The Bruins named Don Sweeney as their new General Manager today. This may be the first time a player I regularly used while playing EA Sports NHL games on play station has become a GM, but maybe not. I do expect, however, that he is now the NHL GM with the highest voice. Finally a soprano sits in the big chair.
All kidding aside, Donny. Let’s bring my team back to glory, okay?
This week has two important dates for our family. First, yesterday was my step daughter’s birthday! I was supposed to mention it here on the actual day, but many many meetings at work distracted me and I missed it. Sorry about that. But, you can still all wish her a happy belated birthday, am I right?
The second important day is today. Seven years ago today I popped the question to my beloved bride Jen. What a day that was. Unfortunately the ring I gave her seven years ago has been damaged. She thinks I’m mad at her because of that, but no. Not even a tiny bit. I’m disapointed that we seem to have bought a lemon that day at Hanoush jewelers in Salem, but otherwise I’m not upset at all. If we can’t fix the ring we will have to replace it. All I ask is that the diamond be re-used in some way. If we can get it onto a new ring then that’s excellent. If not, can we set it into something else? It’s just a symbol or course. The love that it represents will continue to be strong without the symbol. It’d just be nice to be able to keep it around.
So happy birthday to my step daughter, who still has some aging to do before I’ll mention her by name on this here bloggie, and happy proposalversary to the love of my life!
I told them when I joined the band that at some point I was going to start recording practices. I tried to warn everyone that once the flood gates opened there’d be no stopping it.
I just got word that on Thursday UPS will be delivering the big pile of microphones I ordered over the weekend, and next practice I’m going to mic up the whole room.
I’m totally going to drive everyone else in the band crazy. Give it a couple of weeks and they are going to be so sick of me.
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.
this afternoon I changed the strings on my ES-335 and practiced for tonight’s rehearsal…
…Outside in the back yard.
Being a home owner RULES.
We went to Maine for a step daughter’s birthday dinner.
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……
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!
Trees by headlights. #bored #overtired
I’m in line to pick up the kids at the middle school dance. Epic.
They catered our wedding.
