Category: Guitar

Making Progress

I have rhythm guitars on six songs now. I had two done the other day using real amplifiers. I’ve done four today with amp sims. The Amplitube sim of a Fender Deluxe Reverb costs $30. The sim of the Mesa Boogie California Tweed costs $40. I don’t see me moving beyond the free app any time soon. Sorry.

My fingers are killing me so I am taking a break. I am going to finish season two of The Mandalorian, eat some lunch, maybe have a protein bar, go grocery shopping, and then come back for some more guitar.

Sound like a plan?

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Amp Sim

I just put two tracks of rhythm guitar onto RPM song #3. I used a third party amp sim. Amplitube 5, the free version. I’ve used amplitube mobile apps before, but this is the first time I’ve used the Mac version, and the first time I’ve used a third party amp sim in GarageBand for Mac.

Amplitube has a Fender amp version that costs money. If I’m going back to sims for this year’s project I could really go for a 4×10 Tweed Bassman. The version I installed yesterday has a bunch of in-app purchase options for simulations of real amps. I saw a Mesa Boogie Cali Tweed and I really want to buy it. I really want to buy a real Cali Tweed but I don’t want to spend the small fortune that would require.

Amps are fun.

Mad and Annoyed and Frustrated and Mad

I finally did some real recording tonight and now I am pissed off.

I got through two songs without issue. Two amps, two mics, two tracks in GarageBand. No problems.

On the third song, the track from the mic on my Deluxe Reverb started getting all sorts of weird, staticy noise. When I took the headphones off it sounded fine to me. No issues. Put the headphones back on and horrible, awful, disgusting noise. I changed the channel on the interface, changed the mic cable, changed the mic. Nothing fixed it. I shut everything off and took a minor hissy fit and went back upstairs to watch TV with my beloved Jennifer.

I’ll try again tomorrow.

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Everything Works, Now Do Something

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The signal path has been tested. I plugged in this morning and made sure the guitar was getting to both amps, and the mics on both amps are getting into the interface and from there into the computer. Check.

Now I just have to learn how to play the new songs and record them. The downside of not playing since November though is that it took about two seconds for my fingers to start hurting. It’s going to be rough over the next 18 days.

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This is What Avoidance Looks Like

If you ever wanted to see someone distracting himself from a painful situation and thus being a textbook case of avoidance, this post is it.

As someone who owns two Les Pauls and an SG, this is the single greatest video ever made.

I watched it yesterday before things went south and I was going to post this then, but instead I am doing it now as a form of deflection. If you don’t like it, you can suck it.

Sunday Morning

It’s 7:13am on a Sunday morning in January. What’s going on?

Tons. I’m going to have a busy day, I think.

My exercise is done for the day, as well as over 60% of my calorie goal. Nice. I am going to visit my father today and take him to visit my mother. I’m not going to have a ton of time to spend visiting though. I have to work today. I have a ton of paperwork to do that should have been done over the last week but got pushed aside due to some super hot customer issues. I’ll get as much of it done today as possible and get to the rest of it tomorrow. I’ll have it all done on time, but it’s going to make today suck a little.

What about the new cat? She started under the bed. We took one of the little covered cat bed/house things we got for Patches last year and put it into the bedroom. We also brought the cat tree we got for the cellar remodel and put that in the bedroom too. We sat in the room with her for a while but eventually just left her alone. Jen snuck back in to check on her and found her sitting in the cat bed/house. She called to me to come and see and when I called back the cat got spooked and ran into the bathroom and hid under the vanity. Sorry, kitty. She stayed there for hours, even when we left her alone again.

When we started getting ready for bed she was in the bed/house thing again. She stayed there the whole time. We thought that was an improvement. Around 2:30am Jen got up for something and managed to coax her out. She was purring like a porche and rubbing against our legs and just being super friendly. We got her to jump up onto the bed so we could pet the crap out of her. She seemed to love it. When we tried to lay down though she jumped off and tried to hide behind the cat tree. After a minute or so she ran out of the room and down the hall. I found her in the other bathroom crouching behind the door. When I moved the door a little she ran back to the bedroom and went back into the bed/house.

While she was walking around in the middle of the night, Jen was able to show her where the food and water and litter box are. We had all of it in the bedroom because we wanted them close so she could find them if she needed them. I am a little worried because I don’t see any signs that she’s eaten anything yet. We had dry food and lots of treats and we put them out for her, but I also went to a pet store to buy some toys (Patches didn’t really go for cat toys so we didn’t have any) and some wet food. I am going to put some of the wet food out this morning and see if she goes for it. We were told that she had surgery on Friday (she was spayed) so she might not have an appetite as she recovers. I just want to give her all the options we can though.

What else is going on? Music. Have I played the guitar at all this weekend? No, no I haven’t. Asshole. I am starting to think about recording ideas for RPM, even if I haven’t had a single musical thought. I am considering going with two amps at a time again. I have my Fender Deluxe Reverb here so that amp is going to be used like crazy. I might bring out my Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 and use it and the Deluxe Reverb together through the AB/Y splitter. It’s going to be pretty loud down here if I go this route, so I might try it to start with and then change my mind. The amps will be in a corner of the cellar that is as far away from the living room as I can get, and it’s reasonably far away from Jen’s office so hopefully it will be okay. If I bother her at all though, I’ll turn off the 18/30 and just go with the Deluxe. I have a speaker soak for the Deluxe so I can turn up the volume knob without getting obscenely loud. As for the guitar I want to use, it will be the Les Paul Standard again. I freakin’ adore that guitar. I will wait until either next weekend or the actual start of February before I put new strings on the guitar, but I really need to play at least a little bit every day to try and get my fingers into something that resembles playing shape.

Okay, I think that’s the gist of today. It’s time to start waking up for real and get something to eat. Happy Sunday, folks!

Random Lunchtime Stuff

Some random thoughts as my lunch break winds down…

I read a great article from Guitar World yesterday called 20 Ways to Improve Your Les Paul. The need to have my 1978 Les Paul Custom repaired/upgraded is never very far from my mind, but I don’t have the money to spend on it and I am nervous about trying to sell another guitar to pay for it because what if I am overwhelmed with sellers remorse? Worse, what if I sell it for a lot of money and then find out I didn’t sell it for nearly enough. Oh, the stress! Anyway, the article made me want to get on with it, even though most of the things it suggests are things I wouldn’t do. Fifties wiring and PAF clones are about all I have in mind. That and frets… yikes!

Speaking of Les Pauls, I haven’t played my new Les Paul, or any guitar for that matter, in weeks. I am starting to go through withdrawals again, and I have zero calluses left on my left hand. I am soft and smooth and in for a lot of pain and unpleasantness when I do start playing again. Crap.

Speaking of Les Pauls again, I just finished listening to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in its entirety in one sitting for the second time in a week. I don’t know for sure that Steve Hackett played all of his leads on a Les Paul, but it seems that way. There’s clearly a Stratocaster on the next Genesis album, but The Lamb and the three records he played on prior to that all sound like Les Pauls to me. I think he played through Hiwatt amps back then, but I don’t know that for sure. When I saw him in 2019 he was standing in front of a Marshall and a single 4×12 cabinet (he was also not playing a Gibson Les Paul at that show, but a Fernandez Les Paul copy. I think it’s the same (or similar) model I saw Robert Fripp play that same month). I wonder if it was a real Plexi, or even cooler, and old JTM45. Oh, to go back in time with a pile of cash.

I need to go grocery shopping tonight, and I want to get an oil change for the Mazda, which is about to be Bellana’s Mazda. I want the car to be all up to date with everything when we “sell” it to her. I also want to go back to the store that sold me the jacket yesterday and get them to take off the damn security tag. I am pretty ticked off about that. I hope to see my parents this weekend if possible, but it really doesn’t seem like I am going to have the time. There are too many things going on right now, only some of which are related to the imminent xmas. I am hoping I can throw the wife and step kids into the car at some point over the weekend so we can all go out and look at xmas lights. I want that to include a visit to Boston too, but I know it won’t. I wonder if New Years Eve in the city is a possibility? The last time we did that it was followed a couple of months later by a global pandemic, so maybe it’s bad luck? Who knows.

Okay, lunch is over. Time to go be productive for a couple of hours before calling it a work week. HoHoHo, Merry weekend.