Review: Neal Morse - Lifeline

After being relatively impressed with Neal Morse's latest effort, Testimony 2, I decided to go backwards and check out his earlier work. This sent me back to his previous release, Lifeline, which was released in 2008.

I've been a big fan of Neal since his Spock's Beard days. For those of you who don't know, Neal founded Spock's Beard after failing to make it as a pop songwriter in Los Angeles, and after six albums together (and two more with his side project Transatlantic), he became a born-again Christian and embarked on a solo career where he could more freely express his religious views.

I'm also a big fan of what I call classic Progressive Rock, something I've also heard called "retrogressive" as it has its influences in the past and doesn't necessarily progress forward. Neal is arguably the modern master of classic Prog, and losing him to Christian music was a blow to secular fans like myself. Fortunately for us, Neal never abandoned his Prog roots and essentially followed dual career paths - one as a Christian artist making typical praise albums, and one as a Prog artist writing Christian-themed music. As long as the secular fan could get past the godly lyrics, they could still enjoy listening to one of the most talented people in the world do what he does best - Yes/Genesis inspired Prog with a hint of the Beatles.

Random Sunday post: Flight cases, plus I hate tremolos, redux

Thought I'd post a quick update today as I laze around on a Sunday afternoon. I'm excited because I will soon get to experience an NGD (New Gear Day) - I picked up an SKB flight case today for my upcoming trip to Vegas.

My wife is going to Photoshop World so I get to tag along. I'll also have a lot of time on my hands to do whatever I want. Last year I brought my Strat with me as a carry-on, but I got too many nasty looks and bitchy comments so I wanted to check it this time. Good thing we're not flying United:

I just have to decide which guitar I'm going to take. I'm about 90% sure it'll be the hardtail RG, but I still may change my mind and bring the Strat again. I've been playing the RG a lot lately so unless things change it'll be making the trip with us.

Speaking of RGs, I'm having issues again with the Edge III tremolo on my other RG. I absolutely love that guitar, but I just hate tremolos. The only one I've ever liked was the one on my old Charvel. That thing was a rock. I'd go weeks without having to tune it. I changed strings recently and after much frustration got it set up and working again. But one day, I picked it up, played it, made one dive bomb and the whole thing went out of tune. Badly. I just put it back on the stand and grabbed the hardtail RG. I know I could get it back to working condition with some effort but I just hate tremolos. I'm glad I have a guitar with a locking tremolo so I could play songs that need it but I will never own another. My own personal sound - whatever that is, I'm still working on it - will not feature anything that requires a tremolo. It's hardtails for me.

So that's it for today. Until next time, keep playing!

Another practice video: Me and YYZ

After I made this video Saturday morning, I have to admit I wasn't pleased. I really didn't like the way I played and I was rather bummed. But after watching it a few times, I've realized that it's not nearly as bad as I thought, and a lot of the problems are from the way it was put together.

I tried something new with this video. For my other practice videos, I played through my amp and let the built-in microphone pick everything up - that includes the backing track, which I played on my iPod through the amp's MP3 input. This time, I plugged my DigiTech RP90 right into the laptop input. Originally, I recorded the final prodct in GarageBand and planned on replacing the audio. But when I played the captured video in iMovie, my guitar sounded pretty good so I decided to add the backing track in and sync it with my playing.

That's the big issue with this video - I don't think I synced it perfectly so I'm a little off the whole time. It makes my playing sound much worse because it seems like I can't play in time with the music. The backing track, too, leaves a lot to be desired. I wanted to use a backing track so that I wouldn't be fighting with Alex's guitar playing - I wanted to hear how I sounded on my own. The free YYZ backing track I found on the 'Net is extraordinarily horrendous, but it does the job.

So now, for the good and the bad. The good: I nailed the solo, which I've had issues with in the past. The bad: I screwed up two parts of the song. I messed up one of the reggae-inspired chord progressions and I hit the wrong opening note in the post-solo bridge. In the end I didn't do a bad job, but you can be the judge!