barrymclark

That is very cool! I had a Fender HR Deville 410 once when I didn't care what happened to my back. haha. It was a decent sounding amp... but hissy for sure... and that was on one in working order! I am not working towards gigging but I am learning songs at a decent clip now. Instead of taking months to work out A song... now I tend to get a few songs going at once and just work on the one that I have momentum with at the moment. I found the hold up before was writer's block. Now, if I have writer's block on one tune, I might not on another and I continue with that one. I have maybe 7 or 8 solo guitar arrangements done and more being worked on. Maybe Baby (slight swing to it) White Christmas Summertime Autumn Leaves All of Me Sleep Walk My Life (yes, Billy Joel) She's the One (Ramones) Work in progress: In the Pines (Appalachian folk tune) Work in progress: Just the Way You Are (again, Billy Joel) Work in progress: Beyond the Sea Work in progress: Georgia on my Mind Work in progress: Wonderful Tonight I've found that I get more out of my arrangements if i get the piano/vocal music to versions of tunes. Something about guitar books makes me try less hard. That... and I find tab distracting.

It really is a balance of things. I like very, very low action. I mean... 'not many people can play it but me' low. With this, you have some choices to make. How much neck relief do you want? For me, I want no relief or as close as possible. I want the nut cut and bridge dropped as low as it can go. Beyond that, I have to experiment with string size. The bigger the string, the less wobble it gets for to make a note relative to a smaller string. With the less wobble, the lower I can get the strings to a flat neck.

While on vacation this week, I realized that I had strayed a great deal from the intent of the blog starting with the ending of lessons with Sal. From there, I got more and more into learning songs than practicing theory (although I still do this fairly regularly). Throw that in with engineering school starting for me and I just simply don't have the time to invest in this as I want to and once had. Thanks to all that followed it!

Been a couple weeks. I have a ton going on now. Between work and the baby and the girls, I have school now. Yep, back at college for my BS in mechanical engineering. Very good school for it, too; so, I am excited. I was seriously bummed when I heard they didn't have a jazz band anymore. Oh well. I do have a jam prospect coming up though. A dude who is a Berklee grad says he'd like to put something together for small cafe gigs and what not. I am nervous at the prospect for sure but I know this is the only way to get better: experience. This past week did see some changes in my gear for sure. Mark (mgoetting) here on the Heritage Owners' Club sold me his Cube 80x and I gotta say it is the bee's knees for me. I keep saying that I will dial in some good tones for other genres but the moment I hear that wonderful JC tone, I never get past it! haha. One of these days, I am sure I will get to it. The H575 and the Cube together are just something! I couldn't be happier! Thanks again, Mark! I'd also like to add that I picked up a slick leather Heritage strap for the H575 from Bob (GuitArtMan). Thanks, Bob! Playing wise, I am spending time still with Why Don't You Do Right as made famous by Peggy Lee. I love the way she sang some of her most popular tunes. I am also revisiting some of the older tunes I have picked up such as Autumn Leaves, Beyond the Sea and All of Me as well as some not so standard tunes such as Sleep Walk. I am also still working on Georgia on my Mind but I will admit there is no progress in the past couple of weeks on it. I have found that I really like Why Don't You Do Right as a playground for someone learning. Nice and easy and slow changes make it easy for me to tryout the new techniques I am picking up such as adding the walking bass line into the chordings as well as trying improv as well as melody and melody imbellishment.

If the Tokai does the trick, it does the trick! +1 on the paid to play comment... that is why so many guitarists in the US at least are NOT getting paid to play in my opinion.

Been a couple of weeks. Been playing a good bit. Of course, still playing All of Me but I also picked up a new tune: Why Don't You Do Right as made famous by Peggy Lee. Simple changes: Dmin7 (4 beats)- Bb7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Dmin7 (4 beats)- Bb7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Gmin7 (4 beats) - Bb7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Dmin7 (4 beats) - Bb7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Gmin7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) - Gmin7 (2 beats) - A7 (2 beats) .... and repeat. I added a bit of rhythmic flair to it. I also am using this to learn how to walk the bass line while chording. Sounds VERY cool... even in my skill's infancy.

Still messing with All of Me. Getting to know the song better and better. I am up to being able to do a more learned improv up to the first Dmin from there... I just noodle. Wound my first coils for pickups. Here is how it went. The first coil did GREAT! I got 3.92k on it! For what I was wanting, that was ON IT! Second coil.... not as well. Got a 2.7k out of it. Put the two together and I would be only slightly more resistance than a Fender single coil and would lose a noticable portion of the humbucking effect. Before I unwound coil 2, I figured I would try again on a different bobbin. That one I got little to no reading on. I figure it to be the lead wire that I messed up on. You know... the one UNDER then coils. It was getting close to dinner and I had to get across Atlanta (for those of you around here, you know what that means) so I called it a day and will go back in a few weeks to start again on those two coils. Good news is, I got one coil done GREAT! (For the winds, I used Stew-Mac humbucker kits. They came with AlNiCo 5 magnets which I may switch to AlNiCo 2's. I used 42ga plain enamel wire) Other good news is, I believe the owner of the luthiery school I was winding pickups at (the owner is a long time friend) will provide me the facilities to build my guitar as well as pitch in as a partial ghost builder of my guitar! The owner has been in the loop of my design since i started drawing it up. Now that it is complete, I figured it was time to show him the complete drawing. He was VERY happy with it. Hopefully, soon, the templates will be cut out. First step is a prototype. Not sure how long that will take, as it will be done in our spare time... and we don't have any of that. Anyways, that is all for today.

Good week for me musically. Still playing around with All of Me. What I started to do was play along with a nice . I graduated from playing just the chord changes, to the chord changes with the melody included in the lead tones and then just just the melody. After playing with the melody for a bit, I started to add little notes, sometimes just neighbor tones but others being from the scale. For instance, the first part of the melody that has the lyrics, "All of me,..." is R-5-3 in the C scale. I started simple and changed it to R-7-5-3. I then added a simple fill before the next part of the original melody came in. I did this for all parts of the melody through the song. Making those little changes. After that, I got a bit more brave. I would say 95% of what I did sounded great! It was my first REAL venture into improv playing. From there, I already knew the C scale for the finger positioning I was happy with for the start of the melody so.... I just played notes in whatever direction felt right making sure to target the original melody notes for familiarity. Even with other notes in between the original melody notes, it held its familiarity. So... that was good. Next, I went on to E7, then A7 and Dmin. I found myself then doing some rather nice improv single note leads! What I learned from this was that the song itself must be internalized. Not that you necessarily have to have some sort of cosmic connection with the song, but that you learn every aspect of the song from every imaginable angle. You have to learn the chord changes. You have to know the chord changes. You have to know where those chords are all over the board and really get a feel for the what the different voicings will bring to the song if you use them. Next, learn the melody. Know the melody and really develop a feel for how the melody fits against the song. Finally, really know the scales for the all the changes. Started simple and build on that. Learn one scale in one hand position and add to it. I'd say within a few weeks of having little to no familiarity and little to no improv experience, you will be doing some improv! So, yeah. Good week! The 575 through the Vox was the equipment I was playing through for my first jam. Gotta love that tone! I have jammed schedule for the forseeable future but I will try to get some sort of video posted soon. ....Try.

Alrighty. What a week! First off, I am registered for school. Good news is that I am starting as a Sophomore. So... only about 4.5 years to complete the degree as opposed to the 6-7 year track I was looking at. Very pumped. Next, and many of you reading this on the Heritage Owners Club forums may already know, I got my first new guitar that wasn't a 'scratch and dent' that was heavily discounted and required some amount of work from me or some of my friends to get it functioning again. I am now short of guitars in numbers that I once had, but what I have now in terms of guitars left is just something! Three of the four are K'zoo built! One is an old Gibby acoustic built by the boys at K'zoo and the other two are an H140 and the newly acquired H575. That 575 is just simply amazing. I can only imagine this is what my 140 must have been like when it was new! Graham at Jay Wolfe Guitars in Florida was just class act in getting this guitar to me. It came set up BEAUTIFULLY! Ready to play after a quick tune up! That being said, really the only thing I did this week was continue on working out a my version of All of Me with the melody worked in over the chords. I am right at the end of the song right after the last melody note. A couple of the chords are a bit funky for me in moving to them from another chord but I am getting cleaner and cleaner with the changes. The 575 through the MicroCube... WOW. Sorry... got sidetracked. On top of that, I jammed on a couple of other tunes after I got the guitar just to test the versatility. It'll do Black Sabbath's Paranoid and wonderfully! Of course, anything Jazz.... yeah. That's all I can say... yeah. Stray Cats stuff...ABSO-FRICKIN-LUTELY! Anyways, that's what I got for this week!

Sorry I have missed so many entries. I have had a full couple of weeks. I am preparing for starting school in August for my bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. On top of that, I had a nice lake getaway for the Fourth of July weekend. Been reading books on pickup making and so on. At work, they let go of everyone in what was our Toronto office so we are having to pick up their work load as well as shoulder what we already had. On a playing note, I have really been messing around with All of Me as of late. Although I can play the chord changes through the whole song, I am working on encorporating the melody over the chords so I am picking out chords that allow the lead tone to be part of that melody and put my hands in the best position for the upcoming chords. In some cases, I have to stray from the written chords a bit. Nothing earth shaking. Just, instead of playing an Cmaj7, I might play Cmaj. For instance, first chord of the song is Cmaj7. The melody has the single note progression of R-5-3 or C-G-E for start of the lyrics "All© of(G) Me(E)". The Cmaj chords I have to choose from that will work not only as the chord but also put my hands in a nifty spot for the melody are the basic, old C chord with the root C being on the A string at the 3rd fret. Your index finger, you will find, is on a higher C which will work for the melody. The next note is G which, in the C maj chord, is the next string up and it is already open and ready to go! After that comes E and, again, your finger is already fretting the E you need for the melody. The melody continues with a R-2-R (the lyrics here are "Why© Not(D) Take©..."). The C chord again will work here but to get the D in, you will have to employ your currently unused pinky and fret the D on the B string. The chord I use mostly, however, is the Cmaj with the root C on the D string. The rest is basically same as above. I then move to Emaj instead of E7 as it written for the same reasons as me using Cmaj instead of Cmaj7. Anyways, that is about all. OH! If you get a chance, swing by your local GK dealer and play a good jazz box through one of the Gallien Krueger MB115 combos! It is a bass amp... BUT NICE SOUNDING! I was looking at it for my electric uprights, but a thought hit me and I ran a Washburn J6 they had through it. VERY, VERY NICE!

Ok. Another late one. So sue me. haha. Been a busy week. My mother-in-law came in from Detroit. Good visit. She came for my son's first birthday which was this past Sunday. Had family over. Cooked out. Good times. Musicially, I got very little playing in. With the guest and getting the house together, I just didn't get much time in that way. Yesterday, however, I did get my book in on the history of pickups. Great, GREAT read. This is the one I got. Sorry there isn't much information this week. Very little focus on guitar playing due to all that was going on. Been playing a bit since yesterday so the next post should yield a bit more.