Tag: Music

Guitar Pain

I hid away in the cellar tonight playing the guitar. I came up with something new for the Record Every Month thing for January. I came up with something last night but tonight’s is probably a little better. I’ll probably finish them both. The thing I worked out tonight was really hurting my left hand. Lots of cramping (arthritis, maybe?) painful pain.

Next I worked on a re-recording. I hadn’t done anything accept setup the GarageBand file. It’s the same file I used when I wrote the song last February. I pulled apart the mix and left one rhythm guitar track and one vocal track as guides. Normally I replace the MIDI tracks, drums and bass, before I replace the guitars, but this time I started with guitar. Why? Because I just didn’t want to stop recording tonight, that’s all.

I probably should have picked something easier because this particular re-recording took my already hurting left hand and amplified the pain by a factor of 50. Damn, was I hurting. I got through everything, though I am not entirely sure I’m happy with it. I’ll have to live with it for a few days before I decide if I want to do it again.

My hand is still a little sore, but mostly I am feeling better. It was really hurting tonight. I don’t like when that happens. I don’t like it at all.

For the record, here is the already super messy desk I’ve been using, complete with the Bruins game (second intermission, leading 3-2 over New Jersey) on my iPad.

Watch an Artist Work

I post about the Youtube show That Pedal Show a lot. I’ve learned a lot from watching those two guys goof off, but their latest posts are something that is practically unbelievable.

A couple of years ago the two hosts took their #1 guitars to a Luthier who did various maintenance on them (mostly dealing with frets). One of the hosts mentioned that this particular Luthier makes his favorite acoustic guitar and he was going to bite the bullet and order one. The build takes a couple of months and the wait list is a couple of years. Yikes!

Over the last four days the show has posted one video per day (there will be a fifth tomorrow) that is just watching this Luthier build the host’s guitar from scratch. He starts with a couple of thin planks of wood and goes from there.

It is freakin’ FASCINATING. I mean, I knew it was an art, but the guy is shaping the guitar’s neck with a friggin’ chisel! A CHISEL! It’s just amazing to watch.

I’ll post the first video (number one of five) and links to the next three. When I get a chance to watch the fifth video (hopefully tomorrow) I’ll post that one too. The whole thing is going to be about five hours long, but it is just ridiculously satisfying to watch. Give it a try, a bit at a time. It’s so worth it.

Video number 2/5.
Video number 3/5.
Video number 4/5.

Everything Works

I have used the cellar music nook. I put rhythm tracks on two songs, leads on one, and started noodling some changes for one more.

The new wah and vibe pedals are awesome.

I only used the big Fender amp and only on the lower watt channel, but the only thing that wasn’t sounding sweet was the ugly paneling on the walls, babie.

Back to Work

Well… I knew I couldn’t fight it. I punched into work a little before 9:00am and stuck the final nail in this year’s holiday season’s coffin. It’s over, folks.

The kids are still here. I figured they would have left by now so I am pretty happy. They did both sleep really late though so that might be the reason. I don’t care. I love it when they are here. Even when I am working and can’t go hang out with them.

Today has been really quiet overall. Not much to write about. The Bruins played twice over the weekend, finally coming back from the long Covid-19 shut down. I watched a few minutes of Saturday’s game against Buffalo and the little that I saw looked pretty awful. They straightened it out and won in overtime. I didn’t see yesterday’s game against Detroit but they spanked them pretty thoroughly. Here’s hoping that’s a sign of good things to come.

Major League Baseball is still locked out. I keep seeing stories tweeted out from all sorts of sources talking about the things such and such a team needs to do to improve and yadda yadda blah. I haven’t been reading the articles but I am really hoping they all boil down to something along the lines of “don’t be locked out.” Everything else is sort of superfluous* until that happens.

What else, what else… did I mention that all of my workout time that my Apple Watch tracked last week was on the exercise bike? I’m pretty sure that was a first for me. Does it mean anything? No. No, it does not.

I haven’t given much thought to the RPM Challenge this year. The only thing that’s come to me for something different to do is to use two guitars. I always double track my rhythm guitar parts. What if, instead of just tracking everything twice, I use a different guitar for each take? My Les Paul Standard would be playing in one ear, and my SG would be playing in the other. What about that for goofy nerdness? Maybe even use a different amplifier with each guitar. I’m thinking about it.

Okay, 2:00pm approaches. Time to wrap up this lunch break post.

*I had to pay $0.10 to use that word.

Guitar Nook II Yet Again

I should add a poll asking if readers care about any of this stuff but I won’t so neener neener and stuff.

I haven’t really dug into the Lizardfish gig bag since I packed up after the last gig. When I set up the original recording nook in the bedroom I bought new mics and cables thinking the gig bag would soon go back to Mike the Bass Players house. Here we are 23 months later and I really don’t remember what I have available.

Well, lots. Three guitar cables came out of the bag (one to go from guitar to the board, another to go from board to amp, and one more for luck). Also two mic cables (one for each amp, assuming I go back to a two amp set up) and three microphones. Two Shure SM57’s (one pictured) and one Shure SM58. I think the 58 is dead though. I need to run a test.

In other words, more than enough stuff to have a permanent working space in the cellar without stealing anything from the permanent working space in the bedroom.

Why do I need two working spaces? I have no idea at all. I just feel the need for two right now.

I still haven’t set anything up yet. Tomorrow… maybe.

The Big Board

The new pedals are hooked into the big band pedal board. I haven’t Velcro’d them down yet. I want to play through them first. That might not happen until tomorrow though.

I am itching to take them for a spin. Soon, Robert. Soon.

Messing with Tidal

After reading a little about how much artists make per stream from the various streaming services I started messing with Tidal. Jen and I had an account when they first launched but, despite the focus on audio quality, it wasn’t quite up to speed enough to make us want to switch away from Apple Music.

They have a free account now, and I don’t think they did before. What the hell, let’s play with the free account. Spotify’s free account is obnoxiously add heavy, might this be a little better? I know artists get a bigger cut (though it’s still insultingly small) so let’s try it.

I created a new account through the iPhone app. I played around with UI mostly, not really getting into the music at first. That was two days ago. Yesterday near the end of the work day I started listening through the web app. I picked one artist, Robert Cray, and shuffled the catalog. I got three plays before an add. I guess all of their adds are actually adds for Tidal’s paid services rather than paid commercials, but whatever. It’s still an add. After the first 30 second add I heard two songs before the next add. Then I heard one song before the next add. Oh for crying out loud.

Today I tried changing my password. I used something generic to start with but I wanted to change it to something more random. I opened up my account settings and changed the password to something my password manager generated for me. It seemed to work. I then went into the iPhone app to re-log in and it told me my password was incorrect. Sigh. It then took me about four tries to get my password reset. The web app kept acting like I was actually signed in. It wasn’t kicking me out even though I had changed my password, had the password change fail, and was clearly logged out. The iPhone app kept me logged out fine.

Finally I got through the password reset process and tried to log in and the log in failed. Not because of the password, it just failed and said to try again later. I tried a private browser window and it told me I was blocked. Come on, guys. What the hell. I went back to a normal browser window and it finally worked. What an ordeal.

I picked one of their auto-generated user-specific playlist things and the first song it gave me was Pekin Spring by Mission of Burma, so I guess that was Tidal’s way of appologizing.

So far I have gone three plays, a 29 second add, now another three plays. This time though, the second of the three songs was an artist I don’t like so I clicked the little block icon and it skipped to the third song. Does Tidal have a limit on the number of songs you can skip like some of the others do? I don’t know. Does blocking an artist from an auto-generated playlist count as a skip? Did I just break the internet?

We’ll see.

After the third song I got another 29 second add. I have to go do something else soon, so I’m going to have to stop this dumb experiment, but the next song is Mission of Burma again, That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate. Arguably the best 2:05 in rock history.

Another thing to mention for the web app. Coming out of commercials it has a REALLY hard time getting into the next song. It plays the first fraction of a second a few times before righting the ship and fixing itself. When I skipped a track it was even worse. It did the same thing when I was listening yesterday. I think we need to submit a bug for that one, kids.

Okay. Burma’s ending. Time to go find the elusive glass punch bowl that is somewhere in the cellar. Talk to you later, New Years kids.

Pre New Years Eve thoughts

We are less than 90 minutes away from December 31, 2021. While I am strongly looking forward to telling 2021 to fuck off and die, I’ve also started thinking about how to celebrate the end of this dirtbag year and the start of the next year.

I’ve started thinking, but I got nuttin’.

We are going to have the first ever full family Covid test tomorrow. Nana and Papa are coming over for the delayed Christmas Eve and we need to ensure everyone is safe. Rapid tests for all and for all a negative rapid test!

I am going to set up the alternate music nook in the cellar tomorrow. I want to use my new pedals with my 18 watt amp and my KTR overdrive pedal and the rest of the band pedal board, and I also don’t want to mess with the cool setup I have in the bedroom. So two nooks it is! I’ve got a couple of tunes ready to record so I’ll use them to test drive the set up. I’m not sure I’ll actually get to play tomorrow but it is a long weekend so fingers crossed.

As for traditional stuff like New Years resolutions, I don’t have anything yet. I might not at all, but if I do I’ll share it soon enough.

Until then, happy New Years Eve Eve! What’s left of it.