Cool Guitar

I know I’ve mentioned the Rickenbacker 480 before, but this is just plain cool!

Thanks to Guitarz for posting this!  And thanks to Nick Page Guitars for making it!

Missed Anniversary

I can’t believe I missed the one year anniversary of this blog!

One year ago, on September 11th, I started this blog about wanting to be a guitar player.  Basically, I decided to post about being a poser and still loving guitars, learning to actually play and build guitars, as well as joining a community of people who share their love of guitars and music.

I have not achieved the things that I thought I would, but I have made progress.  I have not practiced on a regular basis.  I have not participated in an open mic night.  I have not learned a lot of songs.

I have played in front of people.  I have started a hobby band.  I have built guitars.  I have developed tone.  I have learned a lot about myself and one of the things I love.

I’ll be curious to see how the next year goes.

Friends and Family

We had some extended family over with their kids…which led me to move all my guitar gear into one protected place.  It is one thing to post and joke about my 2 year old twisting all the knobs on my amp so I have to rediscover the perfect settings.  It is another thing all together to post about broken knobs and banana squished into the input plugs…

which did not happen.

But it very easily could have.  Every household has its unspoken rules by which everyone lives.  All guitars (but the acoustic parlor guitar I put back together for the kids) and amps are off limits when hands are sticky or food is being consumed.  The kids know that they have to wash their hands.  I know I have to wash my hands.  It may sound a little uptight, but it has just evolved into this set of unspoken rules.  The kids still strum on the guitars.  They still bang on the drums.  They still mess up my knob settings on my amp.  But they do this within the confines of “the rules.”

When “outsiders” come in, they don’t know the rules.  We have social morays which help us avoid blundering into someone’s rules, but kids don’t always know that.  And some kids like to find out what the rules are the hard way.

So I piled everything together and kept it protected.  Nothing personal to the extended family, it is just part of the unspoken rules.

So look around your house.  Whether you have kids or pets or just yourself, I bet you have “the rules” too.

And if I have blundered into breaking some of your rules.  I apologize.

Recycle

What happened?  I had this great plan for turning an old serial port A/B switch for an old computer into a true bypass/effects loop pedal.  But now that I am ready to buy one, I can’t find it in any thrift store.  Where did they go?!?

Heartless and Petty

Once again we are back to catching up on the ol’ DVR.  This time I watched Heartless Bastard perform on Austin City Limits and loved it!  The lead singer’s voice just fit perfectly and her playing of her gold top Les Paul made me want to play. It was one of those, “Hey, I can do that!” moments.  In a completely positive way.  Her playing was minimal, but it drove the song and was the perfect back drop for her voice whether the band was there or not.

Then I watched Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cover Red Rooster.  I am not a Tom Petty fan.  I like his music, but I don’t love it by any means.  However, I’ve commented on this before, his lead guitarist, Mike Campbell, just nails his parts and takes the songs a step further.  Plus he brings out a different (really cool) guitar for each song.

Forgotten

I played my Wolverine guitar a bit this morning.  Then I washed yogurt and syrup off my son’s face and hair and hands.

I returned to play the guitar and decided to play my Warmoth guitar.  I had forgotten how light the chambered body is!  I’ve been taking it to work everyday for the last few weeks, so I guess I’ve just gotten used to it.  But going back and forth between a heavy guitar and a light guitar made it very noticeable.

Now I just need to plug in and play!

Bogus

I just spent my Friday night watching Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.  There are a few cool guitars, but the movie is so much worse than the original Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  The most distracting part for me was the air guitar.  It was the most bogus thing out of the show.  At least I can laugh at the effects and plot and characters.

I am not an air guitar hater.  I am not one of those guitarists who is offended by air guitar contests.  I wouldn’t enter one, but I’ve been known to occasionally pretend to play the guitar part of a song with my hands.  One of the most endearing parts of the Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was that the air guitar was the same riff.  In Bogus, they had so many riffs that the air guitar became distracting.  I understand what they were trying to do.  They wanted to make each air guitar riff fit the moment in the movie.  But that doesn’t fit with my imagined logic of Bill and Ted’s air guitar.  They were doing the same riff, with each other, over and over…because they thought it was cool.

Admittedly, I couldn’t play them (on a real guitar or an air guitar), so whoever did (probably Steve Vai) is amazing.  But it just didn’t fit.  The numerous Bogus riffs were just that…bogus.

Happy Birthday

I keep a guitar in my office at work. Coworkers are always asking when I’ll play for them.  I don’t.

But today I did.  It was our quarterly birthday luncheon for all the people with birthdays this quarter.

Anyway, I brutally murdered a rendition of the traditional happy birthday song after playing through it two times the previous night and not touching a guitar all day.

No one has asked me to play at the next quarterly birthday luncheon.

Loop or Bypass

Thanks to Craig’s comment on my last entry, I am now seriously looking at a true bypass or looper pedal for my board.  Looks like I can get a basic true bypass/looper pedal for $50 to $85…or I can buy the parts and build one myself… add it to the list.

Three Piece

My wife was commenting on the glory of a good three piece band.  I agree.  Here’s one that I was not familiar with before today:

I wonder if that is a pre-Gibson acquisition Valley Arts  Guitar?

Then there is the three piece that got my wife on the topic:  Joy Formidable

These bands fit more into what my wife is into right now, but it is still good.  At some point, I’ll have to post about how my wife and I have seen our musical tastes diverge over the years.  We used to be a lot closer in our interests than now.  She says it is because I am more into the guitar techie stuff than the music.  Perhaps.  I’m too tired to think about it right now.

So here’s another three piece I’ve mentioned before: