Tag: Guitar

Wah Pedals

I search for boutique wah pedals and get link after link telling me I have to get my hands on the wah pedal I dumped into my closet when that frat boy fucker in California went on his idiotic racist rant following the George Floyd protests and implied that people who put more value on a human being’s life than on their neighbor’s windows are both unworthy of his products and incapable of pissing while standing up. Fuck that guy. I’m never using his pedals again, I don’t care how amazing his fucking deluxe wah pedal is.

End rant.

So where do I go? There is Xotic and Jam Pedals. They are both supposed to have excellent wahs. One company that I know nothing about keeps popping up too. Real McCoy Custom, or RMC. they seem to have a ton of models, all with stellar reviews, but only a few are in production. Is that info correct? They are pretty expensive and there aren’t a whole lot of dealers (just one in Massachusetts).

I’m thinking when the time comes, this is probably where I want to go. The RMC10 reviews are all stellar, but I’m only seeing RMC11’s for sale around here.

One of these days.

Sleepy Red Head

Another less than great night of sleep last night. The data my Apple Watch collected actually looked okay, but coming on the heels of the previous night’s bad sleep it has left me feeling pretty sleepy and crummy today. I’m hoping to get to bed early tonight but I am pretty sure it ain’t happening. We’ll see.

I’m in a weird state right now where I have a few projects to work on and I keep letting them get in the way of each other. I start working on project A but my mind wanders to project B so I switch to that but my mind wanders to project C so I switch to that but my mind wanders to project A and so on. The end result is I don’t make progress on any of them. Blah.

Referencing back to the previous post, if you’re wondering about our neighborhood trash pick up, they still haven’t arrived… though I do hear the sound of trucks in the distance. Maybe soon?

Finally, as my lunch break comes to an end, I return to the topic of guitar gear, what with guitar and cats being the two most common topics of this particular page (are they? I should do some research into that… but I won’t), I am starting to think it might be time to start searching the youtubes for a new wah pedal. I’m starting to want to upgrade up from my Crybaby. Hello, rabbit hole. Allow me to fall down you for a while.

Okay, back to work, red head!

New Song

National Solo Album Month needs to come up with a better name because I’m not writing that dumb acronym again. I’m just calling it November Music, m’kay? That works for me.

Three songs down. I don’t have a count in mind as a goal, I just want to hit the challenge mandated minimum of 29 minutes and however many seconds. Eight seconds? I don’t remember. Let’s round it up to 30 minutes. This puts me at 15 minutes, but one of the songs is disgustingly terrible so if I drop it I’m at 11 minutes. The songs tend to be running a little long this month so I am still in good shape.

I want to like this one. I am not sold yet, but I am hoping it turns out to be track one and kind of the signature song for the month… I just don’t know if I pulled it off.

I’ve been listening to a lot of prog lately… it shows.

Sunday Tunes

I worked on some November music today. I started a new song, which is just rhythm guitars and a drum loop so far, added rhythm guitar to one song and leads to two. There’s one semi-proggie song in the pipeline that I am hoping will come out okay when it’s done. Fingers crossed, right?

The Good and the Terrible

I mixed two songs tonight. I was only planning on doing one. I had a song from the November list that was ready to finish off so I was going to take care of it, upload it to alonetone, maybe add it to a post here, and then go to bed.

Unfortunately it is the worst dog shit of a song that has ever come out of my untalented brain. It just sucked so bad. What was I thinking? What is wrong with me?

So rather than go to bed with that awful taste in my ears, and also with that song at the top of my alonetone queue, I decided to finish off a song for the new round or re-recordings. The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project and all that.

I feel a smidge better about my place in the universe after working on this one. Consider my ears’ palette cleansed.

Bang your head, kids.

New Song for November

Yesterday I posted a new recording of a song from this past summer. Tonight I post a brand new song for the November National Solo Album Month project. Caution: This one has keyboards. I buried them in the mix to be safe though so I think we’re okay.

Quarantine Tunes Again

I was going to save up all of the re-recordings I’ve been working on and share them all at once rather than piecemeal as I finish them, but screw it here’s the first new mix. It’s a tad faster than the original from July, and it’s got a key change at the end now.

How I Spent My Day Off

Here’s what I did on my day off:

  • Car music
  • Sat at my computer watching Futurama on Hulu.
  • Ended today’s fast 90 minutes early
  • Played some guitar
  • Sat at my computer watching Futurama on Hulu.
  • Mixed a song.
  • Cooked dinner.

This list is accurate but it fails to emphasize just how much Futurama was watched.

I mean… I watched a shit-load of Futurama today.

Nutube: Totally Not a Gimmick

I had a little window of time in between Jen’s scheduled meetings so I snuck in some guitar tracking for the November tunes. I put rhythm on song number five and leads on songs one and two.

I am still sticking to the plan to use my little Vox MV50 Clean amp for all of November, even though it’s sitting on top of a Fender Bassbreaker 15 which at it’s worst sounds about 10000000000 times better than the little Vox dude. Still, Nutubes… The MV50’s preamp section runs on a Nutube and Nutubes totally are not a gimmick. Right? Right? I mean there are only two (maybe three, but I’m pretty sure it’s down to two) factories on Earth that still make actual vacuum tubes and if the guitar community wants to continue having that glorious tube amp sound we have to prepare ourselves for the day that we can’t get the real thing anymore… and Nutubes are as close as we can get at the moment, assuming they are not a total gimmick that is just a façade in front of a regular plain old solid state amp. So many questions… so very many questions.

Anyway, the little MV50’s are at least cute to look at, and the Nutubes give off a warm glowing blue warming glow…

Also, playing anything gives me an excuse for lame, faux artsy guitar pics. Today we made use of the iPhone’s portrait mode. Like a telephone photography boss.

Plans for Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Veterans Day and I have the day off. How should I spend the day?

Car music in the morning is a must. I have three November songs ready and three re-recordings ready too. There is zero chance I’ll get to them all, but I should be able to make a dent at least.

There are guitar parts to record too. Jen is working so I’ll try to work around her meetings schedule, but I’ll get some stuff down, definitely.

What else? Should I spontaneously drive to Vermont and take the kids to lunch again? No, but I wish!

I’ll think of some more stuff too, but this makes a decent start.

Rock on.