Month: January 2020

What the Hell is a Cajon?

I can’t remember when it was, maybe about two years ago?  I was listening to a cover band podcast and one of the hosts was talking about an acoustic duo he played in.  One guy played an acoustic guitar and sang, the other was a percussionist/singer who played a cajon.  I thought to myself, what the hell is a cajon?

It’s this.  It’s a box.  There is a pad on one side of it that has wire snares built into it.  If you slap the middle of the box you get a thump.  If you slap the edge you get a snare drummish snap.

Fast forward to October 2018.  I was in Epcot Center, at the cafe outside of Soarin’.  I was sitting at a table by my lonesome and I don’t remember why.  I wonder… was this Summer 2018 and not October 2018?  Maybe.  Whatever, it doesn’t matter.  I was thinking about a songwriting challenge, either NaSoAlMo or 50/90 and I was trying to think of things that I could do to mix up my usual workflow.  I thought about arranging a couple of songs for acoustic 12-string, a cello instead of a bass, and hand percussion instead of a drum kit.  I never did it, partly because the strings function in GarageBand for iOS kinda blows, but while looking at GarageBand Percussionists in the Drummer function I found one with a cajon.

This past summer, just before another trip to Disney World, I was working on 50/90 ideas and I came back to that guitar/cello/percussion idea.  I scrapped the cello for an upright bass at first, and I declared that all hand percussion would revolve around a cajon… because why the hell not?  Then I got a really crazy idea.  Why have a bass at all?  Why not just go 12-string, percussion, and voice.  That would be way out of my comfort zone.  Then the kicker came to me.  Where I would normally play lead guitar… play saxophone.  Oh we’re just one step beyond now!

Of course I never did any of that at all.

Well now we’re three+ days away from the RPM Challenge and I’m looking for ideas again.  Due to still another Disney World trip (this is becoming a trend) I am going to be in quite the time crunch.  I thought about maybe doing half of the songs as usual, and then half as trippy instrumentals.  Last year I did 20 songs, the equivalent of two RPM albums.  Maybe this year I stick to 10 songs but make it two separate five song EP’s.  Then I thought about that damn cajon again.  How about five rock songs, five trippy instrumentals, and five acoustic songs.  The rockers would be guitar/bass/drums/voice, the trippy instrumentals would be guitar/keys/bass/drums with shit loads of sound effects, and the acoustics would be 12-string guitar/hand percussion/alto sax/voice and the percussion would center on a cajon.  Three EP’s which would let me have a complete RPM project and a complete fawm.org project (which I haven’t even considered shooting for this year).  That sounds awesome.  Super awesome.  Super epic awesome.

Granted there is zero chance of it happening.  I’m going to end up with 10 bluesy rock songs in odd time signatures arranged for a bad power trio.  Eh, that would be cool too.

Three days, 10 hours until RPM officially kicks off.

Tetris

I haven’t plugged it in yet. Let’s hope I got the wiring correct. Fingers crossed.

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I added two Donner pedals, the Harmonic Square pitch shifter, and the Yellow Fall analog delay. I also added the Wren and Cuff Tri Pi ’70 fuzz pedal because after practice last night I decided I couldn’t live without fuzz. I put it before the Klon KTR in the hopes that the Klon’s mid push would fill in the gaps from the Big Muff clone’s mid scoop. If that doesn’t cut through the mix I can add volume with the Spark booster.

Like I said, fingers crossed.

Band Practice Recap or Fuzzy Fun

The main focus of rehearsal last night was working out a set list.  Kevin came up with a rough draft.  I had one little suggestion for a change.  Greg wanted more changes but couldn’t come up with alternatives so we punted.  We ran through the list as it was with the expectation that we’ll edit it during group chats throughout the week.

I had some gear issues.  Four or five songs into the setlist I switched off my spanky new Fulltone OCD ge for a second and then switched it back on and… nothing.  Huh.  I kicked it a couple of times and it came back but started cutting in and out.  I shut it off again and left it that way.  There’s a bad cable in there somewhere.  I’ve been using the backup board at practice while I fiddle with everything on the main board at home.  I mentioned a while ago that I took the fuzz pedal off the main board, but I still have one on the backup board, a Wren and Cuff Tall Font Russian.  With the OCD off I was able to switch the Tall Font on and it was pretty stable.  Okay then, for the rest of the practice I’m using fuzz.

The volume level with the fuzz on was the same as it was with the OCD on, but as soon as the band started playing I vanished from the mix.  The Tall Font is a Big Muff clone and that’s a common issue with Big Muffs.  All of the mid range frequencies are scooped out of the fuzz pedal so there is nothing in the sound of the guitar to differentiate it from the bass guitar on the low end or the cymbals on the high end.  The work around is to just turn up the volume on the amplifier.  I turned up until I could hear myself in the mix again and all was almost well.  The problem now is how things work with the fuzz off.  If I need to play clean the guitar will cut through the mix the way it’s supposed to and the volume change will result in everyone being nuked right out of their sneakers.  The fix for that is to use the volume knob on the guitar.  It doesn’t clean up perfectly the way a Fuzz Face circuit does, but it worked well enough.  I ended up turning the neck pickup volume way down and leaving the volume up on the bridge pickup.  When I wanted clean I just switched pickups.  All problems solved.

After an hour or so we needed a bathroom break and I did some troubleshooting.  I unplugged the cable coming out of the OCD and replaced it with the cable going into the amp.  That eliminated the problem.  Did it actually fix it or did I just get lucky and putzing around put everything into a state where it wasn’t cutting out anymore?  I don’t know.  I do know I needed to turn the volume on my amp back down.  I was happy to be back to overdrive, but I was also sad to put the fuzz away again.  I do so love a nasty fuzz sound, but I’m just more into a good overdrive now.  All these options.

My playing as a whole was okay.  I felt a little weird rhythmically, as in I was rushing sometimes and dragging sometimes and just funky (not in a good way) here and there.  I was trying to keep my hands relaxed and it worked.  No finger pain, no fatigue.  My elbow started acting up again though and by the end of the night it hurt noticeably.  It actually still hurt this morning.  It’s starting to feel a little better now though.

The band sounded fine.  We were focusing on songs we haven’t played in ages so there was rust, but when we hit things that are current for us we were pretty good.  The show on Saturday is going to go well.

I have the backup board at practices but I am definitely using the main board at the gig.  When I left last night I was 100% set on using the Deluxe Reverb as my amp.  By the time I went to sleep I was starting to waffle on whether to use that amp or the Bassbreaker 18/30.  I think I’m starting to lean toward the Bassbreaker.

I need to practice, practice, practice.

Four Days and 10 hours until gig day.

Gear Inspiration

Man, youtube… every once in a while you’ll see something and it will just click for you.

I just watched an episode of That Pedal Show where they talk about delay pedals.  I have a really nice digital delay on my pedal board right now, a Wampler Faux Tape Echo, and I have been using the crap out of it.  I use it’s tap tempo switch and it’s subdivision switch and I get dotted eighth note delays and I make all sorts of groovy The Edge style rhythmic patters and it’s just so much damn fun.

It’s a great delay pedal but it doesn’t really do oscillation.  Oscillation is when the pedal feeds back on itself and makes all sorts of glorious noise.  If you mess with the delay time control it changes the pitch of the noise and makes it even gloriouser.  I have a really cheap analog delay that I am not currently using.  It’s from one of those generic, low cost, Chinese companies.  Donner, I think?  A Donner Yellow Fall?  I think that’s what it’s called.  After watching this video I am going to put it on the board too so that I can have noisy fun and still have the digital tap tempo and subdivision stuff.

In all my years of playing electric guitar I’ve almost always had a delay pedal, but I’ve never been a delay pedal guy.  Now I have all this youtube silliness to inspire me to do new and different (and yes, goofy and noisy) things.

Thanks, That Pedal Show!

 

Driving Around Town

I took a leisurely drive* around the city of Methuen on this fine Sunday morning and snapped a few pics of some of the stone walls and random castle-ish looking things that are all over the place.

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This one is officially my pic for the photo a day thing.
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I stopped here once and took some pictures with my D90. I couldn’t find a way into the little building thingie, but it is two stories high. Why is it there?
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…and of course…
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*Okay, here’s the real story. My beloved wife asked me to go out and pick up some breakfast for her. I drove past some stone walls on Pond Street and thought I should snap a pic but I didn’t. I drove to the store, got into the line, got right up to the front, and realized I forgot my wallet. I had to drive home, pick up my wallet, embarrassingly laugh at my own doofusness with my wife, then drive back. On the second trip I had the camera open and ready.

Prep Work for Picard Episode One

The powers that be behind the scenes of the new Star Trek Picard claim that this show will not be Star Trek The Next Generation The Next Generation.  It’s going to be its own independent thing.  I can see where they are coming from with that, but at the same time it’s a character that existed through seven seasons of broadcast TV and four feature length movies.  He also made cameos in a couple of other Star Trek series as well.  In other words, the dude has history.

In post from a couple of days ago I mentioned that there are a few newly released items that serve as a sort of prequel to the new show.  There is the comic book series (two of three have been issued so far) called Star Trek Picard – Countdown, and there is an 8-9 minute episode of Star Trek Short Treks called Children of Mars.

Now that we have episode one of Picard we can look back to a few more things that could serve as prep work for the new series.  Two Next Generation Episodes and one movie.

First, there is an episode called The Measure of a Man, season two episode nine.  In this episode Commander Data is effectively put on trial to determine if Star Fleet should give him the same rights afforded to a life form, or if he should be considered property.

Second is an episode called The Offspring, season three episode 16, in which a bunch of punk rockers need to keep them separated even though they are pretty fly for a white guy.  No, that was a crappy band.  In the episode, Commander Data tries to create a child.

Finally, there are connections in the new episode to the final Next Generation movie, Nemesis.  In that movie Data does a ton of stuff and there are lots of Romulans.  It’s also the movie that was meh enough to pretty much kill the franchise in its tracks.  I think I have only seen it once and if my memory serves it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t that good either.

While it is nerdishly awesome to be able to connect the dots between the old show and the new show like this, you don’t actually need to see any of the old stuff to follow what’s happening in the new stuff.  Picard episode one will give you any information you need from the old stories so you aren’t missing out on anything.

Still, if there is one thing Star Trek is good at, it is building up the universe.  This is just more evidence of that.

Now, given that my last 2300 posts have all dealt at least in part with the new show, you might have pieced together the fact that I am really, really excited about this.  Almost as excited as I was for Star Wars episode IX, though nothing will ever touch the hype I felt for that.  Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to episode two next week.

Hello There, Spicket

I have a couple of new pictures of the Mighty Spicket River in Salem, NH…

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These of course are taken from the Weight Watchers parking lot, which means I went to weight watchers today.  I don’t want to talk about weight loss on the blog anymore, for now at least.  Every once in a while I need to search for something here and I end up reading some happy post from years ago about how I lost two pounds or some nonsense.  When that happens it is really depressing.  It’s like saying, look how good I used to be doing before I started to suck again.  I hate feeling that way so I am not going to keep track of stats or anything,  My first week back was good.  Enough said.

Except that I also went to the gym.  I walked on a treadmill until my sore foot woke up.  15 minutes at a very slow pace.  That’s a good start.  We’re a month away from Disney and I need to be able to walk around all over Florida so I need to start practicing now.

Oh yeah… practicing… guitar… gig… Way to ruin the good vibe and scare the crap out of yourself, fat ass.