Episódios
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Trent and Aaron share a couple of their favorite Christmas tunes, and review some of the things they've learned in 2023: musical lessons, personal lessons, and of course, GEAR!
Merry Christmas!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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The band Creed has become synonymous with butt rock and ham fisted power balladry, often mentioned in the same breath as Nickelback as one of the worst rock bands of the 2000's, if not ever. While this is a popular position on the internet nowadays, Creed's stratospheric album sales -- 53 million records sold worldwide, and 28 million in the US alone -- hint at a different story, that in fact, a whole lot of people liked them during their brief run from 1997 to 2002.
With nearly 20 years passed since the bands initial dissolution, how does Creed hold up today? Trent and Aaron attempt to answer this question, along with their friend Chris Haney, a regular Fort Worth Music Club participant and avid Creed fan. The conclusion? Creed was a much better band than they get credit for, and filled a melodic hole in an overly dreary post-grunge landscape with more range and songwriting prowess than most of their contemporaries.
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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What exactly does being a professional musician entail in 2023? In the modern era ruled by social media, streaming, and limited physical sales, making a living as a professional musician is a tall order, and it looks somewhat different from bygone eras. But as today's guest demonstrates, if you can write a good song, be a versatile player in a variety of musical contexts, and be bold and assertive in your promotion, you've got a great chance to do what you love for a living.
Trent and Aaron welcome Bubba Bellin, a Texas country artist with a deep love of R&B and funk (hence the "funktry" moniker he uses to describe his music) and a multi-instrumentalist. Bubba plays original music with his own band, but he's also an in-demand session player in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, playing pedal steel and guitar for a number of Texas country acts as well as gospel and soul bands. In this interview, Bubba shares how his session and sideman work feeds his original music both creatively and financially, what makes a great country song, and describes his philosophy to building a working musician's guitar rig.
You can listen to his latest single "Girls Bring Guys (Guys Buy Beer)" on Spotify here:
https://open.spotify.com/track/5ekPJRpI5VeC8liEPlHtmw?si=4b8b4f8ef7e74f06
You can also follow him on social media here:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bubbabellinmusic/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/BubbaBellinMusic/
Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bubbabellin
Web: bubbabellin.com
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Making records is kind of like cooking. Timbre is our flavor, and rhythm is the seasoning... or something like that. The point is, that great recordings often create a sense of depth, a front-to-back, three dimensional quality of sound that envelops the listener, putting them into a world. Recordings can be highly artificial or very natural, but most of the best ones have this quality.
How do you achieve that? The key, Trent argues, is contrast. Just like a great chili has different textures, and layers of seasoning, great records have contrasting timbres, rhythms, and time-based effects to create the illusion of depth.
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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At one point in the not-too-distant past, live was the only way to experience music, and it remains the most primal, mysterious, and compelling ways to experience music. With the advent of streaming -- millions of recorded songs available at the click of a mouse -- live music retains the mystique of music. It's raw, human, and risky. Things could blow up at any moment. And sometimes they do. But when they don't, or even when they do, it's a special moment. Or at least a memorable one!
Aaron and Trent invite their first guest onto the show, drummer Kevin Nelson. Kevin shares his live music experience playing in childhood bands, returning to music as an adult with Aaron's own band Standard Transmission, and the Fort Worth Music and Social Club.
Fort Worth Music & Social Club
https://youtu.be/HHlD3D1Dibk
Get in touch with the show!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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We love gear. Of course! There's something seductive about gear. But at the end of the day, the gear exists to make music, and in today's influencer-fueled internet chock full of the latest equipment and software, it's easy to forget about that in the din. Trent and Aaron discuss the merits of gear you know inside and out, their personal go-to musical tools, and why having more gear isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Trent's pedalboard (before the OD-808 got swapped out for a Nobels ODR-1, and a Rockaway Archer Klon-style pedal was added):
https://imgur.com/6MyyrsB
Get in touch with the show!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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Trent and Aaron discuss everyone's favorite effects, reverb and delay. Like hemlines and facial hair, these time-based effects come in and out of style, and over the history of recorded music production tastes have swung from bone dry to soaking wet and everywhere in between. But unlike some creative effects, reverb and delay have their roots in the natural world, and thus are inseparable from the phenomenon of sound that we experience every day.
Trent and Aaron attempt to explain these natural phenomenon, why they matter when it comes to understanding reverb and delay, and how to maximize impact when using these effects in the production process. As usual, it's all about the song at the end of the day!
Get in touch with the show!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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Trent shares his experience attending his first show since 2019, King's X at a medium sized club with a couple young alt rock bands opening. He shares a few revelations from the show about getting huge tones out of small ensembles, the difference between good guitar players and great ones, and why Gen X'ers are the best concert goers. Aaron and Trent also ponder the question: where do songs come from?
King's X - Three Sides of One (Spotify)
https://open.spotify.com/album/2Qii6sj7o8K6ukKSKKExuv?si=XUWCpe6fT6Kn2oOjWK_L1A
Get in touch with the show!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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It's practically synonymous with guitar these days -- clipping, overdrive, crunch, breakup, fuzz... all names for the captivating phenomenon known as distortion. Trent and Aaron discuss the nature of distortion in guitar music, why guitar players can't get enough of it, and some of their favorite distortion tones on record.
Pete Thorn EVH gear analysis video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKejQ1WBybA
Billy Corgan "Stompland" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZemTcTyJKs
Get in touch with the show!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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Trent and Aaron break out the guitars this time and discuss their musical influences, or in other words, the guitar players they stole all their riffs from. While their tastes are far-ranging, the music of their teens played a huge role in shaping their style on the instrument. And as usual for a couple 80's kids, grunge is at the heart of it all.
Melody, tone, interesting chords, dissonance... grunge had a lot of things going for it musically, even if the lyrics and content were often depressing.
Get in touch with the hosts!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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Trent and Aaron recount their misadventures in collecting gear for over 20 years. After dozens of guitars, amps, pedals -- you name it -- at the end of the day you always end up sounding like yourself. So is tone simply "in the fingers?"
Trent argues that it's the act of collecting gear, and searching for tone, that matters most. So yes, the gear matters, but it's the not gear really. It's the journeys you go on with the gear, that lead you, step by step, closer to a palette suitable for expressing your unique personality on the guitar.
Get in touch with the hosts!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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Trent Jones and Aaron LaBoon share memories of their earliest musical inspirations, what made them pick up the guitar, and the soundtrack of their high school years. Not that long ago, music was a social card for young people, a signifier of which groups you belonged to and those with which you didn't mingle.
With the rise of streaming services, the downfall of physical media sales, the slow death of terrestrial radio, and the changing landscape of digital media in general, this aspect of music is changing fast. But at it's core, a good song is one that can unite people and cut new paths through the jungle of human relationships.
Get in touch with the hosts!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
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Trent Jones and Aaron LaBoon introduce The Gain Stage, a podcast about guitars, gear, music production, and the unsung heroes who make our favorite music come to life, in the studio and on stage.
Get in touch with the hosts!
Trent Jones
Email: [email protected]
IG: @marmalade_cream
Web: https://www.marmaladecream.com
Aaron LaBoon
IG: @aarondlaboon
