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Review: More on the DigiTech Vocalist Live 4

Posted in gear, gear reviews, guitar gear, guitarists on January 5, 2008| 3 Comments »

I already wrote a quick review on this cool little box, but I thought I’d provide an update on the DigiTech Vocalist Live 4. Wow! What a tool! I’ve been playing around with it since I got it, and let me tell you, what it does is nothing short of amazing. Throw pretty much any chord at it – this includes “jazz” chords like half-dims, and it’ll create a harmony – ON THE FLY. What I didn’t go into with the last review were some of the features of the Vocalist. I’ll cover some highlights here.First off, it comes with 50 factory presets, but you can also save up to 50 user presets to customize harmony voicing (and several other parameters – 45 to be exact) to your liking. Editing is very easy. Select a preset number that you want, make your edits with a couple of button presses and knob turns, press “Store” and voila! You’ve got your own customized harmony!As far as it sounds, I created a quick recording of the Eagles’ “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” Mind you, it’s not mastered, and I kind of screwed up the solo, but you’ll get an idea of the great harmony that this box creates.The Vocalist comes in two flavors: the 2 or the 4. The 2 can provide up to two harmony vocals, whereas the 4 can provide up to 4 harmony vocals (hence the numeric designations). In addition, the 4 can also act as a mixer, so if you’re a solo player with just a guitar and your voice, you can use the 4 as your mixer. It comes with line-outs so you can hook up a pair of speakers. Myself, I route the guitar signal to my pedal board so I can use my effects then into the mixing board, then output processed vocals directly to the mixing board. Any way you choose to do it, configuration is a snap.Here are some other highlights:

  • Automatic pitch correction
  • Built-in guitar tuner (I prefer my TU-2)
  • Built-in mic pre-amp (so you can use a ribbon mic that needs a pre-amp)
  • +48V phantom power
  • Guitar ground-lift to eliminate hum
  • 24-bit/44.1 kHz audio (very nice)

Whether you play solo or in a band, the DigiTech Vocalist Live (either the 2 or the 4) is in my opinion a must-have box that will add a lot of vocal texture to your sound.

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Sometimes you have to pay in blood…

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars on January 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Okay, I admit it: I have a slightly obsessive personality. I completely lost track of time, and realized that I’d been practicing over three hours, trying out various riffs that have been running through my head for the past few days. Both my hands are numb, and the tip of the middle finger on my left hand is bleeding. I didn’t notice that until I started typing an e-mail and saw that my computer keyboard had little red fingerprints on the “e” and “d” keys. Yuck! But hey! I don’t mind. It was worth getting the licks down.

So what drove me to this single-minded, totally focused state where I lost all track of time? Simple: Developing vibrato and sustain using as little distortion as possible, or none at all; in other words working the strings with my fingers to achieve sustain and expressiveness. After listening to some of my favorite guitarists the past few days while on vacation, I realized that even though they use distortion, it’s very, very light; a lot lighter than what you’d think at first blush. But what makes them sound so expressive, even though they might be shredding is the subtle nuances they add to their solos employing several types of vibrato to eek out every bit of tone from their strings. It’s not easy! Not easy at all! And I’ve got the bloody finger and aching hands to prove it.

That’s not to say that I haven’t done this at all. But in all my years of playing, this was really the first time that I really focused on it. I’ve been a big promoter of playing as few notes as possible to get my point across, partly because I can’t really play all that fast, but also because some of the best solos I’ve ever heard don’t have a lot of notes – they’re just entirely expressive. Horn players know the value of a long-sustained note. It may start out as a plain old Bb – whatever – but as you apply vibrato to sustain the note, it changes color over time. Just listen to some Miles Davis, and you’ll see what I mean.

I’m now a true believer that 90% of your tone comes from your fingers.

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New Song: Que Cosa

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, songs on December 25, 2007| 3 Comments »

I wrote this song in my head yesterday while I was driving home from work. Amazing how stuff just gets into your head. I named it “Que Cosa” because of my wife asking me, “What’s wrong?” while I was working out the arrangement. She said I had this concerned expression on my face. Anyway, give it a listen and let me know what you think!

http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=80200

BTW, the drums and bass were all loops in GarageBand, and I used “Rusty,” my beloved ES-335 for the guitars.

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Top Dawg: Frank Marino

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars on December 24, 2007| 1 Comment »

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New Guitarist Highlights Section!

Posted in guitarists, Guitars on December 1, 2007| 1 Comment »

Before the days of the Internet, the world of “known” guitarists was limited to what you heard on the radio or saw on MTV or by word of mouth. But today, we’ve got all sorts of sources for discovering great musicians. The Dawg often trolls the Internet in search of guitarists, and he’s found some great talent. In an effort to help spread the word about these guys and gals, I’ve decided to create a new section on the site to showcase some of the incredible guitar work that I’ve discovered.

The first guitarist I want to showcase is a guy from Mexico, named Cesar Huesca. I found him on YouTube when I was looking for Steve Vai videos, and this guy covered one of Vai’s songs. His technique is nothing short of incredible, and he’s got great expressiveness on the fretboard. I would call his style “melodic shred,” similar to Vai and Satch and Vinnie Moore. This dude absolutely ROCKS!!! Here are a couple of videos:

Cover of Steve Vai’s Tender Surrender

One of Cesar’s Own Songs – Rockin’ Red Carpet (This Totally Rocks!)

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A Letter from the Future Me…

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians on October 27, 2007| 2 Comments »

Ig wrote a great article last week, and challenged his readers to write letters to themselves that they’d read some time in the future; a lot like Marty did for Doc in “Back to the Future.” So I’m going to take a crack at this.

Hey!

Looks like you’ve come a long way. I know you were thinking about giving up playing, but knowing you, you just couldn’t keep away from your passion. Hopefully, you’ve kept driving towards incorporating different kinds of styles into your playing. I know you started a bit late with improvisation on the guitar, but I’m hopeful that you are now a master of it; or short of that, can work your way around the fretboard instinctively, switching modes to suit the musical phrasing.

Speaking of musical phrasing, you must have written a few hundred songs by now. I wonder what style of music you’re writing? It’s a good bet that rock and roll is still your staple, but I hope you haven’t given up your dream of finishing your concerto. I can only imaging what it would be like to combine a full orchestra with a rock band, and a huge choir. While I know that you originally thought that you’d hire a big name to play lead guitar, at the rate you’re going, I hope you decided to play that role yourself.

You’re probably not a shredder – that’s not something that you ever aspired to being. Though I know that learning various techniques to incorporate into your playing have always been one of the earmarks of your learning experience on the guitar. Never forget though, you always need to sound like yourself, be it on guitar, or vocally.

I know it has been a rough road to get to where you are. But what’s life without struggle? How can you learn without making mistakes? But just keep doing what you’re doing. Keep pushing the envelope with your skills. Be happy with all you’ve accomplished, but don’t settle with where you are. Complacency leads to boredom, both inside and out; and you are far from being boring.

Cheers!

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Don’t you just love it…

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars on October 12, 2007| Leave a Comment »

John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers…when you learn a new lick or technique?

After a week-long hiatus from playing, I picked up my Strat and started playing some warm-up licks. Ooo did it feel good!

After about half and hour, I put the guitar down, and went to YouTube.com to see if I could find any videos of John Frusciante. I’ve always admired his no-nonsense approach to the guitar, and wanted to learn some of the technique he uses to play those very cool licks on the Red Hot Chili Peppers songs.

Sure enough, I found some great instructional videos that John has produced. In particular, I found this great video where John explains some Hendrix technique that he learned:

After years of doing this halfway, now that I’ve seen how it’s done, I’m totally jazzed to practice it! For a pretty much pure rhythm guitarist like myself, learning how to add stuff to the things I’m playing is just incredible!

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Fighting with my guitars…

Posted in guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars, performing, playing live on September 12, 2007| 4 Comments »

My blog buddy, IG over at igblog always compels me to really think about playing. It’s uncanny. Thanks, IG. Anyway, in one of his latest installments entitled “You gotta fight your guitar a little…” he talked about how different guitarists actually “fight” with their guitar; overcoming bad setups or dead spots to really push them to be more expressive. That got me to thinking about my own experience in “fighting” with my guitars.
As far as dead spots and bad setups are concerned, I’m fortunate that my guitars are set up really well (a touch of luthier work here and there). But I do have a quirk that has actually served to push my expressiveness on the guitar. I don’t change my strings that often; in fact, I’ll have my strings on for months and months at a time, though it’s not out of laziness. I actually like the “duller” sound of worn strings. But there’s actually more to it than that.

Several years ago, I didn’t make much money – just about enough to support my family and have a bit left over to have some fun with. Unfortunately, that didn’t include guitar gear. And even though I played often, spending money on gear just wasn’t in the stars for me then. So I didn’t regularly change my strings. If one broke, I’d replace it, but generally, they’d stay on for a long time. I now have the means to buy strings and gear when I “need” to, but I still keep my strings on my guitars for a long time without replacing them. First, for the reason I mentioned above, but secondly because of a more important thing: Those dull strings push me to eek out as much sound from my guitars as possible.

When I didn’t have the means to buy gear very often, I actually had to learn how to do things with my guitar that I don’t think I otherwise would’ve done. You see, worn strings don’t have all that much sustain, so you have to do other things to sort of “fill in the spaces” like strum a chord then play an arpeggio, or sneak in a palm mute right before a chord to add some rhythm, not to mention strategically placed hammer-ons and pull-offs. I learned all these things not because they were cool to do (they were and still are), but more out of a drive to compensate for my dull-sounding strings.

To this day, I keep worn strings on my guitars. It creates a tension that pushes me to explore tonal areas that I probably wouldn’t go to otherwise.

Thanks to IG for jogging my memory!

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Painful Pleasure

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, musicians, recording, songs, Worship Music on August 23, 2007| 4 Comments »

Last night, I finally finished re-recorded a solo for a song I’ve been working on releasing (Great God). The original solo was actually pretty good, but because of some errant picking on my part, there some distracting “extras” that I could easily wave edit away. So I decided to re-do the solo entirely. But that’s not the painful part. The painful part is actually physical. I ended up doing over 200 takes over the past couple of nights to get the solo just right. It’s still not perfect, but it’ll do for now… I need to rest my fingers a spell…

With my first set of takes, I duplicated the original solo. This only took a few takes to get it right. But then, I had a bit more complicated of a solo in my head, and it just wouldn’t let me settle. The only problem was that I had to learn how to play it! If you listen to the solo, it’s not a very difficult solo for anyone with the technique. I could actually play it myself from a technical standpoint, but the challenge for me was to play it entirely clean, without any added “touches.” It’s amazing how playing in overdrive masks out those little mistakes! A brush with the pick here, a mis-fingering there, and it just messes up the phrase, not to mention bending strings to just the right pitch. Playing clean, you can’t hide behind any kind of signal breakup.

So I used this recording session as much for recording as I did for a practicing clean technique; and this is where the pleasure kicks part kicks in. I still need to re-record the solo because I missed some pitch bends, but I’ve now learned some new technique that I can employ in other songs…

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Performance: Keeping Your Focus

Posted in guitar, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, performing, playing live on August 9, 2007| 1 Comment »

I read this great article by Tom Hess at Modern Guitars (thanks go to IG at igblog for turning me on to this online mag!) about the “little voices in your head” that talk to you when you’re playing, and it prompted me to write on something that I’ve never covered in any of my blogs; at least in a dedicated entry…

Tom pointed out some really good things to keep in mind, but I wanted to extend it even further; especially for those who play in much smaller venues than Tom, like myself who plays in restaurants and at corporate events and parties. So here are a few more points to add to Tom’s list:

  1. When you’re playing in smaller venues such as providing music for an event or party where you’re not the focus, don’t take it personally if you perceive that people aren’t paying attention to you. Remind yourself that you’re not the focus of the event, and are playing a more supporting role; however, that doesn’t mean that you play any less toned-down. What I’ve found is that if you continue to play at the standards you know you can play at, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results. I’ve gotten a bunch of extra gigs merely by playing background music, and singing and playing my heart out. People may not seem to give you the time of day during the event, but believe me, they notice when you’re putting your heart into it.A good example is when I play at my weekly gig at a local restaurant. Diners want to eat their meals and converse with each other, and pretty much consider me to be an added treat (though over the last few years, I’ve gained a loyal following). They don’t look at me, or will only occasionally make glances, but all in all, I’m not their primary focus. But time and time again, at the end of the evening, my tip jar is filled with bills, and I’ve given out several business cards. So the point of this is that people may not give you their direct attention, but your music remains in the periphery of their consciousness, and that’s very powerful.
  2. Always pay attention to the energy of your audience, and perform your music that will work with that energy. I no longer use a set list when I’m gigging at parties and restaurants, and let the energy of my audience dictate what songs I play. The same goes when I’m gigging with my band. We may have a plan in place, but we can also turn on a dime if any of us detect that what we’re playing isn’t working.
  3. Many years ago, my dad once told me, “People don’t really respond if you’ve shined your shoes, but they certainly notice if you walk around in shabby-lookin’ ones.” I didn’t really think too much of it at the time (though I do keep my shoes polished now 🙂 ), but my dad was trying to teach me about “excellence” and doing your best; not thinking about doing your best, but doing your best. I’ve taken that little saying with me, and applied it to everything that I do. Don’t settle for less than excellent, and at least for me, never give your audience less than your very best. They’ll appreciate it. Does that mean play flawlessly? Not at all. We all make mistakes, but it’s the total package that counts, not little mistakes that occur. Tom covers this well in his article.

So there are three extra points to add. Keep on playin’, and rock till you drop!

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