Down memory lane, part I

All roads lead to the guitar, that's what I say. Who knew that thirty years' worth of dilettante knowledge could come in handy if you just found the right thing to bring it all to life?

All right, the theoretical math itself hasn't come in handy yet, though there's something to that old saw about learning how to study one thing and then being able to study anything. But my two summers at math camp were like a release from the bubble of high school in more ways than one. I don't remember any of my friends in high school being particularly into music, even the band geeks, but at math camp, everyone brought a few cassette tapes. (I am old.) And since Dad only raised me on classical and we only had cable TV for a year (in which I watched much MTV), this is where I really first encountered Simon and Garfunkel, Clapton, Veruca Salt, Lynyrd Skynyrd, U2, Liz Phair... look, it was an eclectic bunch of nerds, all right? For that matter, much of my earlier rock exposure had come via my brother's years at math camp.

What's more, the influence of math camp and my math camp friends led me to start off college as a physics major. A worse idea, in retrospect, could scarcely have been found. Even now, ensconced in English, I do not have what you would call a theoretical mind. I'd have been far better off as an engineer, and the proof of this is that the only thing I was exceptionally good at was the lab component of Physics 15b, Harvard's weirdly named intro course in electricity & magnetism.

Many's the happy hour I spent sprawled out on a dorm floor, sometimes with the door propped open so the smoke and steam from the soldering iron wouldn't touch off the dorm fire alarm. I fried a capacitor once. Let me tell you, that's an unforgettable smell. Years later when my dad's pre-amp blew (with a huge dramatic noise and a roomful of smoke), I diagnosed the problem by smell alone. My friend used to hassle me about taking the time to color-code my wires and trim them all short enough to make the circuits pretty. Our final class project was to build a lamp. I still have it. It doesn't look like a lamp, since it's just a circuit board with a bulb hanging off, but it has a little dimmer and everything.

When I say "I," what I mean is that it's in my parents' basement. My unhandy dad was charmed by the nice red toolbox they gave us in lab and wanted to hang on to it. You know, to save me the inconvenience, since I move often. Well, no more, dad. This time I'm coming for my wire clippers at the very least. And if I end up taking this class at the Chicago Guitar School, I'm coming for the voltmeter, the resistors, the soldering iron... heck, I'm bringing the whole thing back, and damn the airlines!

E is for Eagle

E7, Em7 now joined by D7 and Am7. And if anyone is keeping track, the practice song of choice is now "Desperado," which is filled with 7 chords. I must say that the hunt for good practice tabs is giving me a real appreciation for the musical preferences of my favorites. Queen not so heavy on those 7 chords.

I also replaced the pink silk sash on the dreadnought with a real (if not fantastic) strap, tied to the top by a thin pink ribbon which is the remnant of one of my bridesmaid's duties, supplying ribbon to tie little bags of potpourri to pelt the bride and groom. I sense a distinct theme here: keep everything in your closet and it'll come in handy again one day in the most unexpected of places. The strap helps a great deal for fretting and picking with less pain, but I still can't quite see.

Ship ahoy, or, Female guitarists of the world, unite!

Are all dreadnoughts equal? I spent a happy hour at Guitar Works in Evanston today, sizing guitars, and concluded that folk-sized is easy for me to play (not much bigger than my 3/4, but a longer neck scale), grand concert is manageable, and dreadnought is a little big. Then I came home, put my new guitar on, and said whoa. It just seems enormous. I'm terrible with eyeballing these things.

That being said, the crucial point with this dreadnought is that I can't yet seem to manage to look over the edge of it to see the face while I'm playing. The corollary is that my right arm feels like it's being twisted out of its socket. I suppose I'll adjust, but it raises yet another question: where does the guitar body sit? Over the breasts or under the breasts? Because when I'm sitting down, I would need to grow a few inches to get it under, but obviously if it's over, it sticks out further -- and I don't have an Audrey Hepburn swan neck to help me see.

I facebook-messaged my only female guitarist friend to ask. Her reply:

We female guitarists have to stick together. My sense is to put the guitar over the breasts. It may depend on the shape of the guitar and where it hits the chest, but I think I've always had my chest and body behind the guitars I've had. Maybe because it's a new guitar you have to get used to it and adjust your grips somewhat? I just looked at the new photo of the guitar on your blog--very nice! Yeah, I think when I've played guitars like that (my current Applause acoustic has a rounded back) I've always had my breasts behind the guitar.

This was decidedly not the answer I was expecting; a male friend's reply was that he slings his guitar very low, and that would be his solution. Which would mean I should just always play standing up.

Now, this could all very well be beginner growing pains, but it does also seem like a basic question of positioning, and one that, as I replied to my friend, "is kind of crucial, and something a man (i.e. 99% of guitar salespeople and luthiers) doesn't think about!"

ETA: I was trying to think of female rockers I've seen playing... mostly standing up, of course, and I think slinging under. But sitting down? The only thing I could think of is that scene in Forrest Gump, not my favorite sentimental waltz through American history, in which Jenny is playing guitar nude in a strip bar. It covered everything.

The lord giveth...

... barre chords and the lord taketh away power chords. Ow. New neck scale is going to take some getting used to. "Yoga for guitarists' fingers," anybody? Either that or I'm going to have to grow a new pinky.

ETA: Or tilt the neck down slightly. Helps like mad. Of course, I can't see the frets, but this seems to be a general problem with the depth of the dreadnought -- I just haven't figured out yet how I'm supposed to be able to see the face of it.

Divine chaos

I gym-read a really great book about guitar making, playing, and generally the pleasures of guitar love, Clapton's Guitar by Allen St. John. It's about the long, slow handmaking of an acoustic guitar for Eric Clapton by Wayne Henderson, a great guitarist and greater luthier who lives in his happy little shack in rural Virginia, besieged by requests, eating lemon pie and slowly crafting some of the best guitars in the world in his cluttered, dirty shack of a workshop with his homemade tools. It's a story about inspired craftsmanship, camaraderie (mostly male bonding), fandom, flatpicking, fried turkey, and, of course, Clapton. Clapton doesn't exactly appear; he hovers, godlike, in the background of the book much like he stood in the glassed-in viewing room over his Crossroads guitar auction, which is referenced multiple times. As a matter of fact, Henderson, it seems, almost never talked to Clapton, and the guitar itself was delivered by St. John, who mediated the whole process, to Clapton's gear guy.

That's a little sad in a way, sadder for Clapton than for Henderson, who's not exactly a Clapton fan even if he does seem to like making a guitar for someone so famous. He really missed out by not talking to Henderson himself and seeing his guitar so beautifully shaped. Henderson is a real country character, and St. John a sympathetic, admiring yet hilariously fish-out-of-water narrator. Fantastic read.

Glam rock

After almost dropping the new guitar (which may get a name) three times, I had to put something on it for a strap. No top button, had to tie something onto the neck -- and the only thing I could come up with was a pink silk sash that I wore as a bridesmaid at a wedding in Bermuda.

It doesn't look quite as idiotic as it sounds.

And in other highly exciting news, my F chord is magically working much better on this neck! I wonder if the mystical world of barre chords is going to open up for me now.

Deal or no deal?

Deal. Check out the new addition to the family:


I got this Yamaha F335 for $100, WITH a hardshell case, and not a pasteboard hardshell either. Don't you love this photo of it next to the 3/4 size? It's like a baby guitar and its mommy.

I'm a little less excited than I was originally, because the girl I bought it from gave me the wrong model number. How the hell she did this, I've no idea; it's IN the guitar, for god's sake. So I ended up with a laminate top dreadnought instead of the solid top folk size I thought I was getting, which displeases me quite a bit now that I'm home. When I was playing it, I thought it must be a large folk, but now I think it's a slightly shallow dreadnought. Like I can tell the difference offhand. I'm surprised that I didn't find it more awkward than I did.

Regardless, it's well made and sounds good. Oddly enough, I must have been looking up this model for another ad, because I had read the reviews before, and they're all raves. I'm satisfied. Would NOT be happy if I had paid $100 for the guitar only, but with a case, it's well worth it.

She may have given me the wrong model number out of malice aforethought. Or she may have had no clue. Consider this exchange:
Me: "Uh... have you ever changed the strings?"
She: "Honestly? Um. No, never. I'm pretty sure."

Yup. Explains the little brown spots on them.

ETA: I've never seen such strings, except maybe on my brother's Soviet mandolin. When I say "little brown spots," I mean darker little spots on the completely corroded string length. Restrung with light gauge Martins, letting them stretch. I did a marginally less crappy job than last time; you can probably tell which order I did the strings in, because the first one has maybe one turn around the tuner and the last few have a respectable number, as I finally learned to leave enough slack.

My apartment looks like a musical instrument shop had a birthday and then threw up on it. I am cleaning up the detritus and going to bed.

Squee!

Urban dictionary defines that word as the sound a fangirl makes. I didn't know anyone used it; I thought I made it up, and I use it mostly in online chats to express a general kind of delight. Both are appropriate. My college friends' birthday gifts for me continue to roll in off my amazon wishlist, and I just opened up the Queen Deluxe Anthology. Guitar, voice and piano! I'm in Brooklyn next month, and the house has a piano, which I fully intend to take advantage of this year.

At sixes and sevens

Where did that expression come from, anyway? Slash chords threw me badly enough that I looked for something else to learn, and peacefully settled on seventh chords. Good times. E7 and Em7 in the bag.

The Wall

Hitting the wall, and not the Pink Floyd kind. The slash chord kind. When I realized that the C/G chord required the pinky to fret the lower A string, I hopped up to the next level of pain. I have an abnormally short pinky. Runs in the family. I will adapt.

Ha, I mean, next they'll be telling me to do something ridiculous, like wrap my thumb around to fret the sixth string. Ha ha. Ha.. what? You mean...? NO.

It's following me!

GAH! In a coffeeshop working and used-guitar-shopping, and what comes on the stereo? "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing." Because playing it every day for the last 2-3 weeks wasn't enough.

Hopping

I'm going to get a different guitar. Why not? I was hemming and hawing about it, but then had a kind of "get over it!" moment. If I can find a used guitar for decent value and sell this one, no reason not to. Matter of fact, no reason not to do it as often as I like. I have friends who switch jobs about this often, for god's sake.

I have my eye on a craigslist Alvarez folk-size. We shall see. I do need more frets, that's for sure. Alvarezes, from what I've read, tend to have thin necks, and I don't think I could handle a dreadnought size. When I tried my friend's in Tampa, it was like lugging a suitcase under my armpit.

Dvorak > Hammerstein

Still in C major, but no longer "Edelweiss": I have just suffered through the New World largo in several different octaves, that is different locations on the fretboard. Still... determined... to... learn where the damn notes are.

Oh, and when I say suffered, I really mean suffered, because I also fingerpicked (a bit, in a beginner way). I decided that it just looks so cool, and it has a very different sound. I like. Must learn.

Green guitars

No, not in terms of finish, but in terms of wood. I was looking at Greenpeace's site investigating the issue of recycled paper products (tissues and so forth) when I saw a section called MusicWood and thought uh oh, here comes the guitar guilt.

But NO! It turns out that Greenpeace is working with several guitar makers, since Alaska has no regulation to speak of, to develop a sustainable source of Sitka spruce, which will incidentally also benefit Native Americans somehow -- it's not spelled out. Phase two, I hope, will deal with exotics, because all that mahogany and rosewood is coming from somewhere and I bet it ain't good. Check it out. But in case you are both worried and lazy, partnering companies include Fender, Gibson, Taylor, Martin, Guild, and Yamaha (whew).

Coffeetable weights

Having thoroughly perused The Fender Stratocaster Handbook and 50 Years of Fender, I am now moving on to The Stratocaster Chronicles, which is huge, and branching out into Gibson Guitars: 100 Years of an American Icon. Nobody can say I'm not thorough. Of course, a lot of this is for creative writing research, rather than my playing knowledge, but it doesn't hurt.

Giving up quickly

I'm going to buy one of those short slide rings and wear it on my index finger to help with barre chords. I don't see how I'm ever going to make the side of my index finger callus in anything resembling the short term, and it hurts my ears so much when that E string just pings and fizzles. Another little trinket I can buy in Japan or China.

Heidi's Guitar Dictionary

Triad (n.): The less painful lower three notes of a basic barre chord. Used to lead the unwary novice guitarist into realizing that s/he ought to make a severe effort to do better on said barre chord fingering; also may be used to shame novice into learning note locations on the D string.

Last thought

I could not go to bed without figuring out why odd partials are bright and evens are warm. I think I got it. Even partials have a more direct relationship to the fundamental frequency of the string, that is the note. So: string's fundamental frequency is, say, low E. What's the second partial? Well, the second partial vibrates at exactly what you induce when you clamp off half the string by putting your finger on the twelfth fret and get the fundamental frequency of that: an E that is a whole octave higher. And what happens when you clamp off another quarter of that string? You got it. (Sixth partial is a B, eighth is E, etc.) So the evens, on the whole, add up to the same note.

But what about the odd partials? Third partial is three times the frequency. That is, about a B. And if you know your E major scale off the top of your head, which I do not because I have the musical theory of a flea, you know that B is the fifth. Fifth partial? G#, otherwise known as the third. Mostly harmonizing.

Now, why we call those bright, and the evens warm, that's one of those weird synaesthetic things, I assume. OR ELSE it's sloppy terminology coming from the pickup world in which one pickup tends to get both the higher and the odds and the other gets the lower and even, because it makes more sense to me just to say all higher partials are brighter (of course, higher notes) and lower partials are warmer. I'd favor a term like "rougher" for odds. And then we get into the term I've heard with pickups, "fatter"... Good night!

Just to make it worse

In case that disquisition on frequencies wasn't bad enough, I was winding down with a little peaceful googling and came across the following information; you can influence the partials with your playing. Of course you can. Play near the bridge, you get a brighter sound. Play closer to the ideal middle of the string, and you enhance the evens, hence a warmer sound. At least I think that would be the logic there.

Teach a man to fish...

...or to repot pickups, and you repot him for a lifetime. Today's elliptical machine reading was Constructing a Solid-Body Guitar: A Complete Technical Guide by Roger H. Siminoff, a huge picture-book sized thing that had people actually looking at it curiously. Yes, I know how to read.

I wasn't really looking to find out about how to cut the wood, though that's all good to know and was worth leafing through. But I did learn more about the electronics of it, though there's just enough to tantalize and I'm a little too rusty to fill in all the gaps myself. I know more about the vibrations that are causing the flux in the pickups, etc. I can't recap it too well without diagrams, but basically, the string vibrates in numerous ways: a full vibration, back and forth like a hill (a half a sine wave), the usual designated frequency of the string. Then there's a second partial vibration, which is an hill up and a valley down (a full sine wave), twice the frequency, then the third partial, two hills with a valley in between (sine and a half), three times the frequency, etc., on and on, as high as we can hear (20 or so). The first partial, the one-hill vibration, makes up the most of what we hear (not a majority though; say a quarter).

The neck pickup, because it is towards the middle of the vibrating string, picks up the vibration from the lower partials. This gives a warmer sound, made by the first partial (the lone hill) and the even-numbered ones, because their greatest amplitude (top of the hill) is close to this pickup. This is also why the neck sound is usually louder, because again, the first partial makes up the most of the sound. Towards the end of the string, that is around the bridge pickup, the big wave of the first partial is curving down, so to speak -- the foot of the hill -- and so the bridge pickup can pick up the amplitudes of the higher partials. Also, if you think about it, it will tend to pick up the ones that make peaks closer to the end, so it picks up the odd partials (that have hill, valley, hill). Odds give a brighter sound. Repeating again, the first partial makes up most of the sound, so the bridge pickup's sound is usually smaller; this is why sometimes bridge pickups are overwound to amplify and compensate.

To summarize: neck, first and even, warm and loud. Bridge, higher and odd, bright.

God, I hope that's right. Let's talk about what the pickups do another day, OK?

Still, I think I get the idea now. What I really want to read is the brand new book all about pickups, but some guitar-loving jerk beat me to the public library's copy. I'll grab it soon, hopefully.

Two steps forward

Played a little for a friend today -- my first performance. She played my crappy flute, and we dueted slowly on "Scarborough Fair," I think both thinking that the other was setting the pace. Then I did a bit of Aerosmith for her, but I did not rock out the way I usually do in solitude. Must work on performance skills, which come to think of it were always quite crappy on piano. I do not emote publicly.

Also decided to hit the triads today and promptly put away the guitar. Tomorrow's another day to make myself play "Go Cubs Go" with a thousand different variations.

Like a snake

...shedding its skin, my guitar calluses peeled right off, and continue to flake, and ow, it hurts again (or rather, hurts a lot again -- it never quite stopped, but I could successfully ignore it for longer periods). I'm going to have to find some happy medium of moisturizing the calluses to preserve them. I had left off the rubbing alcohol, but was trying not to get lotion on them. Maybe I can stop worrying about that. This is not a thought process to which I am accustomed; I barely think about how to get rid of calluses normally, let alone keeping them.

The good news is that the power chords are quite decent, and I'm learning more where the notes are on the fifth and sixth strings. I do notice that I'm playing with the neck awfully close to my nose, and sometimes the fifth string power chords get played a little as if I want to be holding a cello. Eh, whatever. As long as it comes out decently.

Bit by bit

From a Muscovite poster on MandolinCafe:

Well, most of soviet instruments made at the end of 80s beginning 90s were completely unplayable. Except very rare occasions. There were many political and economical reasons for that. Long story. But on the other hand they have significant historical value Because, mandolins were relatively rare thing in SU. Mass production was only on one factory in Leningrad, and not much of them were produced. Only classic bowelbacks were produced. Most of pro players do not use them anyway because Czechoslovakian mandolins (now Strunal brand) were available and were better. So keep it. It is rare thing :)

This contrasts with a previous Bulgarian poster who told me that tons of mandolins were made for the Western tourist trade, but those were plastic flatbacks and often sold at the big shops near the hotels meant for tourists. My brother also writes that the shop where he bought it had only a few, he thinks, not a whole string of them lining the walls.

He's visiting the U.S. in September, so we're going to wait for him to come peer into the body and read the label. In any case, this is just getting more and more interesting. Playability still up in the air, but the current plan is to buy a gig bag, bring it back to Chicago, and spring for a setup. Even if it's meant for a wall, it wouldn't be a bad thing to have it fixed up, though I suppose that if it really is completely unplayable there's no point in having the bridge in the right place covering the little church picture.

Bad house guest

Snuck in a quick practice on my friend's tele this morning while he and his wife were still asleep. What's more Fourth of July than a red Fender Telecaster? Obviously, I didn't plug it in. Baby steps. I was also just playing chords along with nothing at all. "Scarborough Fair" and so forth.

Lots of fun, though I see that I'm going to have to work on my stretches. A 3/4 size guitar is nice for the learning curve, but then there's one later if you keep going. The tele action certainly is easy, though. On my Yamaha (it has no name, unlike the mandolin; it's just referred to in a deprecating tone as "the Yamaha" or "the low-end travel guitar" or "I'm learning on it"), the action's pretty easy at the top and gets ridiculously higher as you go down. I mean, it feels like going from typing on a modern laptop to an old typewriter, if you know what I mean; that real airy push-push-push kind of feeling.

I hate baseball

Grim determination to get this power chord fingering. I am back to "Go Cubs Go." All power chords. Lots of pain, lots of buzz, lots of sour notes. Perhaps tomorrow I can promote myself to "I'm in Love with My Car" again, but it didn't go so well tonight.