Oh yeah, I will play better at tomorrow’s practice. I will. Oh I will.
I’m taking a different guitar. Not because the 335 had anything to do with last week’s trouble, but because karma and the cosmos and shit. Yeah, Robbo’s on the desperate side.
And while I still haven’t shelled out the $1500 for a Fender Twin Reverb, I do still have a software simulation of a Fender Twin Reverb.
The band rehearsed tonight. The first weeknight practice since I joined. It was weird having to deal with traffic to get there. That has never happened. We snuck this one in because one of the guys is going on a business trip for a few weeks. It’s tough getting all of us together this summer. Hopefully things will be easier in the fall.
I took my laptop and a couple of my new microphones with me, but traffic made me a tad late so I didn’t take the time to set them up to make a recording. I settled for my iPhone instead. I haven’t listened to it yet. I’ll edit it tomorrow and share anything that sounds decent. It’s going to sound like swill, but it’s always worth listening back. I’ll get the whole room mic’d up soon, but not until next month at least.
I’ve known people who played guitar who insisted that certain songs should be played on a specific guitar. Usually that sort of thing comes down to genre. People feel that if you play a hollow bodied guitar you should be playing jazz or blues. If you play a souped up Kramer strat copy with active pick ups you should be playing metal. I call bullshit on that. I’ve seen plenty of heavy rock gods playing hollow guitars, and I’ve heard a good amount of smooth jazz coming from 80’s era shred machines. No, your choice of guitar comes down to two things, tone and feel. Genre is irrelevant. If you like the way it feels in your hand, and you like the sound you get out of it, then it’s yours. This discussion isn’t about that.
Years ago, while playing in a band with Mike the bass player and Maria the drummer, I graduated to the upper echelon of guitar skill by finally being able to fudge my way through the opening riff to “The Spirit of Radio” by Rush. You know, that sick speed demon little bastard that all guitar players dream of being able to play when they first start out? I could get through it, though not cleanly and… well… not well. Yeah, I sounded like crap, but at least I could get through it and have it be recognizable. That was when I only owned one guitar, my Les Paul. A couple of years later I bought my ES-335 and I couldn’t play that riff. I attributed it to the action, as it’s a touch higher on the 335 and I thought that was the source of my problem. After that, I never really worried about it again.
Now in the new band there is one wicked easy 80’s song we do by the Greg Kihn Band. Dude, I really hope I’m spelling your name right. During my first practice with the band I had the ES-335 (Mike the bass player said that seeing me with that guitar instead of the Les Paul was just wrong. I don’t disagree, but I do love that semi-hollow little sucker). I played through the Greg Kihn song pretty well. Not great. Not terribly clean, but okay. After a few weeks I decided that Les Paul was my #1. The upside of the 335 was the ease in producing quality, usable feedback. The downside being that the intonation on the low E string is a little funny, and one song we do has a little chromatic scale that sounds out of tune even when the guitar is tuned up correctly. When playing the Les Paul, for some reason that stupid little Greg Kihn riff just kills me. I mess it up constantly. Really, I feel so embarrassed playing that damn song at rehearsal. Seriously, every time we play it I expect them to fire me. After that first practice I have never been able to do it well.
After the sad passing of BB King last week I decided that I would honor his memory in a way that no one on Earth would ever recognize, realize, or care about. I decided to play my 335 at this week’s practice. I put knew strings on it and then played through my nemesis, the Greg Kihn song, for a solid 20-30 minutes. Just playing that stupid four bar phrase over and over…
And I got it just about right every time.
That’s kind of peculiar.
Then it hit me. One of my problems was that I loop my thumb around to play the first fret on the low e-string. The neck on the Les Paul seems to be wider than on the ES-335. Is that the reason? Is that the problem? Is that why I can get through it pretty well on one guitar but constantly blow it on the other? We played it at rehearsal with me using the 335 and it went pretty well. I think I might be on to something. I think the ES-335 might have to make an appearance at every show we do. Because of the iffy intonation, I don’t think it can supplant the Les Paul as the #1, but maybe it means that I don’t have a single #1, I have two of them. Maybe we have to make sure the Aerosmith song (I hate them so) and the Greg Kihn song cannot be played in the same set, so a Kihn set can be played on one guitar, and an aerosmith set (I hereby refuse to capitalize their name) can be played on a different guitar.
And the Stratocaster stays at home and only gets used on home demos.
Last night’s band practice was… different. In a few ways.
It was the first rehearsal I’ve been to that was short a member. Greg the singer couldn’t make it. Kevin the drummer, Mike the bass player, and I decided to get together anyway.
Gear wise, I brought my Strat and… well… it’s wimpy. I ended up playing through my lead channel all night because the guitar just lacks balls. I may need to come up with some sort of alternate signal path specific to the Strat. Maybe a distortion pedal or something to beef thing up. The instant I had that thought I realized that I’ve been whining about my Les Paul being wimpy since I put in the Classic ’57 pick ups. Might a crunchy stomp box at the front of the chain solve that problem too? Probably not, but it’s cheaper and easier than buying and installing a new pick up.
Anyway, that’s not what felt different last night. Neither is the missing singer, really. What was different was that we played very hard. There was a level of intensity that hadn’t been there before and frankly it wore all of us out quickly. It took less than an hour for us to start feeling out of gas. I think there was less discussion between songs, and therefore less time to recover before moving to the next thing. Last night it was a case of someone throwing out a title, we crank through it, then as soon as we finish someone throws out another title. During the second hour we actually took a break. It was a five minute break that, thanks to talking about Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, turned into 20 minutes. It was necessary. It let us finish off the night with a bang.
For me personally, I have to make some big changes to the way I do things, and I’m not talking about gear (for once). It goes without saying that I need to practice more. The other guys have been playing these songs for years now and have them down cold. If they only practice as a warm up for rehearsal then that’s fine for them. Not for me. I take notes on the songs as I learn them and I am completely dependent on those notes. I can’t make it through without checking the cheat sheets and that has to stop right now. Practice will solve that issue.
More concerning, I am not physically capable of just setting up and playing my tail off for two hours. My hands cramp, my fingers get too stiff to play, my wrists hurt, my shoulders hurt, my arms hurt, my back hurts, my legs hurt. A solid two hour rehearsal is almost too much for me. I know I need to exercise more. That goes along with dieting and should result in improvement with my legs and my back. For my arms and my shoulders, I think the fix is to practice standing up. I am into the habit these days of sitting when I practice. I am not Robert Fripp so I should be standing.
My hands though… that is what scares me. I think I’ve mentioned it here before. I don’t want to get to the point where the pain in my hands exceeds the enjoyment I get from playing. I started doing a little research on things I can do to strengthen my hands and my fingers. Two things come up repeatedly. One is squeezing a tennis ball, or something similar. I should be doing that every day. When I’m sitting in front of the tube I should have one of those squeeze grip things in my hand. They actually make one geared for guitar players that lets you squeeze with each individual finger. I might have to get one of those. The other thing I need to do is stretch before I play. I was starting to get into the habit of doing just that when I joined Break Even for exactly the same reasons. A few songs into practice and my hands would be killing me. I need to get back to doing that. My research has shown me a few things to try. I need to never not do those exercises before playing again. I need to make it as much a part of my routine as tuning up. I very much want this band to start working in public again. That means I have to be ready to play hard for four hours a night. As it stands right now I don’t think I can do that. I will get there though. Definitely. Count on it.
I got home from some errands at about 2:00ish today. I went downstairs and took out my Fender. I changed the strings, then noodled around a little. I then played through a bunch of songs that the band has been working on. I hit most of them twice. At 4:00 I stopped and cooked dinner. After dinner I went to band practice. At some point, a little after 7:00, I hit the wall. My left hand stopped working for a little while. I couldn’t get my ring and pinkie fingers to do what I wanted them to do. They just cramped up and told me to go screw. We took five and after that I was better, but the communication between the brain and each hand was off for the rest of the practice. I felt seriously uncoordinated.
That, my friends, is why musicians practice. It’s not just to learn their parts. It is also to build up stamina. There is a tipping point where your skill level disappears. Back in 2005 I could play four 45 minute sets over four hours and not break down. There was a time in the early 90’s where I could probably play for 10 hours or more without a break and not lose it. Today? I probably crash after 45-60 minutes if I’m lucky. I must practice more. I must.
So how did the Strat do tonight? The single coil pickups didn’t make nearly as much noise as I feared they would. They also didn’t feedback. My amp was on the floor. I think if I had it on a stand, a couple of feet higher, it would have been easier. All in all though, the sound of the new guitar was very… stratty. Thin and brittle, like Strats often are. When it comes right down to it, I think the ES-335 is still my #1 guitar. Next practice I’ll bring the Les Paul Custom and see how that feels. It does seem though, that I am still a Gibson man through and through.
Inside the Red Head's Head 