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Archive for the ‘guitar’ Category

New Song: RESOLUTION

Posted in GarageBand, guitar, guitarists, inspiration, Music, songs on May 22, 2008| 2 Comments »

This is an instrumental that evolved out of an acoustic guitar groove I came up with years ago. Recently, a friend of mine shared what he was going through with me, and how he came to resolution with what he was facing. It inspired me to put this instrumental-only song together called, RESOLUTION. Give it a listen:

RESOLUTION (This will take you to iCompositions)

It’s interesting how this song finally came about. It was a really organic process. As I mentioned, I came up with the acoustic guitar groove years ago, and had it sitting in my head until a few weeks ago, when I decided to lay down some tracks. About a week ago, I was playing around with my ES-335, just jamming along with the groove, when out of the blue I started playing the arpeggios on top of the groove. So I layered those on top of the groove. Then when my friend told me what he was going through, I got the idea of doing the song as an instrumental-only song as he had expressed awhile ago that he’d like to hear me do an instrumental song featuring my guitar playing.

After he told me his story, I came home, sparked up my amp, strapped on my Strat, and started experimenting with different melody lines. In the end, I want to do harmonizing guitars with some free-form improv between. The result is RESOLUTION. It’s both sad and hopeful. Hope you like it!

Gear Used:

Ovation Elite Acoustic – recorded live through a Nady RSM-200 and a Sennheiser e835 stage mic :
Gibson ES-335 – provides the arpeggios
Fender Strat – voicing for all leads.

Absolutely no pedals were used to record the electric guitars. I added some gentle reverb on the guitar tracks and that was it. They sounded so good just by themselves, I didn’t feel the need to add any compression or chorus – that might’ve ruined their tone.

Amp: Fender Champ 600 15W – close-mic’d using the Nady RSM-200 to provide some depth. I just love the natural tone from this amp. When close-mic’d it sounds so much bigger than its little 6″ speaker! 🙂

Recorded everything in GarageBand on my Mac.

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In Search of a Speaker…

Posted in amps, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars, Music on May 22, 2008| 3 Comments »

I’ve tweaked about everything I want to on my guitars and amp, but haven’t gotten around to trying out a new speaker. I have a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe that I love, and while the sound is awesome, I was wondering what kind of speaker would work well with it, since I haven’t tweaked that part of the amp yet.

I’m thinking definitely along the lines of a vintage sound, and am leaning towards an AlNiCo driver. But I wanted to open it up to discussion to see what other people prefer. Any ideas?

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What would it mean to not be able to play guitar?

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, musicians on May 20, 2008| 10 Comments »

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve acquired this weird tingly sensation in my hands – like they fall asleep – when I have my arms bent. On top of that, the joints in my fingers hurt. It’s uncomfortable and a little scary; and worst of all, it won’t go away. So I’ve made an appointment to go see a doctor. Heart and pulmonary disease runs in my family, so I’m probably a prime candidate for hardened arteries and heart problems. But this condition has made me start thinking: What would it mean to not be able to play guitar?

Understand that the guitar has been pretty much the center of my life since I was a kid. Playing guitar is my escape from the stresses of the world, and pains of relationships. It is my outlet to release the creative energy bottled up inside of me.

I live to play guitar and play guitar live. To not be able to play, well, that would be the worst tragedy of my life, second only to the loss of a member of my family. I frankly don’t know how I’d be able to cope with life without guitar. Is it unhealthy to have such a dependence on it? I don’t know. But it has always been a calming presence in my life – my own personal therapy. If it’s gone, I suppose I could find something else, but 30 years of playing every day is kind of a hard act to follow.

Before I see the doctor, I’ve already resolved to make some major changes in my life. First, I’m no longer eating red meat. I love it, but my steady diet of pork and beef over the years and not enough fruit and vegetables has probably caught up to me. I can eat fish a couple of times a week, and chicken, maybe once every couple of weeks.

I’m also going to start exercising regularly. Before I started really working on my album, I was walking at least a couple of miles a day, and trying to do something active. But when I hit the studio last year, I did nothing. Now I’m paying for it.

I’m not asking for sympathy. I got myself into this mess, and I’m resolved to get out of it. Wish me luck!

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Top Dawg: Lucciano Pizzichini

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, Music on May 20, 2008| 1 Comment »

Check this kid out… Only eight years old! Incredible. Thanks to GG reader Pablo Levinas for pointing me in this kid’s direction. Just like Sungha Jung, Lucciano is a musical prodigy. Can you imaging how he’ll be playing once he’s a grown-up? It’s scary to imagine. Hopefully he’ll not be exploited and turn into burned out child star. But for now, just check out what this kid can do.

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So You Wanna Be a Rock Star Guitarist…

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, musicians, rock star, tagged on May 19, 2008| 5 Comments »

A while back, one of my kids asked me, “Dad, what makes a rock star a rock star?” Being a dad who is also a performer, I didn’t want to give him the trite response and tell him to look up rock star on Google or make comparisons between rock guitarists. I wanted to provide a certain level of intellectualism to my answer, so I told him to hold on a bit, and I’d let him know what I came up with…

So after a lot of thought, I came up with what I think could be a reasonable explanation of what makes a guitarist a rock star. I call it the “Three E’s.” Here goes:

Excellence, Exuberance, and Entertaining

Excellence – A rock star guitarist excels at playing and musicality. Don’t confuse this with speed. Speed can be acquired. You need excellence in musicality as well as technique. Case in point? Neil Young. Okay, not necessarily that good technique-wise, but more than makes up for it with his musicality.

Exuberance – …and passion. You have to be exuberant and passionate about playing your guitar – and it has to be genuine. Audiences can read right through false passion or a boring disposition, or just plain fakery. Look at someone like Steve Vai when he plays. That’s a dude that just exudes passion and exuberance for his instrument. Others that come to mind are Santana, Frampton, Satch, Stevie Ray, etc…

Entertaining – Finally, a rock star guitarist is far from boring. It’s not that they have to jump around on stage. But by their very nature, they engage their audiences, and draw them into what they’re playing. Look at BB King. Damn! What an entertainer! The same would go for Michael Shenker. People might say that he just stands there, but there’s something about him that just completely draws you in when he’s playing.

So to me, a true rock star guitarist possesses a combination of the three E’s in various balances, but they always possess all three characteristics.

Note that I used a picture of Jimi. He was one of the rare guitarists that had enormous quantities of all three rock star guitarist characteristics. There are few that I’ve seen in my lifetime that were huge on all three. Another would be Prince.

Care to share more?

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Review: BOSS CS-3 Compressor/Sustainer

Posted in Effects, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, Guitars, Music on May 15, 2008| 9 Comments »

BOSS CS-3 Compression/Sustainer
Summary: If you’re looking to really squeeze your signal, this box’ll do it.

Pros: 4 knobs provide great flexibility to shape your compression. For the money, it’s a pretty good deal.

Cons: Has probably some of the most severe compression I’ve ever experienced, which results in a loss of tone. Sounds okay with solid state amps, but horrible with tube amps.

Price: $89 Street

Back when I was looking for a compressor to fatten up the tone of my Strat to compensate for the really bright Tex-Mex pickups, I evaluated a bunch of compressor pedals, from the high-end (Maxon, Demeter) to the low-end, one of which was the BOSS CS-3 and MXR DynaComp.

I recently went through my review notebook and saw that I didn’t do a review of the CS-3, so here goes…

To start with, if you don’t want to read the entire article, if you’re a hard-rock/metal player, I think you’ll like this pedal. It’s real squishy, and combined with an amp that produces a tone of low-freq, it will definitely get you that super-compressed distortion. On the other hand, if you’re a jazz/blues or classic rock player, you will not like this pedal as it can really muddy your clean tone.

That said above, the CS-3 is not a bad pedal. It’s well-made, and compared with other BOSS I’ve owned in the past, it is probably just as reliable. But the CS-3 follows in pretty much the same formula as other BOSS pedals: You get decent tone for a relatively cheap price. They’re made for a mass market audience. Not that that is intrinsically bad, but if you’re a real tone freak, it won’t be up to par tonally with what you’ve come to expect. But high expectations aside, as I said, the CS-3 is not a bad pedal, and with the right amount of tweaking you can get a decent tone from this box.

One thing I really liked about this pedal is its configurability. It has four knobs for Level, Tone, Attack, and Sustain. The Tone knob really comes in handy as you increase the sustain, as I found that increased levels muddied the high-freq tones. The Tone knob helps to compensate for that to a point. But dial in too much highs and your tone becomes really “tinny” irrespective of the guitar you use. Having an Attack knob is a pretty cool feature as well, as you can adjust how fast the compression kicks in. Not bad for a $89 pedal.

The unit I tested was a little noisy when engaged, not matter how much I tweaked the knobs. It wasn’t so apparent when tested with a Roland Cube 60, but with a tube amp (tested on a Fender Twin and 65 Super Reverb Reissue), the soft hiss was a bit annoying. But with either type of amp, as I mentioned above, this thing really squeezes your signal to the point that there’s a noticeable difference in tone between the unit being engaged and not engaged. In comparison, my Maxon CP-9 Pro+ when engaged retains my tone even at higher levels of compression, but just “feels” fatter. Very transparent.

All in all, the BOSS CS-3 is a decent pedal. For someone on a budget who wants to add some compression to their signal, as I said above, this will do the job. But if you’re looking for transparency, this isn’t the pedal for you.

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New Book: Heaven and Hell by Don Felder

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, Music on May 13, 2008| 6 Comments »

On our local classic rock station, KFOX, we are lucky to have Greg Kihn as the morning DJ because he frequently has fellow classic rock celebs on his show either on the phone or in the studio. The cool thing is that most of his guests are guitarists, so I listen to his morning show a lot. This morning, he had Don Felder, former lead guitarist for the Eagles, talking to him about how he did his leads, and what his experience was like being in the Eagles. It was a very insightful interview. During the course of the interview, Greg pumped Don’s book, “Heaven and Hell” that chronicles his 26 year involvement in the band, from its heyday to his dismissal.

Personally, I’ve been waiting a long time to hear his side of the story behind his being fired. I originally became curious about the back story when the Eagle announced their last tour and that Felder would be a “contractor.” I don’t know if anyone saw the show in person or on TV, but it was clear that he was an outsider to the band. Very weird. But now that the book is out, it’ll be good to hear the other side.

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A “New” Practice Technique…

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, Music on May 5, 2008| 1 Comment »

Just read an interesting article in the new issue of Guitar Player, where guitar great Wayne Krantz described a different kind of lead practice technique that eschews the use of scales and modes, and instead focuses on how the lead sounds irrespective of chords or fingerings. Wayne describes this practice technique as playing in a “zone.” A zone is only 4 frets wide, and you have stay within that zone, and pick only the notes that fall within that zone while you’re practicing – and importantly, you have to be disciplined to not venture out of the zone.

The idea behind this technique is that it forces you to let go of the patterns and scales you’ve learned and/or memorized, and makes you explore the tonal possibilities from within a zone.

In the article he uses something like a Abmb5b7 chord structure to start out with then, sets his zone from the 5th to the 8th fret, essentially in an “A” position. But because the base chord is a half step down, you really have to think about what you can pick within that zone. 

I tried it out, and it’s a lot harder than it appears. Without thinking about it, I went to my tried and true pentatonic minor scale, and it TOTALLY SUCKED against this chord! HA! So I just started playing around with the notes and was able to come up with some interesting – to say the least – leads. Here’s an example. The chord progression is Abmb5b7 / Gbm / Cbm7 / Gbm / Abmb5b7 / F#m / Cbm7 / Dbm7 / Gbm7. The lead’s pretty rough, but the cool thing is that it’s all spontaneous.

The fallout of this practice technique is that it really helps you be spontaneous with your leads. Once you figure out what works and what doesn’t in a “zone,” you can really start exploring. For instance, in the example I gave above, I just let GarageBand record in loop mode several times while I essentially just messed around. The result is a bit rough, but this exercise taught me a completely different way of exploring the fretboard.

Another cool thing is that you can move your zones around. I used the 5-8 zone, but I’m going to experiment and try something like the 13-17 zone to see where that takes me. Very cool indeed!

 

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Monumental Things Are Happening!

Posted in GarageBand, guitar, guitar gear, Guitars, Music, recording, tagged on May 2, 2008| 3 Comments »

As some might know, I’ve spent the last year working on my first album, “You Stir My Soul,” which is a collection of contemporary religious songs I wrote for the Catholic Mass. About three weeks ago, I finished the album and submitted it to a digital distribution company to place on iTunes. They indicated that it would take about 8-10 weeks before it was available, but last night, I noticed that it had already become available!

This is a huge milestone in my life! I don’t have any illusions that it will elevate me to superstardom. But I’ve accomplished what has been a lifelong dream for me.

Admittedly, a couple of the songs really aren’t production quality, but I learned a lot about the music production process since then. The ones that have a much clearer sound to them are the songs I recorded later in the process. Oh well, first album, lesson learned.

Check out “You Stir My Soul” on iTunes!

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Recording Your Guitar At Home: Lessons Learned

Posted in amps, guitar, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, recording on April 28, 2008| 4 Comments »

Getting a good guitar sound on a recording can be a real challenge when recording at home. It’s not that it’s difficult mechanically, it’s difficult because of the environment. Working around the limitations of the environment is really the challenge. For instance:

  • Most of us don’t have a dedicated sound-proof room; thus, we get a lot of sound leakage that translates to neighbors (and family) screaming to turn down the volume.
  • Furthermore, most home recording areas aren’t optimized for a “flat” acoustic response. You can do some dampening to reduce room reverb, but you can’t eliminate it entirely.
  • Finally, most of us don’t have expensive recording gear.

But despite all that, it’s still possible to record great, high-quality guitar tracks. I’ve done a lot of recording at home in the past year and thought I might share some of the things I’ve learned in capturing good guitar sounds. Mind you, I’m no audio expert. Everything I’ve learned comes from pure trial and error.

  1. First of all, invest in a decent tube pre-amp. PreSonus makes a great one called the TUBEPre. You can read my review on it here. Even if you use a dynamic mic that will draw power from your line, a pre-amp will boost your mic signal, and at low-volume levels, this is absolutely essential. Also, a pre-amp will add a lot of warmth to your mic signal. In my mind, it’s an essential piece of gear.
  2. Ribbon mics are great for adding depth to your sound, or for recording two amps at once. Unlike unidirectional or cardioid mics that have a reception field that’s in one direction, ribbon mics record in a figure eight pattern in two directions. What this means is that it’ll pick up the ambient sound behind the mic as well. I typically place my ribbon mic about a foot away from my amp cab, then place a 3/4″ thick piece of plywood about a foot behind the mic. This helps reflect the sound back to the rear of the mic. And as long as you keep the volume low on your amp, you won’t get feedback.I also have used my ribbon mic to record two amps at once. For instance, in this song, in the overdriven guitar part, I ran a dry signal out to one amp, then used the other signal to run through my board into the other amp. The net result was it sound like I was employing a lot more output than I actually was. In fact, you could speak (with just a tiny bit of effort 🙂 ) over the combined volume of the amps.
  3. Use two mics to record an acoustic guitar. I read somewhere that using an “X” pattern aimed at the sound hole is really effective. Personally, I use my ribbon mic pointed at about a 30″ angle at the center of my guitar’s body, then use a dynamic mic pointed straight at it. The ribbon mic is about 6-8″ away from my strings, and the dynamic is placed about 10″ inches. The result is a very deep, very natural sound that captures the natural tones from your acoustic guitar.
  4. Because we’re talking low-volume here, there are pedals that you should have that will help quite a bit in getting a good sound:
    a. First, get a decent compressor pedal. I’ve got the Maxon CP-9 Pro+, and just love it. This will help fatten your signal, and give the impression that you have a bit more amp than you actually have.
    b. Invest in a couple of decent overdrive pedals. Personally, I use three: a DigiTech Bad Monkey, an Ibanez TS-808 and a Fulltone OCD. I will either use these individually, or “stack” them in a signal to produce varying levels of overdrive. I know, many purists want to get that power tube saturation sound, but at low volume levels, that’s not practical. Besides combined with a compressor, you can get pretty close.
  5. As far as reverb is concerned, I tend to use very light spring reverb, then layer reverb on top of that in my recording program. It makes it much easier to control on the recording. Some folks use dedicated pedals, which is fine, but I prefer to capture as much of the raw signal as possible, then layer reverb or other effects on top of that raw, dry signal. However, this doesn’t necessarily apply to time-based effects like chorus, flange, vibe, delay or phase. I’ve never been satisfied with the sound quality of software based time-based effects.
  6. There’s nothing like the sound of a tube amp. Unfortunately, with larger tube amps, they just don’t sound good unless they’re cranked. But there are a number of low wattage “practice” amps that actually produce incredibly good sound if you close-mic them. The one I use in particular is the Fender Champion 600. Epiphone also makes the Valve Junior, which has gotten some great reviews. Another low-wattage amp that I’ve been considering is the Blackheart Little Giant BH5-112, which is a switchable 3W/5W amp with a 12″ Eminence speaker. Very cool. Blackheart also makes a 7W/15W version called the “Handsome Devil,” that is also worth a look.

As I mentioned above, I’m not a professional sound guy, and I certainly wouldn’t call myself a recording engineer. But I recorded my first album over the past year entirely at home, under less than ideal recording conditions. It’s entirely possible to do. You just have to find ways to work out, work around and work with the limitations of your environment.

Got any other tips? I’d love to hear ’em!

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