I started the day with eight songs, only three of which had guitar parts recorded. I am now up to nine songs, all of which have guitar parts recorded. I have literally (temporarily) run out of songs! I guess it’s time to both add more songs and write some lyrics. Yikes!
I did the two different guitars thing on the first few songs today, but got tired of switching so I just stuck with the Les Paul for the last few.
I picked off two songs and then had to break for lunch. So I figure I’ll throw out a couple of pics. It is #GibSunday over on Instagram after all.
My 18 year old self laughs at me when I say that we slept late today and got up at 8:00am. However, we slept late and got up at 8:00am. I slept okay after my second fully caffeine free day. I woke up a few times but my numbers looked good. The heart rate dip was really good and the restful sleep percentage was the same as the first day. I feel okay today.
Not a lot on the agenda today. Hopefully lots of guitar playing. Jen’s working on a project so I want to stay out of her way. I have five songs that need rhythm guitars. I should see if I can add to that list too. I would like to get to it, but I find myself distracted by a video on YouTube where Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick shows off some highlights from his massively gigantic guitar collection. It’s only an hour and eighteen minutes. I wonder if they’ll do a video like this with Steve Howe.
One of my gimmicky ideas for this year’s RPM Challenge is to double the rhythm guitar tracks with two different guitars. I thought of that a few weeks ago but figured I probably wouldn’t go through with it. Tonight? The first time I sat down to record guitars? I did it. One guitar part panned hard left, another panned hard right. I always do that. This time, instead of using the same guitar on both tracks…
You’ll hear the Les Paul coming out of your left speaker:
and the SG coming out of your right speaker:
Fun, huh? I only got through three songs, but that’s a good start.
The YouTubes and I have been goofing around looking at reviews of grotesquely expensive boutique guitar amplifiers. There is a lot of dazzling stuff out there. One sticks out to me for purely family reasons.
I had never heard of Hook amplifiers before this evening. Now that I have, I want one. Drool and all that. The R20, on the demoes I’ve heard tonight, sounds ridiculous. Just plain sick.
Oh yeah, the family reason for wanting one? The company is Dutch! I can ask Bellana to bring one home for me. The combo is only about 2,300 Euros. Consider it done, yeah?
New string night.
Prior to the 50th birthday super gift, a new Les Paul Standard 50s, I was thinking about the future, post Covid and post college bills, where I was going to modify the shit out of my ’78 Les Paul Custom. I was going to go full blown boutique, cork sniffing snob on it. I was going to find the best sounding clones of original Gibson PAFs possible and put them in, and replace the wiring with a 50’s style harness and basically try and make my Custom as 1950’s-ish as possible.
Now that I have the shiny, wonderful new Standard, I’ve changed my plans to updating the holy hell out of the Standard and leave the Custom alone (except for the frets… and maybe the wiring harness). The question then is, do I try to turn my guitar into a modern knock off of a Les Paul from the late 50’s, or do I go for a modern knock off of Peter Green’s Les Paul?
I don’t know. What if I go for Peter Green and decided I don’t like the out of phase stuff? boutique, cork sniffing pick ups are expensive. I don’t want to have to play this game twice.
So we’re being goofy on the youtubes today, checking out some pick ups. I am going to say without a doubt that I will not be buying a set of Monty’s Guitars Bethnal Green PAFs. Partly because they don’t seem to be available yet, and also partly because the website makes me think they won’t be available in the US. That’s okay though. Let’s file this under research and Gear Acquisition Syndrome and just being a totally unabashed guitar nerd.
ADDENDUM: So I wrote the post while watching the video for the first time. After I published the video mentioned that you can buy them from Andertons if you’re in the US, and it’s not that they aren’t available yet, it’s that they are making them in small quantities and running out.
I’ve done a lot of musically nerdy things in my life. I’m a Rush fanatic so I sort of goes without saying.
Years ago I made a playlist on Alonetone that held songs I wanted to re-record. Before I started actually finishing songs I just kept adding songs to the playlist. When I started finishing songs I added those to the playlist and matched them up with the originals. Now that it’s done there are 114 songs on the playlist.
Through all of this time I kept the playlist private. Today I made it public. Good lord what a nerd I am.
At last, The Great 2015 Re-recording project has come to an end. Volume six has 11 songs. For a while there I thought it was going to have 12 or 13, but enough’s enough, right? Maybe at some point in the future I’ll pull together another batch of slightly better than shitty songs, but for now let’s consider this nearly seven year old exercise complete.
The last two songs include one that’s basically meh:
And one that might be okay in more capable hands:
I still have to get volumes five and six onto bandcamp, but for now I think I am just going to rewatch season two of The Mandalorian because this is the way.
Inside the Red Head's Head 