tips Archives - tonefiend.com

Cue the Drummer Jokes!
Playing Drums with MIDI Guitar

strung_out_121213_small

I’m thrilled to bits about a show I’m playing Thursday eve in San Francisco featuring two guitarists of impeccable skill and taste, plus me.

Teja Gerken and I are co-hosting a monthly solo guitar night at El Rio, my groovy neighborhood dive.Our guest is the amazing Eric Skye who, among other things, plays gorgeous solo guitar versions of classic Miles Davis tunes. If you happen to be in cold, cold San Francisco this week, stop by and say hi!

I’ve been doing the digital looping thing with Mental 99 for a few years now, and man, trying to work out solo arrangements with live-looped MIDI drums has been seriously humbling. You know all those jokes we love about how drummers speed up, slow down, drool, and generally disappoint? I can do all those things and everything else a drummer does, except occasionally play a competent groove. Some of the problems have to do with MIDI tracking in general, and some are simply general suckage. Man, it sure makes me appreciate my brilliant musical partner Dawn Richardson, who never speeds up and drools only rarely.

animal_drums

But those who can’t, teach. So I whipped up a little tutorial on playing drums with MIDI guitar. The first half covers the moves, and the second half features a live improv based on my fave afrobeat pattern. (Tony Allen is my rhythm god.) It also includes some of the hybird synth/guitar sounds I’ve been exploring, like double single-not lines an octave lower, mixing trashy guitar and trashy organ, and of course, space pigeons. (I stole the organ line from my pal Robin Balliger.)

In other news: I’ve been speaking to the ultra-knowledgable Rob Hull from Tube Depot about creating a minimalist DIY amp kit inspired by our conversations here. Lots more details to come. Tube Depot has a track record of making real nice amp kits, and Rob’s documentation/build instruction are the best in the biz. I reviewed their cool tweed Champ clone kit here.

Oh — anyone score any good holiday presents yet?

I’m Performing Solo. Yikes.

joe_solo — Seriously, dude — where’s my band?

Anyone have much experience playing solo instrumental guitar gigs?

Even though I’ve been playing since the Pleistocene, I’ve only performed solo once since I was a teenaged classical guitarist. But I’ll be making the ~~stumble~~ leap this Wednesday, Sept. 11th, when I perform north of San Francisco at the Sleeping Lady Cafe in Fairfax. I’ll be a guest at Teja Gerken’s monthly fingerstyle guitar showcase, performing alternating tunes with Teja and Mark Goldenberg. (Gig details here.)

Both Teja and Mark are gifted players and composers — check out the evidence here and here. I believe they’ll be playing acoustically, while I’ll be dragging up my whole frickin’ looping/synth rig. Because what could provide better counterpoint to an evening of refined and intelligent fretwork than a goddamned electronic racket?

Oh — that one solo gig? It too was a multiplayer solo guitar night featuring some astonishing players: Will Bernard, Jim Campilongo, and Buckethead. Will, Jim, and Brian were as amazing as you’d expect. Meanwhile I put everyone to sleep by performing the entire Bach A Minor Lute Suite on steel-string acoustic. (I’m sure the audience was duly impressed by my formidable memorization skills as they nodded off.)

I’m not repeating that mistake! This time it’ll be fuzz and feedback, with a double side order of ring modulation! :pity:

So got any survival tips for performing solo? Any good jokes for during the inevitable laptop crash and reboot?

If all else fails, I can borrow a trick that the late, lamented Danny Gatton once shared with me in an interview: A lifelong tinker, Gatton built a stompbox designed to blow the power in any club. If he didn’t like how the gig was going, he’d click it on, plunging the venue into darkness and calling it a night. (Or so he claimed.) Hmm — maybe that’ll be the next tonefiend DIY project….