The Divergence of Common Awareness of Ai and Musicians

  It's been obvious that there is a growing divergence between people who know, partially understand ai - neural network based technology, its current state and people who are unaware.  

 Or, worse, think it's capabilities are "science fiction".

 Likewise, I'm seeing this happen in musician circles.  Particularly with people referencing currently available real-neural network based music software, but also with the tertiary uses of LLMs and retrieval based voice replacement technology.

 There isn't even any cognitive dissonance.  There are simply a lot of people who think:

- Neural net based guitar software is "nothing new, it's been done before".  They think it's another variation on either digital eq, or one shot impulse response convolution;

- Voice replacement, "deep fake" software is either doing something with replaying samples, or is again, a technology that requires Impossible Technology that won't exist for many years.

 There may be a limitation on some people, as far as what they know of computer technology itself, that prevents comprehension of the revolution that is going on.  There may also be subconscious pushback happening, against what seems frightening and alienating.

 Regardless, there is a gap forming that is larger than what happened when digital recording took over.  Back when that happened, there were a lot of people that insisted "it will never be as good as a professional tape machine", that it was too complicated and limited to become a mainstream thing.  I am quite sure there are people who have effectively given up on a profession of recording, not because the music industry has fallen off, but because they literally got left behind because of their beliefs.

  As an aside, there is something similar happening in the computer repair/otaku world.  There seems to be many "tech advisors" that are totally unaware of the shift of graphic cards going from gaming to ai.  Some say things in response to hearing/reading press releases from NVidia (and others), that makes no sense - they're literally not accepting that GPU technology is being steered towards ai, and not video games. 

 There will be many disenfranchised musicians. 

 

Christmas Gift Guitar Amps

  As in my previous post, around this time is when I'm asked not only for "what beginner guitar should I get?" but also "what guitar amp?'".

 Beginner amps - or so to say, "very cheap" amps are a tossup these days.   But (and again, I am not sponsored or compensated by anybody for these reviews) there are 2 answers for "very cheap" beginner amps:

 Brand new, the Boss Katana mini.  small, light, portable (can be battery powered), and covers all of the basic sounds one needs - for $100:

Boss Katana Mini

 

 HOWEVER...

 It is my claim that the number of amps and guitars on the planet is an ever increasing number.  You should be able to find some sort of an amp for $50 on Craigslist, OR alternately, I also claim the Kevin Bacon effect applies to guitars and amps: if you ask around, SOMEBODY you know has one or the other sitting unused in a closet at home.  In others, for FREE.   

 YOU DON'T NEED TO PAY MORE THAN $100 FOR A BEGINNER GUITAR AMP IN THE YEAR 2022.

 Having said that as a second amp, or for just a little bit more at $230, is the full-size

Boss Katana (50 watt combo)

 This is another Amazing Thing in the 21st century.  This amp is loud enough to gig with, has literally all the effects one needs, sounds "almost" as good as a much more expensive tube guitar amp, and (importantly) weighs ~25 lbs.????

 This amp is literally a back saver.  The number of little gigs I've done where I had to bring a 50 lbs. amp, and a suitcase of pedals that this amp could have been used for is ridiculous.  I bought one of these to use in my office (when I had one before covid, I'm now only giving lessons online) and now it sits next to me at home, while my vintage Marshall still remains in disrepair and my finicky VHT Princeton clone is unused.

 Not exactly recommended as a "beginner amp" because it has wayyyy more controls and features than one really needs, and can be very overwhelming, but - not a bad choice, because it's definitely an amp a beginner can grow into.

Christmas Gift Guitars for Beginners: Stainless Frets and Torrified Wood?

  This time of year I usually get calls about "can you recommend a guitar to me for a beginner?" (even before people sign up for lessons....  hmmm). 

(note: I have not been paid by this company or received any recompense for this review...)

 My previous go-to answer was to look for the Monoprice stratocaster copy,   They still seem to be one of the best deals, although in the past year or so models from EART seem to have stepped up - I'd say try to get one of these for $188:

EART Strat

 It's effectively a fully professional guitar, but also has 2 very notable features previously not found on a guitar in this sub-$200 price range, in that it has polished stainless steel frets and a "roasted"/torrified neck and body.

 The stainless steel frets, for the average player, will effectively hold their polish and not wear out.  In the Old Days not only did we not have stainless steel frets, on sub-$500 guitars the frets were made out of a cheap, soft alloy that started to wear with very little playing.  This wear affects the playability of the guitar over the period of years.  With stainless frets effectively the guitar should play the same for the life of the instrument.

 Which brings me to the second part, the "roasted or "torrified" neck and body.   I previously couldn't make the statement "it should play the same for the life of the instrument", because wood tends to do things in different environments when it gets cold/warm, or exposed to humidity/dry air.  "Roasted" means the wood has literally been baked in an oven for a period of time, at a very specific temperature.  This does 2 very good things:

1) removes moisture from the wood;

2) "caramelizes" the lignin, which is to say effectively makes the resin act as epoxy, it becomes harder/stiffer.

 The first thing is good because it means it is much less likely to want to warp or change it's dimensionallity due to temperature/climate conditions.  Wood is not a perfect material, and guitar necks have been known to warp when furnaces are used in the winter, or A/C in the summer creates strange moist-to-dry situations.  This is due to the wood expelling and taking up moisture.  

 When torrified, not only is there no water to want to evaporate out of the wood, the caramelization acts as a sealant that keeps it from wanting to absorb moisture.  

  Which is a good thing, but an even better thing IMO is that because it makes it stiffer, it SOUNDS significantly better.   Without a doubt, I am of the opinion the the reason *some* old guitars are so prized for their sound is due to the fact that after 30+ years, if the neck hasn't warped it's due to both the having successfully dried out AND the caramelization process starting naturally.

 Roasting/torrification does both in one go.  I claim the "vintage guitar" sound, and the seemingly random variability of older guitars sounding better or worse than another, is mostly down to how naturally the wood has dried out.  Roasted necks will create a nicer sound, and also a louder, more reactive sound.   

 These two things, stainless steel frets and roasted wood, I think are the most important inventions in guitar in the past 50 years.  That you can get both on a guitar that's less than $200 is incredible.  The rest of the guitar, pickups, bridge and tuners are also very high quality, as is the quality of the nut.  Effectively in every respect a professional guitar for less than I paid for my first Hondo guitar in 1984 that was lower quality in every respect!  

 

Reverb is the Starfield of Music?

  This blog isn't always about guitar lessons.   Stand by for a very abstract post.....

 "Reverb is the Starfield of Music"

Or so I claim.

In science fiction movies, the starfield sets the tone.  

 In 2001: a Space Odyssey, it's understated.  The stars are not too bright, colorful or lurid.  They don't move.  You don't see them zooming by out if a porthole.  

Realistic.  

As the backdrop to the 2nd act of the movie, it defines what the movie sets out to do at that point: pull you in by trying not to defeat the illusion of "real".  In less realistic movies, maybe sci-fi shows from before the 90s, you had bright stars flying past a window on a starship: all the same color, same size.  Not as realistic, BUT - perhaps within the "creative universe" of said show.   Both a budget-restricted pragmatic choice, but maybe also a simple, quick way of communicating "you're in a starship traveling in a direction".

 Likewise, reverb on recordings once was based solely on analog gear, not unlike the analog "practical" effects of science fiction movies of yesteryear.   While the gear was primitive - springs, sheet metal plates, empty rooms with tiled walls - there was no Uncanny Valley to cross.   

 But just like the early days of computer graphics in movies, when digital came into recording it wasn't necessarily convincing.  Like early CG science fiction effects, you knew it kind of represented something but wasn't perfectly realistic.   It was good enough, and again, a pragmatic solution to production.

 Some music in the 80s suffers from this, although some just wallows in Artificial Modulated Reverb.  The early Sting recordings come to mind, Queensryche's _Operation Mind Crime_, some others.   Like the starship Enterprise in _Star Trek: the Next Generation_, something BIG was doing SOMETHING in a BIG SPACE.   You knew it wasn't real, but it was its own art form in a sense.   

  Post 80s bands started wanting real drum sounds in actual rooms, and for awhile Big Room Sounds supplanted the artifice of Lexicon digital reverbs.  Similarly, science fiction movies have started to reject the early efforts of George Lucas to use digital technology to "enhance" (ahem..) classic movies.   For some movies the look and feel *was* "computer graphics" (Tron, Terminator 2, the Abyss, et al) but when it was mixed in after the fact, the contrast wrecked the production.

 Recordings, being cheaper and much more common by orders of magnitude, have gone through this iteration already.  The Bricastic hardware digital reverb, digital convolution reverbs, have started pulling recording out of the Uncanny Valley somewhat, but some recordings are still prone to having peculiar combinations of "spaces" that are incongruent.  

 Just as some sci-fi movies feature a lot of exterior special effects, that "place" you in that world, others are more careful and spartan with the use of depicting space.   On recordings, the same thing occurs: the reverb tone, sound, and amount is the backdrop for a recording.   

 

 

The Sunset Sound YouTube channel

    I'm surprised this YouTube channel isn't referenced more.

 Sunset Sound is a famous California recording studio that's been around for a lonnng time.   While Dave Grohl has made Sound City famous in a pop culture context, Sunset Sound has been left on the back burner it seems, despite being ground zero for the Beach Boys, Doors, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Prince, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, and many more.

 The great thing about the channel is that they bring on engineers (and other "orbiting" personnel) to talk - extremely candidly - about the recording processes of these famous bands and their associated famous recordings. 
 
 There are other channels that do fairly intensive dives into recording *techniques*, but Sunset Sound's channel is a bit different in that it is done in the actual studio itself, and often by people that were there.  For other things (like the video linked below), they go into a deep dive from a "historical documentary" standpoint, more than a technical one, which I think may be more interesting for the less experienced/more casual musician.   

 For fans of Van Halen and Prince, there is more untold info here than anywhere.  It's really curious why it's not caught on as much as some other channels, but regardless one should look into it for a good retelling of "the way things were" procedurally for recording "back in the day" when recording contracts provided ample money for proper artistic capturing of music.  

 Before music was made on computers, it was done in places like this by people vetted by other established professionals, with a lot of hard work.  When music wasn't free and throw away, things were different....

 

 

10,000 Steps To Playing Guitar?

What's the most common thing a guitar teacher hears? "I didn't have time to practice this week". The 21st century puts everyone in a time crunch. I always recommend having a "sofa guitar" handy in the living room; you can pick it up in all of those liminal moments one encounters there, or even while casually watching something on tv. Learning to compartmentalize small snippets of things to practice, committed to muscle memory, opens the door for (dare I say it...) "mindless repetition" that can be very beneficial. But here's another thing: A lot of people prioritize "getting their 10,000 steps in". Which is sensible, your health is obviously important. A lot/many/most people walk to do it. What if I told you "you can get a strap for your acoustic and practice playing while you walk".......? No, it's not ideal. As a beginner it might seem very cumbersome at first, you will have to commit to having a low wrist and playing by feel instead of by sight. That's ok, even if you're making mistakes; even if you just hold one chord and strum, you're getting exercise in two different ways simultaneously! And you can practice strumming on beat with the cadence of your walk: "on beat" with each step, or a multiple/subdivision. Or other strategies I might suggest as the guitar teacher.... I'm also going to go out on a limb and say the 10,000 steps will go by faster as well! The distraction WILL make it seem less of a chore - for both the walking AND the "guitar practice". I can recommend certain specific things one could do, but as I said, just strumming a chord might be good enough for a lot of people. You're doing an isometric workout, holding the chord down, as well as rhythmic practice in strumming. The next level up would be to change open chords back and forth "blind", not looking down, not trying to look over the front of the neck to see where your fingers are. Keep it simple and basic. Yes, you may attract some attention in your neighborhood or walking path. But maybe that not a bad thing? And it's certainly not as "strange" as some jogging fads that have happened in the past! 10,000 Steps To Playing Guitar, try it...

On Machine Learning and A.I. Technology Used for Guitar Modeling

(excerpted from a recent GS post I made...)

The problem with sims to this point is that:

- Syntax - people using generic terms, or misusing terms
- Apples and oranges - comparing different technologies
- Non-linear vs. snapshot comparisons.


Making an IR that sounds identical to a *static* IR is straight forward, but also Occam's Razor invoking. "Why does it sound identical... sometimes?"
Algorithmic approaches feel better, and *seem* realistic but *not identical*. I can adjust my playing to sort of mimic the Real Thing, but "like a real amp" is not the same thing as "just like a real amp". I love Bandmasters because of the variety of timbre you can get from pick attack, dynamics; you can fake that with Certain Emulations, but it's not as subtle and controllable. I have to exaggerate and worse, think about doing it.

That's no fun.

And speaker IRs are only as good as the engineer that made them, what mic and where they put it on what speaker through what preamp at what level. A greenback sounds different cranked; if you play soft it acts completely different, sounds different. Again, there are ways around that, but it's a kludge and it requires conscious effort.

You can make it work "like a real amp", but not *just* like a real amp.

That's not fun.

All of these things I believe can be fixed, but I'm not sure if the programming talent and effort is in the right place, or guided suitably. They're all almost good, suitable for "most applications", but not exactly the same across all applications.

I think the *curation* at companies has been the most important thing until now, the success of some and the downfall of others. ML/a.i. may make it moot, but the "curation" of the training will still be a factor in the end result production-wise. The end result may be fully convincing, but not in the production style desired, which might be a new problem.

/ $.10

Another New York Times Piece on Guitar?

 

 This time an oblique swipe at guitar solos.

 It's curious that they seem to like to write articles implying "this thing I'm writing about, heh heh heh, we all know is passe.... but *I* know what cool about it, I'm be self-referentially cool by telling you".  

"It's easy to dismiss the guitar solo as an outdate, macho institution"

 Pretty much the Rolling Stone formula of non-musicians being critical of POPULAR musician's choices.  It's an inclusive trick: because you're reading their article, you're included in their Hip Circle.  

 Meanwhile I'm trundling along giving guitar lessons, in which wanting to learn to play solos is anything but dead.  

 

Should You Boycott Harley Benton?

 So some guys on YouTube say you should boycott Harley Benton because the guitar at the top is a rip off of the guitar below it:

Harley Benton Nylon NT

Taylor TZ

  At least, I think these are the 2 guitars in question?

 Which is the gist of my post here: they are similar, but not exact - despite hyperbole.

 Many differences: knobs, fingerboard extension, sound holes are different, body size/geometry different, bridge different.  They look similar (unless I've got the wrong guitars?), but it's variations on a theme.

 A theme that Taylor didn't invent.  The first thing I think of when I see both is a combination of the following:

Godin MultiAc

..and:

Ovation Adamas

Rickenbacker 360

 The aesthetic is a combination of established elements.   From a design intellectual property standpoint, there is nothing new.  From a functional standpoint there isn't, either.

 Nobody is buying the $400 guitar thinking it's a Taylor.  But more importantly - and this is the real point - Taylor isn't losing any customers for it's $2,200 guitar.

 Nobody is walking into a Taylor dealership, thinking they want the Taylor and then settling for the Harley Benton.  Nobody.  Just like nobody walks into a Fender dealership wanting to order a Custom Shop Stratocaster, and then settles for a Harley Benton strat.  

 Which is a whole lot closer aesthetically and functionally than the Harley Benton and the Taylor.

  Unless one wants to restart the stratocaster clone wars and go off on a jihad against everybody that makes a strat style guitar, the Taylor vs. Harley Benton issue is a non-issue in my opinion.   The guys in the Youtube video sells both Fender and PRS: do they want you to boycott PRS Silversky models.......?  

 

Acoustic Guitar Purchasing Dilemmas (circa 2022)

 As a general rule, I think for most people the following made sense for the past 20+ years:

 Buy your first "introductory" guitar.   One takes a chance here, because it's probably not going to be very playable or sound nice.  This is usually without advice from me, and usually takes the form of a guitar that comes in a "pack" deal, somewhere in the $100-150 ball park.

  What I'd advise then would be a "compromise" guitar.  Something better than the above, but not a "real" acoustic guitar.  The advice would be to get the nicest possible with a solid spruce top, with consideration for a pickup system.  Epiphone and Seagull/LasSiDo has been a good choice in this category, .

 Then, I would advise to try not to buy another UNTIL one could afford either a Martin D28, or a 600-700 series Taylor.  Because - in between you're either paying for cosmetics, or another compromise, and these 2 are effectively where "professional, standard issue" acoustic guitars start.  But the main reason was - and I've been saying this for decades now - 

 "there will come a time when it will basically be impossible for you to consider buying a Martin D28.  Try to get one now if you can".

 For a long time $1,000 was the Magical Professional Price Point.  The "nice" guitars started there, or from another perspective, that was how much a Les Paul or D28 would cost.  In the late 90s D28s started creeping up in price; by the 2000s it was going up about $100 a year.  

 A D28 now costs $3,000.  While my perspective may be skewed - my income from teaching guitar has lagged inflation, effectively flat for my whole life, I can no longer advise someone to stretch their second-guitar budget to a D28.  Those days are over; trying to stretch $600,700 or even $800 to that Previously Magical $1,000 landmark was a tough ask, but $3,000 is ridiculous.

 Meanwhile, from what I've seen the sub <$500 price point has gotten better.  EXCEPT:

• Manufacturing quality is sort of all over the place;
• Traditional woods are harder to find.

 

 Which is why my advice is somewhat more ambiguous now:

 Try to get a solid SPRUCE top guitar first and foremost.  The Seagull brand is a cut above quality wise IMO; a less traditional choice of cedar for a top, buy probably a better deal if you're looking to get a guitar to actually use in public.  
 
 Secondly, instead of trying to stretch to get a D28 or Taylor/"?" equivalent,

 Try to find a guitar made of the traditional woods: spruce top; mahogany neck; rosewood or ebony fingerboard; mahogany or rosewood back/sides.  Because this is the formula for what you're used to hearing on recordings as a "standard acoustic guitar".  Scarcity is forcing manufacturers to substitute other woods, some working better than others.  

 What that means is that getting around that $1,000 mark means there are a couple of Epiphone, Yamaha models, and Seagulls that meet that bill.  Those manufacturers still exhibit a fair standard of quality; you're effectively purchasing an "off brand Martin".  They don't have the name cachet, but effectively speaking are still fine guitars.  

 Because where my advice once was "there will be a time when you won't be able to buy a Martin D28", I'm now stating "there will be a time when you can't buy an acoustic guitar made of the traditional acoustic guitar woods".

$.10, YMMV.

Chip is Short... Yeah, but.. No, the Chip Shortage

  A student told me original Boss DS-1 pedals are going for hundreds of dollars on Reverb.  

 So I had to look, it seems ridiculous.  The DS-1 is probably the most ubiquitous, generic distortion pedal there is, at one point I received one as a bonus for buying something else that was only a couple hundred dollars itself; I never used it, but now I've got to go rummage around in the shed to see if I still have it.

 The chip shortage is having a knock-on effect on other things in the guitar gear realm.  The chip in the original DS-1 has gone out of production, and it has nothing to do with the headline news story about the actual "chip shortage".  A lot of integrated chips have gone out of production before the situation occurred with the factory fire + global shut down "chip shortage", but wasn't the cause of any run on pedals except with the Ibanez TS-808 Tube Screamer variants.

  The subtlety of the 4558 variations that were used in Tube Screamers (and clones) are ultra-cork sniffery.  I've got .... 4 Tube Screamers/variations with one inside, and there would be no way I could tell if the chip was a "vintage" one or not, there are too many ancillary things going on with them in the circuit design.  People compare what they say is "identical" pedals, but they haven't examined the resistor values, the input impedance, what things have drifted out of spec within a "vintage" pedal.  It's not actually empirical, and yet, it's still so close that nobody will hear the difference except the cork sniffer doing the A/B test.  

  I guess I need to go see if I can find the pedal.  I think they're ok, good all-purpose distortion pedals that will get someone by in just about any stylistic situation if need be.  They tend to make everything sound similar, which could be a good or bad thing.  For me, the nature of the way they compress combined with the eq makes me play things I start hearing as "Steve Vai", so I don't use them.  That very thing makes them good for "fast technical playing" IMO for that reason, they help you out so to speak, in that they even out your single note playing really well while maintaining articulation.  But to my ears it's Steve's sound, so I look elsewhere.

 "Chip, in the 21st century a USED Boss DS-1 will sell for hundreds of dollars" - I don't know if I would have believed that 30 years ago!

Trends in Guitar Music Circa June 2021

  The last trend I've noticed would be "Polyphia Collage" based music, which just now seems waning.   

 At the moment, for the first time in awhile I would say that trends towards styles has settled down.  I don't see any new ones, but a sort of... kerfluffel...?  Of already established styles.

Wylee is Taking Note of Your Influences

 I would see this as a period of consolidation and reflection (so profound).  I think that without any major things happening, people are going to gravitate back towards their true musical identities.  What I mean by that is that I see a lot of people, and students, getting blown towards the Latest Cool Style, even though it may not reflect the kind of music they would choose to listen to without outside influence. 

 For instance, there was a time everyone wanted to learn the Self-Accompanied Percussion Solo Acoustic Guitar style.  I had a lot of students wanting to learn to sneak ostinato patterns into their strumming.  At other times it was Loose Nirvana Chording, more recently it was Tim Pierce in the Pocket Perfect Soloing, and then there was the Polyphia Phase that happened before covid.  

 Right now I have maybe the most diffuse assortment of interests among students, which sounds like a negative, but I call it a positive.  There doesn't seem to be an overbearing artificial influence happening, and students seem to be interested in nailing down particular things again.  

 YouTube had accelerated the premise of "gotta learn this Cool Happening Thing now!" by promulgating lots of perfectly produced videos, extorting either how easy (never the case) or how cool (subjective) the New Way is.  For the past 5 years, having this constant influx tugging at the *eyes* of students has made people, I think, a bit distraught over whether what they thought they wanted to do on the guitar was cool or not.  

 With no New Major Thing grabbing attention, I think it's leaving room for people to get back to their center, so to speak. A positive phenomenon. 

 

 

 

 

Lead Guitar Tips from.. The Tech Lead?

 Hello, The Guitar Teacher here.

 

(...that's a contextually funny in joke, trust me)

 I believe there is some kinesthetic overlap between typing and guitar playing.  

 When you touch type you're using sublimated muscle memory to press something that represents an alphanumeric character. You don't think about the act of pressing the key, the key representing an alphanumeric character, the character being part of a "word", the word being something you have to consciously spell before your type it out, the word part of a sentence, sentence structure, paragraphs, composition.   

 You touch type (hopefully) from a stream of consciousness, controlling your thinking between the immediate future - your buffer memory, and a more "distant future" of your compositional sense, how what you're typing relates to your overall intent.  

  In my opinion, guitar playing should be this way.  You shouldn't be thinking "I need to put my finger "there" to make the note "D" sound".  "D is part of the D diatonic scale, which is part of a D major triad consisting of D, F# and A, and that's a subset of diatonic harmony," etc. etc. etc..  It should be a reflex if you really want to "speak" when improvising.  You don't speak to other people the way you would write a book, would you?  

In my opinion.  Most people appear to be deciding to consciously do high order math in order to justify their note choices.  That is what I would call an "approach" to process, but different from what I choose to do.  Instinctual choice I think is the point of improvising.  Constructing "sentences" and "paragraphs" from extemporaneous thought, versus pre-planning.  

 Back to typing:

  In the 90s I had my typing speed up over 100 words per minute.  Sometimes I could get it up to a 1:1 or faster speed at an "average speaking voice" tempo, but it's nowhere near that now.  The guy in this video - an ex-Google, ex-Facebook programmer, types at 170 wps - which is very fast, "guitar hero" speed.  I would attribute that to an alpha actinin-3 gene polymorphism (as I've referenced in prior posts), but it mostly down to some simple tips he references within his video.   

 Some of which applies to playing guitar.  Ergonomic positioning, keyboard switches, pitch.  The most important tip being: "don't go faster than you can type perfectly".  I've harped on that before; speed is easy if you're willing to practice something at an optimal tempo perfectly.  You can't do that and not get faster.  Speed is easy. It's very straightforward.

 But watch Techlead's video.  He has a very "technical guitar" approach to typing, that can be motivational I think to practicing guitar (choosing the proper gear, mechanical approach, competitive mindset, etc.), and his videos are "entertaining by an extremely dry wit" as well.

 

 

 

The Mutagenic Influence of Streaming Services on Art Perception

  I use streaming services a lot.

 In guitar lessons I'm constantly referencing music on Spotify for students.  Inevitably I have to look up a song, and most times the following thing happens:

 Spotify chooses to pull up the LIVE version of a song.  Or an alternate version.

 If I tell a student "listen to this song this week" again - most of the time it's not the definitive version, but a live version, a remix, or an alternate take.  Something about their algorithm (and it seems YouTube music is similar, I don't know about Apple Music) makes it pick the least common choice.

 As I'm writing this I'm listening to the tracks on a "deluxe edition" of In Through the Out Door by Led Zeppelin, 7 tracks that are rough mixes - not the original versions found on the record that was originally released.

 

 They have parts that are slightly different or parts that are louder/softer.  It occurred to me a moment ago that for young people that are maybe checking out Led Zepplin for the first time, they're not hearing the optimal, "official" version presented to me when I was a child.  They're hearing a strange version.  They may not even listen to the "real "versions of these songs, much less the album experience in order.

 Curiously, a side effect of this "deluxe edition", or live bias is that it affects the classic bands more than others because they're the ones that have these extra tracks presented to the listener.  Which, don't get me wrong, I love - I'm listening to an alternate mix of my favorite Zeppelin song "Carouselambra" right now - BUT, I remember the first time I heard this album all the way through and thinking about how this song sat in the middle of a record with a lot of songs I didn't care for. Meaning, it told me "these guys have musical influences I don't care for, this percentage maybe", and also that there is a certain breadth and depth to an artist's muse.  

 I fully understood as a pre-teen musicians made music from influences, and the process is not a level, flat plane.  I'm not saying people should have to listen to what they don't want to, I'm just saying this is an aspect that is gone: you don't really know what Led Zeppelin is about just because you listened to "Stairway to Heaven" and "Whole Lotta Love".  And even though you may not like the whole catalog (I don't - and I'd suggest I'm a huge Zeppelin fan) you understand what their CONTEXT is about.

CONTEXT is something that has been thrown away in modern communication.  It's deemed not necessary, inconsequential.  Slows you down, not needed.  Which is fallacious idiocy.

  So, there was a period when Napster took over and IPods were the defacto way people listened to music, and people at that time that considered themselves "fans of music" went to the trouble of seeking out these alternate mixes, or strange music, or niche music.  It wasn't super easy, they had to go online, search on Napster, wait.. maybe one day something would be there and not the next.  BUT - the most common, "accepted" versions for the most part (with some notable exceptions) would rise to the top.

 Not the live version of a Jimi Hendrix song from some oddball show, or an alternate mix.  I believe this is the fault of corporate influence putting newer releases ahead of the queue, thinking it will make sales of physical media happen.  A kid that thinks he likes Led Zeppelin searches for a Zeppelin song and takes the one at the top, and it's a crazy live version, or a mix without the vocal: "I don't like this" maybe he thinks, goes to something else.

 What a horrible experience.  The music industry has been upended so many different ways.  Napster/MP3 technology started it, but at least the people that should be music fans got a proper exposure to the right examples of what they were looking for, for the most part.   Chaos theory is all about initial conditions affecting an outcome; the initial conditions for being a music fan in the 21st century has been damped, if not completely wrecked.  

 

 

 

The Best Joe Walsh Guitar Clinic Isn't Actually a Clinic

 I stumbled upon this video a few weeks ago.  It's not a literal guitar clinic, but Joe speaking at Joint Base Lewis–McChord in Tacoma, Washington.   

 He's not addressing guitar players per se.  Initially, he's just talking about his father's military experience, and his efforts at helping vets.  But then he starts talking about guitar parts in his songs: 

 The thing is, he details almost exactly things I go into in guitar lessons when the topic of "Joe Walsh" comes up, OR when the techniques he references comes up.  The use of the right hand percussively, pendulum strumming - and the notion that some of his licks "drives guitar players nuts".   

 

 It's interesting to know he knows what his trademark licks are, and that he understands why they're clever/brilliant.  And an interesting insight into an artist who superficially may seem on passing to be a bit of an addled persona, but in reality is very thoughtful and together.  

 There is also the element of what I think of as the "70's pop objective sensibility" on display here.  These licks are the result of a mentality that is gone now.  He wasn't thinking about how to play faster, how to play better, but how to play something interesting.  

 Which is a beautiful concept in the 21st century: something that is interesting, without requiring a simple extremism gimmick of "faster", "lower", "more brutal", "slower", "more complex", "choppier", etc..  

 

Covid-19, Guitar and Television Interviews?

  It's been interesting how, out of the blue, the pandemic has changed so many things.

 Guitar sales hit a record this year, while Guitar Center (finally)(after a BILLION $ IN DEBT) goes into bankruptcy.  

 There has been a lot of talk about the state of guitar in the U.S., it's popularity or lack of popularity.  At first this was driven by sales figures being low last year, or assertions about what "popular" music has guitar (or doesn't).  Quasi-valid statistical perspectives.

 I'm quite tired of mediating everything on stats.  It's not perfect, and it's often distorting by initial conditions or cherry picked parameters.  There was a time when humans made these things called "decisions" based on something called "intuition".   It's what makes us better (for the moment) than a.i. machine learning software; our subconscious processing power still vastly exceeds the best of what is available in computer hardware.

 From my Vastly Exceeding Computer Hardware anecdotal extrapolation perspective I noticed a phenomenon that pretty routinely happened:

 Guitar as an at home tv interview backdrop.

 I can't remember the first one I noticed this happening on.  I wish I'd taken screen shots, because I know there have been some curiously notable people (Dr. Fauci I think?) and some suitably interesting choices (Taylors, Suhrs, etc.).   

 Based on this phenomenon of people seemingly wanting you to know they play guitar (I recall one interview with a doctor where a guitar neck seemed poised precariously almost on a doctor .... for "some reason"), I would suggest guitar is as popular as ever.  

 It is also apparently serving a couple of purposes.  Obviously providing character support for people's identity: people are proud of being a guitar player.   It also implies people are looking at the time at home as an excuse to finally learn to play the guitar.  

 Which I of course think is a great idea....

  As I've said many times, "if you're going to listen to music the rest of your life you may as well learn something about how to play and create it".  It's enlivening to see so many having a guitar seemingly playing a role in their lives, and not just passive non-player characters in life!

Toolboxes

 I was listening to the David Gilmour guitar auction podcast today, and heard him play the 12 string he used on "Wish You Were Here".

 He kinda played an excerpt of the beginning, elaborated on it.  What he did kind of illustrated the origins of the riff.  

 Part of what he did invoked a bit of a stylized ragtime piano rhythm.  An old upright piano, of which the never perfectly in tune 12 string somewhat invokes, would be the conduit here.

 Another thing he did was a sort of Lead Belly quasi-stride piano blues, except it wasn't a pure blues but detoured into a post-early 60's U.K. folky chord voicing territory.

 Very informative.  The first thing he did was the rendition of the opening riff to WYWH, but he played on the accents a little differently.  I interpret these accents as being "within the parameters of ragtime proto-jazz embellishment".  I think he perceives it like that as well, the significant part being while it's related to what Lead Belly did, I think Gilmour is not thinking of the parameters he was operating under (while demonstrating on this podcast) as being "Lead Belly" per se, but...

... a tool in the "toolbox" that renders "Wish You Were Here".

 He's got the ragtime rhythm intent, but also the Lead Belly blues shuffle, and Lead Belly melodic embellishment intent.  As well as the folk voicing influence, which I would suggest was a "silent" influence on a lot of the post-60's classic rock guitar players (Jimmy Page...).

 The point of this post is that he had an operating skill and knowledge base of these elements prior to creating WYWH.  It wasn't a linear "learn this chord, then this phrase" but a combination of things from a "tool" standpoint that he liked.  The result is that the gestalt of Wish You Were Here are those things, and in theory one could take the same toolbox and make other "Wish You Were Heres"; not that you should, but one should realize that you've got to have tools in the toolbox to build something.

Vintage That Needs to Go Away: Fender, FIX THE STRAT OUTPUT JACK!

 At least once every 2 weeks or so, I have to give a little speech about how a student needs to make sure they keep the nut tightened on the output jack of their Fender What-ever-Caster.

Pure Evil!

 They put a flat washer under the nut, which is useless and obviously does not work.  For the uninitiated:

 The nut works it's way loose as you plug the cable in/out, and move it around.  I'd guess that after 2 months of  use is when they start to loosen, at which point depending how much and how aggressive you plug the cable into and out of your guitar, the two wires soldered to the jack under the jack plate twist around and around..

 Until one breaks, and the guitar stops working.  Sometimes one is near a music store that can repair it.  Sometimes it's maybe only $35 or so to fix, but closer to a standard bench repair fee of $75 is possible.   At least a week will be lost, maybe more.

 That's presuming the student/Stratocaster owner even knows this has happened and CAN be repaired.  How many people just stopped playing guitar because this happened to their Squire Stratocaster after a few months?  What impact does this have to Fender and other brands for people that end up never staying with it and buying more gear?

 This has been a scourge forever.  The "phono jack" is a design left over from literally 1948 or so, and really can be traced to about 1877.  It's primitive, inelegant, and failure prone.

 I can think of a few better ways of doing it, but I don't have money to patent and manufacture such a thing.  Fender, though - there's no excuses.  Why they continue to use this idiotic part is beyond me, aside from it's sheer cheapness.

 They could easily improve it a lot: simply use a serrated washer, or put a dab of Loctite on the nut.  Or both.  Either nobody at Fender has thought of this as an issue and a fix, or they just don't care.

 Until then, I'll continue to have to waste a student's lesson time explaining they need to keep the stupid nut tight, and that the shorting-noise they're hearing is the result of the jack being loose, and that when it fails they've got to get it fixed.  Ridiculous.

Entertainment Psychology and Practice

I don't use or recommend a book in the context of teaching guitar.

Because ultimately the trick to learning guitar is maximizing what is entertaining about it to you.

In the late 80's during the height of the hair-band metal technical guitar playing era, I could actually prescribe a pretty exact regimen for about a 1/3rd of my students.  They would follow it, and the following week be considerably better at what that regimen addressed.

 They were very, very motivated.  As in, I haven't seen that motivation since then; "people today" (who are standing on my lawn...) can't emulate that motivation, because it was the only time in recent music history where instrumental technique was high prized and actually commercialized.

 Back in that time on MTV - which for all intents and purposes was the entertainment equivalent of the internet for most people in that era - there was a few years where the dominant thing you saw on MTV at any one point in time was guitar-centric rock.  Not only that, but there would be a guitar solo featured heavily in the middle of the video: the guitar player was the star.  Literally.


 Women can't practice to look "as good as" Taylor Swift, men can try to workout to get that Arnold Swarzenegger physique, but it's not going to be the same.

 Guitar solos, on the other hand, was something you can work at and eventually mimic effectively "exactly".  You COULD be the same as the "star" on MTV.  You could walk around knowing you were special, able to do something that was put on a pedestal and respected on a global scale that made you unique.

 That did wonders for my business.  I started teaching in that era, and for many years I never faced the problem of having to figure out how to keep a student motivated.  I completely took it for granted.  I could do what the Famous Guitar Players Did, I could help the student do the same, it was very straightforward and focused.  Just about every student I had played in bands, and that continued for at least a decade into the 90's.

 Then it went away, although the desire to be in a Rock Band remained a pretty good motivating factor.  About half of my students would be in gigging bands, and some went on to making records and touring the planet.

 That went away as the record industry died in the 2000's.  So what remains now is a curious, diffuse mixture of wanting personal growth, a little bit of a rush of doing something special, and maybe a dash of rock stardom swagger thrown in.  But it's rather abstract and non-specific.  Nothing like "I want to get in a band and pull off guitar solos like the guy in (Insert Favorite Band Here)".

  In the year 2018 everyone has different motivations, different musical preferences, different schedules, different expectations, and an overall jadeness to the process of music.  Does "fun" mean a step above the Guitar Hero video game experience?  Is "fun" playing along with a song, or is "fun" being able to execute a single, stand alone piece of music?  Is "fun" having a professional skill set?  Is "fun" learning about how to make music from scratch and record it, or to be able to analyze it by ear?

 Everyone is a unique case these days, and it's super tricky for me as a teacher to prescribe a routine.  In the 80's it was purely a matter of mechanics.  These days it's a matter of trying to get the mechanical side of technique to move along linearly to expectation - which is tricky when the balance of "fun" and "tedium" is a ratio that's different for everybody.

 I insist that ultimately learning skills within the context of goals set by music recordings ultimately is the best way to go about things.  Nobody today is going to "practice" the mechanics of something for very long at all (particularly relative to the 80's) - but being able to get it out of the way while playing to music is easier.

 It's also informative from a rhythmic standpoint.  Doing something properly along with a recording that addresses a particular aspect of one's ability is really the only way to learn the "invisible" aspect of timing.  Learning the mechanics apart from matching it timing wise to the Real Thing is pointless!

 So the Trick is balancing the "practice" routine with what is at least marginally entertaining to you.  Which gets back to "what music do you really like?  Specifically?" and "what do you REALLY want to be able to do on the guitar?".  I'm not Vulcan, I can't read minds, you have to help me out on those questions!  Sometimes I can help the student out on it from a musicology standpoint, but learning to be honest with yourself is a good thing.  Do you *really* want to learn how to play The Currently Popular Song or do you actually like The Almost Unknown Song by One's Favorite but Unpopular Artist?  You'll learn much more within the framework of "what can be learned from that song?" because the entertainment factor will keep you motivated.







 

What Pick to Pick?

"What pick should I use?" is maybe a Top-10 question I get.  Which kind of has an easy answer:
"medium".  

Raise of hands: who has seen one of their own guitar picks under an electron microscope...?
 (special thanks to student Dave Burke for the electron microscopy!)

 What does that mean?  I presume the person I'm talking to is going to either be looking at the plethora of plectrums (sorry) at the must store.  In which case (sorry again, geez...) I'm sure there will be the ubiquitous Fender medium celluloid pick.

 I may sometimes suggest someone get a thin pick.  From a string collision standpoint, a thinner pick causes the picking hand/arm the least amount of disturbance and resistance, which makes it easier to maintain a steady rhythm.

 There is a lot more to picks than that, though.

 COMPOSITION

 Basically picks are made either of a cellulosic plastic, which is what most people initially think that a guitar pick is - the Fender style pick material.

 The most popular at this time though, is Tortex.  Tortex is a plastic that once had a trade name called "Zytel" if I'm not mistaken (could be).  This is commonly associate now with the Jim Dunlop brand, and are color-coordinated based on their thicknesses.

 Nylon plastic I believe was popular in the 60's and 70's.  There was a brand called Herco that from my Speculative Anthropology (tm) research was the popular brand at the time.  The Herco style had an embossed sand-paper like texture where one holds the pick.

 The remainder are something of a grab bag of outliers.  There was a time when actual tortoise shell was a thing to use as pick material; the Ultex plastic material is meant to replicate that.  Delrin is a thermoset plastic that has some strange properties that would seem to make it a good pick material, but in my experience they wear at really strange rates, and seem to be a bit "dead" response wise.  There are also horrid cheap plastic picks that you don't want to use, you'll be able to figure that out fairly easily. Hard acrylic/ translucent picks have the down sides of celluloid and break sooner, and usually have "flash" on the edges that feels extra-resistant to smooth rhyhm. There are also steel and copper picks, and the curiosity of the Big Felt Pick that it would seem nobody is absolutely 100% sure about.

A thick human hair is about the width of the scale shown at the bottom.  One would think a bomb went off on the pick; does that mean I have "explosive" picking...?  Hah...

SOUND / KINEMATICS

 I'm going to start with the felt picks.  You'll see these at every music store, yet at every music store I've worked at nobody can really give you a straight answer of what they're for.  Typically you'll get one of 2 answers: they're for ukuleles, or for bass.

 You want a soft sound on ukes.  But back in the the nascent days of the electric bass guitar, the notion of accepting the difference in sound from an upright double bass was not embraced.  The felt pick I believe was originally meant to NOT sound like a pick, but more like fingers.

 Which they do in a way.  The problem is that they immediately start shedding felt and make a mess.  For guitar it's a nice soft sound, but in both cases: I've never, ever encountered anyone using a felt pick. I've only seen someone buying one because I think they're not sure if they should have one or not.  In the studio they can be useful if someone plays bass with a pick but is having problems playing softly, without making a lot of...

PICK ATTACK NOISE

 ..is an integral part of guitar sound.

 The standard celluloid/Fender plastic pick almost instantly gets a microscopically jagged edge that creates a raspy high frequency attack sound.

 The angle one puts on the pick can demphasize that, or enhance it.  For certain types of blues playing, exaggerating it adds an more brilliant and cutting initial sound associated with certain guitar players.

 From a playing stand point I hate them with a passion - they're almost getting worse and worse, more and more jagged, raspier and raspier.  They're effectively snagging on the string.  It's something that takes up a little bit of processing power that I don't want there.  But for some, it's part of "their" sound.

 The biggest downside is that THEY BREAK.  They'll split on the tip when you least expect.  You can use a "heavy", but they will still break.  So, snaggy feel, raspy sound, and they break.  BUT...

 ... they're the only pick that makes a proper pick-slide sound - and it's got to be a "medium" or "light" pick.  So, if you want to do those Tom Scholz Boston long pick slides you have to use one of these.  Because a nylon won't really do it, and a Tortex definitely sounds different and less satisfying.

The Tortex material iss great.  They last an order of magnitude longer than a celluloid pick.  Not only that, but as they wear down they basically sound the same, except as the tip gets more blunted you get a more pronounced attack.  They don't break.  They're superior in all ways, except one - they sound silly doing pick slides.

  Nylon picks are kind of halfway between the Tortex and celluloid.  When new they have the least pick attack noise, very smooth feel on the strings.  As they wear in they get a little bit raspy, a little bit less smooth - but nothing like a celluloid pick.

 They have an additional property of being a little bit softer, which for the thinner varieties means some people actually bend them in their grip.  The super thin Tortex picks will do this as well, but with the nylon it facilitates changing the angle of attack which alters the sound - Tortex has a very wide window of "normal sound", it's hard to make them sound excessively raspy even for effect.

 Nylon picks will break, but it's like guitar strings - you don't need to expect it.

Metal of course lasts the longest.  The problem is that the thinner ones cannot sound soft, and all of them have a specific "tinkly" attack sound that some like, some hate.  The biggest downside is that they quite rapidly destroy the wound strings; and you'll get string shavings all over your guitar and into your pickups, and that can be a big problem.  If you have a string endorsement and a roadie to change them constantly, it's maybe not as big of a problem?  Also know that the copper picks will stain your fingers green, and you're probably absorbing a considerable amount of it.

 Delrin, and the outlier plastics - they're a mish-mash of disadvantages over the above.  The Ultex material has a specifically raspy quality that I presume is what tortoise shell sounds like (I've never used one, thankfully that stopped being a thing in the 70's).  It's kind of like Tortex with the snaggy/rasp of celluloid, but a specific high frequency rasp that is a bit more forgiving than celluloid.  If one likes that scratchy pick attack sound, but doesn't want to bother with learning to manipulate it this would be the pick to get.  It's more forgiving, lasts 10x longer than celluloid.

STONE - pretty self explanatory.  Thicker, scratchier, destroys strings, makes strumming feel weird and playing smoothly a more random event.


 SIZE / SHAPE

 The tip determines the sound.  The stereotypical shape is "neutral" sounding.  You can also get pointier tips, which translates less energy into the string, or blunter (pre-worn out?).  Some people will use the side, the "hip" of the pick either for the sound, or because it seems faster (because of the shallower angle of attack).

 There are also all sorts of goofy things, picks with multiple tips, fanned tips, the oddball Dunlop brand "shark" picks that, again, people can't really explain the why of, and the new trend of really odd thicker-at-the-tip picks that some Obscure Metal guys prefer.

 There was also in the 80's a very strange pick, whose name I don't recall, that was nylon but had a diamond-shaped knob on the tip.  It's purpose was to force you to be hyper-careful, otherwise the pick would snag, literally get hooked up on the string.  It worked if you were patient enough to use it - but redundant if you can make yourself practice picking that carefully in the first place!

  Coins: 2 very famous guys are known for using coins.  Brian May of Queen, the British sixpence.  Billy Gibbons of Z.Z. top, a Mexican peso.  Gibbons stopped using a peso a long time ago I believe, but Brian May used one his entire career.  The serrated edge of some picks make a very exaggerated rasp on the attack (listen to any Queen guitar solo for the characteristic squeak), while the round shape has a very specific loose feel.  You can try using a quarter, but remember it's metal: you'll quickly destroy your wound strings.  Gibbons and May are imbued with the magical Endless Supply of Guitar Strings as well as The Guy That Automatically Just Changes the Strings When Needed on Your Guitars.  Imagine that....

 Size.  There is the "regular" traditional Fender/Herco shape.  There is the smaller "Dunlop Jazz II/III" size, usually with a pointy tip.  There is the Oddball 3 Sided Triangle that is awful but apparently popular as "bass picks" in the 70's; maybe for cavemen players that would break celluloid picks so fast they preferred having the convenience of "3 picks in one" over the completely anti-ergonomic shape, and weird string feel?  There are some picks with thicker areas where you hold them, holes in the middle.

It's interesting how the edge has these "gigantic" clumps of abraded material.  I'd guess this is what goes away with the "carpet smoothing trick"?  (Again, thanks to Dave Burke for the electron microscopy!  It's great knowing visually what something *feels* like, and it's interesting how it matches how I imagined it!)

 
 I presently use a medium-ish nylon regular sized pick, which I get in bulk from China.  I prefer something like an .88mm (medium-ish) Tortex in the "jumbo jazz" size/shape (which means a pointy tip but regular size).  The "jazz", pointy tip makes a thicker pick sound like a thinner pick - less attack - if you can control it, and raspier like a celluloid pick if you rotate it slightly.  If you grip tighter it makes the attack more pronounced, which is good when you play "fast" for note definition - if you want that.  I'd prefer a pointy tip in nylon if there was such a thing, and cheap.  I use the nylon picks as a compromise, because they're relatively cheap: when they start getting worn down I'm not in a mind set of  "I can still use this pick, I can't waste".  I ditch them before they get to the "might split" phase.

 I propose a pick with a Tortex jazz-tip encased in celluloid.  As the celluloid rapidly wears away the Tortex pick is "unveiled"; but if you wanted the "scritchy" celluloid sound you'd still have it by digging the pick in deeper or rotating onto what was still there of the celluloid.  It wouldn't break and would still be usable even as the celluloid wore away.  I'm not sure if celluloid plastic can be bonded to Zytel, though... hmm, I need to email a friend in N.C. that is a plastics engineer?

 There are always fingers, and for some reason today I'm getting more people that want to insist on using just their fingers.  Which makes sense if you're going to EXCLUSIVELY play nylon string guitars and classical music.  Otherwise - you've got to use a pick!

I spotted a virion instantly in this image; my germ radar is well tuned, but I guess not enough hand sanitizer that day..?