So you wanna be a rock\u2019n\u2019roll star
\nThen listen now to what I say
\nJust get an electric guitar
\nAnd take some time and learn how to play
\nAnd if you make the chart
\nIn a week or two the girls will tear you apart<\/i><\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve been following this blog (it turns out both Captain Hammer and the LAPD read it), you know I got me an acoustic guitar about year ago and have good fun and success in learning how to play it. I seem to have settled into a mode of mainly the folk and rock songs that are good to sing and play rhythm to. I even wrote my first song on guitar a while back and want to put it on my next records. It\u2019s called Rocket To The Moon, and is an uptempo pseudo-punk number (although it has far more than three chords. Eight or nine I think.)<\/p>\n
So I\u2019ve been thinking about how to record this song. At one point I had hoped to get it done by Xmastime to submit to NASA song contest for the final space shuttle flight, but that\u2019s looking unlikely right now due to repeated delays of the ship date for the mbox 3 pro. In the interim I took a look at Reaper, the FOSS DAW, but ran into so many issues with the setup I decided to punt for the time being and go back to the original mbox with PT7 to record my last song on the old rig.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a short cover with a long title. I\u2019m trying to do a really stripped down arrangement with just voice and piano and get it done quickly. But it turns out it\u2019s not so easy to have a simple arrangement and make it come across with power and emotion. So I\u2019m kinda woodshedding it now. Still hope to have it done in a couple of weeks, and by then the new box will be out and it\u2019s on to the big upgrade.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in guitarland, Martin lent me a guitar mutli-FX box and amp simulator. I have an old electric guitar and I hooked the two of them together and gave it a whirl. The box is fun and interesting, and has a lot of cool sounds. But the interface is obscure and I don\u2019t have a good handle on how to do more than move thru the presets, adjust the input gain, and select an amp simulation. This gives a good amount of range in available sounds, but there\u2019s a whole effects block I haven\u2019t cracked, with reverbs and tremelos and wahs and flanges all kinds of groovy stuff. Martin is coming for a visit sometime soon, so hopefully he\u2019ll have the time to show me how the thing works. The other issue I have with the effects box is so many of the sounds are heavy metal megadistortion. I\u2019m mostly playing rhythm and strumming, so this is completely wrong. I just want to embiggen my sound a bit. I wouldn\u2019t mind getting a kinda slinky 70\u2019s sound like George Harrison or David Gilmour either.<\/p>\n
My electric guitar is an old Guild with dual humbuckers,. It\u2019s okay but not great, so I\u2019ve been thinking of getting a new one. I was also thinking of selling it and thought I might get a couple hundred for it. Then I went on ebay and saw the same model listed at $450 up to $1100. So I guess I should try and find out how much mine is worth.<\/p>\n
Picking out a new guitar is a daunting task, cuz it\u2019s not really my area and there\u2019s just so many choices. I\u2019ve been looking online and checking out the guitar section every time I go to Manny\u2019s to see about the mbox. I\u2019ve divided the product space into three main subtypes: Gibson, Fender and other. They seem to go from $300ish to as expensive as you wanna get. One friend thinks I should check out a Telecaster and another recommends Paul Reed Smith guitars. I\u2019m leaning towards a Gibson GS, partly cuz I like the look and partly cuz of the humbuckers. I really need to just go to a music store one day an play some guitars. I tied to a couple weeks ago when I had a day off from work, but I ended up going to buy a snowblower instead.<\/p>\n
So for now I think I\u2019m gonna punt on the whole electric guitar thing and record Rocket to the Moon on acoustic and build the arrangement around that. I have another song ready to go after that called Seven Is Magic, an instrumental which I\u2019m gonna do with a sax quartet. I might rename it Sea of Tranquility (or Valley of Serenity) to fit in with the whole moon concept.<\/p>\n
I also came up with a bass part for RTTM. Remember what I said about the bass being easy? Well the only thing that\u2019s really hard for me is fast repeated 16th notes on the same note. This is not a pattern I usually favor, but it seemed like I should try it for this song. It didn\u2019t really work so I said to myself what would John Paul Jones do? So the new pattern is based on a rotation of fast moving riffs, a la Good Times Bad Times or Dazed and Confused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So you wanna be a rock\u2019n\u2019roll star Then listen now to what I say Just get an electric guitar And take some time and learn how to play And if you make the chart In a week or two the girls will tear you apart If you\u2019ve been following this blog (it turns out both … Continue reading “Music Update 4: The Question of Electric Guitars”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}