Studio is GO!

Well after an afternoon of dusting with an old sock and some lemon Endust - the recording and broadcast studio is almost completely set up. GarageBand didn't magically record my first song for me but after setting up a Windows Vista laptop and a Mac Mini, I gotta wonder why we ain't all using Macs. I'll write more later but WOW what a different experience. Zero trial software crap and a clean desktop. Now where did I put that guitar?

Heart of the new recording studio arrives

After pricing out USB audio interfaces for my laptop to record my new album and trying to dicipher the bewildering array of software options the little light came on that for a few (very few actually) dollars more I could get Mac Mini and just use GarageBand 08. I checked with my more
seasoned recording musician pals and they both gave two enthusiastic thumbs up to the idea. So this morning I unboxed my new recording studio. I had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse (the BYO items) laying around. From all I can tell GarageBand can produce a music CD of sufficient quality to distribute electronically. I'll blog more after I actually get it up and running.

Forsythe Whitfield at The Plug

A while back I was talking to a lovely lady about blues musicians in Second Life. She was adamant I check out Forsythe Whitfield. So much so she made me join his group (ahhhh a precious spot given up to someone I've never even heard). Well the universe hiccoughed (or burped) and I happened to be on when I got a notice to go see Forsythe at a place called the Plug. Well I could hear FW before I could see him and he was ripping out a tasty version of Johnny B. Goode - a song that should be so done by now - but he had marinated it in his one man blues band style and it was sounding damn good.

I walked into the Plug and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had walked into a little live music joint. Layed out smart and loaded with ambience the Plug had a palpable vibe of good times. I mean a cool little venue. Remind me I want to play there when I finally get off my ass and do it.

As for Forsythe, he was definitely worth forcing someone to join a group for. You can check him out anytime at his myspace page. But I recommend signing up for his group which is unambiguously named the "Forsythe Whitfield Fan Club".

FW plays to what can only be custom made backing tracks and it sounds great. He sits behind a drum kit and fingers his resonator. Come on down and ask that lady over there if she wants to dance - you know her partner don't play anymore.

Guitaraoke OK?

I spotted this set of 15 CDs in Walmart for 30 bucks. Now don't get me
wrong Ol' Catfish ain't fond of karaoke but it has it's purpose I
reckon. What's nice about this set is it shows you the chords along
with the lyrics. Essentially it's a box of backing tracks with chordal
tab built in. It only works with Windows Media Player. I picked it up
to force myself to play more complicated songs outside my comfort
zone. Self taught guitar skills are fine if you only plan to be a solo
artist but when you are trying to become a regular musician you need
to introduce a little discipline - which so far has been an Achilles
heel for me.

"Chicken Bill" Martin

My brother got me looking at Martins. He loaned me his Little Martin to try out. It's one the HPL's (high pressure laminate) guitars. It played and sounded great. Very little real wood which was a real turn off for me. At least in my head it was. In practice it turns out that it may be a good even a great thing. Resistant to sweat and the heat of the trunk a HPL guitar starts to make sense. Then I wondered about the life of the instrument. It's basically a formica guitar. I tried to research the life of formica and found only a smattering of info on the net. Then I did a little field research - okay not field research - I went into the kitchen. We have formica covered counter tops there that are at least 20 years old (they came with the house). At one spot part of the formica is bowed out from the curve of the counter. I gave it a whack. Sprung in and back out. Not brittle, just tough as ever. Okay so no worries about a HPL guitar not lasting. I went to the local music store and started playing a Martin DXK2. It's a Koa grained HPL guitar with a stratabond neck made in Mexico. It was setup perfect and it felt great. The neck seemed like the perfect mix of finished and unfinished in feel. The box rings steady and long. It's not incredibly different from a wood guitar, it just seems smoother and longer. It sounds really really good. So after visiting her every day for about a week, I took the plunge.

I have to say I feel the opposite about alternate material guitars than I did before. When I worked at Peavey, I watched the robots cut a neck out of a blank and easily 40% of the wood ended up in shavings on the floor. Tragic really. So I feel good knowing that very few trees or at least a very small portion of them were actually consumed in the making of my instrument.

And the fact that I lose none of the warm analog resonant playing experience like you do when you go from piano to keyboards makes it all good.

So I call it the "Chicken Bill" Martin because as my grandma used to say "It's all chicken but the bill and that's chicken stew." It's every bit a Martin just made out of the scientifically collected shavings and pieces of wood and transformed into a legacy 'tar.

Ear training epiphany

I downloaded an app to my iPhone called Karajan Beginner. It's a free app from the Apple App Store that does ear training in interval, chords, scales, pitch, tempo and key signatures.

I've been doing intervals, and I really, really suck at it. Currently I'm 153 right and 124 WRONG.

At one point during my constant beating over the head with the little red wrong "X" popping up, I realized something.

I've always heard Perfect Pitch referred to as something you had. You know like an innate talent or skill. As I nearly wallowed in the self pity of "not" having it - I realized that the truth is different. It's not an innate skill. It's just what you know.

I noticed as I got more and more repeats of the same note intervals, I got better. Because I had been exposed to them before and knew them. That's how you get Perfect Pitch - you listen critically to a hell of a lot of pitches. Over and over until they are old friends.

No mojo. No magic. No genetics. Just listening and learning. So if your practicing is getting you down because you can't play like Leo Kottke yet - don't get down depressionwise. Get down practicewise. Keep plugging.

It will come to you.

It's not how long you live, it's how you live

Those words uttered by a breast cancer survivor on Oprah, struck me as being critical to where your head is at at any given moment. Quantity without quality is missing the point.

Peace,

Cat'

p.s. Yeah I watch Oprah.