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What the hell is up with song temps?


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32 minutes ago, James Bond said:

A much lesser band/example but KISS also did this in the late eighties to try to be seen as contemporary in an age when speed rock and flashy guitar solos were all the rage. The songs all sounded like shit as a result.

Oh yeah 80's KISS is something else. I turn it on when I want to listen to bad music on purpose.

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3 hours ago, charliedont said:

First of all, Frank plays "on top of the beat". He always has. He doesn't sit in the pocket. He plays in a way that it makes it feel like the tempo is always rising and the beat is a wave which is falling over and crashing on the shore. The reason why we notice the drums so often now is that Steven was a groove player, sitting back in the pocket and Matt plays like a robot always on the beat. Frank plays in a completely different way. Also, Frank adds fills and extra bass notes which Duff doesn't play. It muddles up the groove and makes it sound as if some of the song transitions are falling apart.

It's exacerbated by two things:

1) Frank plays heavier and is louder in the mix

2) Duff's bass is always noticeable, whereas Tommy's bass was generally buried

For whatever the reason, the band sounds off a lot of the time. I subscribe to the theory that it's Frank as the weak link. Duff isn't always going over to Frank to just say hi. He's going over to try and slow things down. 

Vegas 1 was a bit of a mess, but they brought it around for Vegas 2. What irked me was that when I was at Coachella - Richard's guitar is way too loud. Obscenely loud. I've always joked that I bet if we could actually isolate Rich's playing it would sound amateur when he does his punching of the power chords. In the three-headed guitar monster, it was hard to tell - because let's be honest Pitman was probably dropping "sub-bass" at the same time (that's a deep cut for you liner note fans). 

Before I went and saw the three shows I did, I thought this lineup looked awesome on paper. Sure, I would have rather had Matt on drums, but I could live with the compromise. Now, I'm less confident. Rich's guitar will eventually be turned down, they'll eventually get Slash's levels right, but no one can fix the mess that is Frank on drums other than Frank himself. Stop the extra fills, lay back and start and feel the songs again, big guy. I think they'll gel eventually, but wtf were they doing in rehearsals? There's no way they sounded like this then. 

As for the speed of the songs. It hasn't nothing to do with curfew. It has nothing to do with video screens (they're cheesy graphics on a loop). I have a hard time they're using a click track and if they are it's quite sad. They obviously had a predetermined speed they wanted to play at, but it's the drummer's job to push and pull the pace. If Slash starts out PC too fast, you bass drum-snare slower. You reel him in. If Axl starts out November Rain like he's actually getting wet and is running to find an umbrella, you slow him down. I think adrenaline has a lot to do with it. 

Onward and upward. I'm headed to see more shows and I hope this, while an issue now, becomes a thing of the past. Best of luck, Guns. (Please advise speed limits are not suggestions, but rather the law.)

GREAT knowledgeable and well thought out post... I also have been wondering what the hell they have been doing in rehearsals.. You wrapped it up quite nicely too.. 

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On April 25, 2016 at 5:03 AM, bacardimayne said:

Are the stage videos in sync with the high tempo performances?

Not really. They're more just on a loop. I feel like for the non-Chinese Democracy songs, they have someone controlling it and switching to different animated backdrops as different parts of the songs hit. That way they don't have to use a click for those tracks, and they still have their animations relatively in-sync.

Edited by Tyler Drama
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