I have a Blockbuster home delivery deal with DVDs, similar to Netflicks. The cool thing is that I could order home music DVDs, live shows, instructional videos and so forth, then my wife takes it to the local Blockbuster store and could get another free DVD rental by just returning the one that arrived home earlier. I’ve watched a lot of live shows and other instructional videos — still waiting for the Frank Zappa Baby Snakes DVD; suspect I need to purchase that one.

Anyway, I watched through Nils Lofgren’s guitar instructional video yesterday, interesting techniques even if he uses a thumb pick and somewhat I think it would not work out well with my playing.

But there was another note of instructions that got stuck in my brain. Nils said that he got this from hearing  Keith Richards (Rolling Stones) playing. And this was to treat a guitar or actually any other instrument as a percussion instrument. It means playing in the pocket, use percussion elements and in all ways let the guitar playing work like another melodic drum playing.

It’s easy to forget this when you are up on stage and playing, but a band or setup sounds even more tight if your rhythm or even lead playing is tight and has percussion syncopations that work well. This is then true of playing keyboards or anything else, even voice. During the heat of a solo it’s easy to forget this — I think Frank Zappa was a master with his guitar solos, they were very evolving and abstract, but super-tight.

It might even help to think like a drummer from time to time to see how the percussion world works. If all instruments work together like a gigantic drum system, it’s sounds really well and you get the groove, especially a groove needed for any cases where you also want the audience to dance.

When playing live, there are certain basic concepts one needs to keep in mind. One big thing is that you are there to entertain the audience, not yourself.

As part of that one you need to engage in some kind of social communication with the audience. A simple step is to actually look at the audience with your eyes, or at least avoid watching the instrument. This is especially true of laptop DJs, I do believe a large part why laptop DJs have a bad reputation - “reading email on stage” — is that they don’t try to establish an eye contact with the audience.

This is also true of musicians, watching the instrument or fretboard rather than looking out looks like one tries to avoid a connection with the audience. Yes, there are passages that are tough to play without looking at the fingers, but in general it’s a good practice to start watching the audience when you play. In general, it’s easy to separate the beginner bands from the veterans, the beginner ones are not watching straight out, rather looking down at their instruments.

Another option is to actually use verbal communication with the audience, talk to them.  This is where I also think the DJ system breaks down, it’s seldom I’ve seen a DJ take a microphone and at least say: “Hi, thanks for having me here” or something similar. Instead there’s this coolness factor of hiding behind a non-microphone environment, play the records and then go home.

There’s of course no need to go to the extremes and chat the audience to death or be a lounge lizard. But taking small steps will make the connection, the audience is happy, remembers you, purchases your tracks, comes back for more live shows and so on. If you still are shy, use sunglasses as a half-way step.

If you want to learn from a pro, check out how Bono from U2 works on stage.

Another fun book I just finished, actually while waiting to take X-Rays for my shoulder that seems to heal fine. Daniel Levitin’s book This is Your Brain On Music is a brave attempt to map the correspondence between music and how the brain intercepts music. It also debunked the badly scientific test that Mozart’s music helps when studying.

Otherwise, if you are interested in why certain patterns work with people concerning music, others not, also how musicians think, this was fascinating reading. I also liked the concepts of what kind of music we will like later based on teenage years. And that the newly formed baby’s mind is like a psychedelic trip due to all the connections still not wired in place and hallucinations happening!

He also claims that even if some have some talent for instruments and music, it’s the hard work, wood shedding, actually 10000 hours, that defines the talent. I kind of subscribe to that idea myself, nowadays. Just need to find out how to sing for 10000 hours now…

He actually worked for a while over at Stanford University’s CCRMA (a.k.a KARMA) group, and I was in a start-up where the founders came from this group, so there’s a small chance I might have seen him around, but my memory is vague.

I have a Zoom G2 that is one of the best purchases I ever did, got a used one for $55 months ago. The reason was that I was looking for a better solution for quickly tuning bass guitars or guitars during a jam — having a tuner was a drag, it was for me easier to have something on the floor and check the tuning from time to time. Looking around I realized that multi-effect guitar pedals usually included a chromatic tuner. I needed a chromatic one as my bass guitars have D-G-C-F tuning.

I found a used Zoom G2 at the local Guitar Showcase store; it was a cheap one to pick up for plain testing purposes. Then I realized that I really like compression on bass playing — having that as a default setting when going to jams is neat, I could key in the sound I needed on any bass amplifier.

Similarly, I have seven other possible bass effects if I ever need those. The pedal has a built-in drum machine for practice purposes as well as headphone outs so I could take this battery-driven unit and practice anywhere.

For the guitar I have a set of eight or more sounds — all I need at the jam is a clean signal and I could control the guitar sound as I want. It’s a small unit, could fit easily in a padded guitar bag, as well.

All together, it’s good to have such a single-unit pedal, compare this with dragging to jams/practices/sets a huge pedal board, rack-mounted effect system with MIDI control or something similar.

There are indeed different schools of thought, having separate effect pedals versus multi-purpose systems. The nice thing with pedals is that you control each effect separately — the drawback is that sometimes you need to change the settings for specific songs. Multi-purpose pedals could be programmed, but depending on the architecture you can or can’t turn on/off individual effects in the patch.

This was for me a good compromise — next I will dedicate one bank to pure effect sounds, hooked this together with my Pod XT and Marshall stack I could key in either individual sounds, combinational ones and all kinds of other mixtures of effects and amp sounds.

There’s really not a big need to purchase a huge pedal board for your guitar or bass guitar, unless you are of course inclined on mostly doing musical sculpturing with your instrument. Anyway, here’s a really cheap effect solution: use your fingers, guitar pickups and your amp.

Excluding the technical abilities to play scales and chords and so forth, you could achieve a lot by just the finger usage on both left and right hands. For example, Jeff Beck is to a large degree not using a plectrum, only using his right hand fingers, resulting in very amazing sounds just based on the fingering. Bass players using fingers or plectrums also could generate very different sounds on the same instrument itself. It’s all about exploration and learning new tricks.

Same with pickups, learning how they interact, single-coil versus humbuckers, turning them on off, different volume levels, it all adds to the final sound.

Using amplifiers, same thing, the balance between gain and main volume, even eq settings especially with tube amps, it all creates different colorizations.

It is usually good to at least have an attempt to master this before moving on to huge pedal boards, as you could then achieve very interesting effects with no need to drag with you tons of pedals, worry about dead batteries, even more cables on the stage and so forth. Actually, it’s good to have some kind of effect pedal strategy, so I will talk of mine next.

I used to bike to work every day as part of my daily exercise, but after the accident this is on hold until possibly next string. So I’m trying to get to the company gym 3-4 times a week.

Meanwhile, today I hooked up my Yamaha DD-65 electronic drum kit to Logic to record drum tracks. After 2+ hours of drumming I was quite sweaty. So this is now one of my new exercises — playing drums in the studio.

It’s also true that if you stand and play on stage for a long time it is also a form of exercise, standing up burns more calories than sitting. In addition, if you carry equipment around — and avoid of course hurting your back by using a cart to move around amps — then you burn calories.

The thing to remember is to drink a lot of water as you get very dehydrated on stage. Still, if you want to lose weight or otherwise keep you in shape, it does not hurt to stand in a studio or on stage and play, or do a long set of drumming. Now, doctors would say that you still need to elevate your heart rate so you need to go to the gym, too… Or bike, or something similar. Another of my favorite exercises is to go out in national parks in California — the high elevations, the better.

I don’t know if you are like me, but I have a hard time memorizing lyrics, even simple ones. At the same time, the older you get, the better it is to work with this to keep the brain in shape (a form of brain exercise.)

There are many kinds of techniques how to memorize lyrics, associations, chaining of pictures in head and so forth. Here’s one technique I constructed yesterday, depending on how you are as a learner, what style, it might work or not in your case.

Many texts really either have the same patterns sprinkled out here and there, or a certain keyword. I will use two examples. To start with J.J Cale’s Cocaine, it really has three verses with a simple chorus that is easy to learn. Concerning the three verses, each has one or two important keywords, I isolate these out. Thus, “If you want to hang out, you’ve got to take her out” has the pair, “hang out, take her out.” So I just memorize this and it’s easy to remember the rest of the verse by association. Similarly the next section will be “get down“, “on the ground“. As you see the verse already has the repetition starting point “If you want” so it’s easy to just ignore that when memorizing and keeping it around.

This does not mean that you skip memorizing the whole verse, but it makes it easier to remember the verse, especially when you are in front of a mike and have to start doing something…

If we look at Neil Young’s Heart of Gold,  you could see patterns in the verse such as “live, give“,”miner“, “expressions, never give“. And again the chorus should be easy to memorize.

You could even get up one level and give each verse one single keyword a generic theme, in the case of J. J Cale’s Cocaine again, the verses could be extracted to:  “party“, “down“, “news“, “day“, “thing“, “fact.”

And remember, sometimes the original artists forget lyrics and ad lib, there are few in the audience that would even catch such situations, better than look dumb-founded and not sing. Besides, there’s something charming about not just reinterpreting the music, but also the lyrics.

I read a really good article about what makes the guitar tone really work on the Strat-O-Blogster guitar blog. That blog is by the way one of my daily reading blogs as it has tons of good postings about issues in the guitar world.

I think musicians over the ages have known about this, at least the ones that take this seriously. Orchestral musicians are trying to find the best instrument, intonate it and keep it in tune. Most of what they do comes from the brain and fingers, not from a huge pedal board in front of them — that would be a funny thing to see an orchestra performing, tangled with tons of cables and blinking lights.

It is also true of keyboardists and synth players — just keying another patch that sounds interesting does not mean that the whole performance or song should rely on a sound. Ultimately it is really the expression that counts. As the guitar is an extremely expressive instrument, this is why you hear the difference between a guitar artist and non-artist by just giving them the same guitar and amp and hear the difference.

Anyway, only way to get to this point, as the article mentions, is to just focus on a good instrument and then develop your style — woodworking but worth it.

I was working on a cover for Neil Young’s Heart of Gold  last night — it’s one of those side projects where I will selects songs I really like, rearrange them and see what happens. Anyway, as part of that I was curious about doing the “studio retake” trick of using multiple retakes of the same section, what Logic calls Take Folders, record small snippets of guitar or bass over and over and select the best take for the actual part. It’s a very common pattern out there today. With digital software and cheap hard disk space it’s a no-brainer compared with the days of analog tape.

Well, personally I was not that happy. You could indeed put together the most definite recording of a specific guitar arrangement, but for me it sounded less and less human or live, more like a polished product. It’s a point where the ’sheen’ of music just makes it less interesting, at least for me.

The other issue was that you really needed every single other audio track to be super-tight, otherwise it didn’t work, the transitions from one section to another sounded somewhat choppy and not flowing. I also had problems now and then related to overlapping regions, the mentioned article tries to explain it all, but I saw other kinds of strange glitches. In cases like this, with any DAW, what I do is to get to a more simple work flow — making music is more important than spend time working about issues and read manuals..

So I ditched the 2+ hour effort and started from scratch. If you know Heart Of Gold there are basically two parts to it. I dropped in a generic drum loop, recorded the two bass parts continuously, in the first take. Did the same with the guitar comp, had to do three takes until I was happy. Then I just chopped up the parts and used them here and there, as well as added in some better drum patterns and a little bit Hammand EVb3 from Logic. This all took just under one hour. For me the results were more organic.

I see the beauty of doing take folders and select parts and put them in here and there. It might be I will use this in future. Anyway, as a musician I felt more in line to work on longer sections. As a benefit, you really need to be accurate so you also grow as a musician if you record longer stretches of music — long term this will help you with other recordings as well as live performances.

I need to put in the singing and most likely I will do another bass take and play the whole song from beginning to end with the bass, so the bass line is even more organic and changing.

Another way to be very productive is to invite other musicians and have a go and making music. Depending on the configuration you could get all kinds of unexpected results.

Usually I think the best is if the musicians are independent and could play anything at anytime. Being a good musician helps, but it’s the attitude of jumping out to the unknown and play is that counts. It’s hard to get anything going if someone is constantly asking for directions. Same with arrangements, in the case of songwriting the arrangements are of secondary nature, but the musicians should be strong enough to make their own arrangements as part of the sessions to create music.

Then all you need is to record all the sessions, whatever happens, just record it. Have an open mind, not rules such as: “we should do ten songs or otherwise we can’t leave the room.”

I must stress again, this is like constellations, some configurations work extremely well, others barely, some not at all, you need to test out various configurations.

PS: That image is of an MusicMan guitar amp I saw last Saturday. I have seldom seen them here in USA. I used to have one in the early eighties, fun amps, good for rough rock blues sound.

PSS: If you are in the Bay Area (San Francisco) and need someone to do such sessions, just contact me, if I have time I show up. This is of course with AAAFNRAA in mind: “Anything, any time, anywhere, for no reason at all.” (Famous Frank Zappa motto.)

From Guitar Player June 5 2005 interview with Steve Vai:

After all these years of performing and composing at such a high level, what still keeps you jazzed about being a guitarist?

It’s that the guitar is a virtually limitless tool of expression. Just the way you touch the note or pluck the string changes everything, and how a melody speaks on an instrument is really what determines the effect it will have on a listener. I love exploring the dynamics that are capable on the guitar. There’s not a single note I play that isn’t labored over until I’m in total control of the sound. The phrasing, the articulation, the dynamics, and everything else are carefully thought out and performed a million times. All of this is a tremendous challenge, but once I get to the next level of performance, the tough stuff becomes second nature, as well as becoming my new plateau—the place I’ll start from to develop my next period of discovery. And this is one of the beautiful aspects about evolving as a musician: You get to go deeper and deeper and deeper.

I wish synthesizers were as expressive; as  a guitar player you could do so much more with the same instrument, which makes it so much fun exploring and learning every single time you pick up the guitar.

The whole interview is here.

It’s been a while and finally I got together and put together 30 minutes of musical mayhem, if you like Orb and similar atmospheric playing around with sounds and visions you might like this one.

The Music page has information how to subscribe to this podcast. If you don’t want to subscribe via podcasts, then right-mouse or control-click on this link and you could could download the 40Mb+ AAC file.

As for my inspiration. This was an attempt to make some more tech house music, the beginning track, Celestial Cookies, as well as two other remixes will be sent out through the normal channels shortly. Meanwhile here’s the rest of the music that I put together.

As it looks like I have five guitars in my studio now so a lot of future work will be guitar-centric, but parts of that should also go out as the next installment of podcasts.

He is my new voice audio engineer, in charge of the microphone in the studio.

Works for free, too.

Sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to make the recording environment pleasant, including the spot where you have to take and re-take the singing parts. So it’s good to have someone helping out over there.

As for the name, it’s a long story based on a misunderstanding about a character my son created for a game today. I found this one in the other son’s room today, as well, so it was handy for decoration.

Something I learned over the years concerning equipment is that there’s  a certain level of amortization that should happen — in other words, if something is purchased it should be used over time. Nowadays I don’t automatically get anything unless there’s a certain need. And if I get it and realize I don’t like it of some reason I put it out on craigslist for a good price so someone else could use it.

There are of course lots of exceptions where I put aside equipment and to my delight found it later for use. Like the E-Bow I purchased in London around 1987, those were hard to find in the mid-eighties, not any longer. Anyway, it was good it was stuffed aside as it was another saving of $70 or so.

Unfortunately some of the gear I’ve owned over the years got lost, sold or otherwise given away due to us moving across three continents until we settled down here in North America. It would have have been fun to take out the old Electro Harmonix pedals I got back in 1978, who knows where they are today. At least one of my old Ibanez electric guitars have been hanging with me — and I will use it for some musical work soon.

Sometimes I just need to get something that I know I will use a lot in future, like the used Line 6 Pod XT I got cheap and is now heavily in use. So if you find something cool on craiglist or in a store, and it’s cheap, purchase it, assuming you know what you will use it for. If nothing else, make five+ tracks using the equipment so you felt it was a good investment. Then put it in storage and have fun five years later.

Another way to extend and get more creative concerning songwriting is to expand on one’s horizon concerning music making. I will give you two examples, one soft and one hard.

There have been many cases where a songwriter has become inspired just by learning new chords or scales and starting to experiment with these. As an example, someone who learns to play piano starts to see the beauty of extended seventh chords and start to use them in all kinds of interesting configurations. This leads to new songs and new compositions just by the force of exploring new musical territories. It always helps to learn new musical techniques.

The second example is someone who gets a new guitar or a new software synth, by exploring these new tools they get inspired and make new music, taking it into directions where someone didn’t expect to go earlier. So it indeed helps to update your setup from time to time, get a new toy and have fun.

Needless to say, if you don’t have a recorder hooked in, or work inside a DAW with the record button close by, all that inspiration will just dissipate into ether, and most likely you will forget it all and just have a vague memory what happened.