self taught. Then i got a marshall and tube screamer and and suddenly the mud was gone.my solos sounded nice and round instead of sharp and muffled how does that happen?I scooped the mids too but it always felt lacking. Love your stuff i replaced all the electronics in my epiphone custom. Night and day difference. I have the mojotone 59 pickups to put in my 59 ri . The gibson pickups that came with it are nice and slightly warm but a little muddy at times. I like the amp.
Next year you will see him advertise his new pickups. I have a copy of the first Signature Sparrowhawk which used Lace signature pickups. The next model used Seymour Duncans. Man Bill's tone crisis must be worse than mine 😂 do not buy signature guitars for the sound. Its justified to get them for looks or identify with the band but other than that we are talking about recreating the tone artists who have dozens of different guitars and recording approaches. If I can save the next guy, I will be happy. Do not buy a signature guitar. Its better to get the most sold classic models. They are there for decades for some reason. Whatever this guitar can offer soundwise, an Epiphone LP can even do. Looks though? Yeah Sparrowhawk does look very beautiful. Don't get me wrong I really like the dude but this is just Biz they are doing.
"The greatest thing I've made"? Like he was sitting around, winding pickups by hand on his own? Or more like "I've given feedback on how I like the results and David Shepherd and his mates creates a pickup that I wanted". I find that the way we express ourself speaks volumes...
It sounds like a JB but... fizzy? Maybe its the rest of the setup in this video but it doesn't sound great. Also the guitar sounds like it's slightly out of tune
The whole mids thing is a debate on itself. On one hand, yeah, don't scoop all the mids, LOL. THat sounds like shit. On the other, Death and Metallica have always sounded better recorded than Mastodon, LOL. It's not about being louder than everyone else. It's about sitting in the whole band mix right. Guitars are not the only instruments competing for mids in the whole band.
I mean, the midrange is a really wide spectrum. I would define it from like 420 - 6000 Hz. All the great guitar tones sit in that range, even Metallica and death. For example the "scooped" tone of the black album is mainly a mesa boogie mark 2 C++, wich is by itself a extremely mid heavy amp. Using the on board 5 band EQ they scooped the 750hz frequency, but boosted the lower mids, higher mids and lower highs. So it's also very mid focused, but with a scoop at 750. Compared to marshalls, wich are quite present in the 800hz range, they just have a fundamentally different sound. But the guitar will always be a mid dominant Instrument and the only other things in that frequency range are the snare, toms and the singer. Therefore you need mids to be heard. It is just dependend on where exactly all the other instruments sit in the frequency range to determine what exact mid frequencies you need the most to be heard the best in the context of the mix.
@@oli8624 I wouldn't consider 6K mids at all. I agree, there is a lot of midrange present in a guitar tone, and you need mids to be heard, true. And it also depends on the aesthetic of the music overall. But you gotta remember, you gotta be heard, but you also gotta let the other instrumetns be heard. But you also gotta consider the fundamental of a low E is like 80Hz. Also, try to cut evrything above 6K that you mentioned as mids, and all of a sudden, your guitar sounds so dull and unexciting. I don't have a gripe with saying guitars need midrange, but I do have a girpe with the current forum trend of all mids is all you need. I hate it when people dial in a 5150 with the mids on 6, and then use a tube screamer, an emg 81, v30's, and an SM57. Honk city.
Yeah I don't like his tone either, hurts my ears like a rasp being dragged thru them. They sounded awful when I saw them live too, you couldn't understand a single word, the drums overpowered everything, riffs could barely be made out, and overall too loud. But Opeth, who opened for them, had a perfect mix. Not too loud (didn't even need earplugs), could understand all the vocals and hear every instrument.
All he does is play guitar, mate. Your favorite Mastodon riff? Yeah, he wrote it. He can play better on his worst day than you'll ever achieve in your life.
Man, I took a lesson from him and he was playing some stuff from his other bands that was really technical. I've taken lessons from some shredders and Bill can hold his own
