I am THERE.

Metropolitan Museum special exhibit called Guitar Heroes, through July 4.

Like an old friend

Brian May performing at a recent concert with his protege, Kerry Ellis, whose debut album, judging from this concert, is disappointingly bland. She belts, but I don't get a lot of soul from her, usually. What I do love is hearing that Red Special scream out at the beginning of the clip. It makes me squeal like a dolphin.

Back here, too!

The move to North Carolina really did throw me off, but I've found a little time to play guitar lately. I've been looking for group lessons, something like Chicago's Old Town School of Music, but I haven't found anything yet.

However, a friend did send me this:



Pretty cool, huh? He's actually coming to Raleigh in February, and I think I might check it out. I was kind of bewildered as to how he could fill the main venue in Raleigh, but looking at the way they describe him, I think the uke playing appeals to all the bluegrass/folk people around here.

Sigh

I haven't forgotten my guitar; there's just sadly little to report. I need to focus on learning some scales; I think I've maxed out the chords for now, at least until my fingers get a little better at traversing the neck!

Cheap music

Hack. Cough. I am in no kind of guitar-playing shape.

However, before I was stricken by this plague, I did go to a used book sale at the local library, and I bought several issues of Sheet Music magazine from 1978/79, which has guitar and piano music for several songs per issue. Contents range from Broadway standards to country. I am happy. Easy way to get some tabs to familiar songs, all in one place, and good to have more contemporary piano music, too. I do get tired of the wonderful world of Hanon's finger exercises.

Hm

Another month has passed, and yet see below. I am yet again rehumidfying the house. Something tells me I've been traveling too much lately. I've forgotten what the guitar looks like, never mind my mandolin.

Short-term resolutions

1) Rehumidify house before opening guitar case.

2) Get calluses back.

3) Go back to learning note locations on the fingerboard.

Never the twain shall meet

You don't hear about a lot of guitarists who love spending time in the water. Maybe that's just because guitarists who are famous have no time for swimming or snorkeling, or maybe it's because musicians are lazy bastards who don't like working out. Or maybe it's because time in the water means that your calluses will peel off like mad. I had an extra-long swimming lesson last night (learned the butterfly) and I have no calluses this morning. Good times.

More instruments I can't play

You have to check out this video of a kid playing Pachelbel's canon on two gayageums. A gayageum is a Korean zither or plucked harp of twelve strings. More like a harp in that there's no fretting, as there is with the zither, an instrument in which I have no interest, but like the zither in shape and orientation (rectangle laid flat on table or stand).

The kid is amazing. It starts slowly, but trust me, it gets seriously impressive.

It's also similar to the Japanese koto or Chinese guzheng, but not the same as the taisho-koto I eyed in a Tokyo flea market. That is a pianolin, which hasn't existed in the West since the Renaissance as far as I know (long rectangular box across the lap, press keys that do the fretting for you with the left, pluck with the right, only five strings).

I am pondering a purchase. If I go to Korea next summer, as I am also pondering, I might be able to get one then, though good luck to me getting it back.

A crimp in things

Literally. Namely, that while the circuit-building aspects of pedal making do not daunt me at all, there are two aspects that do. 1) hooking it up to something, and 2) doing all the crap that makes it hook up to something. By the time I got done reading Circuit Building for Dummies' section on how to crimp a cable connection onto the amplifier I would hypothetically build -- which by the way, is housed in a box I've presumably built or bought as well -- with a crimping tool I don't own and have never used, and incidentally I barely even know what kinds of connections and power supplies I'd need, well, I closed the book and pondered deeply while continuing to cycle. (At the gym.)

I don't actually think I'd kill myself or anyone else. I'd probably blow a few fuses (also something I've never had to wire into a circuit, never having used a power supply that could kill something bigger than a spider), but it doesn't look terribly difficult. On the other hand, there's clearly a lot to learn about the outer parts as well as the innards, and many tools to buy. I'm not sure which is a bigger problem at the moment.

Popes in a popemobile

How many rabbits can you fit in a guitar case?

At least one.


The rabbit I'm fostering (named Elenor Rigby, complete with typo, after the Beatles song) had a good time exploring.

Finding the one

Oh, no, THIS will be my first build.

Click and you'll see why.

Home from the hospital!

I'm very excited. Puccini the Japanese mandolin is home. I picked it (him?) up today for $69 and backpacked it home, swaddled in a Harvard sweatshirt. Only the best for my antique wallhangers. The guy I picked it up from in the repair shop greeted me with, "Oh, YOU'RE the one... uh, do you actually play this thing?" Fortunately, his questions were not provoked by the state of Puccini so much as the discomfort of playing bowlbacks in general.

I barely looked at it in the shop, thinking I wouldn't be able to see what they had done, anyway. That turned out to be only partly true. The tuners, well, they could have just blown the dust off them and I wouldn't know. But they definitely did some substantial gluing on the back ribs and a good cleaning and oiling overall, leaving the mother of pearl fret dots shining like the moon and the face of it a little more golden. The back varnish is not even dandruffing as much as it was before. It looks funny to me with its shiny new strings, but it's back up to some kind of playability. I have no intention of ever getting it re-fretted (the frets do have substantial wear). It's not as if anyone's going to gig with it, for god's sake.

Awesome! Another instrument I can't play! :) Photos another day.

Time's a-wastin'

Or it will be when I get my soldering iron. I am zeroing in on some circuit-building projects -- classes seem to be rather pricey and hard to find, so I may just sail in and start reading and building cheap projects. Here's one pedal I've found that looks like a winner. Circuitry's easy enough -- I have my old breadboard to test circuits before I solder them, and I wish I'd kept my old physics lab book for practice -- but having to worry about doing it well enough to keep the sound clean is another thing. Not to mention the enclosure and all that other stuff I never had to worry about before. You should see my final lamp project for Physics 15b. It looked like a train wreck with a light bulb hanging off.

Flight of the bumblebee

My guitar has developed fret buzz. It is severely annoying. I assume that either I have already killed the guitar somehow, or, more likely, that my strings have broken in and are vibrating more, and therefore whacking the frets at midpoint. I'll probably just suffer through till I feel like restringing, which will solve the problem temporarily. A heavier gauge string would probably really solve the problem... I'll think about it.

Get thee to a bookstore

If you're a Wilco fan, and even if you're not, rush to read the Fretboard Journal cover article on their secret loft in Chicago, guitar nerd paradise. FJ is a gorgeous, expensive magazine with fantastic articles about, well, fretboard instruments, players, and history. I indulged in one for my train ride to Wisconsin, and did not regret it.

Cmin, my Everest

Took another run at the glass mountain of Cmin today, slipped off and settled for Asus.

Sigh.

In the hospital

Puccini went to the shop today to get fixed. Namely, to have a rib reglued, exterior bottom veneer glued down, fretboard cleaned, one set of tuners removed and wood smoothed so that they will screw down flat, and finally new strings. Total damage likely to be about $60 for labor and whatever the strings cost, say $12 at full markup. Not bad. I was prepared to hear about $100.

The diagnostician, a friendly guy named Eric, took one look at poor Puccini and said, "Oh, this has been in water." I was wondering what the heck kind of varnish Suzuki could possibly have used that could flake off. Honestly, it's like dandruff. If you so much as hold it in a playing position, your shirt is covered with little flakes. There's no help for it; even if I felt like ruining it by stripping and refinishing, it's got so many little ribs on the back (think a pumpkin with many segments) that it would be a nightmare. He also pointed out to me that there are little holes showing below the tuner mounts, suggesting that the tuners, though quite old, as their ivory buttons show, may not be the originals -- which in turn suggests that the mandolin may be even older than 1945, the only date I have.

However, the structure is sound, even after being examined internally with a little dentist mirror -- that amused me no end. I expect to get it back in a week or so.

In the news

Apparently I'm not the only one sick of Aerosmith. I can't seem to get away from those headlines. I love Aerosmith as much as the next '80s child, but does anyone really think it's a huge tragedy if they don't perform together anymore?

Also in the news is Taylor Swift. I watched her SNL monologue and mostly thought to myself damn, the girl has long fingers. She can wrap right around for the thumb on the E string. Forget getting any tips from watching her... I'll have to do some youtubing.

Movin' on up

The strumming is improving, the fingering is improving... and I'm sick of playing Aerosmith. It's fine to warm up with, but I'm trying to play some fast-paced songs now, and ones with difficult chord combos. "Hammer to Fall" is a good fast one. All A, D, and E, but the constant A/D/A/D ad infinitum is excellent practice for me. I still don't hit the D chord all at once -- I lay down my fingers on the B and G strings, then stick the middle finger down on the e string.

Others in frequent rotation now are "Hallelujah," "Desperado," and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." I also went back to "No One But You," which is much harder now that I'm playing every chord instead of only the ones I know. Funny how that works.