Do You Hear That Voice In Your Head?

If not, you are no musician.
Epiphany number two with regards to How to Answer that Call ...or as I referred to it, "

Quality Versus Quantity Part Deux"

This will seem to be a fundamental building block, but then...that's my trouble, I can excel at something with no clue as to what I am doing until it hits me and I comprehend the universe. Or that facet of the universe.

I skated through school on my wit and charm. I got through college on my ear alone - well that, and a healthy dose of sucking up at every opportunity. I coasted through engineering school and then a year into the curriculum I understood what the concept of 'ground' meant. I can get along well and figure it out as I go, pretty much.

So recently I had a major musical breakthrough; to answer a call in your mind, rather than expecting every note in your head to be played out loud. Hear half and play the answer.

Here I am a few weeks later and I have been able to fully incorporate this idea. I have embraced it as the glass holding the water, thank you, Mr. Lee.

I hear music everywhere - in white noise - literally everywhere. All it takes is for me to stop and listen for it.

And now, I have a way to release it. I have an outlet. I have a voice.

And sumbitch, but I really like it. I have had a voice in my playing for years, but like a photo of myself, was never satisfied. I knew what I wanted to hear but it eluded me.

Now if I don't have that fragile bird in my hand.

My smile starts within my soul and radiates outward. This is something I was meant to do; to hear and like what I heard.

(Note to self - this does not translate well into money, you know?)

Every musician wants to like his voice, wants it to sound as she or he imagines it. And for most of us, it is a life long quest. Very few are truly happy with the sound they make. Always striving for more, searching...looking to somehow 'fix' what they lack.

They literally don't know how to sing.

Al's one huge piece of advice - "If you can't sing it, you can't play it."

Bert and I are hitch-hiking to the mall in Paramus and he starts humming a bass line...he was the bass player of my youth. I start singing the guitar part. For a good five or ten minutes, we jammed. It was good. It had soul. It sounded nice. The ultimate air guitar (Invented by David West in a boys room circa 1971), and yet there was a real talent in what we did.

Well now I have a way to do just that with my guitar. Play what I hear in my head. Not imagine I can play it, but play it. I sing the call in my head, I play the answer with my fingers. 

Betcha with time, I'll progress passed having to do the call at all. (Maybe I'll also speak the last half of any thought I have?)

For now, I have to map my moves.

I think I am trying to become Rain Man?

Fake It Until You Make It

Live and play as though you are Bruce Springsteen. Attitude and aura of success begets similar attitude and the herd shifts.

This weekend I have another gig as a stand in for the regular guitarist. A gig is a gig, I love it. An opportunity to play.
To prepare I was given the set list two weeks ahead of time. Tonight we conducted a 'run through.'

We played as though we knew what we were doing.
 It sounded as though we had been playing together for years.Very tight.
The songs themselves are easy. But to get a band to mesh well is why we rehearse. To sound each note in its place...with precision and feeling is not so easy.
Getting the drummer to count a song off at the proper number of beat per minute (BPM) is not easy either. Some are rather hyper and tend to count every song as quickly as possible. No modulation in tempo at all.
Sometimes the bass player feels the emphasis on one and three and you expect it on two and four.

Each little step is the foundation for the next and the next until you have the song sounding as you intend.
Usually it involves a lot of work.

Sometimes, it just clicks.
Tonight it clicked.
It didn't hurt that of the seven songs on the list I knew five. Although the arrangements were a bit different, it was easier than learning a new piece.
The two new pieces were easy enough - I was familiar with them before I had to commit to them.
So we played as though we knew what we were doing.

My new goal is to open my eyes. I am one of those guitarists that just tends to close his eyes while playing. It began as a way to shut out the sea of faces that made for awful butterflies. But it changed with time and venues. Lights are now the main culprit. Maybe I should wear my shades?

Going Digital...The Full Monty Plunge

I was recently on an airplane from NJ to CA, seated next to a very nice mother and daughter. The child was very well behaved, offering to do homework to pass the time. She reached into her bag and retrieved a Kindle.

I've seen them before and I an proud to call myself a Luddite.
I like paper. I love bookstores.

But I dislike lugging five hundred pages across the country only to be done with it somewhere over Texas and now just carrying dead weight. And with nothing more to pass the time but to snooze.

I also find myself watching more television than I used to do. A lot more.
An interesting part of the Kindle bundle is a thirty day trial in Amazon Prime. Not only will shipping on Amazon orders become free (I use Amazon a lot), but now there are five thousand books in the AP Lending Library. AP also streams movies and television shows, such as Grey's - free.
And then I read where an agreement was reached so that many libraries will now carry eBooks.

I'm sunk. $199 for the Kindle...it won't ship before Tuesday and I am at the end of a long, long line so I choose the free, albeit slow shipping of five to eight business days.
Now I am looking into apps for my phone to "tether" to the Kindle so I can use my phone as a modem for 3g access to the WiFi only Kindle.

But hey, I can watch television or movies, borrow and buy books, and carry it aboard a plane, in a slim little package. I know I am a Geek, but this is just another example of a DOS dinosaur slipping into the Digital Age.

Quality Versus Quantity Part Deux

One of my strengths as well as my number one weakness on the guitar is...itchy fingers, digital diarrhea, how many notes can one squeeze into a measure, syndrome.

George Harrison had a mastery of "less is more." He could play four or five notes and say more than most of us say in an entire piece.
Colin James has a knack for answering an unspoken call with three or four notes that  - say-it-all.

And for the life of me, I could never figure this out. I tried to slow my thought processes. I tried thinking and not just reacting to the music played.
I have been trying to achieve this for thirty years? No success.

And then a friend turned me onto a guy named Keith Wyatt.
In this lesson, Keith explains how to answer calls during a "call and answer" segment in a song.
He is fun, fact filled and very succinct. The entire video is eleven minutes.
And he makes a lot of sense, musically.

Part of the driving force behind my rediscovery of "less is more" is my renewed interest in the television show Becker. I love the show for the writing as well as the excellent ensemble cast.
There is a guitar belonging to Jason Miller...with it, he plays small, tight ten second phrases to lead in and out of scenes of the show. I very much enjoy his talent and envied his ability to take a few notes and make a complete musical statement.

I am sitting watching the show when it struck me. The act of answering in Keith's lesson is the epitome of the "less is more" philosophy.
In other words, you need not be answering a call made in the piece - it may be implied...it could be in your head. It need not exist at all.

All of a sudden, I can play like Harrison! I was floored. Epiphany...a moment of clarity.
It is a relatively easy thing to hear a lead in and then "answer" it, whether it exists in the song or not.
How strange it is to have something so easy elude you for SO long and then be revealed in eleven minutes.

Perspective is so very integral to learning. Look at a problem one way and it is a Gordian Knot. From another point of view, it becomes easy as pie.
I'll have another piece of pie, please.

Quality, Not Quantity

Last year I had worked many gigs by this time of the year. I was everywhere, playing with anyone.
It was wild fun and very necessary for my musical ego.
Trolling for gigs like this results in many jobs that are not as satisfying, don't pay as much, et cetera.

This year, I have played far, far fewer gigs. But the times I have played have been so much more satisfying and rewarding.
Why?

In a word...sharing.
I learned a long time ago that as humans, our greatest joy comes from sharing. Be it a joint, a thought, feelings, or music. The act of two or more people seeing and digging the same thing is a minor miracle.
Music is one of those things that is personal, intimate and yet at the same time it can be shared by many people at once. Witness Woodstock.

This year, I got to do one number with a guy I admire very much and in doing this number laid a few bugaboos to rest.
Friends of mine that I have known more than thirty years got to hear me play for the very first time.
My mother...got to hear me playing in a setting other than a cacophony eminating from her basement.

I did more open mics than last year - standing on your own feet does a lot toward that feeling of sharing. That is intimacy at its most public. You are alone, they are watching no one but you.
And what a rush it is!

I found someone else to play as a duo.
Doing less of what others want to play or think is what is expected. I am out to have a blast and make a dollar or two doing so. And if I get to share my inner feelings and get applause in exchange for it...how much better can things get musically? In truth...things can get so much better that all I see is "blue sky."

And so I pursue things. I talk to people on FaceBook in an effort to expand my network - get a job.
I picked up a new instrument (mandolin) in an effort to expand my repertoire.
I meet new people all the time - and when we click, it is sharing once again.

Share with me. It is my greatest joy.

Have a Happy Halloween.

Tele Truss Rod Adjustment Alters Tone - Film at 11

The Baja Telecaster I had bought in May had a real curve to the neck.
More relief than I wanted.

However, I have to date not adjusted a Fender style truss rod. Never had to.
A shim did the trick as far as action/buzz went so turning the rod just never happened.

This guitar had a pronounced curvature in the neck.
I thought I'd have access to the truss rod screw by just removing the pickguard - and for a minute it did look as though I could get a bite on the rod...but no, it was not to be. The pickup was in the way.
Sigh.

Strings came off, and then I removed the neck. It was obvious the original owner had been down this road...he had scored the screws affixing the neck to the body. With his adjustment there was just too much relief in it for me.
 So I tightened the truss rod about a half a turn...which was at the top of the threads - as far as it'll go. The neck was very close to straight. A teeny weeny bit of relief. (Without any relief all the strings would buzz)

Restrung it, and as I was doing so I caught wind of the buzzing which must have made this guy add so much relief.
Funny thing was, with the neck close to straight the action was more than low enough...too low.
 The 'G', 'B', & 'E' strings needed a half turn to feel comfortable to play. I decided to let the low 'E' buzz.

 Holy merde!
Okay...new strings have a lot to do with the wow factor in the tone, but the slap of the strings...it is part of the quintessential tele sound. The bass strings have a thump to them that is very unique. No strat has it.


Well the effect of having the strings closer to the pickups is just not to be believed in what it can do to the sound. Such a small change having such a large impact.
 Obviously I could have raised the pickups to achieve the same result sound wise;l however that would not address the feel of the neck.
I disliked the feeling that the action was changing the higher I played.

 So...got a tele? Raise your pickups! Or peer down your neck and check your relief.

Almost Perfect Pitch

Name any song I know and I'll sing it a half step below the actual tonic.
I hear it in my head a half step flat. (A cosmic joke, methinks)

I am playing the mandolin...Grendel, even with the new strings is starting to sound dull.

Temperatures change greatly where I live. A forty degree swing from the low to the high during a day night cycle is not out of the normal course of things.
So the strings on any instrument will stretch and contract with the rise and fall in temperatures.
I check my tuning before I begin...every time. It is a must. I also mean with an expensive strobe tuner, not by ear.
Piano tuners are tuning pairs of strings much like the mandolin. They do not tune the strings to perfect pitch. i.e.A is not set at 440 hz. But the first of the two strings might be at 438 while the upper is at 442.
This intentional dissonance causes the note to ring out. The waves are alternately canceling and then reinforcing each other which makes a slight vibrato effect. Your ear hears sustain.

So that's why the new strings sounded better? They were settling in...moving. I tuned them and after a few minutes had slipped out of tune. I heard notes ringing out and thought it was the new strings!

So the trick I have is to tune the first of the pair a bit sharp and the second a bit flat. A bit is maybe two or three cents (pronounced sonts) at most. Next I should try reversing that, the top flat and the bottom one sharp.
We'll see.