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Post by scripsit on Jun 8, 2013 0:43:23 GMT
Congratulations Mark, that's quite an accomplishment. And you know that you'll have dedicated guitar enthusiasts in the audience for your set, too.
Definitely go the baritone.
I'd be interested to find out what guitar(s) Mr McManus actually plays in performance these days: in the last twelve months he's been photographed with fan frets, PRS, 12 fretters ... he obviously has GAS like the rest of us.
Kym
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Post by scripsit on Jun 2, 2013 6:24:25 GMT
Beautiful looking guitar. I love what cocobolo does, but have never had the chance to experience a good guitar with a cedar top.
Without knowing of the luthier's background I would have guessed at a Sobell lineage, from the headstock and rest of the aesthetic.
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 31, 2013 9:40:03 GMT
I've kept out of this because it's hard to recommend something that has to, to an extent, be decided on before you can install it and try it, but I am a believer in combination mic and piezo pickups. I've got this Fishman system in both of my main guitars: www.fishman.com/product/ellipse-matrix-blend-1I find that the microphone knocked back by about a third or so blended with the piezo puts out a very realistic sound. You have a slider inside the guitar sound hole which lets you do the blend, and a volume control, too, and most people don't see the unit until you point it out. The microphone is on a flexible stalk and you can experiment with different positions, but in a large 0000 box and a smaller 000 it seems to work well pointed low towards the back, just off the soundhole on the treble side. I've only got a small acoustic amp, a Roland 30W, but can jack it up pretty well flat out without any feedback problems. I was happy with the sound just plugged straight in, but recently bought a Radial Tonebone PZ-Pre preamp (mainly because it's what Al Petteway uses when he plays live and I hadn't blown any money on guitar stuff for a while). The blended signal from the Fishman is mono, so the preamp allows me to plug both guitars in simultaneously and adjust volume and EQ appropriately on its twin channels. There's a mute switch on the preamp and swapping from one guitar to the other is just about seamless when you want to go from DADGAD to missionary tuning, for instance, whereas before the bigger guitar definitely put out more volume. As a bonus, the added EQ allows for a little finer control over the midrange, in particular. www.tonebone.com/tb-pzpre.htmI think Martin were using the matrix blend pickup system in some of their intermediate priced guitars, so you might be able to check out the system in a regular music shop. Their installation was one of the ugly trap door in the guitar side type, but the electronics were the same. I've had limited experience with acoustic guitar preamps, but if you're going to play plugged in I think it's worth investigating what's available. I was surprised how much more flexibility you get, and you won't always have an accommodating sound man. Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 25, 2013 0:56:51 GMT
I call BS on this study, without reading it. (Always the safest way of criticising someone else's paper.)
Chess and music as similar activities upon which to draw conclusions about mastery? You can draw long bows about creativity and the like, but chess (like Brian's quest for better golf) has the capacity for distinct and finite measures. That is, how often do you win and who can you beat (and what is your best score etc)? In fact, I believe this sort of measure is exactly how elite chess players are ranked.
What is the correlation here with music? Classical musicians of a certain age enter prestigious competitions, and the US in particular is fond of things like competitive finger-picking festivals, but are these really measures of how good musicians are, or, more to the point, whether good music is being made?
Likewise, just getting through a piece without mistakes doesn't make what happens 'music', at least to my ears. There are intangibles at all levels of performance which make it impossible to classify when the process swaps from playing an instrument to creating some music.
The easiest proofs of this in guitar terms are people who most of us would consider 'elite' musicians who nevertheless have very limited or even crap technique in objective, guitar teacher terms: think John Lee Hooker, Bukka White, John Fahey... BB King, in the video of him playing with U2, announces with some panic that he can't play chords, and has to be reassured that he can just single string it. Have you ever tracked how often Eric Clapton avoids using his left hand little finger when soloing? And, closer to home, one of the reasons some of Bert Jansch's pieces are so hard to play is that there are bizarre little timing variations from bar to bar, which he covers effortlessly.
So, when it comes down to we lesser mortals, I think practice makes sense, for all sorts of muscle memory reasons (and yes, as an old fart, this is less secure that it was when I was twenty, although to balance this out, I've heard a lot of good music since then), but the main thing is attitude, not to the practising, but to what noises we are making. What are we trying to do with it?
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 24, 2013 10:22:46 GMT
Keith is right about the variations in concert pitch. I was surprised to find out that 'A' wasn't always 440 'A', too. I believe that there are still orchestras (German?) that choose to tune down somewhat today in accordance to some perceived proper 19th century procedure. My daughter is a baroque musician, an accomplished recorder player, and always has to enquire ahead of time what tuning the harpsichord continuo player will use when doing small group stuff. Annoying, too, because you actually have to use different recorders for the old 'baroque' tuning which is a long way south of modern pitch.
And of course Hendrix looked like he was in B but sounded B flat. And Black Sabbath are usually down a full tone because of Tony's missing finger joint.
I think Keith's idea of tuning directly to the pipes is better than trying to nut it out mathematically. I use the clip on tuners for convenience, and they are fiddly to calibrate, but there are some extremely accurate tuner apps for iphones and ipads (I've got 'Cleartune' that I drag out if I'm being super careful for recording) that, on ipad at least, allows you to designate the pitch name from an external audio source, and then adjust all tunings around that. These apps are cheap (less than $10) and I think have crossover versions for Android and the like. If you don't want to do it by ear, that might be the way to go.
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 23, 2013 11:48:20 GMT
Bernd, I admire your attitude. I love new strings and just wish I had access to lots of brands. For practicality I've settled on buying online, ten sets at a time, but I'm strongly tempted to try some different things.
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 22, 2013 11:01:37 GMT
Have to agree with the poster above about a string winder being useful. These are on ebay for less than $10 www.planetwaves.com/pwProductDetail.Page?ActiveID=4115&productid=549&productname=Peg_Winder_Guitarand include a cutter for the string ends and a little device for popping the bridge pins up. Incredibly handy and really speeds up restringing. I made up a neck rest out of a few bits of pine with some felt glued on to the U-shape cutout where the neck of the guitar goes and can lie the guitar on a table or the breakfast bar on a bit of tee shirt material and do the whole job, including a wipe and polish, in under 15 minutes. Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 22, 2013 9:41:38 GMT
I change strings on my main two guitars reasonably often, about every month or so, when I notice that there are intonation and tuning problems because they start to get out of shape where fretted (little flats can be seen on the wound strings in particular when you take them off, if you look closely). This usually coincides with the wound strings looking very grotty, dull in colour and sometimes growing tiny 'beards' of finger oil and callus dust. I take them all off at once so I can clean the neck and fingerboard (warm water and cotton balls to get rid of grunge, wiped off straight away with a soft polishing cloth). No steel string guitar with a truss rod will be harmed in the few minutes the strings are off (and when guitars are shipped the strings are slackened right off anyway, sometimes for days or weeks on end). I use the restringing methods recommended on Frets.com, although I arrived at almost same techniques independently. Even slotheads are easy after a bit of practice. That initial kinking of the ball end was a real discovery and stopped that horrible rising up of the bridge pin when you tune because the ball end has got under the pin itself. www.frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/Guitar/Setup/SteelStrings/Stringing/ststringing1.htmlwww.frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/Guitar/Setup/SteelStrings/Stringing/slotheadstr1.htmlI use medium uncoated strings (D'addario, normally, 13 to 56) and don't bother with any stretching malarky after cutting off the excess string within about a finger's width of the tuning post, just take up to pitch. Play a short piece, retune, play a piece, retune and leave for 20 minutes and you're done. I love the sound of new strings on the first three days, and wish they would stay like that. Don't like the sound or feel of coated strings. The one exception I would make to the 'all strings at once' change is with resophonic guitars. Most National and Dobro style resophonics depend on the string tension over the bridge to keep everything lined up properly on the spider and cone. If you take all the strings off at once it can be a nightmare to get everything set up again, and in fact takes hours and screwdrivers are involved. Don't ask me how I know this. Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 17, 2013 0:15:59 GMT
Very interesting, Martin, I might have to track that down.
The DVD version I have is one I created myself from a VHS video version belonging to a friend (not sure where he found it: was it shown on TV?), so the video and audio is definitely below par.
I like the look of the extras, too.
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 11, 2013 9:16:32 GMT
I play pieces designed for solo fingerstyle and listen to a lot of that, too. Sometimes my listening is because I have an obsession with a particular player or the tunes from an album that I'm wanting/trying to play, but I've always enjoyed the introspective nature of a lot of acoustic guitar playing. Even back in electric days several decades ago I used to listen to a lot of John Fahey, John Renbourn, Leo Kottke and the like. There's no safety net, either, when it's just a single instrument.
I've got a big collection of baroque small ensemble music and romatic era opera, which I like putting on when we have dinner or sit about the place reading. I got into this when I was weaning myself off blues and hard rock (it got too complicated to put bands together, rehearse, find places to gig and so on, but when I gave up playing I used to get edgy and depressed and jealous if I listened to others playing this sort of music).
If I have too much to drink (not that this happens often, of course) and the rest of the family goes to bed I sometimes find myself with headphones on listening to anything which involves guitar players like Peter Green, Rory Gallagher or Paul Kossoff. There are some excellent Australian guitarists like Ian Moss and Kevin Borich, too.
If I have far far too much to drink we are talking Motorhead and Bon Scott era AC-DC and early UFO ('It's the Ace of Spades, the Ace of Spades ...').
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 9, 2013 10:35:21 GMT
Keith
The body shape of the Powell guitars is quite unusual. I had a look on the website and at first I thought some of the images were distorted, before I realised it really is an oval sound hole.
Was that big lower bout difficult to get your arm over? I've found lots of dread size guitars (and most dreads, I must admit) quite uncomfortable to play for any length of time.
Interesting to see someone using Tasmanian blackwood so far from its home (at least on his website). Although I suppose it's not much different from spruce being imported here.
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 9, 2013 1:19:48 GMT
It looks like an effective show and tell: congratulations. I'm sure the effort was worth it.
I'd love close up access to even a small variety of something other than factory guitars.
The electric/acoustic thing is a pain, and always has been. Our two or three local shops with a range of different acoustics are difficult to visit because whenever I can get into them it seems the school kids can, too, and there is always so much electric blasting at full grunge settings that I can never hear the thing I'm trying out.
By the way, it always used to be 'Smoke on the water', badly, and played incorrectly as a single string riff. Now it seems to be (I think) 'Sandman' that they crank. Yet another sign of getting old.
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 8, 2013 13:08:31 GMT
Didn't the army put either bromide or banjos in tea back in the day to control those urges?
Kym
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Post by scripsit on May 5, 2013 7:40:58 GMT
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Post by scripsit on May 5, 2013 7:32:46 GMT
Marcus
If you are on a PC (as opposed to a Mac) you can download and install the free, open source audio editing program called 'Audacity'.
This allows you to record directly from the computer or external microphone, build up multitracks and do considerable fiddling with the built in suite of manipulation tools. You can use the Zoom H2 as an external mic and Audacity will recognise it without any problems.
I believe the latest version of Audacity also lets you install what are called 'VST plugins': these are software emulations of recording studio hardware devices like reverb and compression and so forth. If you have a bit of a hunt around you can find many useful and free versions of these.
Once you've done the recording, and used the tools in the program to do a 'mixdown' to your taste, you can export the sound files in a variety of formats, to burn to CD or use directly on MP3 players and the like. My memory is that you have to carry out a simple step to enable you to save to MP3 format the first time because of licensing issues with that format, but it is not difficult and only has to be done once on any computer.
I used Audacity for several years as the main recording software for various voice and soundtrack editing purposes when I worked in educational multimedia production, and it is a very powerful program which is easy to use.
For guitar recording I've now gone to full featured DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software: I use 'Presonus Studio One'. Most DAWs are expensive and the interfaces can be daunting (there are still bits of mine I don't know much about). You can download a free version of Studio One which has some of the more sophisticated tools left out. If you have access to a good microphone (maybe something that is just a microphone for about the cost of the H2) and a preamp to plug the mic into the results can be surprisingly professional once you get the hang of it. If you think you are eventually going to get into this recording thing in a big way, that might be a better way to go, and it's still free at the start.
Lots of home recording folk use a DAW called 'Reaper', which is free to begin with and very cheap even for the full version, but I've got no experience with it.
Kym
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