Category: Guitar

Make That Four Days

You know what?  After four days of practicing, my fingertips are hurting.  I guess I am having a little bit of a callous issue.  I didn’t think that would be a problem, but here we are.

I said I was going to run through some of our more challenging songs.  I didn’t.  I just noodled for about half an hour and then tried to play along with a few Jeff Beck songs.  I still had most of Rock My Plimsoul in my head, and I can still nail that perfect solo in I’ve Been Drinking (it’s really simple but it’s one of my favorite solos on any instrument ever).

I’ve played the SG the last two nights, after playing the Les Paul the previous two nights.  Part of me is thinking that maybe the SG might be the go to guitar for at least the first set tomorrow.  I’ve never played it at a gig before.  Maybe it will have it’s debut.  We’ll see.

It is a little dusty though.

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Time to Get Ready

Today is a good day.  I got a bonus from work today.  That’s good.  I got my tax documents from work too.  By the time this posts my taxes might even already be filed because my wife is amazing.  That’s also good.  I just spent my lunch break working on a time sensitive issue and I figured it out with a minimum of stress.  That’s good too.

The RPM Challenge starts in less than nine hours.  That’s good, but I highly doubt I’ll be awake at midnight to celebrate.  We have a gig tomorrow night.  That’s good as well.  I’m not nearly as stressed as I was for the last gig and that is doubly good.

There are some things that royally suck but I am not letting them bring me down.  The triumph of authoritarianism over democracy is progressing in the US Senate right now as the republican party makes a farce out of the constitutionally mandated impeachment process.  That royally sucks.  I am beginning to think that secession is a viable option.  Brexit takes place today.  Midnight Brussels time, 11:00PM London time, That’s 6:00PM Boston time, I think.  That royally sucks too.

I’m weighing the good against the incredibly bad and choosing to ignore the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, the bad is infinitely more important than the good.  Today I am deciding that the good will outweigh the bad even though that is amazingly, shockingly naive.  Screw it, I’m going to Disney in a couple of weeks.

For now though, I have to start planning my packing for the gig tomorrow.  I need my Les Paul and my SG, my Bassbreaker 18/30 and my Vox MV50 with the 12″ cab, my full pedal board, the handful of new cables I bought (bright orange so you can see them from space), a couple of backup pedals (looking at you, Keeley D&M Drive) and power cables for each one, the microphones, stands, and cables I took home from the rehearsal room recently, the little pick/slide holding microphone stand attachment, and a new glass slide.  Then I’ll go to Mike’s house and get the rest of the mics, stands, and cables, my gig bag with all my emergency stuff in it, and the little stand I sit my amp on when we play.  Oh yeah, and I have to change the strings on both guitars!  Can’t forget about that!

Sunday after the gig I’ll put the amp and the pedal board (and the associated cables) back into my room where they currently sit (see the pic from last night), Setup a mic, stand, and cable on that amp and on the Bassbreaker 15 that is not leaving my room for the gig, then plug those into the 16 channel USB interface that I also took home from the rehearsal room recently.  I will plug the USB cable into my MacBook and make sure I can get both mic signals into GarageBand.  Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to record guitar parts in stereo.  When I record the acoustic guitar or a vocal or a saxophone I can just swing up one of the mic’s that will be on a guitar speaker and use that.  I also dug out my little acoustic guitar pickup that I got a few years ago and still haven’t taken out of the package.  I can use that to record as well.  I’ll keep the laptop and my iPad and my iPhone good and charged so if an idea comes to me I can play it into one version of GarageBand or another.  Once that’s all taken care of I just have to… you know… write a shit load of songs.  Yikes.

This year is a leap year so we get a whole extra day for the RPM shenanigans.  So really it’s no problem at all this year.

Yikes indeed!

But it’s still a good day.

 

Now It’s Three Days

Yesterday I said I had practiced three days in a row but it was only two.  Tonight it’s three days in a row.  I didn’t play through either of the sets, I just played scales and bad blues scale riffs for 30-40 minutes or so.  I did play through an amp and I did use my pedal board.

Actually I played through two amps at once because I am crazy like that.

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If I get the chance tomorrow I’ll probably pick and chose a few songs from the set list that are a little more challenging and run through those. Tonight I poked around with some pedal settings. The analog delay is set for a slap back, the reverb has a new setting that seems to be working. I set up a decent boost level. Things like that.

Oh and I played the shit out of the ol’ blues scale.

Two Days in a Row?

I practiced again tonight.  That’s two nights in a row.  Oh.  My.  God.  Woah, wait a second… I was at a band practice on Sunday too so I actually practiced THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW!!!!

Last night I played the first set on our rough draft setlist and the first two songs on the second set.  My playlist for some reason skipped a song from set 1 though and I didn’t notice until later.  Tonight I started with the song I missed and then did the whole second set and the first song from the third set.

It wasn’t quite as thorough as last night.  Last night I played through the full rig I am planning on using at the gig, and I stood for the whole time and I didn’t take any breaks.  Tonight I didn’t have the house to myself so I played through an app on my iPad while listening to the playlist on my phone.  I also had to take a break when the love of my life came home and we had to shuffle the cars around and I sat down for a lot of it.

Still… I played for a solid hour for the second night in a row.  I am shocked.

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Practice Goal Achieved (for today)

Raise your hand if you’re sick of guitar/Lizardfish/gig posts.

On second thought, don’t raise your hand.  I don’t care what you think.  Here’s another one.

Earlier today one of the guys in the band submitted 2/1/20 Set List Draft #2.  I was in the middle of my lunch break at the time so I typed the list into a Google Doc and sent it around, and then went to hearthis.at and built a playlist of the entire list and shared that around too.  I had an ulterior motive for that one though.

Jen has a work dinner thing tonight and I knew she wouldn’t be home until late.  Tonight is a dad night for the kids so I had the house all to myself for an hour.  I took that new playlist, ran my phone through a blue tooth speaker, plugged in the guitar with the full pedal board, turned up to (slightly less than) gig volume and played.

I made it into the second set, only one or two songs.  I think one song was missing from the first set though so I have to check on that.  I played for an hour solid without a break.  I did have some real pain in my left hand for about two songs but it lessened as I went along.  By the end of the hour I was noticeably tired and it was getting hard to bend the strings.  That’s time to stop for tonight.

I played a lot in a short time.  Notice that I did not say I played well.  I guess I still have to work on that.  My improv skills are down to about 10% right now, Captain.  I need to open a ticket with engineering and get Geordi LaForge to work on that for me.

The gig starts almost exactly four days from now (9:00PM on Saturday).  I need a lot more practice.

I’m pleased with my dumb ass for the moment though.  I’m proud of me, fat boy.

My ears are ringing.

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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.

149/365

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!