Hi!
My name is Tim B. Green – I play live rock guitar – sometimes I sing too!
I have started this webpage primarily to showcase my music, and try to get more gigs – but also try to make a bit of extra beer money, reviewing and recommending good guitar gear to fellow musicians – while warning off bad gear, or pointing out potential problems stuff may have.
If you want to contact me – or find out more about me, what I am currently doing, and the sounds I make, you can check out my Facebook page Here – Check out My Instagram Here – Or my Twitter Here
If you want to have a listen right now to some stuff I play – you can check out my Amazing YouTube channel – There are several cover versions there, that I regularly play live – Or you can start with a complete live gig!
Here is a full session, over two hours long, I played in Sue’s Darts Bar on the 25th of Jan – You can find a complete song list on google, with clickable chapters of each song. Most of the songs use a backing track as a base – but some, it’s just me and my loop pedal, building rhythmic layers, playing a melody on top – and finally adding some words!
Enjoy!
Or just listen to my version of The Theme from Peter Gunn – Which isn’t too bad – despite the intro being far too long lol!
Or have a listen to my version of the Shadow’s song Apache
I also have some walkabout videos in which I attempt, and sometimes succeed, in capturing the atmosphere, as I wander about in Benidorm – Check out my Walkabout channel on YouTube Here
If you want to have a look at the reviews I do of some of the equipment I buy and use – then check them out Here – you may see just the thing you want to buy – or something want to know more about!
So if you are interested in checking out a new artist, playing some different tunes from the rest, trying a bit of improv, and making some interesting new sounds – Listen to some tracks, watch some videos – And check out where you can see me playing live!
You can buy me a beer right now, if you want to help out a starving artist – or a coffee if you prefer – go and do that – right now! at TimB.Green@BuymeACoffee.com or at TimB.Green@ko.fi – Many thanks to those of you who do so! You will find some pics and videos of me there – so Yay!
If you yourself are into making rock, for fun, or for money – and looking for some interesting tips and tricks from someone who has possibly bumped into the same problems you are now finding – Follow the white rabbit, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes!
There are tips and tricks here you can use to cheaply improve your own setup, your sound, and maybe your approach to playing in front of a live audience! If you are looking for new equipment to help create that sound you are trying to make, and find cheaper ways of doing it – Are you better off with a multi-effects pedal, or do you need a pedalboard with individual pedals stuck on?
Find out which cut price gear sounds almost identical to the expensive options, and which gear doesn’t!
You can read about stuff that will make you sound better – help you to catch a break – and maybe earn yourself some very much deserved hard cash – or at least a few beers!
Newbies and absolute beginners can find out here what kind of equipment are they going to need to make that great rock sound they are looking for, but can’t quite find – how much it should be costing them, and what sort of stuff are they best off avoiding – A Guitar and a combo amp is a good start, but you are going to need some effects pedals too, and a power supply – things can quickly get more complicated!
Don’t forget to take a multi-plug to your gig, they may not have many sockets there, and you could find yourself completely stuck – But don’t be too dismayed – you are not the first person this has happened to!
I don’t teach guitar, I will leave that to the very many who already do that – some of them spectacularly well – What I am doing here is documenting my long and arduous journey into the world of rock, of playing and recording, and sounding the best I possibly can – and the things I have found out on the way – in the hope that my experiences, my knowledge, my learning, even my mistakes, can be of help to others, as they continue along their own personal path.
There are a lot of tips and tricks here for newbies, and anyone moving from the world of folk guitar, or indeed classical guitar, to an electric rock setup. This site isn’t about learning to play the guitar – it is about translating your playing skills to the world of rock, and getting that gritty grimy rock sound you love, but maybe can’t quite get your guitar to make!
How much you should be paying for a new electric guitar? Would you be better off getting a second hand one? – How many watts should your amp be? How many pedals do you need, which pedals should you buy? What order should you plug them in? – and what is the best way to power them? How do you record record your sound? Do you need a mixer? And how do you get rid of that horrible buzzing sound…
If you are a budding musician, who wants to know how to rock like a rocker, but can’t quite get that sound you are looking for – you can find out here – which is the best equipment to create that great sound you want, especially if you are on budget! And find out what equipment you should probably steer well clear of . There are plenty of boxes, and thingy whatsits, cheap guitars that should be classed as toys, and amps that sound like transistor radios – they may come filled with promises, but they really don’t sound great, or they soon break.
While a second hand Chinese fender, a cheap ten watt practice amp, and a battery powered overdrive pedal, snug in a basement, may keep some people happy, for a while at least – anyone serious about making a sound they can listen back to, and be proud of, is going to need to spend a bit more time getting the right equipment. If your stuff is too cheap, it just isn’t going to work properly, which will just lead to frustration, and probably eventual abandonment. If you want to do the job properly – you are going to need the right tools.
You can also find out here – how much alcohol you’re gonna have to drink, to numb the pain of your blistered fingers, and your tired soul! – Read on and find out! (You’re probably going to need quite a lot of alcohol though!)
Or if you just enjoy authentic raw, unedited, live rocking, you have come to the right place! Live rock is what I do – the sound I make – what I know about – What I love to discover – what I write about – what I love!
If you want to listen to that bona fide live rock sound, that lately seems to have disappeared into a mediocre, over-polished, post production blur, where music is created solely for the purpose of making cash – You will find it here! I record, and upload, my own live sessions directly to my YouTube channel, and I will soon be doing some live performances on YouTube – So you can enjoy that wonderful true live rock sound I make – If you enjoy a nice bit of something mellow first, it’s going to sound even better! – Recorded live, unedited and raw – the way rock music should be heard! Check it out!
I Don’t use a drum machine – I hate the incessant sound of emotionless repetition they churn out. you won’t find any beat detection, quantizing, auto-tuning, anything on any kind of grid, in my tracks – just raw and dirty rock. The beat, and all the music I create, is just me on a guitar, or sometimes on bass, which I also love to play, just laying down sounds, and building on top of them with my looper pedal. The notes I play are the notes you hear, with no pitch correction, no no quantizing, no fitting anything to a grid in post production. I believe automation, quantization, and machines in general, take the soul out of music, and the blues, which is the root, the spirit of all rock, should not be regulated by an electronic box that destroys it’s very heart!
While post production editing and polishing, changes what was actually played, and is akin to creating some photo-shopped perfection that never existed in reality! Live unedited versions are usually dirty, and include plenty of warts and boils The timing is going to be a bit out, you may even hear the odd bum note – but it is pure emotion you are listening to, created by a human being, not some soulless, emotionless machine.
Here’s what Paul Davids, one of my favorite YouTube guitar teachers, thinks about grids and things!
He doesn’t like them either! – How Jimi Hendrix invented his own timing
I do like to add layers to my music! I have a looper pedal, which allows me to create multi track recordings in real time. I can create a beat, put some chords on top of it – then add a solo over the top of that! Its me, with me accompanying myself! whats not to love!
yeah – OK – I know my looper pedal is a machine too lol – But it isn’t making a sound by itself – it’s just reproducing the sounds I put into it. It is helping me make music, rather than forcing me into a rigid, unbendable, unnatural mechanical framework.
Am am using this space to have a close up look at some of the equipment I use to produce my raw rock sound, some of the gear I use to record it, even some of the stuff I use to power the effects pedals and things I use – Something I hope will be interesting or useful to someone out there!
There are some tips and tricks here too, for any budding young rockers out there, or indeed any older rockers wanting to improve their skills. A couple of tips on some decent YouTube, and online teachers I have come across, on my travels around the web –
There are a lot of ‘teachers’ out there, some are a lot better than others! Some can teach you a basic version of any song you may want to learn, which are always fun to have a go at, and a nice way to impress your friends with a tune they know! Some instead have libraries of licks or riffs, famous and otherwise, which you can learn parrot fashion – other teachers, the better ones, teach techniques, and ways to speed up your learning and your playing. These last ones are probably the ones you should be listening to most!
No shortcuts I’m afraid! If you want to create real rock, you are going to have to put a lot of time in, blood sweat and tears too. It’s a lot of work – but worth every second, every tear, and every drop of blood!
I post most of the tracks I record, directly here, to this website – which you can find by checking out ‘Recent Posts’, ‘Live Rock sessions’, or in the ‘Archives’. While most of my live unedited sessions I post to my Youtube channel – “Live and Rocking!”, finished versions of individual songs, and cover versions I post to my other youtube music channel ‘Amazing‘ some of the best individual MP3 tracks, I post to SoundCloud, my Audiomack,or to my MySpace page.
I am using this site as a place to link to my different channels and pages, to make finding different music videos, live stuff, and practice sessions, a lot easier. I even post some of my video walkabouts in Benidorm, so anyone can share in a little bit of Benidorm sunshine, or nightlife – or simply check out to see how things look there right now
So you can use this page as a central hub, to find my stuff – or go directly to my Youtube Channel, my Twitter Feed, my Instagram, or my Facebook page – where you can ‘friend me’, ‘follow me’, subscribe, or simply join me, if you want – And I will try to follow you back!
Remember – You can help out a starving artist by buying him a coffee, or a beer 🙂 at TimB.Green@BuymeACoffee.com or at TimB.Green@ko.fi
Yours Gratefully –
Tim B. Green
