My Christmas tune

[richard burton]

'Blue Christmas', played on my Marlen, with a bit of guitar at the start

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIni_VB6X44

[Bill Waskiewicz]

Great Sound Richard as always, thanks for posting.
Bill W.

[James Kerr]

Very nice Richard and very well played.

James.

[Dale Rottacker]

I guess these days it's never to early to bring out the Christmas stuff, and that certainly was a nice way to help get a guy in the mood...nice job.

[richard burton]

Thanks Guys

I don't know if I'm too early for this Christmas, or too late for last one

[John H. McGlothlin]

An absolute fantastic job Richard and that Marlen really has a great tone to it. Great job. John

[David Hartley]

It's far too early.. But I still enjoyed it.. I will watch it again Christmas eve, when I get home from doing all my Christmas shopping.. Ha..

I am a humbug when it comes to Christmas..

From davidhartley at btinternet.com

Oh.. I forgot to say, substitute the 'at' with @

[Billy McCombs]

Hi Richard, that Marlan sounds like a million bucks. How do you record to get that wonderful clear sound? Thanks

[richard burton]

Steel > Volume Pedal > Boss GE-7 Graphic Equaliser Pedal > Computer Input.




I figured that all I needed to do was boost and shape the signal from my Marlen pickup (George L E66 humbucker).

I prefer single-coil pickups, but unfortunately they hum too much for recording.

The E66 is the nearest I can find to sound like a single-coil pickup, but it still lacks that little bit of clarity, so I use the EQ pedal to scoop the middle frequencies out.

Then all I have to do is 3 or 4 steel tracks, (using the 'Audacity' recording utility http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
all of them slightly different, as I never know exactly what I'm going to play, then I edit out all the silly bits and keep the good bits, and end up with a usable track

I also work out how long each beat lasts (by dividing 60 by the beats-per-minute) and then set the inbuilt Audacity echo effect to half the length of the beat
eg if the song is 100 BPM then 60 divided by 100 = 600 milliseconds, so I set the echo at 300 milliseconds.

[richard burton]

I should add that the antiquated Marlen changer mechanism (pull-release) delivers (in my opinion) a clearer tone than most of todays all-pull changers.

The down-side of the pull-release system is that it can't do all the tricks of an all-pull, but when it's set up correctly you can hardly notice any difference in the playability

[Marco Schouten]

Wonderful. Tone with tons of character.

[Roger Shackelton]

HELLO RICHARD,

Please record the same tune without the BOSS GE-7 so we can hear the natural tone of your MARLEN Guitar.


ROGER

[richard burton]

OK Roger,
This is the Marlen straight into the computer, no graphic, no echo, just raw steel.
Bear in mind that the Marlen does not have its original single-coil pickup (far too noisy), I have installed a George L E66 humbucking pickup

http://picosong.com/eKB/

[Joachim Kettner]

I like it very much. Thanks for sharing!

[Roger Shackelton]

Thanks Richard. Your Marlen sounds ok by itself, but the enhanced version of this tune sounds so much better.


ROGER

[richard burton]

I don't want this to disappear off the radar till after Christmas

[John Alexander]

Very nice!

[George Brown]

Very Pretty Richard. If that don't get you in the mood for Christmas, I don't know what will. Thanks Much for sharing.
George...

[David Hartley]

Just watched it again mr Richard.



I am getting organised this Christmas early. All shopping done and wrapped.

So it's time to watch these Christmas videos again.

I hope to see you again soon maybe in January at JD's gig?

Have a good Christmas

David.