Electric Bard

Our band, The Malarkeys, have just posted a brand new song onto the band’s web site. The song is called Right as Rain.

The acoustic guitar tracks were laid down using the Gibson J-45, and all the electric guitar tracks feature the Squier Classic Vibe Telecaster, making its recording debut at our studio. The mandolin on the track is my 1917 Gibson A-4. The electric guitar was plugged straight into a little Mackie mixer and patched through a Beringer compressor, and then I used Logic Express 9’s Amp Designer to craft the guitar sounds. The amp models are a lot of fun to play around with, and I think I got some really good sounds on this track. I hope you agree – let me know if you do or if you do not!

Last Saturday night we played a wedding at the Summerhill Pyramid Winery. We had a lot of fun. I brought along my Gibson J-45, the Fender 12-string, and my Robert Cray model Fender Stratocaster. As the evening progressed we brought more rock to the set, including songs like What I Like About You, as well as a couple of blues tunes – Tore Down by Freddie King and Mercury Blues.

We had a request for Led Zeppelin. This is not the first time we’ve played a wedding where someone requests Zeppelin, and we’re a Celtic-influenced band, you know? But no fear, we had an answer. If you’ve never heard our version of Drunken Sailor, well, you’ve never experienced a full-on Malarkeys Celtic mash-up. Yes, our version of Drunken Sailor eventually winds its way into the guitar solo from Stairway to Heaven, with the Strat on full shred. The Squier Tele just wouldn’t have cut it yet, it’s still being broken in. The Strat was totally up to the challenge after 5 years of regular playing. As usual, the Hughes and Kettner Statesman Dual 6L6 kept all the guitars pumping.

Our next show is a public one, March 5, at the Bike Cafe on Ellis in Kelowna. Don’t miss it!

My birthday was this past Sunday, and some friends and I went to Poppadom’s for a fine Indian dinner. They brought me a slice of chocolate cake with a sparkler, plus one for Don, whose birthday was on Saturday. We had a great time there, as usual. I tried Tree Brewing’s Thirsty Beaver pale ale, which helped tame the curry. It was a delicious evening out with friends.

Also for my birthday, Gail (aka Mrs. Electric Bard) rented me a Squier Classic Vibe Telecaster.
It’s a really great guitar. I love the way it looks.

The sound is very Tele-esque, with a nice commanding bottom end. Playing individual notes it sounds very good and can really go from jazz to full-on twang no problem. It also sounds great doing blues. Saturday night I debuted it onstage at our UBCO gig for Art on the Line.

It occurred to me that the middle position on this Tele actually sounds a like the tone I used to pull from my stolen custom-built Les Paul. At one time I owned a walnut Les Paul that was built for me by a luthier named Gord Litster. It was a beautiful guitar, and if I can find any good pictures I will post them. I experimented with pickups on it over the years I had it, but when I last saw it there was an EMG-85 in the tail position and a standard Gibson PAF in the front. The thing was, though, that the guitar had a mini-switch that let me throw the pickups out of phase, and this was the position I used the most. It gave the guitar a slightly thinner, more nasal kind of sound, but still had plenty of sustain. The Tele gets that kind of in-between sound in the middle position too, and it sustains amazingly well (better than my Robert Cray Strat, which is a hardtail and sustains fairly well since I swapped out the original bridge saddles).

Is the Squier Classic Vibe Tele the ultimate Les Paul, then? Well no, not quite, but dang, I am having a lot of fun with this guitar. If you’re into Fenders and dig the oldies, check out the Squier Classic Vibe. Ignore the ‘Crafted in China’ decal and pay attention to the tone, fit and finish, wonderful colour and wood grain of the pine (!) body, the comfortable tinted neck, and guess what it’s all worth before you look at the price tag. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Last but not least, here are a few photos we found recently of Gail and I performing onstage with Randy Bachmann at Bluebird North in Vancouver, several years ago. Wow!

On Sunday I was in San Francisco and I had a chance to visit the Guitar Center on Van Ness. I was hoping to see the Gibson Les Paul Studio Deluxe ‘60s but I didn’t see one there. It looked they had a Les Paul Traditional Pro way up on the wall, but I couldn’t reach it and it wasn’t really what I was looking for anyway.

What I did see was one of the new Fender Blacktop Strats, in candy apple red with a maple neck, as well as a Blacktop Tele. I did not get a chance to plug them into an amp. The store was busy and some guy was shredding metal and the noise level overall was kind of intense. Nevertheless, my impression was that these guitar are mighty impressive for the money – $449USD and with the Canadian dollar at almost par, that’s a screaming deal compared to the $625 those guitars cost in Canada. I don’t know what duty or shipping would set you back.

I also had a chance to pick up the Paul Reed Smith SE Singlecut Korina. This is a nice looking guitar, very clean and minimalistic. It was surprisingly heavy, although not at all unmanageable. They also had an Epiphone Casino there. Those guitars are very light. There was lots of guitars to look at, and some very cool looking Ernie Ball basses in delicious colours. Almost makes me want to be a bass player just so I could have one of these things.

In my quest for the “ultimate” Les Paul, I’ve been outlining in this blog the kinds of features I’d like to see if I were to have, say, my own signature model Les Paul from Gibson. Having studied Gibson’s lineup carefully, I can’t find a model that gets it just right. A number of other manufacturers have some interesting takes on the iconic Les Paul design, though.

Paul Reed Smith guitars offer some lovely looking models, that include a few of my dream Les Paul features: two humbuckers, and a volume control you can reach with your right pinky for doing volume swells, as well as a pickup selector switch that won’t get in my way on the upper bout of the guitar body. And yet, as lovely as they look, the ones I’ve tried so far just don’t have “it”. I have not had an opportunity to try the SC 58, though, and it is so close to what I’m talking about in a Les Paul. Too bad they put the pickup selector where they did.

I recently say a new Godin guitar online that looks very impressive, especially in the electronics. Its pickups can be run as humbuckers, single coils, or P-90s. Wow! That covers it. The guitar is not bad looking. I wonder what it weighs. It’s called the Icon II Convertible . Is that really the best name they could come up with?

But maybe there’s another alternative showing up from, could it be, Fender? Fender’s new Blacktop Strat has two humbuckers with a 5-way switch that includes a couple of single coil modes, a master volume control (is it logarithmic?) and two tone controls. It’s also got 22 frets. They’re inexpensive and with a couple of mods might be very cool. I know I’d want to swap the saddles out for something more modern, and maybe change the amp-style knobs. With any luck I’ll get to try one out this weekend when I’m in San Francisco.

Right now in 2010, top 40 radio does not include a lot of epic guitar solos. Thanks to YouTube, though, the guitar solo has not gone away, and every day guitarists are uploading videos of themselves either reproducing a famous guitar solo, or showing off their own improvisational skills.
This YouTube guitar army is an awesome resource as a guitarist. In many cases you can see your favourite guitarist playing a solo you’re curious about learning, and you can see how they themselves played it. You can also find lessons and breakdowns of how a particular guitarist gets their sound, or how to play a famous solo in note by note detail.

For a lot of guitarists, the way into learning to solo is to reproduce someone else’s solo note for note. Another simple technique to begin playing lead guitar is to learn the melody of the song and just play that. Once you step beyond those techniques, you’ll want to start learning a few scales, or as is the case for a lot of lead guitarists in rock and blues, one scale in particular.

If you want to play jazz solos, be prepared to learn your theory. If you’re going to be good at it, you need to be familiar major scales, minor scales (harmonic minor, diatonic minor), and modal scales with exotic names like Mixolydian, Dorian, Ionian and so on.

The Pentatonic Scale
For rock and blues players, and even country, we can get away with one scale. I’m not saying this will make you a guitar god, but in combination with dynamics, vibrato and timing, you can go a long, long way with this one scale. The Pentatonic scale, as the name implies, is made up of just 5 notes. I’m not going to explain everything about that scale in this post, but here are a couple of pages you can visit online to get the basic information.
Pentatonic Major
Pentatonic Minor
Another way to express what the guy in these video links above is saying is that if you’re playing rock or blues in the key of, let’s say G major, use a G Pentatonic scale to build your solo. It will sound ‘bluesy’. So the rule is, whatever key the rock or blues song is in, play the corresponding Pentatonic scale, and that will always be a reliable place to start. This is what he refers to as the Pentatonic Minor scale.

If you’re playing a country song in the key of G major, use an E pentatonic scale, and howdy partner, you’re sounding kinda country. The same rule applies in any key. Without getting all technical or theoretical on you, think of it this way: Blues in A, scale in A. Country in A, go down 3 frets to F#. Works every time. This is what he calls the Pentatonic Major scale.

Here’s a quick reference chart:
Country song in the key of… play a pentatonic scale in the key of…
G -> E
Ab -> F
A -> F#
Bb -> G
B -> G#
C -> A
Db -> Bb
D -> B
Eb -> C
E -> C#
F -> D
F# -> D#

This is just a start to get you playing some notes that will sound OK. As you advance, there are other elements you’ll need to introduce that help define your signature style, like string bending and vibrato, which I’ll touch on in another post.

My interest in playing slide started with George Harrison. Guitar solos like the one in My Sweet Lord featured slide to great effect, and I wanted to get that sound. Learning to play slide involved a lot of experimenting on my part. I bought a big metal slide and started sliding around. The first thing I had to figure out which finger to put it on. The right answer is whichever one works for you. If you watch proficient slide players, you’ll see that different players prefer to wear their slides on different fingers, so it’s really personal choice. I’ve linked up some videos for you in this post featuring George (above) and Eric Clapton (below). They’re both using their pinkies, but peronally I use my ring finger. They’re famous and I’m not, so maybe you’ll want to consider that when you’re figuring out which finger to learn to use for slide playing.

Using your little finger for the slide leaves the other fingers free to do some fretting, so it’s a more versatile approach. Because I admire George and Eric’s slide playing so much, I’ve really tried to emulate their little-finger technique, but it just doesn’t work for me. I struggle to sound in tune, but with the ring finger I’m much more capable of playing in tune.

The other thing you have to sort out is what kind of slide to use, metal or glass? They have different tonal qualities, but again, it’s a matter of your personal choice. I used metal for years, but lately I’m using glass.

Finally, you’ve got to develop your fretting hand technique so that you’re kind of in tune, and not pressing too heavily on the slide and grounding out on the frets. I find that to play in tune, I have to aim to stop the slide right on top of the fret, as opposed to just behind it as your finger would be placed if you were fretting the note with your finger instead of a slide. Once you get that down, work on adding some vibrato (a little shaking of the slide on longer held notes), and you’ll sound cool as these guys.

If you’re shopping for a guitar amplifier, there are a lot of models to choose from, but they all fall into two broad categories; either the amp has tubes or it doesn’t. A lot of professional players choose tube amps, and it’s because of the tone. Famous tube amps by Fender, Marshall, Mesa Boogie and many other manufacturers, have set the bar for popular guitar tones – they’ve shaped the very idea of what we think a guitar and amp should sound like.

Over the years, there has been a vast array of new technologies brought to bear on achieving tube-like tone, without using tubes. Some of those technologies have been amazing. Check out amps that feature ‘modeling’ and you’ll hear what I’m talking about. They typically digitize the signal from your guitar, crunch and flavour the bits, and convert back into an analogue signal to come roaring out of the amp’s speaker(s). You can go from Marshall to vintage Fender to Mesa Boogie with the turn of a knob.

You might be asking at this point, if guitarists generally agree that tube amps sound better, then why doesn’t everyone just buy tube amps? Well, tube amps have a few characteristics that may make a player think twice:
• tube amps are more expensive than solid-state amps, feature for feature
• tube amps are heavier than a comparable solid-state amp
• tube amps require more maintenance, as tubes wear out and have to be replaced
• tube amps might be more prone to damage if handled roughly
• tube amps produce more heat

When it comes to features per dollar spent, a solid-state amp delivers more than an equivalent tube amp in most cases. For lots of players, the advantages a solid-state amp offers make them a better choice.

Personally, I’ve owned different amps over the years, both tube and solid state. My first amp was a small tube amp, and I moved to solid-state amps. I found they were much more reliable, and I could afford more power (RMS wattage rating = louder). The other key factor is they were a lot lighter, which at 2AM as you lug an amp up or down a long flight of stairs after 4 hours of playing your heart out, makes a difference.

At this point in my life, I own two guitar amps, and they’re both tube amps. I put up with the extra weight because for me, the tone is worth it. It’s hard to describe the difference, but it’s like when I play through a solid-state amp the sound is good, but it’s two-dimensional. When I play through a tube amp, it adds a third dimension. There is something there that I can’t put my finger on, but the sound is more satisfying to play into. If you blindfolded me and made me listen to someone playing through different amps and asked me to pick out which was a tube amp and which wasn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised if you fooled me. But if I was playing through the amp myself, blindfolded, I think I’d be able to tell the difference. Hmmm, maybe I’ll have to try that sometime.

Playing acoustic guitar in a band setting comes with a unique set of challenges. Whether you’re playing acoustic or electric guitar in a band, every guitarist has the same basic needs:

1. The need for great tone. “Tone” of course is subjective, but it’s not much fun playing if you think your tone sucks.
2. The need to be able to hear what you’re playing. If you’re being drowned out by the drummer or other musicians, you can keep playing and hope for the best but it’s a major drag when you can’t hear yourself.
3. The need to be in control of your sound. With an acoustic guitar or semi-hollow electric guitar, as volume levels rise, so does the likelihood of feedback. Controlled feedback is good, uncontrollable feedback equals vibe killer. The need for higher volume levels before feedback is one of the reasons the solid body electric guitar was invented.

I play a fair bit of acoustic guitar with The Malarkeys, and I’ve had to adapt to play with drums, bass, accordion, fiddle, and sometimes keyboard. It’s a demanding situation for an acoustic guitar.

Acoustic Guitar Pickup
Until this year, I was playing an Ibanez AW-10CE NT, which has a built-in pickup system that includes an onboard EQ. It has a phase reversal switch to help prevent feedback. It also features a very unusual XLR output jack in addition to a standard ¼” jack. The whole system works very well and the sound is nicely balanced. It works well either through a guitar amp or direct into a PA system.

This year I got another acoustic guitar which is now my main acoustic instrument, a Gibson J45. It features a built-in pickup from L.R. Baggs. There are no tone controls or anything, just a volume wheel discreetly located inside the sound hole. The sound is full and works very well in a band context. The J45 also sounds beautiful on its own.

Amplification
When amplifying an acoustic guitar, there are four main choices.

1. Point a microphone at the guitar and run the signal into a PA system. This is usually the best way to reproduce the truer acoustic sound of the guitar. The drawback is that the player can’t move around; if you step away from the mic your sound drops out and no one will hear you. The technique is also next to impossible if there are other loud musicians playing with you; the microphone will be very susceptible to feedback if the stage volume gets aggressive.
2. Use a built-in or clip-in pickup and send the signal to a PA system. This is a very popular method, particularly if you have a pro sound system and a sound technician running it. If the sound engineer knows what they’re doing, they should be able to provide enough on-stage monitoring so everyone can hear the acoustic guitar, and they can make sure enough signal goes to the front of house so the guitar is in the mix properly. For small gig situations with no sound engineer, this is still a popular choice. One potential drawback is that acoustic guitars can sometimes sound very tinny and thin when amplified this way, so you’ll see some guitarists run their signal into an acoustic guitar preamp or direct box first, and then to the PA. A preamp helps adjust the level the guitar is sending to the PA and usually includes tone-shaping circuitry and/or EQ.
3. Plug the guitar’s pickup into an acoustic guitar amplifier. This can provide a good sound and provide lots of control over your sound. Many amps will have a line out for sending a signal to the PA, and having an amp on stage can act as your personal monitor so you can hear what you’re playing. One downside of this approach is that if you’re switching back and forth between acoustic and electric guitars on the same gig, then you need to bring two amps, really; one for the acoustic and one for the electric, because the electric guitar amp will be voiced differently, and usually include features like overdrive.
4. Plug the guitar into a regular guitar amp, and put a mic on the amp’s speaker to send a signal to the PA. The reason for the mic on the amp speaker is that with many guitar amps, a line out an effects send jack, sends the signal out before it has been processed by the amp’s EQ section. Consequently, you may be hearing a wonderful tone through the amp, but the PA is getting an undoctored sound that can be thin and wimpy. I go with this option most of the time, for a number of reasons. I’ve got a video demonstrating how it sounds on YouTube.

There are many variations on these techniques, and you’ll want to experiment within the parameters of your band, your playing situations, your PA system, and of course your budget.

Preventing Feedback
Some acoustic guitarists will stuff their acoustic guitars full of foam to help prevent feedback. Personally, I’ve never done that, but I would recommend picking up a sound hole cover. They’re inexpensive, and they help a lot. Your guitar will still sound OK acoustically, but you’ll be able to get more amplified volume before feedback occurs.

I own a Fender F-55-12 12-string acoustic guitar. Mine is sort of like the Toyota Corolla of 12-strings, nothing fancy but it gets me where I want to go every time. It’s a ply top, and features a built-in pickup. The pickup has no controls whatsoever. I know that doesn’t sound too promising, but actually this instrument works remarkably well. I’ve used it on tons of gigs and on several recordings (you can hear it on the song Time Machine). It has cheapo looking tuners, but it stays in tune quite well. It sounds great amplified, with no fuss at all.

This is the second 12-string guitar I’ve owned. When I was much younger, I bought a Framus 12-string, in 1974. According to Wikipedia, Framus went bankrupt the next year. I have always been a big Beatles fan, and the 12-string sound was something I wanted to get into for learning songs like Here Comes the Sun. I tuned the Framus at regular pitch, and after several years, the incredible tension that twelve strings exert on the top of the guitar starting warping the top. I didn’t know what to do about it at the time, so I did nothing and just kept on playing it. Eventually the warping behind the bridge just got to be too much and it was clear that the guitar had become unplayable. As the top warped and the bridge shifted, tuning the guitar became hopeless. I can’t remember what I did with that guitar. I somehow can’t imaging I threw it out. I probably gave it away to someone who wanted to hang it on a wall or turn it into a clock, I don’t know.

By the time the Fender 12-string came into my life, as a used guitar with its share of dings and scratches, I knew a bit more about the care and maintenance of guitars. That’s not to say I always do what I should to look after it, but at least I knew more about it. Like many 12-string players, I tune the Fender 12-string down a whole step, and capo it at the second fret. I play a lot of Celtic-influenced music with it these days, and in lots of different keys. I like playing open chords as much as possible, especially with the 12-string, so if we’re playing something in an inconvenient key, I move the capo to whatever fret I need, and then move it back to the second fret when we’re done. The problem with that is that getting the tuning just right on the 12-string takes a little time.

When I’m tuning it, I put the capo on the second fret and then tune it like a regular guitar.

I usually tune the treble E strings first, then the low E’s, then the B’s, the A’s, the G’s and finally the D’s. If I then move the capo to another fret, when I return it to the second fret I have to put it back exactly where it was or my tuning will be out of whack. I recently found a solution to this little dilemma; it may be perfectly obvious to you, but I’d never seen it done. It occurred to me to treat the second-fret capo like a nut, never to be moved once I got the strings in tune. The answer is to use a second capo for those other fret positions, and leave the first capo alone. It might look a little funny, but it works.