Monthly Archives: March 2018

Guitar Techniques

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When I first found this amazing magazine about 8 years ago I was blown away. It has so much instructional material for a wide variety of subjects and styles (rock, jazz, country, classical, blues) from some really great players/instructors. The focus is truly on teaching/playing, way more so than any other guitar magazine that I’ve read. Also, it’s really well put together. The writing, notation, photos, audio and video examples are all done at the highest level of excellence. This is the kind of magazine that I’ve always wanted. So glad that I found it!

Mastery

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Last year I put together a custom electric guitar, all aspects of it were to my specification. Everything from the parts, the materials used, the look and wear/aging of the paint and hardware, even the type of wiring used for the electronics. I called it “The Duke”.

I love this thing. Honestly, it turned out way better than I thought it would. Essentially it’s all my favorite things in one guitar: mahogany Fender Jazzmaster body & neck, ebony fretboard, extra wide neck (for my big fingers), locking tuners, stainless steel frets, throaty P90 pickups and the amazing Mastery Vibrato.

I point out the vibrato because I was originally given another (inferior) tremolo/bridge and was really not enjoying the way the guitar turned out as much as I had hoped I would. Once I got the mastery installed it transformed the guitar into a completely new instrument. It feels so smooth, solid and dependable. Stays in tune without needing a locking nut and looks bad ass. It’s fantastic. This is without a doubt one of my all time favorite guitars. Thanks Mastery!

What a Rig!

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As much as I love my tube amps they just aren’t practical to record with at all hours of the day and night, so I’m super glad to have Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig to get my ideas down. I particularly like the “Country” presets for clean parts, “Dual Vintage” or “Massive Wall of Rock” for crunchy rhythms and “Eric John Son in Manhatten” or “God’s Love” for leads.

Capo

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I’ve been using this app “Capo” as part of my “Hearing and Writing” transcription assignments. A bit pricy but works really well for what I need. In addition to being able to slow things down while maintaining pitch and spectrogram analysis, I particularly like being able to navigate forwards and backwards in a song using key commands so that I can really zero in on a passage without having to look at the screen.

MuseScore

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Found out about this fantastic open source music notation app through one of Adam Neely’s videos. So far I’m loving how easy and intuitive it is to use. It’s really well thought out and implemented. Did I mention that it’s free?! Wow. Big thanks to the MuseScore community for making this available to everyone.

https://musescore.org/en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ4kRzkHroU&list=PLTYuWi2LmaPGb4SKXHm9JULQ-0CH8KpUk

Everything is Everything

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Watched a great lecture on the relationships between rhythm, pitch and color given by Adam Neely at Abelton’s Loop 2017 conference. It gets “out there” at times, but he pulls it all together as he demonstrates how everything is essentially rhythm.

Particularly liked this “The Color of Sound” chart from Nicolas Melendez and Clint Goss that Adam referenced. It shows the direct correlations of pitch and light frequencies. It would be cool to use this when putting together a concert’s light show!

Good Times

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Was trying to decide which song to notate for my next “Hearing & Writing” assignment and remembered how much I love the bass line of Chic’s classic hit “Good Times”. First I wrote out the bass part and programmed it into Logic. I then added some drums, guitar and piano. Afterwards I notated all the parts on one sheet of paper and put together this video.

That Pedal Show

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So glad that I found this channel on YouTube, it has so much useful information on it. Thoughtful reviews on all sorts of pedals/amps/guitars, comparisons of pedals by type (overdrives, distortions, fuzzes, wah-wahs, reverbs, delays, tremolos, vibes, etc.), thorough explanations on pedal related topics (e.g. pedal order, gain stacking, using buffers, power requirements, etc.), interviews with great players, pretty much anything you can think of related to electric guitar is on this channel. Also, they seem to be a couple of genuinely nice “blokes”.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnUXq8mGmoHt0e6ItuTs10w

Out in the Shed

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This is another “someday” book that sat on the shelf for many years that I decided to make time for. Been going through it, slowly, over the past year or so. Each exercise runs through all keys and usually has at least 20 rhythmic variations to do. Usually I will run through one position on the guitar for each rhythm pattern. Takes quite a while to complete just one of these exercises. Right now, I’m about two-thirds of the way through and happy that I made the effort.