Making A Comeback

Its been a long time since I've even touched this blog and I think I'm going to change that starting today. I've come to realize that writing is pretty good therapy for me. Music has always played a role in my life for as long as I can remember. So why not get back on the blogging platform and do some writing. I'm going to share my own product reviews (among other things), so stay tuned.

Riley B. King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015), known by his stage name B.B. King
Rest In Peace Mr. King .....

Songwriting 101 Or Something Like that

Hey peeps, long time no see I know. But I've been pretty busy lately trying to learn a few things. And I am. I'm to the point now that I can lay down some basic guitar tracks and then double them as I've always tended to do back in my tape machine days. I'm starting to get the hang of things in Garageband and the more you play around with it the more you learn, like anything else. I've also got Ableton Lite but haven't messed with it much. Garageband has built in drummers, and they used several studio drummers to put down drum tracks. Its unbelievable what you can do with it and I'm sure I don't even know anywhere close to half of it yet. So yeah, you basically pick out a drummer, I think there's 7 or maybe even 12 drummers on mine, and pick what kit you want him to play on. There's a ton of different drum kits on there. Set the timing to 4/4 or whatever and how many beats per minute and bam!! You can adjust the beats per minute along with a lot of other things "on the fly".

I have been neglecting my recording though for the past 5 weeks with a songwriters class at Berklee via Coursera, where you can take free college courses on tons of things! Seriously for someone like myself, who didn't go to college and took the trade route instead am able to take some of those college classes online and best of all, for Free. I'm actually just taking a break between lectures as I type, letting the next one buffer and load. To say I've been a little busy is an understatement. We played a gig a few weeks ago at a country clubhouse birthday party. It was our newest bass players first gig with us and he did pretty good considering the massive pressure lol. I have to say, the dude kinda won me over that night just because he played solid and the few bad notes didn't stick out like a sore thumb, which WAS something our last bass player didn't mind doing. He played it loud and proud. Which kinda sucks for the rest of the band because those loud and proud bad notes can really throw you all off kilter as a functioning unit.

I'm not even sure we have much of a band right now. Our singer doesn't seem to be into it lately. He never wants to practice anymore or even really do gigs. I think the only reason we played the last one was because it was family of his that was putting on the party. He's got a lot on his plate though in real life. New house, new daddy, fireman, and taking a college class in hopes of becoming a Game Warden. We hate to see it happening but its sure looking like he's about done with the band thing. I sure can't say I blame him, I was in the same type of spot when I was young and I chose a day job over being in a band. Even a part time band. Anyone who's in a band and is married can relate to how hard it is to just deal with that AND be able to keep up with what it takes to be in a serious working band. I'm not sure what's going on right now ...

All I know is that I'm going to keep plugging along and learning this songwriting craft as best I can and trying to write some songs while the band is on hold or whatever. I play guitar and write pretty much every day right now and that suits me just fine right now.

Gotta get to class folks ... later

Getting Closer To The Light(bulb)

Its barely creeping its way now, finally ... a little light is starting to show itself to me. I'm talking about the digital recording world in case you're wondering. Way back in like 1984/85 or so?  I was tooling along there with my Fostex X-18 4 track cassette recorder and my Alesis SR16 digital drum machine. I was doing what I call "sketch padding" some songs. And then the digital recording world reared its ugly head and stepped into the picture. It was "the new thing" and it was aggressively taking over the entire recording world. Being the rebel in nature that I tend to be I said "fuck you digital recording" and slowly let it all go to the wayside. "You got me" ... "Fuck it, it probably wasn't going to be a good idea anyway" "sour grapes" yadda yadda ....

Well, I just like music damnit, and fuck it, if ya can't beat 'em join 'em right? I asked around from people I know for advice. People who I look up to and people who do that shit for a living. There's a concept ... just ask someone who KNOWS right? So I get to talking one night to a buddy who's a drummer for a fairly well known band in Texas (at least). I try to go see them when they get close and play a gig somewhere. They're just damn good ole regular guys trying to make it in the music business. Not doing too bad either I might add.

But anyway, after talking to this drummer who kinda has his own home studio and is into recording, Pro Tools, etc, I talked to another friend. A record producer/recording engineer/genius/musician/you friggin name it! ........... I decided I should get a macbook pro first and foremost, and then some kind of interface. My drummer friend had insisted on Focusrite because it has the "Neve" pre's in it. I know, this is "shop talk" lol. Rupert Neve is like a recording guru in the world of recording. He's regarded as the God of mixing boards by some of the best in the business. Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame features Neve in Grohl's documentary; Sound City. That's a kick ass documentary by the way! I highly recommend watching it 3 or 4 times at least. Its really THAT good. No shit.

So here's where I am right now. I probably SHOULD get Pro Tools.
But do I really NEED it?  Its like a $700.00 question right now.
I have the macbook pro ... and I have an interface. A Focusrite 2i4 to be exact.
The macbook pro comes with a program called "Garageband" ... its a regular factory installed program included with the laptop. Now, from all the video watching and reading I've been doing on this whole thing I have found out I never really needed a macbook pro in the first place. There are a lot of PC based programs out there. I didn't even really need an interface either if I wanted to get downright technical about it. NEED being the key word here. I could have used a 1/4" to 1/8"  mono cord and hooked right into the headphone jack. If I was doing it "bare bones poor mans ways" it would be the way to go. Just be careful not to fuck up your jack inputs by putting stress on them. Like everything, use a little common sense right? Getting the macbook was a wise choice I believe. At least in the long run. Garageband looks to have a ton of potential for what I was looking to do though, which is continue to "sketchpad" songs. I have finally figured out how to make my interface communicate with Garageband. But that also means I can most likely figure it out on most any DAW ... that's "shop talk" for digital audio workstation.

I guess the real question here is, how far does a person want to go with it? Before turning it over to the pros?
I have no real desire to be a recording engineer guru type of person. Although I have the utmost respect for the craft. I just have some songs that might be good. "Might" being the keyword here.

Still thinking about it all ......... I'll let you know what I do.
Peace to all ..

So You Want To Be A Rock Star?

Just a quick blurb of some randomly occurring thoughts. When I first started playing guitar I totally admit I wanted to be a rock star. I was all in man! I locked myself away for 8 hours or more every day learning to play along with records. Pretty much the same old story I hear from the big rock stars I've heard interviews and read interviews about. Then one day all that changed and regular life stepped into the picture. I quit devoting all of my free time to it. I never fully quit though, I just didn't play much for several years and really didn't know anyone around here (where I ended up) that played music. Much less Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, etc etc ... This IS Arkansas after all.

I eventually found a few people here and there and pretty soon had 3 pieces of a band. So we jammed like that for a while. Two guitars and a drummer. We finally found a guy to come play bass with us once but that was about where we were stuck. It was a one time deal. Eventually more regular life (wives and kids) came along and we hung it up. By that time I didn't even want to be a rock star anyway. I think that had a lot to do with looking at it from a different perspective. But anyway, this time I hung it up so to speak for 25 or so years. "It" ... being anything to do that involved music in my life at a serious level. Like making a living at it. Or even just being in a good cover band as a hobby for that matter. I have sat in on some gigs with bands over the years and even played in a short lived bar band when I was like 19 or so. The Corn Band lol. Maybe I'll do a post on that sometime.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago and damn if I didn't do it again. This time I got serious about it. My buddy that I had last jammed with got to coming around visiting me after my motorcycle wreck and we got to talking about the old days and playing guitar. Neither of us had ever quit playing. Next thing you know we're jamming together again. I figured maybe I could do it for physical therapy since I didn't get any of that after my accident. Fast forward a couple of years and now were playing live in front of people. BUT its a lot of work and its always a work in progress if you're doing it right.

If you really want to be a rock star, more power to you! But you better be prepared to work your ass off at it and devote yourself to it like a marriage or something.

Personally, I couldn't do it if I wanted to because of physical limitations. In fact, if you see me playing there's a 99.999% chance I'm on the pain pills pretty hard and heavy. Thankfully they don't make me stagger all around the stage. When you NEED them they don't get you all buzzed like all those "hydro heads" out there take them for. There's a lot of work involved in just having a decent cover band, not to mention the money you have to invest into it. Don't do it FOR the money though. You'll find yourself usually making minimum wage if you're lucky.

Breaking In a new bass player

Hey folks, hope all is well with everyone. We had a nice practice session last night with our newest bass player. Hopefully this one will work out because its getting a little old now. Our last bass player was good and also very good at singing harmony. Its back to the dreaded machine for our singer now I guess because I'm not singing with thing lol. I'm just too old school for those things. This new guy (hate to call him that, but) is pretty cool and he's a helluva good bass player. He doesn't sing, but his sister damn sure does! I'm thinking she was on Nashville Star once but it may have been American Idol. Either way, she's a great singer and wants to come practice with us. Hopefully that will happen next time around. We ran through a pretty decent chunk of our songs, about enough for 2 long sets at least. Its going to take him some getting used to us and us to him, but we should be in good shape pretty soon. He's gig-able now but we'd like to polish things a bit first. We're in no big hurry.

Since my last post here I have went off the deep end just a little. I've decided that since I already knew a little bit about recording (4 track cassette and a drum machine lol) I should get back into that. At least enough to produce a demo for the band. I figured I could buy everything to do it for about the same price as having a good studio do it for us. Only this time around I'm having to step into the very thing that made me hang it up (recording) in the first place. Digital recording. I don't even like the sound of that word, much less typing it, but there it is. I got myself a MacBook Pro and a Focusrite 2i4 digital interface so far. Even with the free mixing software that comes with the interface has me totally lost lol. So far I have learned to hook it up (the interface) and get the software to acknowledge the interface. But that's about where I get stuck. So, its back to the tutorials for me on that. I'll keep you posted ......

Gone But Never Forgotten

Hey folks, its been a while but here I am again. Life has really taken a sharp turn for me lately, but not all of it has been bad. Despite losing my favorite uncle in the whole world things have been okay. I've been depressed over it but it was expected for a while. He had cancer and it was pretty aggressive, although I forget the type (there's so many). Day by day its getting easier, but I'll always miss him till my last day here.  My band played another gig last night and it was one of our better performances if not the best yet. Despite not having a bass player I thought we sounded pretty good, and that was no fluke. We worked on it. We did it the old fashioned way, just paying attention to details and making sure everything is hooked up correctly when its time to start flipping power switches. Then we did our sound check. First up came the drums. One by one (microphones) we fine tuned them on the mixer, and then it was our singer's turn. After that we dialed in the guitars and tried out a song and made a couple of fine adjustments and walla!! We were ready to rock n roll. We shut it all down and went home to get ready for later that night. It was a Halloween party and I'd say everything went pretty well as far as the gig & party goes. We were all on top of our game at the same time and everything just clicked along like a well oiled machine. And our singer won best costume for his Joe Dirt look.

I played my uncle Bob's old Gibson ES-330 for the first time ever at a gig. That old guitar and me go a long way back. I think I'd have to do a full blog post on that history to do it justice. My uncle Bob passed away a few weeks ago from cancer and I was pretty close to him my whole life. Even while he was in the Navy we wrote letters back and forth (we didn't have email back in those days) and when he got out and moved to Arkansas, with me in Illinois, we still wrote letters and talked on the phone occasionally until I finally moved to Arkansas myself after a stint in the Army. We were co-workers on two different occasions and one of those lasted several years. So we were pretty tight as you can probably tell. After the funeral my cousin Bobbi presented me with that guitar to hold on to for a while once again. Words cannot express how that felt to me. Of course I assured her it would receive the same good care I used with it back in my younger days and told her I was going to put that guitar back on the stage in his honor. Uncle Bob played in bands a lot in his younger days but this guitar had not been touched for a long time.

I invited my cousin, Bobbi and uncle Bob's wife, aunt Vada to the party to see uncle Bob's guitar back in action. When I picked up that guitar and strapped it on for Jamie Johnson's, In Color, there were a few hearts that skipped a beat or two (including mine). It made my cousin cry, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the bad kind of crying. She said it was the perfect song to honor uncle Bob with, and I agree. It was actually suggested by my buddy, Steve, our lead guitar player. As soon as he said it I knew that was THE song. After a couple more songs I'd had about all I could handle for the time being. I didn't want to start bawling on the stage lol. Uncle Bob was right there with me all night in spirit. Something (strange?) happened at the gig before this one. It was on the same day uncle Bob passed away. I didn't find out until after we were finished playing and saw my missed calls and text messages. While we were playing, and while my uncle was passing away, my amplifier volume turned up a little. I'll just say it kinda blows my mind thinking about it and leave it at that...... Until we meet on the other side and get together for some pickin'. Rest In Peace Uncle Bob ... I love you forever man.

Is "Big Music" Dead?

Looking at my stats, nobody's reading this anyway so I'll think of it as my little journal of random musings about music stuff. I really don't give a hoot one way or the other I just feel the need to write it down sometimes. To get it "out of my system" so to speak. Maybe its the lack of tags? I did notice one particular post of mine that had several hits and it had "tags" so maybe that's the way to get readership? I'll try it on this post and see what happens. Maybe some hyperlinks too. I'm kinda curious about it now. I'm just writing and thinking it up as I go along. Sometimes a subject gets to me and I start thinking about it deeply. I just watched a video and it mentioned the decline of the music industry. I have been hearing that for a long time now. Several years now in fact.

But is the music industry really in decline or has the game just changed? I think the game has changed tremendously for the stereotypical industry "fat cats" of years gone by. People have started buying music by the song now. Back in the day an artist made an album and sold a collection of their songs at once. Some of those songs weren't too great either as I remember. It seemed like there was a formula and they would put a certain amount of "singles" on it and the rest was "filler" material. Seems to me that now there's more incentive there for an artist to try for making an album where all the songs were singles.

I have noticed a decline in the amount of CD's on the shelf at Wal-Mart over the years too. Maybe its just the one I'm going to? Possible but thinking back 15 or 20 years I can remember when there were lots more CD's for sale on shelves and a lot of stores. I think there might be a record store at the mall 50 miles away from me. Target still sells some CD's also but I can't think of many places to buy them around here. I have to consider though that I DO live in a very small town. The nearest "big town" for me is 50 miles away, and its not that big. A lot of people have went the Amazon way now too. Buying things online has become a pretty big industry over the past 20 years or so.

 The music industry has definitely changed a lot over the decades. Now it seems its almost anyone's game with enough drive, talent, and ambition behind them. Computers and software are a big part of that change too. With a Mac and Pro Tools and some other home studio equipment people can make recording that sound as good as anything you buy off the shelf. Some people are very proficient with all those tools at their disposal and there's a growing Indie market out there with several choices when it comes to outlets for selling your own tunes. Anyone can sell their music on itunes now as I understand (although I personally don't use itunes). One outlet I have used is cdbaby and they bill themselves as "the best independent music store on the web" and I have no doubt they are.

Another factor in this games is that now with youtube, anyone can learn to play guitar or other instruments. I know people who give lessons over Skype now too. There's a ton of guitar lesson videos on youtube for free. People also do covers as a sort of lesson. The downside to it is that there's a lot of crap on there lol. I have been through no telling how many bad videos looking for good ones. After a while you do find a lot of good teachers on youtube. To help some of you out if you're interested in checking out some of the better players and lesson givers out there I'll share some of my favorites with you. There's privettricker, who plays covers and though not technically "lessons" in the traditional sense, he's very good. More for advanced players like myself who just want to get the progression down quicker etc.. There's another great player on youtube who goes by the name tonedr and he is bad ass! He does tutorials on a lot of good songs and is in a few bands also. One of the bands he plays in features Lauren Mink who was a contestant on American Idol a couple of years back. He also plays in a project band called The Lexington Lab Band. Here's a video of just one of their many covers. This one is The Lexington Lab Band covering Aerosmith's Dream On. Check out all of their covers if you have a chance. They have different singers and musicians that sit in with them and they are all top notch. One of the more well known teachers out there is a guy named Marty Schwartz. He has a LOT of lessons on his channel(s). Marty is the type of teacher that walks you through the lesson step by step. Another guy like that is Justin Sandercoe, and in my opinion one of THE best guitar teachers out there. Like Marty, he goes through songs step by step and he's very thorough about it. AND he has that British accent that a lot of people seem to enjoy. Everything is free with Justin. He also has a website where you can get tabs etc,.  He has two youtube channels also. The above link is one and his other one is called JustinGuitar Songs. His website is here http://justinguitar.com/

So is big music dead?  Maybe ...... but there's a lot of good music still out there. And plenty to chose from too. It looks to me like bands that want to be successful these days just have to get out there and play every gig they can get their hands on. If you have a record/CD for sale, being out there playing in live venues is a good place to sell them. Back in the day a signed artist made an album and went on tour to promote it. Hopefully they would have a hit single or two and rake in a lot of cash and get to sit on their ass for a while and enjoy life. I think those days are kinda faded now and artists have to keep at it a lot harder than they did in the old days. A lot of bands operate on shoestring budgets and tour like hell for a year or so until they can save up enough to kick back for a month. And then its right back on the road again if you want to make any money. In a sense its always been like that but what's changed is the money and album sales. A whole lot of people these days buy ONE song at a time on itunes and that has surely put a huge dent in the Album/CD sales department.

Anywho .... that's about all I have to say for now on this subject.
Peace out good people ...