My Fender Hot Rod Deluxe III

The latest amplifier added to my stable is a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe III. I've always been a Fender man when it comes to amplifiers. I currently own five of them, but only two are tube amps. I've always preferred the sound of a tube amp over a solid state, but there are some pretty awesome sounding solid state amps out there. My Fender Frontman 25R is my go-to practice amp, and I really dig the sound that little thing puts out. It sounds like a big amplifier when you're not looking, and I've even used it for a few gigs. Power doesn't matter so much when you mic your amp anyway, but you do need a little stage volume. It appears that Guitar Center no longer sells that particular amp, but you can still get one on Amazon.com. I paid $99.99 for mine and got the red colored model. Its a 1x10" - 25 watt combo amp with reverb. Well worth a hundred bucks if you're looking for a good practice amp. You can check out some reviews on it at Ultimate-Guitar.com.

The Fender Hot Rod Deluxe III is the latest generation of Fender Hot Rods and I must say, they got this one right! Not that there's anything wrong with the others, I just love everything about this amp. Its a 40 watt combo amp with a "12” Celestion® G12P-80 speaker. It has Three channels (normal, drive, more drive). Internal variable bias control, Effects loop, bright switch and Fender spring reverb,  And it comes with a Fitted cover and two-button footswitch." 

Personally, I like to use the clean channel and let my guitar volume knob and pedals take care of boost and distortion. I'm not much of a pedal guy but I do have some that I feel are necessary. In fact that's probably going to be the subject of my next blog post. Sit back and take a listen to this short video for just a little taste of what these Hot Rods are capable of.

~Its All About The Music~ 

New Fender Telecaster

This isn't really new news for me, but it is for this blog. Since I've been gone from blogging and out playing gigs, I've added a new guitar to my stable, and by far, its the best playing guitar I have ever purchased. Its the first real top of the line guitar I've ever bought too. My other guitars were all medium price range, enough to get the job done, guitars. This time I got a Fender American Deluxe Telecaster in Aged Cherry Sunburst. It has the new Fender N3 Noiseless Tele pickups as well as the S1 switch on the volume knob.

I don't know how much can be said about Fender's Telecaster Model that hasn't already been said. For me, its the best playing guitar I've ever had. I like the noiseless pickups too. I've always stayed away from single coil pickups in the past because they have been notoriously known for the buzz they can create. Especially if you're anywhere near a fluorescent lamp. But not these babies, no way, no buzz. 

I had been wanting a Telecaster for quite a long time, but I wanted an American made Telecaster if I was going to ever get one. Its a fairly serious investment so I wanted to go big and get something that holds its value. I got mine from Guitar Center and couldn't be happier about the service those guys give you there. Everyone that I've ever met there have always been very helpful in answering any questions I've had. And if they don't know the answer to your question, someone in the store will. And that's because they have specialist's employed in every department of the store. 

They also offer Pro Coverage on their products, which can be a very good thing to have in case you have a mishap. It might seem a little pricey when you're thinking it over, but when it comes to something you're going to drop some serious cash on its something well worth considering. 

I got a new amplifier at the same time I purchased my guitar, but I'll save that for a new blog post.
Stay tuned .......

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 ......