Monthly Archives: February 2018

Pedal Board 4.0

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I’ve had various incarnations of my pedalboard over the years. In the past I had ones that were designed specifically for acoustic guitar. Others were to be used with either acoustic or electric. This one is a side project that I’ve been working on for quite a while and it’s all about the electric guitar.

It’s pretty large when compared with what’s popular these days, but hey, I’m a large guy with large feet and large hands. Given that I’m not gigging out much these days I decided to go with comfort and ease of access on this one.

Aside from it’s substantial footprint, the biggest feature of this pedalboard is that it is set up to be used with two amps, either one at a time or simultaneously. (I had no idea how good two amps could sound when blended together. It really is quite remarkable.)

So far I’m pretty happy with how it is working out. Sounds really good and I can access everything/make modifications quickly and easily. Now I just need to program the loop switchers and it will be good to go!

For The Love

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Remember when you did something purely for the act of doing it? No ulterior motive (e.g. “I’ll do this and maybe this other thing can happen…”). I’m guessing that you, like me, were pretty young when that was your modus operandi in choosing how you spent your free time. For me it was skateboarding, sports and music. I remember being about 12 years old playing the saxophone in my bedroom. I had been practicing a piece over and over for about 2 hours (driving my mom and neighbors batty) and feeling totally alive, free, and fulfilled. At that moment I felt that there was nothing better in the world that I could be doing with my life. It was pure, honest and direct. I still think about that moment when I start to wonder why I do what I do with music and always come back to the same answer: “For the Love”.

The Bends

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A few months ago I stumbled onto this series of videos put out by Guitarist magazine featuring Guthrie Govan giving a master class on string bending. It’s really well done and he gives a bunch of exercises to improve your bends.

I’ve incorporated the idea of bending the notes of any given scale into my daily practice. Each day the scale is different but I’ll bend my way through it. While playing up the scale (ascending), I’ll bend up to the next note. On the way down I’ll pre-bend to match the preceding note.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Guthrie you can thank me later.

Notation

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I’ve always wanted to write my musical ideas down in standard notation but each time I tried it took way too long and never seemed quite right. I bought this book back in 2004 hoping to fix that.

After trying to go through the material with my old approach (wanting to dedicate hours of study and only moving forward when I thought I had mastered each and every subject) inertia kicked in. This became yet another book that sat on a shelf for a long time with the “some day” label assigned to it in my mind.

“Some day” came and I started going through this book as part of the “little bit every day” experiment that I’ve been doing the past few months and I’m about half way through it. I have to say that it is one of the denser music books that I’ve gone through but I’m glad that I’ve stuck with it. Between this book and ear training I’ve started being able to write simple melodies from memory.

Things like nursery rhymes, holiday melodies and early Beatles songs, etc.  I know it’s not the level of Quincy Jones taking a complete symphonic score and distilling it down to it’s core elements and then re-orchestrating it in all twelve keys without an instrument, just using his mind, pen & paper. But I’m happy to be moving in that direction.

Study

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I have been really fortunate to have had some truly fantastic guitarists/musicians as teachers/mentors. Each had their own area of expertise (James Robinson: Flamenco and improvisation, Hristo Vitchev: Jazz and Music Theory, Doug Doppler: Metal/Rock and Modes). A common thread they all share (aside from them all being great guitarists) is their commitment to excellence as musicians. Each of them are truly masterful and I’m very grateful to have been able to have the opportunity to study with them.

Perhaps the one lesson that has become the most useful and profound is one that James Robinson shared with me. I was having difficultly making time to practice and he said “just do a little bit every day, even 5 minutes a day and you will get better over time”.

After repeatedly trying (and failing) to make myself stick to difficult and extensive regimens, I decided to try his suggestion and do a little bit every day. The past few months I’ve been doing just that and I’m starting to see a difference. I created a daily routine that covers a wide variety of subjects that I’m interested in and limit the amount of time that I spend on each of them to 5-10 minutes a day. I do some ear training, guitar studies (fretboard knowledge, chords, sight reading, bends, scales, improvisation), theory, notation, bass, keyboards (scales and chords), songwriting/chord progressions and vocal exercises. Again, each area only getting 5-10 minutes a day, period.

Is it perfect? No, but I can see that I’m making progress and am happy to have something that is manageable and easy to stick to. Also, I have plenty of time left over to do other things like writing and recording songs, which is why I want to be a better musician in the first place.

Thanks for the excellent advice, James!

Lyrical

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I used to really struggle with writing lyrics. It felt so important, with a such need to be significant that I usually stopped before I began.

Along with “starting with the end in mind” I’ve been using a cool technique that I learned in a songwriting workshop that Richard Adoradio and Kenny Schick put together back in 2006.

The process is simple. Get a timer and free-write without stopping for 2-3 minutes. When I say free, I mean completely free. Write whatever comes into your mind and don’t stop until the timer goes off. What you write for these 2-3 minutes does not matter. The point is to get into the creative mode and to get past the inner critic. Don’t filter, don’t analyze, don’t evaluate. Just write.

Once the timer goes off, work on the actual song lyrics can begin. The “stage has been set” for focusing on a theme and what feelings are to be conveyed. Rarely do I use anything that I came up with during the free-write. It was just a means to getting ready for the real stuff.

Now days I can usually finish a song’s lyrics in one sitting, as long as I stay open to the idea of it being done.

Thanks to Kenny and Richard for the great tip!

Start with the End

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“Start with the End in Mind” was a phrase that I heard from time to time over the years. I thought it sounded good but I had no idea just how useful it could be when applied. It wasn’t until I started working on the Music Sketches project at the end of 2016/beginning of 2017 that I found out first hand what it could mean.

Up until then, writing songs had been a difficult and arduous experience. I was lucky if I got one whole song together in a given year. Then I tried applying this idea of starting with the end in mind, as if the song was already done and that the process was easy and (dare I say) fun. I just focused on the idea and feeling of what it would be like if I had already finished the song. Before I knew it I would have a new idea which would lead to another new idea to another and so on. Within a few months I had over 50 song ideas recorded. These were full song ideas with chord progressions, melodies, grooves, hooks and sometimes lyrics and vocal parts all recorded and posted on YouTube.

It was a huge realization for me, that all those years I had been the starting with an end of difficulty, confusion and futility. Good to know.

The Bottom

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I love great bass lines and have been fortunate to have played with some truly fantastic bassists over the years (Akil Wemusa, Doug Pohorski and Edo Castro). I bought this book years ago in the hopes of becoming somewhat competent and conversant on the subject, but never got that far with it.

Recently I decided to take another go at it and finished the book this week. Am I at the same level as one of the amazing bass players I mentioned above? Not even… but I’m feeling more comfortable in reading and writing bass lines and that’s more than I had before.