Here’s a quick snapshot of a jam with just guitars and the JM4 with a built-in techno drum loop that I put together in five minutes: Download audio file (New_Deco.mp3)
. This was just a 16-bit mono file I could download via the SD card from the ad hoc jam with multiple guitar loops, saved into SD card, from there to my Mac with some mastering processing inside Logic. Anyway, it shows what one could do ad hoc on stage with it — something I will try out tomorrow evening. Let’s see how it all works.

The plan is to use this device for live situations, if I don’t find a drummer and/or no bass player, I have WAV files with something for bass/drums with me in this box, including all guitar effects and amp simulations. Then I of course plug it into the PA and I’m up and running in less than a minute. Alternatively I could just use it for guitar work via PA, no need to drag so much stuff to various live situations, as long as monitoring is OK.

Now, one has to restrict the usage of the multi-loop to similar crazy guitar work as Adrian Belew. To use loops to make plain songs is somewhat sterile, me thinks. For experimentation it is superb. I will use it for just plain comps as well, but then no looping involved.

It’s also a fun tool for just exploring ideas and save them for later works. If nothing else I could drag it from room to room and just have fun with headphones — even if tonight I had it connected through my studio monitoring system.

Yes, one could use Logic or Ableton Live to get to the same point, but there’s something cool about having a standalone box.

An investment to help our poor backs are always a good investment. If you drag equipment around from place to place, get a cart, something like this. Much better than dragging equipment around, putting a lot of pressure on the disks, resulting in long term back problems.

The cool thing with this cart model is that I could build a table on top of it, so it could even be used as a keyboard stand. Same with guitar or bass amps, I could put the amp with an angle in one corner  so it is pumping the sound upwards — important as otherwise you don’t hear as much when you play and the sound is mostly traveling past your legs.

Did I mention that there’s no need to have huge amps and cabinets in today’s world with effective amp solutions?

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.

The key to being successful in this market is to make a digital recorder that is easy to take with you, use and then easy to dump the contents. I got a hand-held Olympics recorder three years ago, the drawback is with this one that it records on the high end WMA files so I had to install additional QuickTime codecs to get this to work with my Macintosh studio setup.  I also hope that the built-in mics are better than the batch a few years ago.

One market for this is to always capture ideas you have. Let’s say you get a new guitar and you get tons of ideas and you don’t have a capturing happening — days later you realize that you principally made three new songs and they are now forgotten. I know this from experience.

And then you just need to make a habit to bring with you such a device everywhere. For example, if you attend a jam or play with a band, it’s a quick way to get some kind of live recording. Doing recordings via mixer board is always better. If you have a dedicated mixer or mixer person, you should always dump the contents from line out to a recorder (DAT or something else.) Zappa captured all his live shows and there’s plenty of material to go through for a couple of centuries.

It also seems that today’s audience has a high tolerance for lesser quality live recordings so you could always give them out as PR material or use it in similar cases.

Anyway, it’s again one of those golden rules: record as much as possible, document it, and later decide if you want to release it or not.

There’s so much that could go wrong on a show, broken strings, malfunctioning pickups, something else, having something  around is always a good idea, even if it takes some effort to drag all the equipment to the show. The same is true of extra batteries, enough cables and similar tools for those situations where something has to be fixed.

I must say, I don’t take multiple guitars with me for jams or practice sessions. This is only for those important shows where everything has to work, no music, the audience gets restless.

As for studio work, usually one guitar is enough, especially one that gives enough sounds from one end to another, as I use Line 6 Pods for most of my guitar sounds. Still, fun to pick up a different guitar from time to time. They all have their own special feelings when playing, the necks are different and so on.

In today’s market you could easily find a good brand new guitar for $400 or below. There’ no need to spend a lot of money for a piece of wood. Yes, you might get some special parts that are hard to find or it all sounds somewhat better, but with studio production the guitar sounds are processed so it all just drowns in the mix. Same with live. I must say, I would not like to spend a lot of money on an instrument, pay all the money and then worry for a lot of things. If it breaks, it’s not a big deal to get another one later. I’m sometimes confused about the used guitar sale prices — I looked at a used Ibanez JEM777 for $590 (made in Korea, i.e. low end Jem), it was beaten and even if it felt good, it’s an old guitar where all kinds of problems in the bridge, tremolo and frets will show up and you need to spend more money and time to fix those problems. Compare that with picking up a brand-new medium sized guitar for the same price and just start playing after some initial setup work.

PS: I named my new guitar Lori, don’t know why, I think I was thinking about Lore but Data’s evil twin is not a fun guitar name. While Lori sounds musical, maybe it’s a shorter name of Lorelei.

It’s great! I recommend it, you could sit back and type or do edits in Logic without the need to sit close to a table. If you have a laptop, it will cool down the laptop, as well as the laptop does not push into your knees as the bottom of lapdesk is padded.

A couple of months ago I attended a Sunday jam where a drummer brought one of these in. I really liked the drum sounds, going through the PA. Also, I got these for a really good online price so I could not resist.

I have multiple reasons to get this one. First, I really needed another input for percussion triggering concerning MIDI and built-in drum machines and loops. Even better, via MIDI I could drive Superior Drummer 2.0 so that the recorded sound will sound like recorded in a huge studio using very exotic and good drums.

Secondly, if I have band configurations practicing in my garage, I don’t mind it as long as the volume could be controlled. Drums are the worst case scenario, with electronic drums that’s under control.

Thirdly, it’s been a long time since I played drums and I never got to a level where I considered I could jump into any song and just play drums, so that should be corrected. My youngest son also wants to learn drumming so this is a good start. The system has lots of drum sets as well as songs, I could disable the drums and then learn along. Or hook it via aux in with music from a computer or an iPod.

These are not like Roland V-Drums, the kick and hi-hat buttons are flimsy and the hi-hat only has open/close midi messages. Otherwise, for the $220 I payed (including power supply) they are definitely worth the cost.

I will get a used share stand for placement. Who knows, when I feel better, I might take them to jams for either percussion or pure drum usage…

The nice thing with Spider III amps is that they have 12 amp simulation models, each sounding different. Yes, it does not sound exactly as a Marshall, and a trained ear could hear some issues with the mid-range levels, especially when pushing through a 12″ Celestion speaker.

Anyway, for a majority of the audience they would not notice anything. But for me as a guitar player I could have fun with all kinds of interesting settings, all built into the amp, including many basic effects.This one is also a 33 pound unit, so it’s easy to transport around.

Plus, it’s fun having so much flexibility as a guitar player on stage.

Recently when I visited the library I found a catalogue listing Ibanez Guitars, especially pricing information about old guitars, what the street value is today. That was interesting reading. My first Ibanez was a Flying V (clone of the famous Gibson version), it actually had a good sound but the tuning was hard to keep in place. And of course you could not really use it easily in studio sessions — but for stage presence it had it’s plus moments. I sold it long time ago. The catalogue told me that the current price is between $1500 and $1800. Ouch. 

My next Ibanez was a RoadStar II. Those were clones of the Stratocaster model. They were nice, light, but the tone was somewhat thin, but that’s what you get with Stratocasters, anyway. I still have it around. But I don’t think it’s a special guitar, exactly. The catalogue price was $500-800. Huh. 

My current Ibanez is an RG-750. I still think this is one of the best ever Ibanez models made, a high end system back in 1990-92. Custom made in Japan. Has the best tone and playability I’ve ever had. Still using it today. Catalogue price: $400-600. What?

Anyway, in case you have old Ibanez guitars in your attic, now is the time to sell them. As for current guitars, I do think that a large selection of today’s guitars, in the $400-800 range, are really good. You have to pay a lot of money to get the extra quality or tonality, and with effects and other parts it’s doubtful you could invest in that, unless you really know what you want. They are not vintage guitars — but frankly speaking I do think a lot of contemporary guitars today are really well made, compared with the old produces.

The reason is that a lot of today’s guitars are made with CNC manufacturing. The robots could cut out parts from wood that few craftsmen could do, 24 hours a day. The only bonus humans could achieve is in the really high end — think of the ’samurai swords’ of guitars. Super-good, but you pay a lot for that. I would actually recommend to watch the factory tour video from Carvin that shows how guitars are carved out with CNC systems — quite fascinating. You could also get the videos via the free DVD. Anyway, I think it will open up your eyes why you could get really good quality guitars and other equipment from countries like Indonesia today. An sell your old vintage guitar, now is the time!

And of course after such a long time of no usage, the potentiometers had squeaky sounds when I booted up the amplifier. I had a spray can of WD-40 back home, assumed that this miracle chemical would fix anything, but especially one of the volume knobs still didn’t work properly.

So today I stopped by one of the local Frys and looked at other solutions, I found Puretronics contact cleaner, it was a cheap can, $6, so I took one home. I sprayed the pots, and yes, now they work fine.

The local Starving Musician also sold me an old Marshall channel switcher, for $10, and of course this one didn’t work. So I sprayed it with Puretronics, and yes, now it works fine.

Lessons learned, keep a bottle of this around, there’s a lot of stuff in your studio that could get dust and dirt inside the volume potentiometers, sliders, contacts and so on. There could be many cases where you think your equipment is broken, while all it would take would be to fix bad connections with something like this.

The other lesson learned was that WD-40 is not that universal; use something dedicated for electrical contacts. No, Puretronics has not sponsored me. That bottle I purchased today should be enough for the next five years or more.

I have an Ibanez RG series guitar, owned that one since 1992 I think. I’ve actually been an Ibanez only electrical guitar owner since my first Ibanez back in 1978, purchased a Flying V copy model. It was a fun guitar, but unpractical for studio work, of known reasons.

Anyway, makes me go and check out other Ibanez models this weekend…

Speaking of Steve Vai, he’s one of the few guitar players whose solos I actually like (Eric Clapton being another player). You could get a free DVD from the Carvin site, check out the really funny solo Steve Vai does on that DVD — even my wife who is bored of guitar music was impressed. What makes Vai’s playing interesting is that he is interesting, unique. Something to strive for. There’s no need to be a technocrat player, speed is not everything. Don’t be a copycat, invent your own style, in whatever musical genre. One Daft Punk is enough.

As part of ramping up the traditional instrument side I’ve been purchasing stuff from online stores and other places. Here are some notes in case you want to save money.

One place that I like is Musicians Advocate.  They don’t have all the brands, but a nice wide selection of instruments, amps, effects, MIDI interfaces, even software. The cheap prices are the ones you need to click for generating an email response. I suspect that those are B-stock units. B-Stock is where something has a flaw, either as part of shipping or being in a store for weeks, resulting in something that can’t be sold as brand-new. But hey, if a little bit paint is gone in a corner, that’s not a big deal, especially as musical instruments in use will become tarnished over time, anyway.

Another interesting link that I check from time to time is Musician’s Friend Stupid Deal of the Day. They have different kinds of things there, a couple of days’ ago they sold bass softcover bags for $9.95 plus shipping. But if you suddenly wants something they announce, it’s a quick way to get something cheaply.

Another place I check is DealNews,  but this is mostly to catch any interesting coupons for online stores. Speaking of coupons, do a net search in case the brand of the product purchased has a special deal for sending in a coupon (usually a PDF file to be filled in) and you get something extra or money cash-back.

I’m also using Google’s Shopping service to quickly get a rough idea what the street price is for various products. Also, using Amazon I have found even lower prices for the same music online sites that sell via Amazon compared with their online prices at their site. One of those mysteries of this universe.

There’s the obvious eBay and CraigsList. I prefer Craigslist as I could locally meet the seller and check out the product before taking it home. eBay purchases are more risky in my opinion, the picture looks nice but it might be broken, or the shipment might cause damage to the product — as shipping electronics is a delicate matter.

Many music stores also have a special swap shop section. Here in the San Francisco Bay area the Guitar Showcase swap shop and Starving Musician are good places, they even have their listings online so you don’t need to visit the places unless you see something you want to purchase. The Guitar Showcase has some kind of deal with Ibanez USA about B-Stock, I’ve seen a lot of really good Ibanez electric and bass guitars for ridiculously low prices over there every week.

Finally, if you purchased something that you are not really using, just re-sell it. No idea wasting studio space for unused gear.

For example, the state of art concerning electronic drum kits are far beyond the early days of the Simmons sets. Check out the Roland TD-3S kit, a very reasonable price, you could usually get them for below $1000 or even lower. The videos at the link also shows what could be done, provided you do your homework and learn to play the instrument.

Now, compare using something like this for recordings or live sessions versus using a drum machine or drum loops. There’s something special about humans that play, the nuances will pop out. Yes, I know, many of us try to put them back with shuffle modes and all kinds of tricks, so that’s another way to do it. But then again you could do it in one take — assuming you want to learn to play drums.

Those electronic drum kits are also easy to transport, for example for jam sessions. Not to speak of the clarity of the drum sounds when running them through a PA. And we have not even touched the options to trigger and play all kinds of percussive and non-percussive sounds during a live set. The other bonus is that the audience loves people playing instruments.

The Create Digital Music blog had a new entry about this also today.Roland is a great company, and I’ve been a Roland customer since Jupiter-6 days — owned one of the first ever Jupiter-6 keyboards back in 1983 as it had the first MIDI implementation (I still think it was earlier than Prophet-5.) However, they have a reputation of introducing cool things and then just abandon the concept and go on with something new, instead of refining a good product.

If someone knows of an email address where to send feedback to Roland, please let us know. Also if you are involved with any other bigger keyboard company, Yamaha et rest, let them know that there’s a nice market to be taken over in case Roland is not re-introducing new keytar models.

As for me, it would be fun going to jam sessions as a bass player, but using a keytar instead of a bass. I could also figure out tons of other similar ideas using a portable keyboard controller for various projects….

It is really important that we have good controllers in this new age of electronics. We don’t want to sit behind a pile of equipment, thanks. I don’t want to climb inside a pyramid, either :-).