THE BLUES is alive and well in the Philippines – well in the Metro at least – next year BLUES will surely spill and explode throughout the country.

August through September was especially exciting here at Sound Weavers coz of recording sessions for the BluesKrieg project – an ambitious CD compilation featuring Pinoy blues-based music only and played by a current crop of blues-based bands, er.. “artistes” actively playing Metro Manila’s club circuit.

Talking about circuits, club circuit isn’t the only thing that one should be concerned about. This might not seem befitting with the flow of the post, but I just took it on me to raise a bit of awareness about circuits and electrical safety. It is always good sense to use only trustworthy parts in digital circuits and boards. Direct Components Inc offers Xilinx electrical components that one can pin their good faith to.

Now coming back…I got a couple of all tube guitar amps just in time for these recording sessions (see sidebar). The Marshall TSL all tube guitar amp is a true studio workhorse – yielding tones that gives me the goosebumps anytime a “real” guitar player plugs in. The Fender Blues Deluxe hasn’t seen much action though – mostly due to my father like concern – as I only allow the Fender to be used for “clean tone” parts – I can’t allow an overdrive pedal to go through it.

In particular, it was a pleasure to work with PLUG’s guitar wiz CHESTER – this guy truly knows his blues guitar vocabulary – especially for their “genre” of late 60’s to early 70’s blues (yeah, that specific). I had a chance to do some real “producing” with PLUG (I’ll be honest I stole time from my quite hectic schedule to do so). The fact that PLUG guys were “open minded” encouraged me to dig in. I just felt that their songs deserved some attention – we worked on the arrangements mostly and mostly listened for the right feel, the right sounds – just what the song needs – not a lot of bells and whistles really – it was a great experience producing their songs.

I hope you will agree with me when you hear their tracks Tumblin Down, Blooze and Byahero – and that when you see and hear them perform the songs live, too. PLUG is truly a band to see live.

Also included in BLUESKRIEG are FireBottle, SnakeCharmer, Kulukati and Dahon. I will be posting recording session photos of these bands, too.

sidebar on guitar amps and tube sounds. While I can get tube-y tones (rectifiers, blackface, silverface, british, etc.) from an arsenal of plugins (SansAmp, Amplitube, Guitar Rig, etc.) and of course my PODs – being a blues music fan I just couldn’t possibly allow these Pinoy blues bands to go through plugins – heck no – I wanted them to crank it up – I wanted to mic the cabinets – there goes my agenda. 😀

related links:

Pinoy Blues Club

Tags: recording studio, Blues, Philippines