Category: Guitar

Tuesday Lunch Post

I don’t have anything to talk about. How is that possible?

Right, so here’s a question. Who should I believe? I ordered a couple of pedals last week. Amazon tells me that the estimated delivery is either January 3rd or 4th. That was the estimate when I placed the order, so that is fine with me. When I track directly from UPS though it tells me the delivery will be two days from now on December 30th before 9:00pm. Well that sounds sweet!

So which estimate is correct? It has to be UPS, right? I mean let’s just go to the source. Unfortunately I signed up for text message alerts for status changes and I have not received a single message. That implies that the package hasn’t even been picked up yet. So who do I trust? As The Joker said in Batman the Movie back in 1989, “money money money, who do you trust?”

How’s this. I will trust Amazon’s 1/3-4 estimate while keeping my fingers crossed for UPS’s 12/30. That works, right? Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

I have a new uni-vibe pedal coming. I’m finally upgrading from MXR to something boutique. I also have a new wah pedal coming. I had gone from Dunlop to boutique a few years ago, then the whole bullshit thing happened with the racist frat boy pedal builder and I went back to Dunlop. Now, a year and a half later, I am going boutique again. Duck and cover and wish me luck, brothers and sisters in music nerd.

Music Nerd/TV Nerd

I haven’t recorded anything in a couple of weeks now and my mental state is starting to show it. I know what the next few songs to re-record are going to be and today I actually started monkeying with the MIDI on one of them. Time to get back into it, I think.

I am considering setting up a second guitar playing/recording nook in the cellar and I don’t know why. I want to use my big amp and my big pedal board and I don’t really have the room for either of them in the bedroom nook. I’m also thinking about going back to two amps for the 2022 (2020 too) RPM Challenge and that’s just easier to do down cellar. There’s also the fact that the cellar is 90% empty and not being used for anything other than laundry and I just want it to feel useful. I’m still undecided, but it could happen.

For TV, I started watching Wheel of Time last night on Amazon Prime. I have heard so many good reviews that I wanted to check it out. I got 15 minutes into episode one and turned it off. I can’t say it’s good or bad or anything, I just don’t know if I have another sword and sorcery story in me right now. I think Game of Thrones might have broken that part of my brain. I still haven’t watched the Hobbit movies either, so maybe it was Lord of the Rings that broke my brain and Game of Thrones was just the last gasp? I don’t know. I picked episode one up again this morning but didn’t have time to finish it. Maybe I’ll just power through.

Also, The Book of Boba Fett starts tomorrow. Have I mentioned that?

Boxing Day Mix

So another Christmas holiday comes to an end with the posting of yet another new version of an old song. This one started out in 2011 and has been recorded three times. I am not sure why I keep coming back to it. It’s not very good. This is definitely the best of the three though.

Happy Holidays.

Christmas Mix

I snuck in a mix for a new take on an old song today. This was before our canceled family Christmas was brought back to life.

Written in 2009 for a failed crack at the RPM Challenge. This is really the first time I’ve looked at it since, but it’s always stuck in the back of my head.

Is it a good song? No. No it is not. Not even close. It’s kinda fun to play though.

Volume Five is Done

I mixed the last song on the list for Quarantine Tunes Volume 50/90. This one makes 10 songs written over the summer, redone for the winter… or something like that.

There is really nothing to this song so I went overboard on the gimmicks and effects and now it’s a soupy, saucy mess, but I like it.

Now I need to come up with a running order for the 10 songs and I can declare the fifth volume of re-recorded songs finished and get back to work on the sixth volume.

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone. Maybe next year I’ll mix a Christmas song on Christmas Eve. For now, you’re stuck with this guy.

HoHoHo.

Retail Therapy

It took me 50 years before I had a year where there wasn’t a christmas. This is it, folks. The year without a santa claus for reals.

On Saturday it will be pretty much a normal Saturday. Jen and I are planning on a nice dinner together. Maybe we’ll play some Mario Kart and watch a movie or maybe binge watch some TV or something. We’ll just spend the day together.

I was going to write this post about how I wanted to take my frustrations out on capitalism by buying a new guitar. A Les Paul Junior to be exact. I jokingly asked the love of my life if she would be okay with me buying yet another guitar and to my shock and amazement she said yes! That’s twice she’s said yes to me! Once in the backyard at the duplex when I was on my knee, and then again today. How wonderful!

That’s when she told me she was doing the same thing. Maybe a Nintendo Switch or a PS5. We had a good laugh. I’m not going to buy a $1,600 guitar, especially when it’s only a few months after Jen bought me a much more expensive guitar for my 50th birthday. There is a chance though that I might magically (though probably not christmas magic, given the circumstances) upgrade a pedal or two in the coming days. You know… magically.

One More Song for Today

I haven’t finished Quarantine Tunes Volume 5 yet, but here I am mixing the first song for Volume 6. This is just getting silly now.

Written in February 2007, rearranged slightly and rerecorded in 2013, and now rererecorded in 2021. I keep coming back to this, even though it’s really a crap song. Also, this is a seriously ratty, crap performance, but it is a lot of fun to play.

Song, Second Attempt

I just wrote this post a few minutes ago and it included what I thought was a new version of a song from this past summer, but the hearthis.at player actually grabbed the original version. Weird.

Let’s try again and see if we get the right one this time….

This One is Pretty Blah

I thought this song was coming out pretty good but now that it’s done it doesn’t really do anything better than the first version. It is faster so I guess that’s something.

Two more songs to mix and then I’ll be done with this batch of songs.