RI Guitar Club

[Wombaticus Rex]

Been finding a handful of superb documentaries on guitar. First and foremost was Fuzz: The Sound that Revolutionized the World (which it didn't) a film I watched in chunks on the video hosting site DailyMotion. Movie can be ordered online: http://www.fuzzthemovie.com/ We're working on a project about effects pedals so we'll probably order a copy.

The unexpected upside of a documentary about the technicians behind these effects: these people are fucking hilarious geniuses. We were on the floor laughing at points. It takes a special kind of lunatic to get into this stuff and they all make for entertaining footage.

It Might Get Loud I wasn't feeling too much. Loved everyone in the room but it got boring. I dug Twang Bang Kerrang more, featuring a wider set of players and an older vintage (I believe it's 70's era BBC) -- especially because it introduced me to my latest hero, Jerry Donahue. Thank the Nyan Cat, Interners have provided a video of that entire segment so you can all enjoy it now:



Needless to say, my horizons have just been expanded and my goals definitely include the runs he's doing there. That's one of the most stunning uses of a fretboard I've seen since I stumbled into a Kaki King show with no preparation about...10 years ago? Am I really this old now? Probably not.

Currently I'm about to get toasted up and take in a 3 part, more recent BBC excursion, Imagine - The Story of the Guitar, I'll edit in a review later today. Love y'all.

[Wombaticus Rex]

So Imagine: The Story of the Guitar was an interesting and straightforward BBC historical treatment. The third part got into modern guitar and was mostly a rehash of any other rock guitar "hero worship" style documentary. There is of course some priceless footage, since that particular Valhalla is full of colorful egomaniacs like Angus Young or Eddie Van Halen or Pete Townsend, but overall I don't think I'd really recommend it.

I've been doing some reviews and writing on my Guitar Learningses process here. Seeing that reminds me I need to write something more useful today. The best recent stuff is about my attempt to learn Bach's BWV 1007 Prelude. I've spent the past day working out the Ludovico Einaudi piece Oltremare for bass and guitar, got a duet project with a friend and we're shamelessly going for "expensive-ass background music" as a genre. Getting back into sheet music is exhausting but rewarding as hell, I hope to be fluent by 2013.

Edit: voila - http://wombatradio.blogspot.com/2012/06 ... -part.html

and

http://wombatradio.blogspot.com/2012/06 ... uitar.html

[dada]

I have a block with reading sheet music. I still go through a piece, writing the letters above each note before I try to play it. I don't know, maybe if I forced myself I could get beyond it.

Here's something from 1997. I could've sworn it was recorded on a full moon on Friday the 13th, but I looked it up, and there was no Friday 13th full moon in 1997. Oh well. My old bass player is there, and the drum machine was played by X, the guitar player from the Magic Tramps, a glam band from the 70s. Both of them are gone now. I remember X standing in front of me and looking at my hands suspiciously, making sure the sounds he was hearing were coming from my fingers and not some effect pedal. Sometimes I feel like time travel can happen through music. Time is not necessarily linear, there are harmonic resonances between moments, and you can jump around the stream. Time is a spiral, etc.

[Hammer of Los]

...

edited

Time!

The answer is always...

Time!

Time is a spiral! Someone else noticed!

Turning and turning in the widening gyre.

etc.

I still can't play guitar.

...

[Joe Hillshoist]

Jeez dada that sounds great.

[Elihu]

http://12160.info/profiles/blogs/feds-t ... e=activity

[Project Willow]

Lived with musicians my whole life. Put a Martin under the tree once for Xmas.
.....

Oh the beautiful hands...

[Elvis]

Put a Martin under the tree once for Xmas.

I could use a good solid-body with fast easy action, humbuckers and a whammy bar (hint hint).

Kidding of course. I actually have one, a cheap Jackson; love the sound and action but its cheapness is wearing on me. One way to tell a cheap guitar: pluck the low E, let it ring, and bend the high E a whole step at the 12th fret or so. If the low E 'droops' in pitch, it's a cheap guitar. A sturdy guitar won't do that. I love my Jackson but it's cheap and the string-bend shortcoming is an issue at times.

It's kind of funny that my daily guitar is a Jackson---which is sort of known as a "metal" guitar and I don't play "metal" much---but I find it very versatile and use it for different styles. My custom amp helps get different sounds, but will tell about that another time. When I do get snarly, I have the most awesome tube fuzz ever, of all time. I generally use too much echo, trying to get a Big Sound.

One of these paychecks soon, I'll go guitar shopping for a better version. After not caring much for vibrato ("whammy") bars, I got hooked on them when I started playing Shadows covers and the like. I had a beautiful Godin for awhile---Godins are excellent guitars but I didn't like the pickups on that one and didn't want to mess with it (plus no vibrato arm).

Anyway, I really came on here to say that I just got a drum machine and have been programming it with songs. I'll probably record the drum parts on laptop and add bass to them, to play along with at home. I can get drummers & bassists when I get gigs, which is not often, but for everyday playing it's fun to play with bass & drums, even if it's a drum machine. I have to get my recording laptop setup set up and if I get anything good I'll post it.

After a life of rewinding tape between takes, I'm loving digital recording. The time it took the tape to rewind was just interminable, really broke my concentration and wore me out. Instant rewind, wow.

[Hammer of Los]

...

You know, I would like to record my voice.

Preaching, probably.

Or teaching.

It has a nice sonorous quality to it.

That's because deep inside of me is a black hole.

Maybe someone could use some of my recorded audio to provide backing lyrics or chanting or humming or somesuch?

I really do want to produce something creative, if you know what I mean.

I think my wife just wants me to get a job stacking shelves in Sainsburys.

I know.

...

[Wombaticus Rex]

Finding this on Youtube kinda blew my fucking mind, because this footage right here is exactly how I got introduced by Kottke. The sound and picture here are so gloriously muddy and dark I honestly wonder if it wasn't rendered from the very same VHS tape that my Pops had...John Fahey and Steely Dan were on it, too, I remember, just a primitive, deck-dubbed video mixtape of old live footage that was getting re-run on the oddball Canadian stations we picked up in Vermont. And, of course, good old public television: Austin City Limits and Sessions at West 54th were a staple of my early music education. I loved my father's massive library of vinyl, to be sure, but nothing grabs the young imagination like them moving pictures.

When I was first sitting down trying to emulate what I saw here, I was playing a Silvertone with a badly replaced neck and I didn't even know how to tune the thing. I reckon all I manged to do was cultivate some early carpal tunnel and annoy the living fuck out of my poor Dad.

[Stephen Morgan]

http://youtu.be/

[Bruce Dazzling]

[crikkett]

Jon Gomm-Passionflower
The song looping in my head is a sweet torture.
It's probably there because I can't get over the bravery of de-tuning an instrument as part of a performance.

[Joe Hillshoist]

[barracuda]

Been lurking this thread, 'cuz I can't play for shit. I know a few chords and noodle like a hungry mosquito in your ear. Despite this, I've been in a few bands, written many, many songs, done some recording, lotsa live performances, etc. Maybe the info and videos here will get me back to practicing. I doubt it. I've had at least one or two guitars in my life since I was about fourteen, but never made much progress. I just love guitars, I guess. I usually try to get guitars that sound great when they're tuned up, and look great when they're sitting around.

I have a few guitars at the moment: an archtop Harmony 6-string like this one,



an archtop Harmony 4-string (tenor) same era, an Aria steel twelve-string with a trapeze tailpiece, a 1930's flat top Gibson with a wire bridge (discussed here), a Martin acoustic bass, an Aria hollow electric circa 1965 (pictured) that I play through a pignose, and a coupla nameless acoustics, as well as an antique ten-string baroque guitar of indeterminate age with a mustache bridge.



I have dreams - pipe dreams, mind you, pointless time wasting reveries - of playing like Joey Ramone on his one-string electric, or like Skip james, or like Big Joe on his homemade ten-string...