Jam Prep and string critique

Songs I want to play (easy chord progressin, yet still fun to play)
Sweet Jane - Lou Reed
All Along the Watchtower - Jimmy Hendrix
Rock & Roll - Velvet Underground

Strings
I have finally killed the Fender Pure Nickel Wounds and am putting the Gibson Brite Wires on tonight. Hopefully I wil have them all perfect for the Sunday Jam.

The Fenders were fine, I have to give them an A+ for durability I played the shit out of them and they are holding tune just fine (many of you will insist that since I play with such light sissy picks there is no way I could wear out a set of string in my life time, and to you I say BITE ME!!). I thought the tone of the Fender strings was unimpressive, they seemed a little flat to me so a C for tone. Action was fine (if strings have anything to do with that??).

I will let you know how the Gibson strings work out.

12:12 PM  F!! Gibson Strings suck! I broke the high E. Actually what happened was that I left the tail to short and it slipped on the tuner, when I tried to repair/restring it it weakened the string so that as I was tuning it up it snapped. Nearly took my eye out. Wear your safety goggles guitarists!

Decent Chords and lyrics site

Chords and Lyrics
This is a pretty good one. Some guy named Damon has a bunch of nicely formatted songs with easy chords.

Something to read for my Franken-guitar project - Electric Guitar Pickups

Electric Guitar Pickups

Guitar Guts

While we were at Trade-up I mentioned to Bryce that I would like to get a junky old guitar and take it apart and see how guitars work, and then "recondition" it as a part of my learning process.

I have a deep need to understand how stuff works, as a kid I was the one who took stuff apart just because.

Bryce mentioned that he still had his first guitar and that I could do whatever I wanted to it. Last night he delivered one dusty, duct tape covered Kingston Stratocaster clone.


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I plugged it in and it plays OK, but the plug is loose and crackly, the knobs are shot, and the neck is pretty bowed. I was able to tune it and play for a couple minutes before I couldn't stand the loose plug.

Now I am thinking of all the fun stuff I can do with it. I will take it apart this weekend and see what makes her tick, and decide what I can do. Perhaps i will turn it into a franken-guitar.

Trade Up Music

Trade Up Music
This place is Awesome. They have tons of stuff in every price range. I found myself playing $100 classical guitars and over the course of my visit moving up to $800 electric guitars. They have a pretty cool percussion section as well, I was eyeing all sorts of gizmos from maraccas to bongos.

If you want to try a bunch of different types of instruments (i.e. Banjo, Mandolin, Ukulele) or just see what the difference between a Gibson Les Paul vs. an Epiphone Les Paul clone is you can do that at Trade-Up Music.

I will definitely go back.

I feel better

Two things to say tonight.

1) I feel better about playing guitars in a music store.
This is a factor of imcreased confidence in my playing combined with a lack of concern about what the other people in the music store think about me and my playing. I also realized that I can do an OK job of tuning a guitar without my tuner, this was something that used to frustrate me. I hated having the silly guitar sales guy have to tune every guitar for me when I was shopping for my first acoustic.

2) I think I might be writing a song (or something that sounds like a song).
Long ago Bryce chastized me for being concerned with how things were supposed to sound instead of focusing on what I thought sounded good. Well many months later my fingers are adventuring out of formation and pressing completely different and interesting unknown combinations that sound good to me. That combined with a funny thing that my daughter likes to do in her spare time (watch cars from the patio) makes for interesting potential. Keep in mind that this song will be intended to entertain my toughest critic, my nearly  6 month old daughter.

Just to prove that my creative talents aren't limited to music, I can mess up perfectly good pictures with my computer too!

OLGA - The On-Line Guitar Archive

I just discovered OLGA! The archive was begun by James Bender at the Univ. of Las Vegas (UNLV). Judging by the earliest files found in the old archive, this was in 92.
OLGA - The On-Line Guitar Archive

WEB BASED Tab Generator

Tab Generator Writer

Stones Chords

Stones Chords

A Sweet Microphone FAQ

www.hr-faq.org: FAQ for the homerecording.com mic BBS

School of Rock

School of Rock
I love this movie!

Easy Blues Jam song?

Before you accuse me - Eric Clapton

Yahoo! Search Results for juniorrocker

Yahoo! Search Results for juniorrocker

Neighbor

I have heard that neighbors can wreck a perfectly good jam, and I was pleasantly surprised this morning when a neighbor 2 houses down said that she wanted to hear us play again.

The Independence Jam

Saturday marked the day of my first jam hosting. It was a nice day, and everyone showed with many instruments in tow. We had 4 guitars, a bass, a fiddle, a mandolin and an electric ukelele.


The Jammers. . . jamming.

I believe fun was had by all and I certainly learned a bunch. I hope to do it again soon. The patio seemed to be a great venue, and no neighbors complained.


Bryce


Johnny


Chris feels like a poser


Landon lost his fiddle


Landon still looking for his fiddle


Chris trys the bass


Ed - Lead Ukelele

I am amazed at how fun it is to play a simple 4 chord progression with other people and other intruments. It is especially nice with talented musicians that can actually add layers of complexity on top of the simple chording. As with the jam at Ed's house Landon was a pleasure to play with, I think the fiddle is a very nice instrument, Bryce always amazes me, Johnny is an excellent musician and Ed continues to make me wonder why he doesn't play more.

Me on the other hand, I felt a little tiny bit more confident about my basic guitar playing. I definitely feel like playing with others is the way to go. It focuses my efforts when it comes to practicing and I look forward to getting together with folks again.

Thanks guys!


The reason for the lost fiddle

Johnny on bass

Bryce & the mandolin