Month: May 2015

Is it a Myth or is it True

I’ve known people who played guitar who insisted that certain songs should be played on a specific guitar.  Usually that sort of thing comes down to genre.  People feel that if you play a hollow bodied guitar you should be playing jazz or blues.  If you play a souped up Kramer strat copy with active pick ups you should be playing metal.  I call bullshit on that.  I’ve seen plenty of heavy rock gods playing hollow guitars, and I’ve heard a good amount of smooth jazz coming from 80’s era shred machines.  No, your choice of guitar comes down to two things, tone and feel.  Genre is irrelevant.  If you like the way it feels in your hand, and you like the sound you get out of it, then it’s yours.  This discussion isn’t about that.

Years ago, while playing in a band with Mike the bass player and Maria the drummer, I graduated to the upper echelon of guitar skill by finally being able to fudge my way through the opening riff to “The Spirit of Radio” by Rush.  You know, that sick speed demon little bastard that all guitar players dream of being able to play when they first start out?  I could get through it, though not cleanly and… well… not well.  Yeah, I sounded like crap, but at least I could get through it and have it be recognizable.  That was when I only owned one guitar, my Les Paul.  A couple of years later I bought my ES-335 and I couldn’t play that riff.  I attributed it to the action, as it’s a touch higher on the 335 and I thought that was the source of my problem.  After that, I never really worried about it again.

Now in the new band there is one wicked easy 80’s song we do by the Greg Kihn Band.  Dude, I really hope I’m spelling your name right.  During my first practice with the band I had the ES-335 (Mike the bass player said that seeing me with that guitar instead of the Les Paul was just wrong.  I don’t disagree, but I do love that semi-hollow little sucker).  I played through the Greg Kihn song pretty well.  Not great.  Not terribly clean, but okay.  After a few weeks I decided that Les Paul was my #1.  The upside of the 335 was the ease in producing quality, usable feedback.  The downside being that the intonation on the low E string is a little funny, and one song we do has a little chromatic scale that sounds out of tune even when the guitar is tuned up correctly.  When playing the Les Paul, for some reason that stupid little Greg Kihn riff just kills me.  I mess it up constantly. Really, I feel so embarrassed playing that damn song at rehearsal.  Seriously, every time we play it I expect them to fire me.  After that first practice I have never been able to do it well.

After the sad passing of BB King last week I decided that I would honor his memory in a way that no one on Earth would ever recognize, realize, or care about.  I decided to play my 335 at this week’s practice.  I put knew strings on it and then played through my nemesis, the Greg Kihn song, for a solid 20-30 minutes.  Just playing that stupid four bar phrase over and over…

And I got it just about right every time.

That’s kind of peculiar.

Then it hit me.  One of my problems was that I loop my thumb around to play the first fret on the low e-string.  The neck on the Les Paul seems to be wider than on the ES-335.  Is that the reason?  Is that the problem?  Is that why I can get through it pretty well on one guitar but constantly blow it on the other?  We played it at rehearsal with me using the 335 and it went pretty well.  I think I might be on to something.  I think the ES-335 might have to make an appearance at every show we do.  Because of the iffy intonation, I don’t think it can supplant the Les Paul as the #1, but maybe it means that I don’t have a single #1, I have two of them.  Maybe we have to make sure the Aerosmith song (I hate them so) and the Greg Kihn song cannot be played in the same set, so a Kihn set can be played on one guitar, and an aerosmith set (I hereby refuse to capitalize their name) can be played on a different guitar.

And the Stratocaster stays at home and only gets used on home demos.

Boy Does Robbie Need a Hobby

Two band practices ago I recorded the whole thing. I used the iTalk app on my iPhone and just pointed the mic in our general vicinity. It worked well but it sounded like sludge.

Last band practice I recorded the whole thing again. This time I brought my MacBook, my USB interface, and one microphone. It worked well. It sounded pretty bad, but 100 times better than the phone.

Now how do I one up myself? Let’s see. We have three vocal mics, a guitar amp, a bass amp, and a drum kit. Also the USB interface only has two outputs. I won’t be able to record each source onto it’s own track. The best I can do is record a stereo mix. So how do I get that stereo mix? Three mics for voices, two more for the two amps, and let’s say two overhead mics on the drums. Seven microphones. What to do, what to do……

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I haven’t used this puppy in four years or so. It is a dusty mess. If things come together I’ll need a lot of compressed air to get the channels clean. I just performed an experiment. I plugged Larry’s piano directly into channel one. I plugged a guitar directly into channel two. I plugged a mic into channel three. The piano panned left, the guitar panned right, and the mic straight up the middle. Now unfortunately the PA we’re using does not have channel outputs. Mr Mackie here does. So we’d have to plug the vocal mics into this, then direct out them into the PA. So to test that out I direct out’d the piano track into the little toyish Marshall amp. Next I plugged the board’s stereo outputs into the USB interface and plugged the interface into the MacBook and brought up GarageBand. I hit record and strummed with one hand, banged on the piano with the other, and gabbed into the mic.

Success.

A stereo recording in GarageBand with the guitar on one side, the piano on the other, and the mic in the middle, and the piano coming out of the little amp. Now the only thing left to do is try and clean out the channels because there was a lot of scratchy dust induced interference that needs to be eliminated. Then it’s just a matter of setting everything up and tweaking the mix to tape as we go, although that would be more of a week to week thing because I don’t plan on listening to play backs until after practice. It’ll do though. Even better, when the day comes when we buy a real power amp to use for PA, the board will already be in place and everything will be ready to go.

This is all upside, right?

I’m not alarmingly obsessed, right?

Right?

Oh did I mention though… I don’t have enough microphones to actually pull this off. To the music store we go!

B. B. King

Rest in peace B. B. King.  He was better than all who came before him, and he is better than all who come after him.  He is the definition of a genre.  The best vocalist blues will ever know.  The best guitarist blues will ever know.  A peerless, passionate performer who will never be equalled.  The world has lost a treasure.

Flickr Camera Roll Discovery

I bitched about the new Flickr Camera Roll recently. I still don’t like it as a layout for viewing, but I have to admit as an organizational tool it is really growing on me. Partly due to the date searching. It allowed me to dig up this little biscuit.

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Now… this doesn’t mean that I have to give back my Ultra-Liberals club membership, does it? No, no. This is me and my brother ridding the world of the clay pigeon menace. I asked him, what do you want to do for your bachelor party? He said to me, skeet shooting and Foxwoods. So we went skeet shooting and then went to Foxwoods.

It is sort of an internal conflict for me. On the one hand I am strictly anti-gun. On the other hand, with a little practice I could be a damn good shot. Granted with a shotgun you just have to aim in the general vicinity of your target and you’ll hit it.

note: I don’t know who took this picture, but I would guess it was Larry. I do know it was taken with my camera though. Flickr tells me so.

Randomish Pictures of the Day

I just had a sudden need to try and remember how many of the Great Lakes I’ve visited.

Lake Michigan:
565

Lake Ontario:
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Is that it? I think so. I was thinking there might have been one more, but I can’t recall which one or when I would have been there.

Of course, being a New Englander I feel that Lake Champlain should be included in the list of Great Lakes… but I think we’re losing that battle.
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