It's Harder to Break a Guitar Than I Thought

I finally got around to watching "The Complete Monterey Pop Festival" and realized it is very difficult to break a guitar.

I'm a guitar hobbyist and probably the antithesis of a relic fan as I like to keep them looking new. This affects my playing to some extent as I treat the guitar as something fragile. Although I've seen the clips of Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix breaking their guitars before I guess watching it on DVD provided high enough definition for me to pay attention to how hard they had to work at it!

These things are a lot sturdier than I thought; maybe I don't need to worry about breaking it and just play. Gave it a try and the guitar survived just fine. Good thing too as a guitar broken by Pete Townshend or Jimi Hendrix is worth lots of money where as one broken by yours truly is worth nothing!

Consignment – Another Approach to Guitar Aging

There’s a policy in my household that if you buy something new you need to get rid of something old (or new as long as it is something). This is to prevent us from being invited to one of those “Clean House” type reality shows on cable. I reached a point where this had to apply to guitars and I learned that consignment can be a guitar aging technique.

I have a relatively small guitar collection but a collection nonetheless and they hang in a small bonus room that has reached its reasonable capacity. Then, I ended up taking in a stray guitar and one of the others had to go. I decided putting one on consignment would be an interesting experiment.

I’ve used the “investment” argument with my bride to rationalize buying guitars and it took about 5 minutes setting a price at my local guitar shop to blow holes in that theory. Still, I went ahead but did not set the price low enough where a sale was guaranteed. As time went by I started missing this guitar and after a 60 day period decided it was time to retrieve it.

After some artful rearrangement of wall space and the addition of another wall hanger I restored the guitar to its space. But, although the serial number was the same, it seemed to be a different guitar. For one thing, people that play guitars in guitar shops do not seem to have clean hands. But, after a quick cleaning treatment it still had a much different and more interesting personality than before I sent it off for adoption and now is one of my favorites to play.

If you decide to use this “aging” approach, remember not to set the price too low. A down economy also helps!

My Experience Attending National Guitar Workshop

In a previous post I mentioned I was prepping to attend National Guitar Workshop and I would report back. That time is now, err… it was some weeks ago actually. To keep things simple I’ll say up front that it was worth the money for the experience as well as the improvement to my playing I got as a result.



Experience
The workshop was at the Blair School of Music on Nashville’s Vanderbilt Campus. After the usual logistical glitches that can occur things got rolling with a short orientation. All the instructors played on stage and showed their stuff following the styles for the sessions they would be teaching.

Since the venue is a school of music we had a well appointed classroom with a piano as well as a fully stocked sound system cabinet. The instructor, Jeff McErlain, kicked things off by having us all trade solos against a blues progression to determine where we were in our playing and we went at it from there.

One of my initial concerns on registering was I would be the oldest person there. They assured me I wasn’t and we had around a 40 year age range in my class. There are lots of opportunities to interact with players from the other classes and at dinner that evening I was able visit with lots of other middle age guys with variations of the “how many guitars does one person need” t-shirt; one active musician I traded notes with had 37 guitars. Where was that money when we really needed it, back in our teens!

Improvement to My Playing
My main attraction to Roots Rock was to get exposure to styles beyond the blues that I’ve focused on to date. The focus was on:

· Use of double stops
· Make use of your thumb on the fretting hand
· Use your fingers as well as the pick on your picking hand
· Improve your comping abilities through use of inverted triads
· Learn some theory to get out of the box on improvisation

I record myself so I can do some critial listening and gauge progress. A couple days into the course I recorded solos against some simple progressions and compared those to some I recorded before the class and noted an immediate improvement. My improvisation didn’t get flashier in two days but the note selection and phrasing were more interesting. My summation is that my playing improved because I learned about straight forward things that if you work on can really improve your overall sound.

The NGW workshops include guest artists and in the case of Roots Rock it was David Grissom. He does session work in Nashville and keeps a complete setup stored in town when he comes in from Austin to work. He setup shop in one of the auditoriums with this rig, took a range of questions from the students, and played some music along with Jeff McErlain, our instructor.

Some of the takeaways from this session is it ain’t easy making money playing music. If you look at some of the photos you will see there were 10 plus guitars plus two or three acoustics stored in a separate case. In a studio situation you have to be prepared to deliver what the producer is looking for and quickly. That means a wide range of gear even is something only gets used once or twice a year. Another takeaway was David Grissom’s answer to a question of how do you go about getting to where he is to which he answered “be ready to give up everything else”

As for this hobbyist, I don’t plan on giving up my day job so I’m out of the running. However, the NGW experience is open for all age ranges as well as all experience levels. Give it a try, you might like it too!

Fun With Drop D Tuning

I wrote awhile back about multi-generation reactions to Linkin Park’s Minutes to Midnight. While three generations of family members liked it I seem to be the only one enamored by “Given Up”. So, while practicing yesterday I decided to learn how to play it and discovered the benefits of drop D tuning.

I popped the CD into my TASCAM Guitar Trainer and started working out the chords. I had the right pitch but not the crunchy tone I hear on the recording. So I did a quick online search for some tab and learned about drop D tuning (tune your low E string down a full step to D and you end up with DADGBe rather than EADGBe for your tuning). From there I have all the power chords I need by fretting the first three strings, DAD. Jeez, why have I been practicing chords all this time?

This gave me a flashback to when I took my daughter to an Avril Lavigne concert. One guitarist had his axe slung so low it seemed to have the ground clearance of a Ferrari. I was just starting out on the guitar at the time and I thought it must be advanced technique that would allow someone to play a guitar like that. In reality it was drop D tuning; all he needed to do was bar DAD using his thumb and mute the other strings with his fingers.

My first thought (after the thought that there are still obvious elements to the guitar that haven't occurred to me) was that this is like cheating. That was until I cancelled out the guitar on the recording with my guitar trainer and played along with the recording using this tuning; it sounds great! This is where that delightful crunch from metal comes from! Yes, another "should have known" moment but fun nonetheless.

The More I Play the More I Want to Play

I’ve talked recently about stepping outside my guitar comfort zone. Whether it was adding my own twists and turns during transcription study or finding other guitarists to jam with or mentoring others, what’s been behind it all is that I’ve been getting myself prepped for guitar camp.

This is not like the Camp Granada that people in the baby boomer demographic remember while growing up but is the National Guitar Workshop. I’m signed up for a course on Roots Rock with David Grissom as the guest artist. My original goal was to put some extra practice time in so I would get the most out of this course but it has started getting out of hand. Seems the more you play the more you want to play.

My playing is improving due to added practice, which makes playing more fun, which makes me want to play more. It has crowded out a lot of other activities including my blogging time but I’m going with it while it lasts. Maybe this is the kind of rush seasoned players experience getting ready for the big concert. I guess I’ll only know once I get seasoned and this upcoming workshop is the next step. I’ll post some info on what goes on there.