The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello everyone. I just spent a few hours recording a couple of tunes and i thought you might be interested in hearing them. You can find both of them on my myspace site: www.myspace.com/mattlangemusic
The first (untitled) is a solo piece performed on my converted acoustic. It's a tune i've been working on for a while; it's still not perfect, but i think it's good enought to share. There's a bit of bar-against-the-fretboard noise, as the nut extender doesn't quite pull the strings up far enough, but it sounds pretty rhythmic and fits in so i accept it.
The other piece is an experiment in overdubbing multiple parts, which i've never tried before. But after listening to Michael Bean's work with multiple instruments (he's the featured artist this month on Rob Anderlik's site), i figured i should give it a shot. I play acoustic guitar, lap slide, bass, and a bit of simple percussion on the track. All of the tracks were one or two takes as this was a bit of a rush job. At times the rhythm is off (i need to get a metronome ) and there are a couple of rough spots for intonation on the slide, but again, i think the basic idea is there.
Any comments, questions, or constructive criticism (especially concerning my slide playing) is encouraged.
Thanks

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my music: www.myspace.com/mattlangemusic <font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Matt Lange on 20 June 2006 at 01:38 PM.]</p></FONT>

Matt,

Sounds good to me - nice tone and clean technique. Definitely heading in the right direction as far as lap style playing goes. I liked the song with vocals and the overdubbed one, but if I have a constructive criticism it is that the solo pieces could use some more melodic development - they are well-played, but with open tunings everything can kind of sound the same if you're not careful.

I like the sound of the guitar you are playing - what is it?

Hi Matt,
I really like your playing. I like "Gypsy" very much. Thanks for posting it.

Thanks for the kind words guys.
Ben, thanks for your thoughts, i'll try to keep melody in mind a bit more when writing solo pieces.
In response to your question, i'm playing on an old acoustic of mine played with an extender nut. The guitar is a Mitchel, which was the cheapest solid top guitar on sale at guitar center when i bought it, about 5 years ago or so. I think it was around $350. The solid top gives it a really nice warm sound, but as it is a cheap instrument the frets were beginning to wear and it was getting more difficult to play as a regular "spanish" acoustic. So when i got my Martin 3 years ago the mitchel began collecting dust, but as it still had a good tone it was the perfect guitar for a conversion. Changing it to lap style was the best thing i've done, now i play it more than anything else!


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my music: www.myspace.com/mattlangemusic <font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Matt Lange on 21 June 2006 at 07:05 PM.]</p></FONT>

I remember some previous discussion on the forum about how not-so-great guitars sometimes seem to come to life when played as lap steels. I have a Seagull dreadnought that sounds very good set up normally, but it never sounded that great as a lap steel for some reason.