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You Gotta Have Something to Say…

May 16, 2013 by GoofyDawg

I listened to a recent interview with Huey Lewis on the WTF podcast, who’s on a promotion tour for the 30th anniversary of Huey Lewis and the News’ “Sports” album. Can’t believe that it has been that long since that album was released. I still have the original vinyl that I bought all those years back. What a great album! Reminds me that I should get a digital copy… oh well, so much music, so little time.

In any case, I was absolutely fascinated by the interview; initially because I wanted to see what he has been up to all these years, but then got completely engrossed in his story. But it was something that he said at around 18 minutes into the podcast. The host, Marc Maron, and Huey were talking about Huey playing the harmonica. Marc was trying to get a gauge of how good of a harmonica player Huey was. Huey’s response absolutely floored me:

You gotta have something to say, and you only need the chops to say what you need to say. <background agreement from Marc> It depends on what you want to say.

That statement struck me like a ton of bricks! For years, I’ve felt exactly like that about playing music. My feeling has always been if I can say what I need to say with the chops that I have, then that’s what I focus on; saying what I need to say, and not worry about other people possibly having more to say. Of course, saying the same thing over and over gets old pretty fast, so I occasionally spend a lot of time expanding my musical vocabulary, such as my recent foray a few months ago into studying modes more closely.

To me, having something to say is absolutely central to my playing. A friend of mine and I were talking last night about our approach to guitar. He’s a really awesome blues guy. During our conversation, I mentioned that I have a hard time just noodling or playing licks or leads without something to play against. Call it a weakness, but I just don’t know that many standard licks. I play what I’m feeling in the music I’m playing over.

Then the thought struck me that that’s kind of like my personality. Unless I have something to say, I usually just keep my mouth shut. I shared that with my friend and we both laughed because he could relate.

Kudos to those who can just rip out solos on the fly. I with I could do that. But for me, I need to have something to say…

As for Huey Lewis, like many, I wondered what happened to him and his band since their heyday. Turns out, they never left the scene. They’ve just been playing as a band all these years, and still going strong. People talk about the Who and Stone and U2 and all these HUGE bands that have stayed together. Huey Lewis and the News deserve that kind of recognition for staying together this long.

Posted in Guitars | 5 Comments »

Answering The Question

May 14, 2013 by GoofyDawg

…which, of course is the question almost every guitar gear slut gets from their significant-other: How many guitars do you need?

To which, of course, the only correct answer is:

JUST ONE MORE

To be completely honest, after I got my lovely, practically perfect Slash L Guitars Katie May, I’ve been pretty set for guitars. Besides Katie May, I’ve got two Les Pauls, three Strats, a Gretsch, a Tele, a PRS SE II Soapbar, and a few other guitars I don’t play; not to mention a few acoustics and a bass. Out of all of my electrics, I’ve been playing Katie May the most simply because she is by far my most versatile guitar. I can get super-heavy to light and jangly tones from her.

But the other day, I was re-arranging a song I wrote called “Never Trade In Her Life” and though I used Katie May for the main electric rhythm part, I needed a different sound for the lead, and she unfortunately wasn’t giving it to me, no matter what amp I used. It’s not that she sounded bad, but she was just way too smooth, and I needed something on the much more open, dirty side of things. So I pulled out my American Deluxe Strat and my world was made right. 🙂

After I got the final recording down, it occurred to me that I was glad that I had my Strat, then took the thought even further to rationalize the number of guitars I have. I’ve told my wife that each one of my guitars has a different voice. It sounds like me playing, but each guitar has a different tonal expression that I can feel and hear. I know, it may sound lame, but there’s a lot to it. For instance, my R8 Les Paul has a very cool and smooth tone; almost like a cello. On the other hand, my ’59 Les Paul Replica has a bright, midrangy tone that’s perfect for classic rock. Katie May also has a smooth tone, but it’s also a bit more hollow sounding than my Les Pauls.

There are even differences between my Strats. My American Deluxe has the classic Strat sound, but it has higher-output pickups, Kinman HSX to be exact, that give it lots of growl when they’re cranked up. And it’s a dirty, single-coil sound that I can’t with any other guitar.

But as I mentioned above, I’m pretty set for guitars right now. But I know that perhaps in a few years, I’m going to be writing some music and will want a different tone that the guitars in my stable can’t produce. So it’ll be back to getting just one more guitar to capture that particular sound. 🙂

Funny thing is that when I play live, I only take two guitars; one of which stays in the car as a backup. That’s purely practical. I don’t have a roadie, so I want to take as little gear with me as possible. If I ever go on the road, I suppose I’ll bring a few for different songs, but in general, I’d still take a practical approach to the gear I bring. In the studio, on the other hand, I can use what I want…

Posted in Guitars | 2 Comments »

Happy Mothers Day!

May 12, 2013 by GoofyDawg

First off, Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers around the world!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a song for mothers called “Never Trade In Her Life,” attempting to capture the essence of the busy mother who’s constantly on the go, swamped by the life around her; half wishing she could be free and single, but knowing that the love of and for her family keeps her where she is. When I first laid down the song, it was purely acoustic with some drum and bass added – I think I even had some piano in it. But I updated the song today for Mothers Day, removing the piano, and adding electric guitars and backup vocals. Then I completely re-mixed the entire song to make the sound a bit fatter without losing dynamics. Here’s the final result:

And here are the lyrics:

NEVER TRADE IN HER LIFE

Verse 1
She’s living in a world full of complication
Spinning in her mind like a merry-go-round
and she feels her life could use some renovation
to see the world rushing past her vision

Verse 2
She finds it hard to find some motivation
Coffee and a smoke help calm her down
She reads through all her status line to prove her isolation
But then she smiles…
It’s not so bad after all…

Chorus
She just wants to have some fun
go out in the sun
shoot her worries out the barrel of a gun
See them speed away into the distance
She knows there’s a place in her heart
that needs a restart, to find a new direction
but then she sighs… she’ll never trade in her life

Verse 3
She knows that it’s a passing agrivation
Pictures of her kids bring back her smile
She looks into her world in fascination
and then she cries
with all the love in her heart

Bridge
She remembers all the times
when she was young
and she was free…
But she knows the life she’s chosen for herself
was meant to be…

You might’ve noticed that after the line in the first verse, “spinning in her mind…” there was a little, distant shriek. That was little boy who was four years old at the time who was running through the house playing with his sister. Rather than remove it from the recording I decided to keep it to subliminally add to the mental and emotional chaos the subject was feeling. 🙂

For the electric guitar parts, I kept things VERY simple. There’s a basic rhythm track where I’m comping some two-string chords underneath the verses. This was done with my Perry Riggs Slash L “Katie Mae” custom guitar plugged directly into my custom Aracom VRX18 All the dirt is coming from the amp.

The lead guitar part was played with my Fender American Deluxe Strat plugged into a Circus Freaks Tattooed Lady Overdrive, then into my 1958 Fender Champ. The Tatooed Lady is providing all the grit and grime, plus lots of sustain. I decided to go this route so I could take advantage of the great tone controls of the pedal as the Champ has no tone circuit, and tons of clean headroom. Talk about fun! 🙂

Anyway, I’d like to again wish all mothers out there a wonderful and blessed Mothers Day!

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A RocknStompn REBATE!!!

May 8, 2013 by GoofyDawg

rocknstompnFrom now through the end of June, you can get a $100 rebate on a RocknStompn power supply. Normally, selling at $379.00, it’s a fantastic deal with the rebate!

TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE REBATE

1. Click here to purchase the unit on Amazon.com

2. Say something nice about the unit on Amazon.

3. Send a copy of your invoice to Kimball Magee mentioning GuitarGear.org.

More Than Just a Power Strip

I know what you might be thinking, that “it’s just a power strip.” Well, it has lots of features that make it so much more that that. First off, it has LOTS of capacity for surge protection, so you’ll be protected from surges. You can also adjust the timing of each outlet row’s activation. It also sports two ferrite cores on the AC line to provide noise filtering.

I’ve been using mine for just short of a couple of months, and it has become one of those necessary pieces of gear without which, I won’t leave for a gig. For instance, I’ve got some pedals (one in particular) that are extremely sensitive to dirty or fluctuating power. Before I got the RocknStompn, I used regular, off-the-shelf power strips, you know the ones you can get off the shelves at RiteAid. Well, those work well for big spikes, but do nothing for tons of fluctuation, and practically nothing for noise. But with the RocknStompn, I get a nice, clean charge where even my finicky, noise-sensitive pedals operate nice and quiet. Though I’m not electrician, Kimball – the RocknStompn creator – communicated to me that the use of two ferrite cores on the AC help filter out the noise. All I can say in my layman’s vernacular is that it works.

Now I realize that this might seem like a fairly high price to pay, but here’s my personal rationale: I’ve literally spent thousands of dollars on my gear. Last year, I had almost 200 gigs. In some of those places – especially a 110-year-old winery – the power was either extremely dirty, or I got some occasional spikes. It truly worried me. So having some level of protection between my gear and the power source is absolutely comforting. What’s that peace of mind worth? Well, a few hundred bucks to me isn’t too steep a price to pay…

For more information, go to the RocknStompn web site!

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Les Paul Stars of the 60’s

May 4, 2013 by GoofyDawg

I don’t normally forward stuff that I read in other sources, but I thought I’d forward this particular article I read on Gibson’s site. The article covers 10 Les Paul Players of the 60’s and their histories with the venerable Les Paul. Here they are:

  1. Eric Clapton
  2. Freddie King
  3. Jeff Beck
  4. Jimmy Page
  5. Hubert Sumlin
  6. Keith Richards
  7. Paul Kossoff
  8. Peter Green
  9. Michael Bloom
  10. George Harrison

I’m not one of those super-fans that know every niggling detail about a particular player, so the real surprise for me was George Harrison. I always thought he played an archtop in the 60’s. I had no idea he played a Les Paul. Oh well… the things you find out. 🙂

Posted in Guitars | Tagged | 3 Comments »

What’s in a Name?

April 25, 2013 by GoofyDawg

Goofydawg here and back from a rather longish hiatus of having a total hip replacement. My goodness! It is an incredible feeling to walk with a normal gait and at speed that I haven’t been able to walk at for almost a couple of years! Yeah, yeah… People always ask why I didn’t do it earlier, but the cold hard fact was that I had to deal with getting my cardiac and pulmonary systems in order first so I wouldn’t die on the table. So after many many months of Lipitor and two different types of blood pressure meds, I got my system back into balance enough to have the surgery. And just two-and-a-half weeks past my surgery, I’m operating without any assistive devices (walker, cane) whatsoever, and not only that, I’ve been able to wean myself of all my pain meds except for one that I use for sudden pain! Nice!

Okay, that out of the way… One of my other life-long passions other than guitar is fine wine, in particular fine Pinot Noirs, Syrahs and Zinfandels. I don’t drink a lot of wine (though I do a lot of tastings over the year), so I usually have no more than two cases in my possession at any time (though I have stash in my nice, cool, dark walk-in closet where I hold the ones I won’t drink for years). With that passion of course, I subscribe to various periodicals and newsletters that I keep around the house. In particular, I keep my K & L Wines newsletter in my bathroom for nice bathroom reading. 🙂

This morning while I was perusing my latest copy of the K & L newsletter, I read a column on the 2010 Burgundy’s that are just now hitting the market. It was the word “Burgundy” that sparked the idea of this article.

Over the years, Burgundy has held several connotations for me. Some thirty years ago, when I first started getting into wine and had no idea about different varietals and regions, whatever, the word “Burgundy” equated to cheap, jug wine that parents would provide at parties. My first taste of red wine was actually a sip of that kind of “Burgundy” when I was 16 years old. I remember thinking to myself, “People actually like this shit?” Little did I know that it was cheap imitation, which in later years couldn’t be termed that because of legal restrictions. Of course, fast-forward to today, and thinking about true Burgundy, made in the Burgundy region of France from the noble Pinot Noir grape, gives me the equivalent giddy, butterflies-in-the-stomach reaction to GAS.

The point of all this is that over time or with education, what a name or term may connote changes. For instance, I used to equate the Yamaha brand with cheap Japanese stuff. But now, Yamaha acoustics are my preferred brand; yup, over other venerable labels such as Martin or Taylor. Why? Simply because Yamaha electronics are second-to-none in my experience. They sound the most natural to me plugged in. Their raw, natural acoustics may not be quite as rich as those others, but since I primarily play amplified, I’ll take a Yamaha over any one of those any day!

Why is any of this important? I bring it up simply because it’s very easy to get locked into a certain way of thinking about different things based upon our current perceptions. Think about all the gear out there. We all have our brand preferences, such as my preference for Yamaha acoustics on stage. But I didn’t develop that preference in a static way. I had to do painstaking research when choosing my stage acoustic. I shared this before; I literally spent months evaluating guitars, and while I had the money to spend on a guitar five times its price, I chose my trusty APX900 much to even my surprise.

I do realize that some things, no matter how much I might try to keep an open mind, remain just cheap or bad (no, for the sake of keeping to my policy of playing nice, I won’t name names). But one thing I’ve learned in the years I’ve been writing this blog is that my perceptions on many things have changed because I became personally informed about them.

Challenge your perceptions sometime. You may be surprised by what happens!

Posted in Guitars | Tagged | 1 Comment »

Jazzy Jam Track

April 13, 2013 by GoofyDawg

I was bored sitting around the house yesterday, and since I always have a guitar on hand, I just started messing around with some chord changes. Before I knew it, I had strung together a cool, jazzy chord progression with a bit of a latin flair. So, IK Multimedia StealthPlug in hand (I always carry one in my computer bag), I plugged it in, opened GarageBand, then laid down the track. Here are the chords first:

[Bm7] [E7] [Amaj7] [Bbdim]
[Bm7] [E7] [F#m] [F#m7]
[Dmaj7] [Fdim] [F#m7] [E] [Dmaj7]
[Bm7] [C#7b9] [F#m]

[Dmaj7] [Gmaj7] [Amaj7]
[Dmaj7] [Gmaj7] [Amaj7]
[Dmaj7] [Fdim] [F#m7] [E] [D]
[Bm7] [E7] [Amaj7] [Bbdim]

Now here’s the track (you’ll have to loop it if you want to jam to it):

As you can see from the chart, the track is in two parts. I always like having a verse-chorus type of arrangement with my jam tracks so improvising doesn’t become monotonous.

In any case, When I improvise over it, I found that starting with an E Lydian for the first few notes works great for me, but starting on the A on the 7th fret. After that, I just let my fingers do the talking. 🙂 That’s how I’ve been improvising lately. I start with a mode to get a groove going, then I just feel it afterwards. What I’ve found is that the mode provides a theme or a backdrop to the picture I want to paint, then what follows after I let the mode go follows that basic theme. It’s a way for me to think about what I’m playing without over-analyzing it. 🙂

About the IK Multimedia StealthPlug

This wasn’t meant to be a review of the StealthPlug, but I thought I’d give it some props just the same. This little $99 gadget has been a traveling companion now for the past few years, since IK sent me one that was packaged with some AmpliTube software. Since then, I’ve always kept it in my computer bag. The reason is that it provides a very convenient guitar to computer interface that works great with most recording software. I use it with GarageBand to knock out ideas when I’m on the road or, incapacitated as I am right now, not able to get into my garage/studio without assistance.

And the new GarageBand, with all it’s great plug-ins makes recording guitar so very nice because you can easily shape the tones to fit your needs. For instance, the bass part was recorded using my acoustic guitar, but brought down a full octave with the pitch shift plug-in. Isn’t technology cool?

Anyway, enjoy and ROCK  ON!

Posted in Guitars | Tagged , | 3 Comments »

The Secret to Playing Faster and More Fluid

April 11, 2013 by GoofyDawg

So you’ve watched all the vids, learned all the scales by heart, and the only thing left to do is play them faster and more fluid because you feel you’re just slogging along and you feel your solos are choppy. Well, here’s the secret: PRACTICE. That’s it! No joke.

Of course, there are exercises that help with developing speed. But those are just exercises not meant to be musical though some may seem so. Yngwie Malmsteen has some excruciating exercises that he uses to develop speed. For awhile there, he was the king of speed. But more importantly, his playing was absolutely fluid. His secret? PRACTICE. 🙂

What brought this subject up was a discussion I was having with my son yesterday. He’s studying computer science, and I’m a software architect so it’s cool to mentor my own kin for a change. He’s currently learning design patterns, which is a particular specialty of mine, as I’ve been applying them to my own designs for years. Especially with respect to object-oriented programming, using design patterns really helps in making designs much more sensible and organized.

But one of the things I mentioned to my son yesterday was that in all my years as a software engineer and engineering manager, I’ve observed that roughly 95% of the people I’ve interviewed learned design notation like UML in school but have NEVER employed it professionally. To a person, their excuse has been that it slows them down.

What a crock of S$%T! In fact, the fastest developers I’ve ever worked with are those who work out the problem first, then code. Moreover, because they’ve worked out the problem first their code tends to be significantly less buggy than those who just pound out code. I’ve taught many of those developers I’ve worked with. At first, they flail with their designs, but after a couple of weeks they become better at it and faster. Then as they gain more experience, not only are they faster at coming up with a design, their coding, which at that point becomes a mere formality, is super-fast.

Here’s a great example. Back in 2007, I took on a team of developers to build our company’s very first single-page web application. The initial project lead had estimated that the project would take 13 months to complete. But teaching my team members proper design techniques, and having them practice it on a daily basis, we got the first usable version of the product out in less than four months! And it only took that long because we didn’t have a back-end developer until three months into the project! We started the project in October, and were completed with the front-end application before Christmas shutdown!

The point to this was that practice made the team and its individuals faster, but it also made their work style much more fluid. And the same applies to guitar. Speed and fluidity can only be achieved by committing oneself to practice. Yes, it’s a rather pedestrian and utilitarian affair, but there’s no way around it. You just gotta practice.

Posted in Guitars | Tagged | 2 Comments »

Can’t Wait to ROCK!!!

April 10, 2013 by GoofyDawg

bren_hospitalYup, that’s the Dawg (me) sitting in my hospital room. This past Monday, I had total replacement of my left hip. The surgeon used the anterior technique, which is a relatively new technique here in the US. Basically, with this technique, instead of cutting through the gluteus maximus muscle (your butt), with the anterior technique the surgeon works his way in between the quadraceps, merely cutting through the fascia that holds the muscles together. The net effect is a much shorter recuperation time, which is important to me because I just wanna ROCK!

Amazingly enough, they had me up and walking twice yesterday. The first session in the morning was absolutely excruciating, but in the afternoon, I was able to walk over 100 feet up and down the hall. Today, they’re going to do the same, but in addition the PT will teach me how to get in and out of a car, and in order to get discharged, I’m going to have to walk up four stairs! I’m not looking forward to that, but I realize it has to be done.

Now that I’ve had the procedure done, I can’t begin tell you what an ordeal it has been for the past year and a half. I developed severe arthritis in my left hip over the course of several years due to an old injury. It finally manifested itself at the end of 2011, though the pain wasn’t so bad at the time. But as these things go, it got steadily worse. I finally got around to seeing a doctor, and he told me that I’d probably have to get a hip replacement.

Due to other health issues I was having, I couldn’t schedule my surgery until August of last year. But then a couple of weeks before the surgery when I was to get clearance to undergo the procedure, my blood pressure had gone up; and dangerously high. So I had to cancel the surgery lest I bleed out on the table, and for the past several months I’ve been working hard on changing my diet and religiously taking my blood pressure meds, and amazingly enough, my blood pressure went back to normal levels and lo and behold, I was able to get my hip replaced.

But in the interim, life pretty much sucked. I still kept on gigging, but it was under a lot of pain. It got so bad that I couldn’t even stand for my gigs and had to use a drummer’s stool for my solo performances. I stood a bit at my church gigs, but I just remained seated for the most part in the weeks leading up to my surgery.

Now that I’ve had my hip surgery, life is going to change for the better this time. While I was writing this article, my quite attractive physical therapist fetched me to do some walking about the corridors and to practice going up stairs and steps and getting in and out of a car. Amazingly, my joint doesn’t hurt – at all! What hurts is the incision, and that pain will go away eventually. In fact, it’s nowhere near as painful as it was on Monday, so I’m pretty encouraged.

What this means is that I will have mobility again, and will soon be back and rockin’. Life is going to get better – much, much better!

Posted in Guitars | Tagged , | 17 Comments »

Gear Review: Rockn Stompn Sequential Power Supply

April 9, 2013 by GoofyDawg

rocknstompn

 Rockn Stompn Power Supply
Summary: Nothing like clean power. But there’s also a lot to be said about getting your power on in the right sequence.Pros: Great power conditioning, plus the ability to properly activate your rig in the right power-on sequence.Cons: A little pricey.

Price: $379.00 Street

Features:

  • Fully customizable power-on interval setup
  • 1935 Joules of surge protection
  • Power conditioning ensures your rig always gets optimal power.
  • Convenient foot switch for power-on.

Tone Bone Rating: 4.75 ~ You might be thinking that it’s just a power strip. But this isn’t your ordinary power strip. The surge protection and power conditioning alone are worth it.

Kimball, the maker of the RocknStompn power supply, contacted me recently, wanting to send me his power supply for review. As is my normal routine when contacted out of the blue, I do a bit of research to find out about the product. So I went to the Rockn Stompn web site to see what was what with this power supply. Admittedly, when I saw the price of the unit, I got extremely curious. What could make this so pricey? So I emailed Kimball back, and said I’d review the unit.

It arrived a few days later, and I immediately plugged it in, plugged my amp and pedal board in, turned my amp on, then switched on the unit. As advertised, the power to the plugs went on sequentially with amp coming on last. That’s actually a VERY cool feature as it ensures that you always power on your rig in the proper sequence.

But the thing that I found was much more important than the sequencing was the power conditioning. I have a few pedals – one in particular – that are extremely sensitive to the power supply I plug into. If the power is “dirty” these pedals make a lot of noise. But with the Rockn Stompn, I get clean power, and even my most finicky pedal, my ToneCandy Spring Fever, was absolutely quiet. That pedal has frustrated me since day one when I got it, and for the first time since I’ve owned it, it is dead quiet.

I first tried the power supply in my studio, and it worked just fine. But you know me, the real test for any gear is at a gig, so I brought it to my church gig last weekend. My church is an interesting place in that we have pretty good audio equipment, but the power can be a little dirty. But with the Rockn Stompn powering my rig, I had zero noise. My VHT Special 6 can also be a bit finicky with power, and it too was dead quiet.

After the gig, I asked myself, would I actually spend this kind of money on just a power supply? After using it, yeah, I would definitely save up to get one of these units. Not only does it give me clean power, but the surge protection is worth it as well. Protecting my gear is ultra-important to me, and for as much as I gig year round, having that protection gives me a lot of peace of mind. Plus, once you have everything hooked up, all you need to do is hit the foot switch, and your rig will power on – in the right sequence. The foot switch is VERY convenient.

Notice that I didn’t mention anything about tone; neither does the company. But with continuous clean power, and a clean signal, one thing that I did notice in an A/B test was that my tone seemed a little clearer. I’m not saying that this will improve your tone, but it’ll definitely help with cleaning it up; especially if you’ve been running through dirty power. You know me, I’m highly suspicious of the snake oil that’s out there. But the Rockn Stompn isn’t sold with claims that it’ll improve your tone. But it sure does give you clean power, and that could have a good effect on tone.

I highly recommend that you check this out. It comes with a lifetime warranty, so the risk is minimal; you won’t be over a log if it stops working. I know one thing’s for sure as far as I’m concerned: This unit will be like an American Express card; I won’t be leaving home without it!

Posted in buying gear, GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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