There were two acoustic jam meetups in December - one in early December (actually the "November" meetup), and one yesterday. These are still great fun - good people and good music. The songs we played, as best I can remember, are as follows (with my choices marked with asterisks.)
Early December
Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)
Poor Little Fool (Ricky Nelson)
Here Comes the Sun (Beatles)
S'Wonderful (George Gershwin)
Sloop John B (Beach Boys)
You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Beatles)
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Promises (Eric Clapton)
Key to the Highway (Eric Clapton)
Pilgrim (Steve Earle)
Show Me the Way to Go Home (Irving King)
** Carefree Highway (Gordon Lightfoot)
6th Avenue Heartache (Wallflowers)
Soulshine (Warren Haynes/Allman Brothers)
Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash)
Dear Mary (Linda Thompson)
Yellow (Coldplay)
Help (Beatles)
Dreaming (Blondie)
Deep Elm Blues (Jerry Garcia)
Down By the River (Neil Young)
Late December
House of the Rising Sun (Animals)
When Will I Be Loved (Linda Ronstadt)
** Willin' (Little Feat)
Like a Hurricane (Neil Young) (Marylou chose this, as it was the song we played at the holiday open mic)
All I Want is You (U2)
Snow is Gone (Josh Ritter)
Poor Elijah (Robert Johnson)
Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Eric Clapton)
Crying in the Chapel (Elvis Presley)
Tennessee Waltz (Patsy Cline)
This Land is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)
** Hey You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Beatles)
After seeing Little Feat at the Folk Festival last August, I was determined to see them again, if at all possible. Well, I didn't have to wait long for the next chance. Within weeks, Darling Wife saw a notice that they were coming to the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood, NJ in late December. I grabbed some tickets, and have been looking forward to it ever since.
Saturday finally arrived, as did 4 inches of snow. There was some last-minute shuffling of attendees, but we got over to Jersey with no problem, got a very nice sushi dinner, and made our way to the auditorium. It's a very interesting old 1,000-seat theater dating from the 1930's, and we had great seats - very first row of the second section, left-center.
The band went on shortly after 8:00 (with no opening act), and launched into "Rocket in my Pocket" and "Fat Man in the Bathtub", two great songs from "Waiting for Columbus" (their monster album from the 70's, and for my money, the best live album there is.)
I'll likely repeat everything I said after the August folk fest show - they lay down an amazing funky groove. I can't explain what makes it so infectious, but I could listen to them play all night. Many of their songs probably went to 10 or 15 minutes, with the two guitarists and the keyboard trading solos, and I found it mesmerizing - never tedious, as I often find extended jamming. It wasn't flashy pyrotechnics, just fun jamming over top of a rock-solid rhythm section.
I had one detail wrong in August, and I didn't realize my error until after Saturday night's show - there are two guitarist/frontmen, and the guy I thought was Paul Barrere was actually Fred Tackett. So in my August review, when I talked about being impressed with Paul Barrere's multi-instrumentalist playing, I was giving credit to the wrong guy.
They mixed in some songs from their new CD, and the title track, "Rooster Rag", is a very nice bluegrass-type tune with acoustic guitar and mandolin. But they did all the big songs from "Waiting for Columbus", but to their credit, none were note-for-note reproductions.
They closed the set with an extended "Dixie Chicken", featuring Fred Tackett's jazz trumpet intro, then one encore ("Oh Atlanta"), and the show was over, a few minutes shy of two hours.
I see on the band's website that Paul Barrere is going to be taking a medical sabbatical to try to recover from Hepatitis C. I wish him a full recovery, and hope Little Feat will be back on the road ASAP.
Donovan's "Catch the Wind" is a song I've always wanted to know how to play on the acoustic guitar. It sounds like it shouldn't be that hard, but I've tried to figure it out a few times, and always walked away frustrated.
So it was with great pleasure that I saw it show up in my YouTube feed of new videos last week - no surprise that the tutorial is by the prolific Marty Schwartz. (Tutorial is here, song is here.)
I'm pleased, and not surprised, to find out that it's not hard to play. The trick is knowing to capo at the third fret. Once you do that, it's just strumming C, F, and G7. You can put a few embellishments in, that sound great, and also aren't hard - and Marty shows how to do it all.
The only part that's a little tricky is the descending bass run that starts the song (and some of the verses.) It's not hard, it just needs some repetitions, which I'm giving it.
Kudos again to the best guitar teacher on YouTube. If I ever meet Marty, I owe him as many beers as he'd like to drink.
It's always interesting to open my YouTube feed and see which of the people I follow have posted a new guitar lesson or song tutorial. Last week, I was surprised to see that Marty Schwartz (the best and most prolific guitar teacher on YouTube) had a video on how to play James Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves". (Tutorial is here, song is here.)
That song is one of my all-time favorites, and has to be one of the prettiest songs there is. The finger-picking guitar work is *exquisite*, and I'd always assumed this song was *way* out of my league. That may still turn out to be true, but at least I now have an idea of how to play the song (where before, I had none.)
I've gone through the lesson in great detail (backing up and repeating 10-second segments again and again). The chords of the song are not complicated. But the right hand (the picking hand) is as complicated as I imagined.
I've given it a bunch of slow repetitions, and it kinda sounds like I'm getting there a little bit. But then last night, right before turning off the lights, I grabbed my iPod, put on my headphones, and listened to the recorded version. Its beauty took my breath away...and also made me realize I'm still a very long way from sounding like that.
But I'm thrilled that I can play it at all, and this will now be part of my practice routine.
I was in the local music store recently to get a set of strings. While at the register paying, I noticed a display of clip-on tuners for $12. I love the clip-on tuner that brother Eric got me for Christmas a few years ago, and for $12, having a second one seemed like a good idea (one for upstairs, one for the basement.) So I grabbed one.
Well, I'm now reminded of the old saying that a man with two watches is never sure exactly what time it is.
Intonation is pure physics - the note A vibrates at 440 cycles/second. There's no room for interpretation. Yet my two tuners are slightly different. If I had a guitar in tune by the old tuner, the new tuner says everything is a shade sharp. My guess is that the new tuner is correct, as I've often noticed that I'm a shade out of tune with YouTube lessons I play along with. I'd always assumed that was a by-product of YouTube, but maybe it's been me.
It's not a big deal, just a very minor annoyance - and no concern at all when playing by myself. When playing with others, I will have to decide which tuner is definitive.
I can't help myself, I always like looking at guitars. If there's nothing else to read at lunch, I'll grab the Musician's Friend catalog that I already know by heart. I sometimes browse eBay auctions just to see what various instruments are going for - and while I know I *need* nothing, I'm always on the lookout for what seems like a good bargain.
Two weeks ago, I was looking at SG's, and noted that there were some Epiphones going pretty cheaply on eBay. The SG is a classic guitar, and I'd often thought that I'd like to play one, just to fool around with. I saw one up for auction for $150 (plus shipping), put in a bid at that price, and won - my bid was the only one.
It arrived a few days later, and is a gorgeous instrument. It needed a little cleaning and a new set of strings, but that was easily done. Now I have a sweet looking and playing guitar, and I couldn't be more pleased.
Others in the house *could* be more pleased. Elder Daughter, on hearing that I'd won an eBay auction, said, "Just as long as it's not another guitar." Well, sorry about that, sweetie.... Younger Daughter couldn't see why guitars are being purchased when there are still daughters without iPhones. There's general female agreement that I should be banned from eBay.
I'm comfortable that no one in the house is going without any necessities. And I think I could have worse vices. Until I find one, I'll be happy with my SG (and its friends. :-))
I heard the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" recently, and it struck me as such a classic song that I should know how to play it. I did a quick YouTube search, and Marty Schwartz from guitarjamz.com came to the rescue yet again.
I can't recommend Marty highly enough. He has one YouTube channel for lessons and theory, and another channel for song tutorials. He's a great teacher, and I've learned a ton from him.
"Here Comes the Sun" turns out not to be that complicated. It's played with a capo at the 7th fret (though that's only necessary to play in the same key as the recorded version.) The chords are simple: D, G, A7, E7. The strumming is the trickiest part - at least if you want to do it as George Harrison did.
Marty explains it clearly and in detail, and I have the basics pretty much down cold. It's a fun song to play, and I'm not completely smooth with it yet - but that's just a matter of repetition.
The August acoustic jam meetup was yesterday. The previous meetup was in early June - no July session was scheduled due to hot weather (we meet in a non-air conditioned Quaker meetinghouse), and the August session was scheduled for the end of the month for the same reason.
It was a full house of 15 people, plus a lengthy waiting list. Word must be spreading that it's a good time with good people. The songs we played, as best I can remember, are below.
A good number of folks had been at the folk fest last weekend, and we chatted about our experiences there. In honor of the folk fest, I brought Little Feat's "Willin'", which was well-received. The other "topical" song was Don's selection of "Mr. Spaceman", in honor of Neil Armstrong's passing the day before.
Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)
Forever and Ever, Amen (Randy Travis)
Mr. Spaceman (The Byrds)
Sweet Home Alabama (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
Que Sera Sera (Doris Day?)
Birds (Neil Young)
Hey Soul Sister (Train)
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (Bachman Turner Overdrive)
After a number of years of thinking about it, I finally got to the Philadelphia Folk Fest last weekend. It's a Thursday-Sunday event, and I was able to get there for the day Saturday. I'll write more about the whole folk fest experience, but for now I'll just write about Little Feat's set.
I've been a big Feat fan since I discovered them in the post-college years. Their live CD "Waiting for Columbus" is a classic, and widely considered one of the best live albums ever. I remember one weekend road trip when I put it on and turned it up, and the usual banter in the car stopped and we just listened - they put down an understated funky groove that's unique.
For many people, Little Feat died with founder Lowell George in the late 70's - and I have to say that I'd only thought of them and put them on very occasionally until just recently. But they came back on my radar when I saw a blog post of someone who saw them live recently and raved about it. Then when I saw they were headlining the folk fest, I decided I needed to see them.
I had a great time at the fest and saw a ton of good music, and Little Feat blew me away from the first note. They opened with "Spanish Moon", my favorite song from "Waiting for Columbus." They're a six-piece band: two front-men who play guitar (Paul Barrere and Fred Tackett (in the Lowell George spot)), keyboards, bass, drums, and percussion.
They mixed in new songs with the old songs - and the new songs didn't make the show lose momentum. The classics were certainly recognizable, but they were updated - they weren't note-for-note reproductions of the mid-70's arrangements.
Three of the classics provided departure points for some extended jamming - Dixie Chicken, Willin', and Fat Man in the Bathtub. Extended jamming often strikes me as boring and self-indulgent - but their jams were *treats*. They wove lead lines in and out, and the result was mesmerizing. I didn't want it to end.
Fred Tackett especially impressed me. Depending on the song, he might be playing lead guitar, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, or mandolin - and he stood out on them all. Oh, he also played a slow trumpet introduction to "Dixie Chicken" that brought down the house.
"Fat Man in the Bathtub" ended their 70-minute set, and the crowd *screamed* for more. But the night was tightly scheduled, and there was one more performer, and more wasn't possible.
What makes some jamming mesmerizing while other jamming is tedious? I can't explain it - but I know it when I hear it, and Little Feat has the goods. They're not flashy, but they're tight as hell and they have a sound and a groove all their own. It was a pleasure and a treat to see them, and I will see them again at the next possible opportunity.
When Led Zeppelin released some of their live performances a few years ago, the nicest surprise for me was hearing their acoustic set. That's not something I'd ever heard (as it wasn't on the live album "The Song Remains the Same"), and it blew me away.
The live version of "Going to California" was especially beautiful, with Jimmy Page's acoustic guitar and John Paul Jones' mandolin weaving together. The DVD gives some hint of how the finger-picking is done, but didn't give me enough to play it myself.
Yet again, YouTube comes to the rescue, with a very clear lesson on how to play it. It's in "double drop-D" tuning, where both E-strings are tuned down to D. After watching this lesson twice, I can fumble my way through the song. I need a lot of repetition on the right hand, to burn in the finger-picking pattern, but it's fun and sounds great.
I was playing it last night while watching the Olympics when Sarah came in from work, grabbed a snack, and sat down next to me. She recognized what I was playing right away, which pleased me a lot.
I recently wrote about my travel guitar, and now I've had a chance to actually travel with it. Last week was my annual boys' hiking/camping trip, this year to the High Peaks region of New York State's Adirondacks. Five of us crammed our food, gear, and beer into a rental minivan and hit the highway, headed for four days and four nights at the Wilderness Campground at Heart Lake.
Now that the trip is over, I have to say that the guitar met every hope I had for it, and was exactly what I envisioned it to be. It was always handy - I would grab it during post-hike afternoon downtime, or around the campfire at night. It wasn't my intention to play "for" anyone - I didn't want to annoy the guys with it, and thought I would probably take it and go down to the lake and find a quiet spot by myself to play. To my surprise, the guys wanted to hear songs, and tried to sing along. The problem was I didn't have lyrics. Next time I'll make a point to bring my binder of songs from the acoustic jam - at this point I have a sizable collection of printed tabs (chords and lyrics.)
I continue to be very pleased with the guitar itself. I can't recommend the Washburn WMJ 10S Mini Jumbo highly enough. It sounds good, feels good, and looks good - and at a budget price.
My baby's first outing was a complete success. I will be taking her with me everywhere it's possible to bring her. And for the next camping trip, maybe some other guys will also bring a guitar, and we can really have some fun!
I saw a YouTube guitar lesson over the weekend on the Page/Plant acoustic version of "No Quarter". I love the Zeppelin version of this song, especially the live version with John Paul Jones' extended keyboard solo, but this is an interesting rearrangement for acoustic guitar.
It's in DADGAD tuning, which I only know from "Kashmir". The guitar lesson is here, and I re-tuned and easily followed along. I've kept my Seagull tuned in DADGAD ever since, and have been playing both "No Quarter" and "Kashmir" a lot (probably to Darling Wife's distraction.)
I want to find some more songs to play in this tuning - though just noodling around is fun in itself. It produces an exotic sound, which I'm not sure how to describe - Middle Eastern? Arabic? Indian? I just know that I like it - a lot.
I had a recent birthday, and when asked the inevitable "what do you want for your birthday", one thing came to mind. I would love to take a guitar with me to various places - to the River, to the beach, to the campground, etc. I love my Seagull, but it's too nice an instrument to take into the elements. So I've been thinking about getting a "beater" or "travel" acoustic guitar.
I did some research, asked some questions, and settled on the Washburn WMJ 10S Mini Jumbo Acoustic Guitar. I heard numerous recommendations for Washburns as decent-quality guitars at entry-level prices. I ordered it from Musician's Friend (using one of the discount coupons that shows up in my inbox just about every day), and it was delivered a few days later.
I've had it for a week now, and I'm very pleased. It looks, feels, and sounds great. I like the mini jumbo size. The action could be a little lower, but that's something I can fix the first time I change the strings.
I'm tentatively planning to bring this with me to the Adirondacks, keeping it at my feet in the van if there's not room for it in the back. And I'm calling it a travel guitar - not a "beater." I plan to take good care of it - but I also plan on taking it with me everywhere I can.
I hinted at the end of my last post that I talked with a friend from the acoustic jam meetup, and we were considering playing some songs at the following Tuesday's open mic at The Rock. This did happen - Marylou and I settled on three relatively easy songs that she was comfortable singing:
Nights in White Satin (Moody Blues)
For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
Horse with No Name (America)
ELP's "Lucky Man" was a possibility, but scrapped in favor of "Horse with No Name".
It all went very smoothly. I played my Seagull, which is a straight acoustic guitar. Many of the other players have acoustic/electric guitars (with a pickup for plugging into an amp.) That means they had to set up a mic in front of me, and that worked well enough. Another friend from the meetup let Marylou borrow his gorgeous Gibson acoustic/electric guitar.
We played our three songs and got through them fine. It was a lot of fun, and I'd love to do more things like this - the big caveat being that I need to perform with someone who can sing, as I can't carry a tune.
Last Sunday was the latest jam session of the Downingtown Area Acoustic Jam meetup group (yeah, Sunday was actually June, but it was the May meetup.) These are always fun, and Darling Wife, who comes along to sing, enjoys them every bit as much as I do.
You're supposed to bring two new songs to every session, and Darling Wife suggested a couple, which I researched and printed out. The first was Neil Young's "Don't Cry No Tears". I wasn't familiar with this song, but it's a good song, and easy to play, with just a few simple chords. She also suggested Eddie Vedder's "Guaranteed" (which I've blogged about playing.) It's a tricky song to finger-pick, but not hard at all to strum the chords.
When our turn came, I handed out "Don't Cry No Tears" - and it went over like a lead balloon. I don't know what the problem was - even if you didn't know it, it's not hard to follow along. But people acted totally lost. I'm not sure what the problem was, but it just didn't fly. Darling Wife was a bit traumatized, and told me absolutely not to hand out the Eddie Vedder on our next turn. So I didn't, and called for an old standby (and one of my favorites) - John Denver's "Country Roads".
Notwithstanding our apparently misguided selection, it was a fun afternoon of good music with good people. Guitar great Doc Watson passed away last week, and a few people brought Doc Watson songs to the group.
As a teaser for my next post, I talked with a friend after the jam session, and we toyed with the idea of playing a few songs at the open mic on Tuesday night.
The set list, as best I can remember (and I know I'm missing a few songs), is as follows:
Deep River Blues (Doc Watson)
Peaceful Easy Feeling (Eagles)
Don't Cry No Tears (Neil Young)
Act Naturally (Beatles)
For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
Let It Be (Beatles)
Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter (Herman's Hermits)
I Know You Rider (Grateful Dead)
Sittin' On Top of the World (Doc Watson)
Take It Easy (Eagles)
Country Roads (John Denver)
Preston Miller (Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer)
Tennessee Stud (Doc Watson)
This Land is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)
Southern Cross (Crosby Stills and Nash)
Ferry Across the Mersey (Gerry and the Pacemakers)
I *love* finding stuff like this on the Internet. Here is Stevie Ray Vaughn's guitar rig and gear setup diagram from 1985. It's fascinating to me to see how a pro player actually sets things up. One of the commenters on the message board I found this on noted how simple SRV's setup was - maybe that's true, but it looks pretty complicated to me. I guess other pro's are far more complicated? Anyway, take a look and enjoy.
In my last post, I said I would go into a little detail about what I'm working on with the looper pedal. To start, I have to talk a little about the guitar lessons I took last year.
I took lessons for about four months, going every other week, and then I stopped (just about a year ago) when work and life got busy to the point that I wasn't able to give the lessons proper attention. I didn't stop because it wasn't helping - quite the contrary, it helped a tremendous amount - but he gave me so much, so fast, that I couldn't even begin to process it all in the two weeks between lessons.
I knew then, and I know now, that what he was giving me was the road-map to being a competent guitar player. He told me I had to burn in the five positions of the minor pentatonic scale, going up and down the fretboard. And in every key - though that's not that difficult, once you learn it in one position, you just shift the position to play in another key.
Then there's the minor scale - again, in all five positions, and in every key. And then the major versions of these minor scales (though there's a trick - they're the same thing.)
Soloing and improvisation are based on these scales, and I've continued practicing them. So now with a looper, I can play a chord progression in D major, or A minor, or whatever, and practice improvising over that progression. I can play around with the different positions of the appropriate scales, and try to play something that actually sounds like improvisation, and not just like playing scales.
I think I'm at the point now where I've finally internalized what my teacher was giving me a year ago. And I've barely scratched the surface.
We've been having the basement finished over the past month, and as the work has progressed, I've been getting more and more excited at the thought of having a dedicated space (a corner of the basement) where I could set up my gear and keep my guitars and amps, and a place where I could hopefully practice without bothering anyone else in the house.
Late last week, the work was completed with the installation of the carpet, and I had a guitar and an amp down there just as soon as I could. So far it's exceeded all my hopes and expectations.
The first thing I did was turn my amp up louder than I would normally play and played for five minutes. Darling Wife said she could barely hear me, and didn't even have to turn up the volume on the TV. Both girls were studying upstairs in their bedrooms, and also said they could barely hear me - that it might disturb them if they were trying to sleep, but it wouldn't disturb them from studying.
I'm not even close to fully set up - I have one guitar and one amp down there, and no furniture. But I can turn on my amp, start up the looper, play a chord progression, and practice improvising over it to my heart's content. And I've been doing a lot of it, and already feel like I'm much more comfortable with extended improvising. More on exactly what I'm working on in my next post.
I was down there playing on Thursday night, and Sarah came down to look at my setup. Her first reaction was that it looked sad for me to be playing all alone in one corner of a huge space. I understand that - but we'll work on filling in that big space over the coming months. But her next reaction, after listening to me play for a minute, was that I sound "legit". I'll take that as the compliment I think it was meant to be, as my interests more often than not get eye rolls from the teenagers in my house.
Two week ago, I wrote about winning an eBay auction for a looper pedal, and promised a review once I received it. I've now been using the looper for a week, and here's my review - it's the greatest practice tool ever.
If you're learning how to solo or improvise, I don't see how you can do without a looper. You tap the pedal with your foot, play a few bars or a chord progression, then tap it again, and what you just played loops continually (until you double-tap the pedal to stop the loop.) While it's looping, you have a background track to practice improvising over.
It took me a little while to learn how to use it properly. I couldn't sync the timing of the loop, and finally realized that I was coming in on an off beat. I now pay attention to coming in right on the beat, and it works like a charm.
My looper (the Boss RC-2 Loop Station) has many features that I haven't yet used - I've only recorded a loop, then played it back. I could save eleven loops to play back later - but I'm doing very simple chord progressions - nothing so complicated that I can't just play it again next time. There are also drum tracks that can sync with your loop - I've played with that a little, but it's not necessary, and I've been fine practicing to just my simple loop.
I got an e-mail from a band-mate saying "Do a YouTube search on 'Zepparella, When the Levee Breaks'! I think I'm in love". That was easily done (YouTube link here and below.)
At first glance, I was blown away. Four women who look like models playing Zeppelin (and doing a great job)? Sure, what's not to like. Then I got skeptical. Really? They all just happen to be smoking hot? Are they really playing those instruments?
I can't answer that question, but a little web research shows the the guitar player, Gretchen Menn, is a very real guitar player (and yeah, smoking hot.) YouTube interview is here.
As recommended, "When the Levee Breaks." Fantastic version of one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs.
Well, that was fast. eBay is pretty amazing. I was looking at the current generation Boss RC-3 Loop Station, and thought that it had way more features than I would want, and cost more than I wanted to pay. One of the comments I saw on the RC-3 compared it to the superseded RC-2, so I went searching for that on eBay. There were plenty of RC-2's up for auction, either lightly used or "new in the box".
I put a few of the RC-2 auctions in my "follow" list. Yesterday, as time was expiring on a "new in the box" RC-2, I put in a bid, and won it. So hopefully in the next week or so, I'll have a looper to practice with. I'm quite excited.
From the "there are always more fun toys necessities" file. Twice in the last few weeks I've seen what a cool thing a looper pedal is.
A couple of Saturdays ago, Darling Wife and I went to a local bar where they advertised live acoustic music. There was a guy with a guitar playing, and at one point we realized we heard two guitars at once - he would take a solo, but the chords of the songs were still playing. In between songs, he addressed that, saying that he wasn't playing to a recorded backing track, that he was using a looper and playing over himself.
I knew how that worked - it's a foot pedal, and you tap it once to start the loop, then tap it again to stop, then the loop repeats until you stop it. So if you set a loop of 8 or 12 or 16 bars of a song, it will keep repeating until you stop it, and you can play a solo over the looped chords.
Then on Tuesday night we went to an open mic, and a very talented guitarist also used a looper. He played a few bars of a chord progression to set the loop, then soloed over top of himself.
I have *no* intention of playing out as a one-man band, but the possibilities for using a looper to practice seem endless. It would be very cool to set up a loop of a chord progression and practice soloing over it.
Looking online, even the basic looper pedals are more expensive than I'm comfortable with - and they also have *way* more features than I want. I just want a very simple pedal that will store a few minutes of a chord progression to let me practice soloing and improvising. Some research shows that older-generation loopers are still readily available on eBay.
Let's just say that I'm monitoring the situation closely.
I've been giving some thought recently to what I want to concentrate on in my playing. I've done some playing with the aikido band on both guitar and bass, and have also enjoyed the monthly acoustic jams. I'd like to do more playing with people, either in a formal band or in jam sessions. It's both a lot of fun and the quickest way to learn and improve.
Here are the options I see:
Bass: while I'm spending just about all of my practice time on the guitar, it's a fact right now that I'm a better bass player. I can play rhythm guitar in a band or a jam session, but I'm not good enough yet to be in a gigging band. As a bass player, I think I am good enough to step into a gigging band and play out. That would be fun in the right situation, and I'd be open to it...but it's not what I really want.
Electric guitar: this is my main focus, and I'm having a blast. I can feel the improvement I've made, and I intend to keep progressing. I'm not *good*, and I don't know if I ever will be, but it's just a whole lot of fun. I'm going to keep playing with the guys, and hope to find other folks to play with. I *love* the gear I have, and have no big desires right now (yes, I'll qualify that with "right now", as Darling Wife rolls her eyes.)
Acoustic guitar: this obviously isn't that separate a thing, as improved playing skills on the electric will carry over to the acoustic. But sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't focus more on the acoustic. So many of the issues of tone and gear issues that you spend time on with the electric just go away when you pick up the acoustic. The sound of the instrument is all there is - and I adore the feel and the sound of my Canadian beauty. Maybe I should focus on acoustic playing, and look for opportunities to play with acoustic folks. Maybe even look to form a group to play folk/acoustic/soft rock songs. I think I could do that with more confidence that I could in an electric situation.
I'll continue to think about it, and we'll see how things develop.
Last Sunday was the latest meetup of the Downingtown Area Acoustic Jam group. After having made five straight meetups, we missed February because of an emergency need to clean out the basement. We were sad to have missed one, so we were all the more excited to get to this one.
For our two songs, we again brought one new one (The Eagles "Tequila Sunrise") and one repeat (Pure Prairie League's "Amie", which is fun to play and was well received last time.)
As always, it was a fun afternoon of good music and good people. What we played, as best I can remember, is as follows:
As I mentioned in my last post on recording, I learned that Guitar Center gives free recording workshops on Saturday mornings. It's a four-part workshop, which repeats every month. Part 1 ("Overview on studio setup and capturing audio") was last Saturday, and sounded like just what I need, so I signed up.
Two GC employees ran the demo/workshop - one running the controls and the other playing a guitar. Their setup was an electric guitar, but no amplifier - the guitar ran into an audio interface (exactly like the Tascam unit I now have), and from there into a Macintosh running the GarageBand software. Also attached to the audio interface were a pair of studio monitors (for sound output.)
GarageBand can model a huge number of different amps, settings, and effects. In other words, you can use your Mac as a guitar amp - simply amazing.
GarageBand also has clips and loops you can use. They set up a project and imported a drum loop in. Then they used the multi-track recording capability to record first a rhythm guitar track, and then a guitar solo on top of that. I've done that using Audacity, but the ability to bring in drum loops was eye-opening.
They didn't demo this, but the alternative to using GarageBand as your amp is to record your actual amplifier. You just set up the microphone in front of your amp, and record that.
This was a very valuable session. It was nice to get some confirmation that I'm basically on the right track. But it also showed me how much more there is.
I grabbed Darling Wife's MacBook last Sunday when she was out and fired up GarageBand - playing with some of the amp models. But as cool as GarageBand is, I can't use her laptop as my recording workstation.
I suspect that Cubase has a number of the GB features, just not in as user-friendly a format. I need to figure that out.
The Guitar Center free workshops are highly recommended. Yes, of course they're trying to sell gear, but they're also genuinely trying to help people get set up to record.
I am now the owner of a used Epiphone Casino guitar. I've been interested in electric hollow-body guitars, and the Casino specifically, for a while now. And I look in on the Craigslist "musical instruments for sale" section from time to time, just to see what people are selling. (As Darling Wife noted with raised eyebrow when I told her I'd found a guitar that I wanted to go look at, "One doesn't find without looking." And of course she's right.)
Late last week, I saw an ad for a nearly-new Casino. I wrote and said I was interested to see it, and after some back-and-forth, we settled on a late Sunday afternoon time when I could look at it. It appeared to be in pristine condition (in natural finish, as at right), so I played it for a bit, and we quickly settled on terms.
The Casino is most famously John Lennon's guitar. I'm not such a big Lennon fan that I have to have his guitar, but that is a cool fact. And the previous owner removed the white pickguard (which is shown in the stock pic at right) for a more authentic look, which I like and will keep. (I have the pickguard if I change my mind.)
I put a fresh set of strings on, and it sounds fantastic. So I'm quite pleased. Now begins the process of seeing just what sounds she's capable of - playing with the guitar settings, and seeing what different amp settings do.
I made a promise that I'm not accumulating guitars - that if I got this one that another would go. So my Epiphone Les Paul is now officially for sale. I've put the word out to my musician friends, and if no one bites, it'll be on CL or eBay very shortly. If I can get somewhere near what I paid for it two years ago, I'll have made a very nice trade for not very much money.
I posted in December about my initial experiments in recording my guitar playing on my laptop. I ran a guitar amp's "line out" to capture an electric guitar, and used the laptop's voice mic to capture an acoustic guitar. It worked, though the quality was not wonderful, and I was able to record a simple multi-track project that I was able to make into an MP3.
That was basically step 1 - proof of concept. I was certain that it's possible to capture better quality sound, and my Internet research indicated that the first necessity was a USB audio interface. Instead of running amps or microphones directly into the laptop (with its rudimentary sound card), everything plugs into the audio interface unit, which then plugs (via USB) into the laptop.
Musician's Friend has any number of these, and I had a few in mind when I went into Guitar Center with Eric's (Christmas gift) gift card in my pocket. After a discussion with an employee there, I walked out with a Tascam TrackPack SE - an audio interface bundled with a nice microphone, closed-ear headphones, and Cubase LE5 software.
Cubase is an alternative to Audacity - the recording/editing software. It apparently has many more features, but is also considerably more complicated than Audacity, and I simply haven't had the time to go through tutorials and get a feel for it.
I've set up the audio interface, installed drivers, etc., and done a little playing with it, but I still felt like something was missing.
Once again, Guitar Center comes to the rescue. I'm on their e-mail list, and get a list of coupons/promotions just about every day. I noticed that they hold free recording workshops on Saturday mornings - a four week course in home recording with your laptop that repeats every month. Part 1 was yesterday, and I thought that would be perfect - rather than continue to fumble around, I could go and watch someone who knows what they're doing.
The Beatles' "Blackbird" is a song I've wanted to be able to play for a long time. And I have been able to play a little of it - basically just the opening line. I knew it continued in the same vein, but I never sat down to figure it out.
Once again, YouTube comes to the rescue - and specifically again in the person of Marty Schwartz at guitarjamz.com. He confirmed what I already thought I knew, and showed me the rest. Since I had some time to myself last weekend, I played this song - a lot. And since it's on the acoustic, I could give it a lot of repetitions after girls had gone to bed.
It's a gorgeous song, and I'm thrilled to be able to play it. Now if only I could sing like Paul McCartney. :-)
Marty Schwartz of guitarjamz.com has to be one of the most prolific guitar teachers on YouTube. He posts videos on technical aspects (scales, chords, riffs, soloing techniques, etc.) and also lessons on how to play specific songs. I'm a long-time subscriber to his YouTube channels, and I have him to thank for a lot of the improvement I've made over the past year or so.
One of his recent song lessons is the blues classic "Stormy Monday", which I know as an Allman Brothers Band song, but goes way back and has been performed by many bands. After going through the lesson a couple of times, this is one of my new favorite songs to play. While it's a blues progression in the standard I/IV/V, there are a lot of subtle twists, interesting non-standard chords and passing tones.
I *love* the 9th chords on the IV and V - I love 9th chords in general, and have ever since I discovered that Led Zeppelin's "The Crunge" is a simple riff on A9 and D9 (which may be a topic for a separate post.)
I've been playing this song a lot, and I'll be playing it a lot more. I've got the chords down, so the next step (eek!) is soloing over top of these chords. I'll start slowly and see how it goes.
I recently had the good fortune to learn of the band Fontaine Cooley, and to see them play live. It was pure serendipity - I saw on Facebook that my ex-bandmate John Childers was playing solo as an opening act at a local music store. We like live music, and had no plans that evening, so we went out to see him.
John is well worth seeing, and did a lovely set of original songs, accompanying himself on the acoustic guitar.
Then Fontaine Cooley came on, and we were blown away from the opening notes. They're a four-piece acoustic band: guitar, mandolin, bass, drums (only the drummer was wearing what looked like a video game console around his neck - apparently it's called a zen drum.) I found out later that they sometimes play with a fifth member (on alto sax.)
It's all instrumental music - no vocals. I'm not sure how to categorize it - sometimes it sounds like light jazz, but it can also sound folky, and sometimes a little bluegrassy. But category doesn't matter, it's great music and tremendous musicianship.
We took in their set with much appreciation, then bought a CD ("Cheyney Sessions"), which I've been wearing out, and even chatted for a few minutes with guitarist Peter Hayes. I told him that his playing reminded me somewhat of Andy McKee, and I wasn't surprised at all that he knows Andy and has played with him.
It was a fantastic night of music. We agreed that we would go out and see them again in a heartbeat.
Here are some YouTube selections by Fontaine Cooley:
This afternoon was our fifth consecutive monthly session of the Downingtown Area Acoustic Jam group that we found out about through meetup.com. It felt like a long time between meetups, and looking at the calendar, it's been six weeks since the last one
You're encouraged to bring two new songs to every meetup (printed tabs enough for the group of 15 people.) We didn't have much time to think about this, so we brought one new song ("Amie", by the Pure Prairie League - which was very well received by the group, as it's an easy strumming song and fun to sing along to), and one song that we'd brought to a previous meetup (Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".)
The songs we played, as best I can remember, are as follows. The songs we picked are marked with asterisks.
Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)
Dirty Old Town (The Pogues)
It Don't Come Easy (Ringo Starr)
Rainy Day Women (Bob Dylan)
After the Goldrush (Neil Young)
Amie (Pure Prairie League) ***
Ring Around the Moon (Greg Brown)
Hey Good Lookin' (Hank Williams)
I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) (The Four Tops)
Steel Rail Blues (Gordon Lightfoot)
Country Roads (John Denver)
Wagon Wheel (Old Crow Medicine Show)
Help (The Beatles)
Red Clay (Gillian Welch)
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Bob Dylan) ***
Rooty Toot Toot for the Moon (Greg Brown)
California Stars (Wilco)
Let it Be (The Beatles)
Deportee (Woody Guthrie)
Makin' Whoopee (Eddie Cantor)
Good Luck John (Joe Crookston)
Another fun afternoon, and we're looking forward to next month's meetup.
There's a lot of Eddie Vedder in my house recently, as Darling Wife has discovered his solo music. There's a lot of finger-picking acoustic guitar (which I like a lot), and even a disc of ukelele songs (which I can take or leave.)
I thought I'd heard some of the acoustic guitar songs, and I finally figured out where - he did the soundtrack to the movie "Into the Wild", which I saw and liked. I stumbled on a YouTube guitar lesson for the song "Guaranteed", and I've been working on it ever since.
It's a simple and pretty song - acoustic guitar and vocals - and the chords turn out to be pretty straightforward:
G Bm G7 C
C G D
The finger-picking pattern is also pretty standard. But putting the two together at speed is *not* easy. And watching Eddie Vedder (in the clip below) play this live makes me appreciate that the man can seriously play the guitar.
I'm not sure I'll ever work up to full speed, but I'm giving it a lot of slow repetitions as a finger-picking exercise.
I don't remember exactly how I discovered Eric Johnson. It may have been through repeated glowing reviews of his playing on a guitar forum I sometimes browse...but however I learned of him, at one point I downloaded his Live from Austin, TX disc, which is a live performance from 1988 from the Austin City Limits TV show. It quickly became one of my very favorite discs, and I've listened to it countless times in the car or on the iPod.
I've shared my enthusiasm with brother Eric, and when Darling Wife saw that he was coming to the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, we decided that would be a good Christmas gift for Eric and me. We went on the theater's website in December and found that we could select the seats we wanted. Two seats in the 8th row a bit right of center sounded perfect.
The afternoon of the concert, I finally had time to do some research on what we could expect to see, and discovered that he has a new disc, Up Close. I downloaded it, and after a quick couple of listens I particularly liked the opening mood piece, which then launches into a guitar jam called "Fatdaddy."
Eric Johnson and his band (a bass player and a drummer) came on around 9:25, and launched into..."Fatdaddy." Great opening song, and the first thing I noticed is that he wasn't playing his signature Stratocaster, which is a sunburst body with a maple fretboard. Instead he was playing a black Strat with a maple fretboard. His amps were behind a black curtain, but it looked like there was a Marshall stack and a couple of Fender amps.
He went from one song to the next with very little stage banter (really nothing more than "thank you so much".) His playing was everything I expected from what I've heard and seen on YouTube - his tone is amazing, and pretty much unique. If I have my iPod on shuffle in the car, both my girls will call out "Eric Johnson" when a song of his comes on - even if they don't know the song, they know his sound. He can unleash a dizzying barrage of notes, flying up and down the fretboard - but he can also stay in the background laying down a groove during the vocals, or when the bass or drums are featured.
He didn't play songs from his new disc to the exclusion of everything else. He did some covers - The Beatles' "Dear Prudence" (which honestly didn't knock me out), a John Coltrane extended jazz jam (where he played a Gibson SG), and Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary". I was hoping that his Hendrix cover would be "Are You Experienced?", as I love his version from the '88 live disc. Songs that he did from that disc were "Zap" and "Cliffs of Dover".
I was impressed by the variety of styles of music he played. I was expecting the rock/blues jams, but the Coltrane jam surprised me, as did a country-style jam. The song is "On The Way" from his latest disc, and it's a fun kick-up-your-heels country picking song, and he called Andy McKee out to play on it. He even did a handful of solo acoustic guitar songs, including Paul Simon's "April Come She Will" (which is a gorgeous song that he played beautifully.)
One quibble - I'm sure it's too late to change his style of live playing at this point, but I wished he would have looked up from the guitar more. I'm not suggesting he become a showman - it's obviously not his style, and that's fine. But it seemed like he spent too much of the show hunched over the guitar looking at the fretboard while he played.
But that's a minor quibble - it was an amazing show. The man's technical ability is off the charts, and watching him lead his trio through so many musical styles was a treat. Eric Johnson alone would have been a memorable night - throw in Andy McKee as the opening act, and you have a night of guitar playing to remember.
Looking at YouTube, I see a number of clips from his show the previous night at BB King's in NYC. Here are a few:
One of our Christmas gifts to Eric was a ticket to the Eric Johnson concert last Saturday night at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville. I also got a ticket, and we've both been looking forward to the show, as we're both fans of Eric Johnson's music and his guitar playing. We knew the show was at 8pm, and that was really the only detail we knew.
On Saturday afternoon, I did a little web research, and discovered that there was an opening act - Andy McKee. The name rang a bell, and I thought it was a guy I had heard on WMMR's morning show a few years back. If it was the guy I was thinking of, he did some amazing things with an acoustic guitar in the studio that morning - not only strumming it, but drumming it at the same time and making some amazing sounds. A quick visit to YouTube confirmed that it was the same guy.
He came out to start the show around 8:20, played until shortly after 9:00, and knocked the socks off of Eric, me, and the rest of the house. He calls what he does "percussive guitar", and that describes it pretty well - but it still has to be seen and heard to be believed. He not only finger-picks and strums with his right hand, he taps and slaps the strings with either hand, fingers the fretboard with either hand, and also drums on the body of the guitar with either hand. I've never seen or heard anything like it.
He said he uses alternate tunings to get some of his sounds - and indeed he changed the tuning between almost every song (which is just one more thing that was boggling to me, as he did it effortlessly, and while chatting with the audience.)
His stage manner was warm and funny, and he would look out into the audience and raise an eyebrow as he was playing, as if to say "I can't believe how cool this is too!" He received a well-deserved standing ovation at the end of his set.
Another interesting note was the guitar he played. The frets were *not* parallel to each other. I've never seen a guitar laid out that way, and I don't understand. Is there a reason for it (it seems like there *must* be, even if I can't imagine it), or is he just trying to intentionally make it as difficult as possible? You can see the frets in the pic at right.
Rather than trying to describe any further what he does, I'll give some YouTube links. I would buy a ticket to see Andy McKee again any time, and I can't recommend him highly enough. "Unique" is probably an overused word, but he is truly unique. And while it is kind of like watching a magic act ("how in the world does he *do* that?!?"), the attraction isn't just that he's unique or that he's doing amazing things - it's also great music.
We decided to get together on New Year's Eve and have a potluck dinner party and jam session with the band and aikido folks. This seemed like a fun way to ring in the New Year, as the last dinner party/jam session last January is what prompted the formation of the band, which was definitely among the highlights of 2011.
We figured that we'd play our two sets as a trio (with me on bass), then if anyone else was there who played, we could jam to our heart's content. It turned out that the other folks who play couldn't make it, so we played two sets, then settled in to eat, drink, and be merry, while watching the New Year's coverage on TV.
Darling Wife had never seen us play as a band - she was at all the pre-band jam sessions, but wasn't at any of the parties we played. She said she was impressed at how much better we'd gotten, and that we sound pretty tight. So it was a fun night.
Gear-wise, I had my bass and bass amp - and also brought the Telecaster and the new Bugera amp. I brought the guitar in case we had enough people to jam (which we didn't), and I brought the new amp to show the guys (who were suitably impressed.)
We've also talked recently about personnel. I'm happy to play bass occasionally, or as a fill-in, but I want to play guitar. If we don't have a bass player, then we need to find one. And I think we have some options. I guess it's also a matter of our goals as a band. If we want to be a real gigging band, then we should find a wiz lead guitarist, and I'll be happy to play bass. But if (as I think) we want to be serious, but not too serious, and have fun rehearsing and play occasionally for parties of our friends, then I want to play guitar. So we'll see how things develop.
Either way, I'm happy to be playing, and hope to do as much as possible in 2012.
I've heard that one way to get better on guitar is to record yourself. It also sounds like fun, and I know that there are freeware software packages that can do fairly sophisticated multi-track recording. The audio recording and editing package that seems to be the standard is Audacity. I had downloaded and installed it, but never really learned how to use it. With some free time over Christmas week, that seemed like the time to learn.
I went through the basic tutorials on the Audacity website, and basic multi-track recording is very easy. So I thought I would try to create a three-track audio clip: bass and rhythm guitar playing a chord progression, and a solo guitar on top.
The first trick was how to capture the guitar or bass? Both my guitar amp and my bass amp have a "line out", and I can run a cord from there to the laptop's "microphone" port. That worked, but the input levels were way off - I had to turn the amp's volume to down below 1 for it to be anything but blaring static. But it did work, and I could get electric guitar and bass tracks that sounded okay, if a bit tinny.
I realized I had a very cheap and very old voice microphone that has to be years old. But I plugged it in and it worked, so I also decided to record an acoustic guitar track. That worked better than I thought, so I experimented with a three-track recording: acoustic (rhythm) guitar, bass, and lead guitar.
It actually worked okay, and I could export the Audacity project into an MP3 file, that if not professional-caliber, was recognizable as music. :-) It was a fun afternoon's project, but in the end it just made me want to figure out how to make better-sounding recordings. And that's where Eric and his family's very generous Christmas gift of a Guitar Center gift card comes in.
