It's hard to get good

Since embarking on this trek back into the world of music and guitar playing specifically, I've come to a realization:

There's just too damn much crap to learn.

It's overwhelming, really. Not only am I trying to learn guitar techniques - alternate picking, sweep picking, left-hand dexterity, legato, etc. - but I'm also trying to learn music theory. Stuff like scales, chords, modes, and how they all fit together. Some days I don't know where to start, so I just end up noodling around for whatever time I have to practice that day (it varies from 20 minutes to a few hours), which is pretty much what I've done for years and what I'm specifically trying to avoid doing here in my latest attempt at being a guitarist.

I heard a great quote on "House" the other day. Either you are good, you get good, or you give up. I'm not that good yet, and I don't want to give up, so I really have to work at the middle one - getting good. I tried the lesson route and that didn't quite work the way I thought it would. I've been trying to learn on my own, either through YouTube videos from guys like Rob "Chappers" Chapman or through Scales over Chords by Wilbur Savidge, a great book by the way. I'm still running into the same problem, though - where to start? Do I focus on technique, or do I learn scales and chords? Or should I just learn some new songs? (I'm getting really tired of playing Rush all the time.)

I'm at a loss. If anyone out there is reading this, I'd appreciate some suggestions. Before I go insane playing "Red Barchetta" every freakin' day!

The virtues of playing along, even if you don't know what you're doing

When I went to my guitar lesson a few weekends ago, something I said to my instructor caught him off guard. I could tell he was surprised by it as he really didn't know what to say. Thinking about it later, I realized he was right and that I should start doing the thing I said I don't do.

What's this thing that I should do that I wasn't doing?

Playing along to songs.

I know what you're thinking - "What a dumbass." Or maybe that's just me. Either way, I was being a dumbass for not doing something so obvious.

UPDATE: The Strat humbucking conundrum

Thanks to all the suggestions from my loyal readers, I'm ready to make my decision regarding the... Wait a minute. No one suggested anything. Thanks for nothing!

But hey, what should I expect, seeing as how I only get like five page views a day. That's OK, it's a labor of love.

(Silent stewing.)

OK, I'm over it now. I finally have an answer to the conundrum I described in this post. After careful consideration, I've decided to...

*Insert drum roll here.*

...keep the Strat stock and rewire the middle tone control to the bridge. What a wuss, huh? Take the safe route. Actually, that's not entirely true. Granted, I want to keep my Strat as genuine as possible (and keep the far-eastern parts off of it) and it's the easiest and least intrusive modification I could make, but I also just like the way it sounds. For stock ceramic single coils, they sound great. All the bridge pickup needs is a little tone roll-off to remove some of the brightness.

I feel that I have a perfect complement of guitars. Each one has its own sound and fills a specific role in my arsenal. The new Tele has those two powerful 'buckers and that S-switch to add some single-coil tones. The Hondo has the bridge humbucker and the tremolo which is perfect for screaming leads. The LP Special has two P100s that are somewhere between a humbucker and a single and have a sound all their own. The Strat, well, it sounds like a Strat, which is enough. Why change it? The bridge tone control will eliminate the only problem with its sound, making it the perfect Strat.

And you can't argue with perfection.

The Strat humbucking conundrum

I have a Strat and I love it. It's nothing fancy, just a regular Mexican-made standard Stratocaster with three single coils and a 6-screw tremolo, just as Leo Fender intended - although, to be fair, he probably didn't intend for them to be made in Mexico. But I digress...

As I said, I love my Strat. I love the way it plays and, for the most part, the way it sounds. There is an inherent design flaw in the Stratocaster that has been sending Strat owners to their soldering irons for years - there is no tone control on the bridge pickup. Leo designed the Stratocaster for maximum brightness and twanginess - that also accounts for the angled pickup, as the pole pieces for the higher strings are even closer to the bridge, maximizing twang. While this may be great for country music, it's not so great for rock. That's why a lot of players take out their trusty soldering irons and rewire their guitars to get some tone roll-off on the bridge pickup.

There are many ways to do this, but the easiest is to connect the tone control for the middle pickup to the bridge. The middle pickup sounds great with the tone maxed out, so most players won't miss the ability to roll off tone on the middle pickup. Also, having a tone control on the middle and neck positions means that when the switch is on position 4 (or 2, depending on where you start counting) and both of those pickups are activated they run through two tone potentiometers, resulting in a lot of tone roll-off, even when both are cranked. Moving the tone from the middle to the bridge eliminates that. This is what I want to do with my Strat, once I get the balls to attempt to use a soldering gun on my favorite guitar.

There's another issue, though.

I really like humbuckers. Especially after getting my new HH Telecaster. I like them even more when they're in the bridge position. The HSS pickguard I got for my old Hondo has a really nice bridge humbucker, especially for a no-name brand. The single coils, however, leave a lot to be desired.

This morning, an idea hit me that's so good it may just work.

I could remove the Hondo's pickguard assembly, replace the crappy single coils with the middle and neck single coils from the Strat's assembly, rewire the middle tone control for the bridge, and install it on my Strat. Just like that I have a bridge humbucker on my beloved Strat, plus I'd still have the better Fender single coils in the neck and bridge. The electronics on the Hondo's assembly are pretty good quality, so I don't think I'm losing anything by not using the Fender parts. Then I can take the crappy singles and put them into the Fender assembly, then install it on the Hondo.

It's so simple it's brilliant.

But all is not perfect. I don't know if I want non-Fender parts on my Fender. I like that it's a cohesive piece. I like having Fender pickups going through Fender volume and tone pots to a Fender switch. Also, do I really want a pearloid pickguard on my real Strat? If not, I'll have to buy a new one, and my guitar budget is already blown for the year after buying the new Tele. There's the problem of compatibility. The Hondo is not built to Fender specifications, probably to avoid lawsuits. The neck pocket is bigger, and the pickguard had to be altered to fit. While this shouldn't make too much difference if the Hondo assembly is mounted on the Fender, it does mean that the Fender pickguard won't fit on the Hondo without modification, so I'll be one guitar short until I can get it fixed.

So therein lies the dilemma. Do I put non-Fender parts on my Strat (and render my Hondo temporarily unplayable) just to get a bridge humbucker, or do I just keep it as it is and make the tone change?

If you have suggestions, please comment below!

Publishing change

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who reads my blog. Despite the fact that I can count all of you on my fingers (with a few to spare), it means a lot to me that you take the time out of your day to read my rants.

However, I think I've been putting too much into this blog. I think putting up long posts each day is too much work. It's one thing if this were my job, but it's not. I also think that I blew through most of my really good ideas in less than a month. The well's running a little low lately. So, I've decided to change the publishing schedule for my blog to give me more time to devote to my posts. I'm going to have one big post a week, on Monday mornings at 7 a.m. Mountain time. If something comes to me that I want to post, I'll put up short posts in between, but they won't be on a schedule. I'm hoping that this will not only free up my time, but also improve the quality of the weekly feature posts.

I wish I would've thought of this sooner. Instead of lasting just 29 days, my posts would've lasted me 29 weeks.

Over six months.

Damn.

The Hondo story - part two

Read part one here!

To quickly recap, I got back my first guitar, a Hondo Strat copy, and stripped it down to be sent off to the luthier, marveling at the crappy laminate body but still anxious to start the rebuild, which I planned to do myself while keeping a photo journal of the process.

One thing I have to say about the guitar is that the neck is really nice. Definitely the best part of the guitar and reason enough to keep it alive. Unlike most budget guitars of today that are made in China, this one was made in Korea. Korean guitars now are known to be just below Japan for quality among Asian imports, and Japanese guitars are considered to be on par with American guitars. Back then they weren't quite as well regarded, but the quality craftsmanship of this neck shows that they were well on their way. The neck is straight, the frets ends are smooth, the wood is high quality and the finish is thick and glossy without the orange glow of some Chinese imports of today. Putting it on a new body wouldn't be a bad idea at all. Maybe someday I'll do it.

The Hondo story - part one

Some times fate intervenes in your life and brings with it opportunities you would never have thought possible. Such an opportunity presented itself to me shortly after I got my Fender Stratocaster last March.

But first, let's take the Wayback Machine to 1984. "Ghostbusters" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" top the box office, Van Halen gives us the eternal advice "might as well jump," Michael Jackson catches fire during a Pepsi commercial, and an 11-year-old me goes into a guitar shop with my parents and gets a new Hondo pseudo-Strat, my first guitar. As you can see from the picture, it's a typical Strat-style guitar, black with a white pickguard, three single coils, a fulcrum tremolo, and a maple neck and fingerboard. The only tip-off that it isn't a Fender is the black headstock with the Hondo logo. This is the guitar that served me throughout my early guitar lessons, but during one of my guitar down times I put it away and when I resumed playing, I ended up going through a string of other guitars - a black Hondo Les Paul copy, an Epiphone Flying V, and finally a red Charvel Model 2 - after which I sold it to my friend's dad for way too little money. 80 bucks, I think. I never thought I'd see it again.

Then fate stepped in.

My first miss = my worst day

It finally happened. I had my first day without a blog post. I had a few extra posts in the tank, but I burned through them last week and I had nothing for Sunday. Consequently, I had one lone visitor to the blog yesterday.

That sucked.

I probably could've written a few more posts, but my review of Transatlantic's The Whirlwind took a long time to write. I think it came out well, so I can't be too upset, but it still left me in a bind. My goal for this blog was to have a new post every day at 7 a.m. so I could establish a nice routine that readers could get used to. A Web site is nothing without content, and I want to make sure the content on my blog is updated regularly. I don't want to lose the few readers I have.

Life gets busy sometimes, and when that happens tasks get prioritized. This weekend was no exception. I had almost no free time this weekend and what little free time I had was used for other things. The blog took a back seat. It's for this reason that I like to have a few posts already written, and I was just out. The tank was dry. On the plus side, though, the new Telecaster came home on Sunday, so I'll have something to write about this week (with pics).

Time to get writing. I don't want this to happen again.

It's like a real Web site now!

I made some updates to my blog recently that almost make it look like a real Web site. I think one of the updates is new to Blogger, because I swear I've never seen it before.

As I'm writing this post, I notice an "Edit Pages" option at the top of the page that I swear wasn't there before. In fact, I didn't even notice it when I started researching the changes I wanted to make. I wanted to see about adding a contact page and the "Pages" option in Blogger came up when I Googled it. It's a great feature that was lacking when I started this blog, and I promptly took advantage of it by moving my "Welcome" post to the "About" page.

Review: The Whirlwind by Transatlantic

When I heard that Transatlantic was reuniting for a new album, I was completely jazzed. After all, their previous album, Bridge Across Forever, is one of my favorite prog albums of all time. I was sure that anything they could put out would be a worthy addition to the genre.

I had my concerns, though.

The reason Transatlantic has been on the backburner for the last eight years is because Neal Morse, who also fronted Spock's Beard at the time, found Jesus and promptly left both bands. That was in 2001. Since then, he's put out a string of albums, some prog, some not, but all of them Christian. Now I have nothing against spirituality per se, but I don't want to be proselytized to and I certainly don't want to listen to an album that's full of the G- and J-words. I like my prog with a little less God, so to speak. I heard his Testimony album and while the music was solid, the lyrics ranged from groanworthy to completely laughable. Since Neal is the principle songwriter for the band, I was duly concerned.

So it was with this combination of excitement and skepticism that I dove into The Whirlwind.

Watch your AC adapters

This will be a short one today, but an important one.

After my recent success selling my Telecaster, I started looking for other unused pieces of musical equipment I had lying around my house that I could potentially sell. One of those pieces of equipment was a Dunlop Wah/Volume pedal sitting in a drawer, where it's been since I sold my Fender amp and picked up a Line 6. The reason I wasn't using it anymore is because it never sounded right with my Line 6. Every time I plugged it in it caused cacophonous buzzing, which I attributed to the amp, as it always worked just fine with my Fender. Since I had no plans to buy another amp, I thought it was a good time to sell the pedal.

One era ends, another begins

This past Sunday I found the Holy Grail of guitars when I went to my guitar lesson, a Fender American Series Telecaster HH. And it was for sale. I knew I had to have it, but there was just one problem - I already have too many guitars and I couldn't justify another one. Something had to give.

In this case, it was my red Tele.

Pick of the gods

People find god in all sorts of places. The details. Burnt pieces of toast. Sticky buns. Clapton.

I found it in a pick.

Not just any pick. Simply the best pick I've ever used. It instantly turned all my other picks into just pieces of plastic, or potential shims. Things to use to fix the wobble in the kitchen table. Certainly not to play guitar with, because I'll never use another kind of pick again.

What is it?

My lesson was...interesting

I went to my much anticipated guitar lesson yesterday and the outcome wasn't what I expected.

Let me explain.

First of all, the instructor was a great guy. Friendly, knowledgeable, and honest. He's a multi-instrumentalist and teaches other stringed instruments including banjo, mandolin and steel guitar. Plus he had an enviable collection of equipment (more on that later).

The lesson started out much as I thought it would. He told me to play the most complicated thing I know, and of course I froze up. Didn't know what to play. I'm not good at being put on the spot like that. So I started noodling around with some scales I've been learning and then broke out a little Rush. I'm so used to playing in front of the two people I trust the most - my wife and myself - that I didn't realize how self conscious I was playing in front of other people. I felt like I was giving a speech in public. Thankfully it didn't last too long and we then started talking about what I was hoping to get out of the lessons and what he could do for me.