Random ramblings about music I make and enjoy. I play some guitar and sing a bit. I record using Linux. I may sometimes blog about other stuff that interests me, but that's more likely to be direct to G+
It's been a while since I updated this blog. There just never seems to be enough time. I'm trying to play as much guitar as I can. That includes a weekly acoustic session and a monthly open mic at the local pub. That gets me playing, but I need to find time to work on songs in between.
The big news is that I finally had a custom guitar built by Steve Benford. It's a modified Telecaster with a few special features. I'm really enjoying it and it was a pleasure working with Steve even though it was all via email.
I cover some of the details of this guitar in my latest podcast. It's taken me about a year to get around to episode 3, but I wanted to keep it going and will try to do more this year. This episode includes the latest song I wrote. I'm hoping some friends will contribute so it's not just me rambling on.
I intend to continue with writing songs. I have a few ideas I need to work on.
A while back I noticed that I had a lot of guitar plectrums around the place. I only use a few of them, but they do look nice, so I have stuck them along my shelf above the desk. There's about 30 of them now. This latest piece was contributed by someone at the acoustic session. The Foo Fighters ones came as a set bought at the Milton Keynes gig last year.
I've started a group on Tsu for people to swap picks. It's yet to really take off. I have offered to send people money from my Tsu bank to cover their costs and will also donate to charity. I have built up a fair bit there and want to make use of it.
I've also been doing a little bit of guitar repair on behalf of a friend who runs a charity shop. Some of the guitars that get donated need a bit of work. It's fairly basic stuff like stringing them up, replacing bridges and tuner buttons. All useful experience.
I'll try to update this blog more often. A few comments may encourage me ;)
Social media is full of people doing challenges. Sometimes these are for charity or to promote some cause, but some are just a form of motivation to achieve a personal goal. Some of my friends on Tsu were doing some for September and I decided to do a musical one to get me playing more guitar. I've done a few music videos before, but I have been wanting to do them more often.
My target was to do at least ten of these during the month. I wasn't going to worry too much about production quality as I'm concentrating more on just playing these days.
About a Girl is a song I've played a lot at pub sessions, so it was an easy one to kick things off. Recorded in the bedroom on my phone as my kids take over the study these days.
Another personal goal has been to write my own songs. I've had a few ideas, but never seem to get around to developing them. I wrote a post on Tsu a while back that ended with the line "I came for the money, but stayed for the people". That seemed to resonate with people and I was inspired to try writing a song around it. It quickly evolved into The Tsu Song. I used a fairly standard set of chords to keep it simple and got it recorded. That took longer than planned as I kept messing up. Even this take went wrong, hence the cussing at the end.
Skullcrusher Mountain is a song by the great Jonathan Coulton that I enjoy playing. This was a spur of the moment recording as I wanted to get another one done that day after having issues doing another. Another bedroom phone recording.
There are lots of on-line guitar tutorials around these days. They are a great way to get you playing something new. I like this series on Premier Guitar. They have a neat web player than show the music as it plays the backing track. I'd just been to see Foo Fighters, so this seemed appropriate. I had tried it before.
Sometimes I'll be listening to music and think 'I could play that!' Holiday by Green Day was one such song. It is fairly easy, but I looked up some tab anyway to speed things up. My daughter plays bass and had played this, so we decided to do it together.
I was sharing my posts about this challenge with some fellow Tsuvians. I put out a call for requests and someone asked for some Billy Joel. Still Rock and Roll to me is an old favourite of mine. It didn't take long to learn.
A lot of my early guitar experience was having classical lessons. I don't play it much these days, but I still try it now and again. I find it a completely different challenge to playing rock. This is a piece called Alman from my old Grade 5 book.
On a trip into London I decided to treat myself to some new effects pedal. I don't have very many and want to learn how to use them properly. I got an overdrive and a wah. I decided to jam a little demo to show them off.
Many years ago, before we had a web full of cool free guitar lessons I used to buy guitar magazines. Some of these came with a CD of backing tracks. One of those was for the Paul Weller song Sunflower. I'd tried it a few times, but never recorded it before. I used my new overdrive on this.
The final song of the month was Porcupine Tree's Lazarus. This was done the day I saw the band's Steven Wilson play an amazing show at the Royal Albert Hall. He did this song, but much better of course. He also played another, Open Car, that I've also covered.
I consider this challenge to be a success. I had hoped to do more new songs, but limited time prevented that. However, I did write my first song! I'm thinking I should do another challenge that will involve writing more songs.
For October I'm challenging myself to just learn some more classic riffs to expand my musical vocabulary. There are certain tunes that every guitarist ought to be able to play, but that I just have never learned. I don't know if I will record these. We shall see.
Guitarists love gear. Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) is a common condition. Lots of people are on the quest for Ultimate Tone (whatever that may be). They talk about it on podcasts and have endless debates on forums. I personally have fairly limited experience of different gear. I've owned 2 electric guitars and sold one of them years ago. I've had a few cheap amplifiers, but am now fairly happy with my Roland Cube 80x and Belcat 20r valve amp. I've not had many effects pedals, but my Zoom G3X is doing the job for me now and giving me some experience of what I actually need.
Would I like more gear? Of course I would, but do I need it? I feel I have to justify any purchases, so most of what I have bought in the last few years has been to allow me to play in a band situation. Previously I played almost entirely at home and wasn't even recording. I'm hoping the current band will play some gigs next year. Come that day I could probably justify having another guitar as a back up and to give some more tonal options. I'll go into detail on that nearer the time.
So, why do people obsess so much over gear? We would all like to be better players, but it's easy to blame playing issues on the gear. The way I think of it is that most of our guitar heroes who grew up in the 50s and 60s had to learn with guitars and other equipment that we would consider pretty bad. In many cases they had to build it themselves or modify what they could find. Even when they could afford something better the options were limited and quality was probably a lot more variable than now. They just had to get on with it and made lots of amazing music.
Now you have the choice of hundreds of different guitars with huge ranges from each major manufacturer, thousands of effects pedals etc and at prices from pocket money to eye-watering. It's probably fairly hard to find anything being sold that is really bad as competition and mass production methods mean that quality is consistent. We are spoiled for choice and I think the excess of options leads to confusion and stress over making the wrong choice. Those are general problems in modern society. 1st world problems.
I could buy lots of cheap gear, but I'd rather save up for something special and I feel that I need to be a better player to justify having the good stuff. I believe that what I have is probably good enough for the performing and recording I want to do and I plan to invest time and money in playing. Having a family means there are other priorities when it comes to the budget.
I was actually thinking of starting a podcast that talks more about playing than gear. The much missed Six String Bliss had a good mix in that respect. I may look around for someone who would be up for co-hosting a show, but I'd like to have interviews with players of all levels. I've no experience of this sort of recording, but I have a few friends I could ask for advice.
By now most people have heard of the 10,000 hour theory that you need that much practice at anything to achieve success (or something like that). Malcolm Gladwell cites +The Beatles as an example as they put in a lot of time in Hamburg before they made it big. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have done the hours and still not made it as they didn't get lucky or perhaps they didn't practice the right things.
I've been playing guitar on and off for nearly 40 years and I'm not sure I've played for 10,000 hours yet. That equates to about 40 minutes per day, but I've had long periods where I didn't play much or just didn't progress much. I would play the same old songs rather than learning new ones. Back then you had to get books or magazines if you were not learning by ear. Now you can find a lesson for just about any song on-line. That's a facility I'm making a lot of use of.
These days I play for several hours a week rather than watching television as my evening relaxation. The obstacle to that is that I have two teenage children who also want to use the study/studio for playing music or games. I have to grab some time once they have been sent to bed and at weekends when they are all out doing stuff. I'm not logging my time, but wonder if I will ever get to 10,000 hours, if that even matters. I'm trying to apply myself to improving my playing using the lessons on the +ArtistWorksPaul Gilbert Rock Guitar course. I reckon that has done a lot of my technique since I started in January. I've had a dozen video responses from Paul where he has picked up on various issues to keep me on the right course. I'll get to see him on stage next month when Mr. Big play in London.
I've still playing with the blues/rock band. I have been doing the singing, but we have agreed that we need someone with a better voice. We're in the process of auditioning people. We need to find someone whose ambitions are compatible with ours as well as having the talent. We only really aspire to playing a few pub gigs each year. Ideally we want someone who also plays guitar to fill out some of the songs that need it. I'd still like to at least do backing vocals and maybe sing a couple of songs. I'm getting more confidence at playing lead guitar. I'm trying to learn a few of the original solos to start with, but will look to do my own variations. With luck we could gig early next year, if not before. We need a few more songs in the set first and to get them 'polished'.
On top of this I'd like to do more recording at home. I've had some technical issues with this lately, but I've tried doing a fresh Linux Mint install at the weekend that seems to be working better so far. My daughter wants to record a rock violin piece, so we'll aim to do that soon. Stay tuned...
I may have mentioned that I listen to a lot of podcasts on my long drive to work. I listened to the radio in the past, but got bored with that. I went through burning podcasts to CD to playing them from my phone once I had a way to plug it in. I listen to shows about music, science, technology, comedy and other assorted shows that take my interest.
Since the demise of the mighty +Six-String Bliss: The Guitar Podcast I have sought ways to fill the guitar-shaped hole. Some of the community members have been inspired to start their own shows, so I listen to:
There are probably more. A few I've listened to are no longer active, but you may be able to find archives out there. There's probably enough to keep you busy for years.
I only just learned about the one from GAK. Will check it out soon.
Update 25/11/14: I've also started listening to the show from Wampler Pedals. They tend to ramble off-topic, but it's fun.
I've been keeping fairly busy musically. The band I mentioned a while back is starting to get somewhere. I'd played a few times with the bassist, but last week we had a rehearsal session at a local studio with a drummer. That really makes a difference and I found myself really going for it on the solos. The new tube amp was sounding great. I used a few effects on my Zoom G3X for variety. We're building a set list of covers. I thought we needed another guitar to fill the sound on some of them and we may have someone joining us next time. Stay tuned. We need to come up with a band name. We're a bunch of older guys playing blues, classic rock and southern boogie. Could probably come up with some pun on that.
I'm still doing the +ArtistWorks course, but need to get back to working through the lessons and submitting some videos. I ought to find some areas of my soloing to get suggestions on. I also have some extra learning material after winning a competition by +Licklibrary - Online Guitar Lessons. I now have DVDs for the styles of Billy Gibbons and Gary Moore. I've started on the former and am incorporating it already. I'm playing most evenings. I need to learn more songs for the band as well as developing my general playing. It's good to have a focus now as I was lacking direction between bands.
The new PC is mostly working fine. I've had some audio issues. The sample rate for the interface does not always get properly initialised, so audio ends up playing too slow. I had a workaround until it seemed to sort itself. I think there may have been a driver update. Unfortunately the problem came back this week. I've not being doing any recording lately, but I'll need to get this fixed somehow.
To try and get the PC nearer to silent I purchased a NoFan CR-80EH fanless cooler. It's an interesting design that should work on my 65W CPU, but when I got it installed I found that the temperature was going over the specified maximum, even with no load. I could only check this from the BIOS anyway. I also had some issues installing it. I had some contact with the manufacturers in Korea, but they couldn't come up with any answers, so I've sent it back. I'll probably get something else with a quiet fan. The AMD cooler is just loud enough to be annoying.
When I do get to some recording I have a new set of plug-ins from Linux DSP. They were on special offer for a while and I couldn't resist. I'm still learning to use things like EQ and compression, but these come with detailed manuals that I need to read.
My latest video exchange with Paul Gilbert involved me playing some triplet pull-offs. He picked up that I was actually playing three 1/16th notes. Actually it may have been somewhere in between the two. It's a subtle difference, but they are different musical feels. This is the sort of thing you need a guitar teacher to tell you.
He's given me a few examples of songs that use triplets to listen to. I should really know this as I've played various music that uses triplets on guitar and djembe. I obviously didn't have it as well ingrained as I thought.
This is what I sent him. It's part of a series of lessons with this sort of groove.
One of his suggestions was this
Paul is actually touring in Chile at the moment, so he recorded his video to me in his hotel room. The guy is really dedicated to this course.
Another feature of the ArtistWorks site is a course in music theory. I've done the first part of this. There was a lot of stuff in there I didn't know. The quiz was fairly tough, but I've passed to allow me proceed to the next part.
My daughter has been pursuing her own guitar studies playing along to some of her favourite songs. We just recorded one of those. She did bass, guitar and vocals. The drums came from a video I found of someone playing along with the song. Youtube is a wonderful resource.
A while back I posted about taking some private guitar lessons. The lessons were good, but getting to them proved to be a pain. It was only a few miles from the office, but getting there after work could take a ridiculously long time. Regretfully I had to give them up, but Stuart left me with lots of material to keep working on. We did an extended last session about chords.
I had also been looking into some of the on-line courses available. I liked the look of the Paul Gilbert school from +ArtistWorks. I like Paul's teaching style. They had some special offers at the end of the year, so I treated myself to a three month subscription that started last week.
The school consists of lots of lessons grouped as Fundamental, Intermediate and Advanced. In his introduction Paul recommends that everyone work through from the start and I can see why. He includes lots of good tips in each video that are applicable to most players on basics like tuning and holding the pick. The latter is different to what I have always used. He uses his thumb and two fingers. I'm giving that a try and finding that I need to use a lighter pick to get smooth strums.
Fairly early on he introduces muting, which is a vital skill for electric guitar. Some of the exercises are fairly tricky, e.g. playing left-hand muted strums between each note of a pentatonic scale.
One of the big selling points of this site is that the instructor will give feedback on videos which you submit for specific lessons. I've sent in my first one and have another ready. I used Cheese to record the first one, but then had to convert the video (using Handbrake) to a format that they accept. GUVC offers more options, but I still had to convert the file. This is my second video. I can't send it in until Paul responds to the first. That seems to be taking a while.
I can't post Paul's response as it's locked into the site, but if you join then you can see all of them. He gives different suggestions for each person, so that makes for a lot of extra material to learn from. It's actually overwhelming how much there is.
The site has various social aspects including a forum and 'shout out' board that Paul participates in. There are also some interviews including this one with Dweezil Zappa. The whole thing is eight parts and they cover a lot of ground.
There is a free acoustic school you can join to see how it suits you. This is fairly basic stuff and I have only looked at a few of the early lessons. There are lots of other schools for different instruments and genres. Everything from classical to bluegrass.
ArtistWorks has an affiliate scheme. If you join with this link then we both get a free extra month. I think the prices are pretty good as you are only paying the equivalent of one private lesson each month.
As I've previously said, I've been thinking about getting more guitar lessons. I found +Stuart Bahn on Google+ where he was posting some interesting articles and eventually realised that he's based not far from where I work in London. My first lesson was last night.
I told him that I want to improve my ability to solo in blues and rock. Whenever I try this I seem to just play cliches or get stuck in very linear patterns. I have tried learning more licks from various tutorials, but haven't done so well at applying them.
Stuart is taking me back to basics on really learning the minor/blues pentatonic scales in all positions and exploiting the extra notes and bends you can use. He did a good job of explaining the basic theory behind why certain notes sound good. I knew some of this, but he's filling some gaps. We went through some example licks to apply this, but he emphasised using variations of those for variety.
He also picked on up various issues with my technique. I expected this as I knew I had some bad habits. I need to work on all areas of picking, bending and muting. I generally just play my electric without plugging in, but he said I should use an amplifier or other effects so that I can more clearly hear where the issues are, e.g. other strings sounding when they shouldn't.
I've got a load of stuff to work on before my next lesson in a couple of weeks. I have been playing a fair bit anyway, but it was not generally focused on anything specific. I have been trying to use some books, but not sticking to a schedule. I will review those in the context of what I'm doing in the lessons.
Of course I need somewhere to apply all this learning. I'll look again at trying to get involved in some sort of jam at least.
Although I've been playing guitar for about 35 years I don't consider myself to be that good a player in various areas. I've mostly been a bedroom player and just learnt songs, or parts of songs that took my fancy. I've also done lots of tutorials, initially from magazines, and later on-line. I've not done much actual performance where I need to bring it all together. I have played in a couple of band line-ups, mostly playing rhythm. I have improved at that, but could do with expanding my chord vocabulary.
I've recorded a few songs where I played several parts, but those are invariably built up from lots of small sections and I've not done much soloing.
Soloing is probably my weakest area. I know lots of licks, but when I try to string them together it all sounds terribly clichéd. My recent jazz improvisation course showed up some of my limitations, but may have been too advanced or the wrong approach for me. Perhaps my mindset of being analytical rather than spontaneous is part of the issue.
I'm thinking of ways to move forward. One is to find a good teacher who can guide me to a new approach. I have some leads on that to follow up. My other thought is to try learning more full songs, complete with the original solo. I have quite a few of those in magazines, with backing tracks. I'd aim to play the song 'live' as if performing it. I really want to do some gigs at some point, but just don't feel quite ready yet.
This post is an incentive to actually get on with achieving my goals, so that I need to update you later. Stay tuned.
Back in mid-2011 I donated to a Kickstarter campaign to make a film about the issues with some of the woods used in making acoustic guitars. The Sitka spruce used for guitars comes from an area of Alaska that is being 'harvested' by a corporation run by the native Americans. Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars put well when he described what they are doing as mining because they are not growing a crop, they are destroying an environment with no hope of it recovering.
I finally got my download of the film this month and it's moving stuff.
The guitar companies, which also included +Gibson Guitar and +Martin Guitar, were brought together by Greenpeace to see what was happening and they formed the Musicwood Coalition. To build their guitars they need wood from old trees (as in hundreds of years old) and those are running out. Most of the timber is exported for pulp and construction with a tiny fraction being used for guitars.
As of now things are not looking great with the native Americans fighting to get more land allocated to them and not moving forward on getting FSC certification.
There is also mention of the issues of woods from Madagascar. Gibson were raided over potentially illegal imported woods. Not sure what's happening about those woods.
As with many areas we are consuming these resources at an unsustainable rate in the name of profit. The guitar builders will have to adapt and do without some of the woods they are used to. I've read something from Bob Taylor about using ebony that isn't purely black as many trees are discarded because their wood is not what people expect. We can't afford to waste.
Coincidentally I saw this story this week about wood from Swiss forests for violins. I hope they are managing that better.
Some companies are looking into non-wood alternatives, such as carbon fibre, but a lot of people still want those precious woods. We can expect the prices for those to increase steeply.
I've been a member of the Six String Bliss community for a few years since I discovered the podcast. It's small compared to some other guitar sites, but very friendly. I've met several of them and regularly chat with others. One of the fun features is the production of an album twice a year. A topic is chosen and people can submit songs either individually or in collaboration with others. I've been on a few of these now. One was a collaboration with several others on a Slade song, but the others have been solo efforts. Previously I have not done full song recordings with multiple parts, so these have been good opportunities to learn about the process.
Previously I've used a MIDI file I downloaded for the backing, but this time I wanted to do it all myself. The topic was 'Songs released in 1987' and I chose She Drifted Away by Hüsker Dü from the Warehouse: Songs and Stories album. It seemed fairly simple and achievable. Then I found myself thrown by the 3/4 time signature. I wrote a bit about how I worked around this previously. Once I had the drums I did the main guitar part with my Roland Cube 80x running direct and recorded in Ardour. I managed to accidentally slightly change the feel of the intro riff, but I don't worry about exactly copying the original. I think I did the first vocal take next, but slipped up slightly. I was monitoring on headphones, but didn't realise I'd left the PC speakers on! You can hear it on the track, but I didn't think it worth re-doing just then. Then I added bass. I'm no bass player, but I've got a Peavey Milestone bass from a friend which I ran that through my Zoom H4 to use one of the bass amplifier models. I need to experiment more with those as I wasn't hearing much difference between them.
I added a couple more vocal tracks to give a bigger sound on the choruses. It wasn't intended, but the result has a bit of a sea shanty feel to it. I also doubled the main guitar part and added some high parts where the intro riff is repeated using a different model with more gain on the Cube.
I asked my friend JMan to have a listen and offer his opinion on what effects I should add to make the mix work. He had a few hints about use of reverb and compression. The bass in particular needed something to make it more consistent. The compressor settings I ended up with gave it a grittier feel that I liked.
Trying to mix was not helped by having blocked ears at the time. That's what prevented me re-doing vocals and the deadline was looming, so I sent it off as it was.
The album was launched in a special show. It's fun to hear the details of each song and the opinions of the hosts Clint and Alicia. Alicia has said before that she's a fan of my singing (!) and was disappointed that I did an instrumental last time. I think she actually said that this track was her favourite on the album. Comparisons were made to They Might Be Giants and Steve Howe, which I'll take as compliments. As always I am stunned by the quality of tracks that others put out. Mine sounds distinctly amateur by comparison, but I'm really happy to be accepted as part of this community. I'm looking forward to the next project.
You can download the album for free. Reviews are posted on the forum.
I had a bit of time alone at home, so took the opportunity to turn up the guitar amplifier for a change. Generally I play acoustically to keep the family happy.I bought this blues course a while back and keep returning to it to learn a bit more. It's been a bit of a challenge, but has pushed my playing in some new directions. I did a quick recording using my Zoom H4. The audio is not great as the amp wasn't even pointing the right way and the backing track was playing through the PC speakers. I messed up a few licks and then just did my own thing for a bit.
