Tag: Guitar

Fight the Urge to Stress Shop

One of the slew of guitar orientated BookFayce groups I belong to had a post a few minutes ago where one of my fellow members confessed to stress-buying a guitar pedal.

Fulltone is a company that manufactures pedals.  I own three of them.  Well… more like two and a half.  Two different versions of one pedal, and then a second pedal.  Whatever.  Suffice to say they make good stuff and I am a happy repeat customer.  I am also on their email list.  I got an email from them a few minutes ago.  I read some updates on things they are working on and I think I literally salivated a little.

Unlike my fellow BookFayce sufferer, I have managed to stop myself from stress-buying… anything.  Not just guitar gear, but anything.  The only thing I’ve spent money on since the quarantini kicked off is food and one tank of gas in the Kia.  That’s it.

My thinking is simple.  If we don’t spend any money during the quarantininess, I should be able to afford a new Les Paul once it’s all over.  If it lasts another month or so I’ll be able to afford one of those sweet 2019 Les Paul Standards (with the gold finish because I’ve always wanted a gold top).  If it lasts through the Spring, like many people believe it will, I’ll be able to afford a nice late 60’s Les Paul Custom, in black, of course.  If it lasts into next year… well… with that much money saved we can start looking at something from the late ’50’s.  Probably not a Burst (capital B) but maybe a ’56 or a ’57?  Maybe a ’59 junior?  Sky’s the limit, kids!

 

I Don’t Have the Tools

I had a bad morning.  I was all emotional and messed up and stuff.  Two really awful night’s sleep in a row put me in a pretty screwy state of mind.  Before I fell into my personal little black hole I was talking to Jen about things we can do to keep our heads.  Seems ironic now.  I said that I need to try and give myself the illusion of control over our crummy situation and one of the ways I can do that is to try and be creative.  I’m going to keep trying to write and record terrible songs until it’s all over.  Of course I had the opportunity to work on music this morning but did I?  No.  Bad day.

March is almost over.  I want to do another 10 songs in April.  My tiny little brain wants to change the March process up (guitar straight into an amp, like some kind of neanderthal) by allowing one pedal.  My little Fuzz Face mini.  I have heard that a Fuzz Face circuit is really simple.  What, thought me, if I gave myself another project and finally built a pedal of my own?  There are companies that will sell you kits with all the parts you need and you just have to assemble it all.  I was so going to do it.  Then I realized I don’t own a soldering iron.  Or solder.  Or literally any tool required to build a circuit board.  Damn it.  I guess we’ll punt on this until after the COVID-19 gives us our lives back.

I did go looking for youtube videos showing people building fuzz pedals.  There are a couple, but nothing really like what I want to see.  Instead I found an episode of That Pedal Show from 2015.  I’ve never watched this one, but they compare a few different Fuzz Face pedals.

Let this video kill off 11-12 minutes worth of your coronavirus exile.

Thursday Night Music

The March 2020 Music Album in a Month RPMarch thing whatever it’s called made progress tonight.  Two of the four rhythm guitar free songs now have rhythm guitar.  I played my SG tonight instead of my Les Paul.  I don’t know why.  It means I have SG Hipstamatic pics to post though.

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Shake to Shuffle rides again.

Yesterday’s Music

Here are the two songs I finished recording yesterday.  I mixed them this morning.  I bent my low-fi idea a little and put some more effects onto some of the tracks than I was planning on, but it’s still pretty simplistic.  No doubling anywhere (though there are more vocal harmonies than I was planning to do.  I have a hard time not putting harmonies into choruses).

And just for schnitzengiggles (we watched Beerfest last night) does wordpress.com recognize hearthis.at sets yet?

DOOOD!  IT RECOGNIZED THE SET!  (at least it did in preview mode, let’s publish the post and see what happens)

Addendum: The playlist displays, but it doesn’t seem to play anything but the first track.  That could be my browser though.

I’m a Terrible Musician

I finished two of my March Music songs today.  Everything’s done but the final mix.  I wrote two songs worth of melodies and lyrics, and then recorded two songs worth of vocals and lead guitars.

Given that these are the first two songs I’ve brought along this far this month it might be safe to assume they are my favorites of all of the things currently in progress (there are eight songs so far) and you would be correct.

After today’s contributions though, these are now officially the two worst songs I’ve ever written, the two worst vocal performances I’ve ever recorded, and the two worst guitar performances I’ve ever recorded.

I suck.

I tried to make myself feel better by going a little nutty with Hipstamatic.  Shake to Shuffle didn’t shake my current musical sucking.

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Incentive

I’ve been thinking about it.  Sometimes Americans are able to do the right thing.  Other times, not so much.  Maybe if we bribe America they will not be stupid regarding this whole COVID-19 mess.

How about when it’s all over we all get a Les Paul.  What do you say?  Everyone gets a shiny new Les Paul.  Some people have a weird thing about Gibson, so they can get a boutique copy that’s really sweet.  Most of us though will get a perfect sounding, beautifully built 50’s spec Les Paul Standard.  Of course, because this was my idea I’ll get an actual 1959 Les Paul Standard.  A nice burst with a really good flame top that’s all faded to gold the way the good ones all did.

I think that’s a good plan.

Guitars and Statistics

I doubled the number of songs with guitars recorded tonight.  I had three, now I have six.  They all suck and my attempts at keeping things low-fi are making them suck even more.  What can you do, right?  Two of the songs are in 7/8 time because prog, and two are in 3/4 time because… I don’t know, waltz maybe?

So… COVID-19.  WHO has declared it a pandemic.  Duh.  It is pretty global now so, yeah.  Pandemic.  Dig it?

I’m seeing all sorts of people calling the responses so far “panic”.  They don’t seem to get it.  It’s not panic, it’s resource management.  Every single infectious disease expert is telling us to put “social distance” into practice.  Why?  Resource management.  There are going to be x number of infections, based on the data we have from China, and y percent of those infections will require hospital care.  Finally, we only have z number of hospital beds available at any given time.  y is less than x, but y is greater than z.  Dig?  Statistically speaking there will be more infections requiring hospital care than there are hospital beds to put them in.  If we put “social distance” (I fucking LOVE that term and I’ve been practicing it since I was about four years old) into place then we spread out the infections over time, thus reducing the number of cases requiring hospital care at any one time so that suddenly y is less than z.  Boom.  Problem if not solved then partially alleviated.  Statistics, babie.  Stats for the win.

Read this from the New York Times: Flattening the Coronavirus Curve

Read this from WBUR: Harvard Global Health Expert: Mass. Hospitals Face Capacity Problem If Coronavirus Cases Spike Quickly

Strat… Delay

I brought my Fender Stratocaster up from the cellar this morning.  I cleaned everything out of the case (except for the whammy bar and a couple of strap locks that were there when I bought the guitar six years ago).  I plugged it into the little Bassbreaker and made sure everything worked.  The volume pot is a touch on the scratchy side, other than that it’s top notch.

Then I put it back in the case and leaned it against the wall and left it there.  I was going to take it to Guitar Center tonight after work to see how much they would give me for a trade in.  I paid $700.  Strangely, $700 is about the retail price for a Vox AC15 amplifier.  Weird how that works out, eh?  I know Guitar Center has a reputation for being stingy about trades and if they offer anything less than $700 I’ll take it somewhere else.  Maybe ebay.  Maybe reverb.  I’m not taking a loss on this baby.  No way.

I’m not doing any of that tonight though.  I’ll take a look at the world situation on Saturday and see how things look.  This is the very definition of non-essential.  It can wait.

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