Come now people.

Some of that was helpful...... My aversion to tab aside, can someone please tell me in precise musical terms what is happening with the flourish before the first groove kicks in.

Maybe I'm just lazy...

I know he uses it a lot (I love watching the videos of him in Liquid Tension Experiment with the stick). He just seems to downplay it at ever possibility. even in the bass clinic video above from the mid 2000s, he said he tries to stay away from it.

That said, I think he's amazing, and I love his work in LTE, King Crimson, Stickmen, etc.

Where do you get that from?

What he says in the video is this (starting at 2:33), "the top side, that I actually rarely play cause I'm the bass player, most people don't want me to play a guitar part", and then later "I play the bass side or I play the top side" when talking about not playing two parts at once.

That says nothing about "trying to stay away from it."

No idea why you would interpret it that way.

Konrad,

I think he is using a delay on the recorded version to get that swimmy sound right before the groove kicks in, but I could be wrong. Micheal might know more about that one.

Every time he talks about the stick in depth, he mentions how he tries to only play the bass side. Maybe "aversion" was a stronger word than I'm getting at, but he does seem to focus mostly on the 5ths side of the instrument and alludes to it a lot in interviews.

Edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwcSElMLpBM
He says here "Then, there's the guitar side, which I did not use in King Crimson". (:42 Seconds in the video)

Tony, if you read this, can you please tell us if you avoid the melody strings, or if you just like the bass strings better. This would make all of our life a little easier.

Sorry guys, couldn't resist...

Best,
TheMM

with apologies to the MM....

Every time?

This is a really nice interview, with some excellent video links, that might shed some light on things for you:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/blogs/blog-on-the-tracks/4002188/The-Tony-Levin-Interview



Everyone misspeaks on occasion, even someone as erudite as Tony.

Tony's Stick playing is great. I can only hope to be as "musical" as he is in his delivery, and as creative in my ideas. Having seen the 2010 Stick Men in concert, I can only say he's playing the whole instrument, arranging amazing music that takes advantage of the whole instrument and is in full command of what it has to offer. He's clearly expanded what he's doing with it over the years, so I'd say your perception is out of date.

Though, based primarily on Liquid Tension and Peter Gabriel, I could see why you might hold that view. Watch the Stick Men vids that are out there and see if you still think that's the case.

Tony need an Stick with DBR tuning!


By the way, Tony is the reason I know about Stick in 1999 (LTE), and decide to buy one after see StickMen show this year.
\o/

Man, all this talk of LTE...


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edqH0ofRQrM[/youtube]

Aversion to the melody side my arse...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgUDDxFgL7I&feature=related

Hey Radkon, I'll try and answer this for you instead of defending the melody side with my life

Given that they recorded this in the 80's he had that "Chorus" sound on the bass and lots of compression. As far as what he is playing, it is a 2 note tritone chord (see aforementioned tabs) that is phrased as a grouping of 4 sixteenth notes. He starts off really slow and does an accelerando. On the recorded version he goes back and forth by moving up a half step on the higher of the 2 chords once he gets that spirally hammer on thing going. He has some kind of a short delay (maybe 110ms) that helps the part take on a "looped" sound and seems to nearly double the tempo of the part he is physically playing. I believe his pedal of choice for this is the Boss Digital Delay. Right before he kicks into the main groove he shuts off the delay which brings the riff to a screaming halt. Most of the clips of him playing Elephant Talk do not sound as awesome as the version on the album. I found this clip which IMO is the best I've ever heard him perform this live. If you listen closely at the beginning you can actually hear Tony start the opening riff without the delay on and then he kicks it on which causes a little "hiccup" in the riff. Then you can see him stomp on the delay pedal at the end of the riff. Cool.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTsG74P0mWI[/youtube]