I tend to regard the New Year’s resolution like New Year’s drinking: not necessarily a bad tradition, but one I feel no guilt about ignoring most years.
But since I have some specific musical goals in 2013, I figured I’d share ’em — and open the floor to anyone who feels inspired to disclose his or her sonic goals for the coming year. Please post your personal promises to comments!
Here’s my short list:
UPDATE: Here’s a direct link via SoundCloud. The file is downloadable for free. Sheesh — never occurred to me that folks might, like, actually download it and overwhelm my feeble little DropBox account!
While most people are baking cookies or lining up at the grocery store for 45 minutes to buy those frickin’ chives they forgot the other day, Dawn Richardson and I just put the finishing touches on Mental 99’s chaotic cover version of the Doors’ “Hello, I Love You.” (Mental 99 is our digital guitar/analog drums duo band.)
Have a free copy on us! Grab it here. (Download available.)
Why? Because we love you, man!
Seasons best from Mental 99!
(Nerd details: all guitar tracks played on my James Trussart Steelcaster though Apple’s MainStage software. Drums tracked at Fantasy Studio A, Berkeley, California, by Jason Carmer and Alberto Hernandez.)
UPDATE: Wow, I can’t believe all the cool stuff folks have been posting to comments. I find myself feeling quite inspired about the future of instrument — when I’m not laughing so hard I spit coffee all over my laptop. Thanks for all great ideas. Keep ’em coming! 🙂 :thumbup:
Prophecy is for suckers. Who’s stupid enough to go on record with bold prognostications about the future of music and music-making, given the near-certainty that the words will reappear someday to bite you on the ass?
Well, me. And, I hope, you.
So I invite my fellow foolhardy loudmouths to join me in sharing their half-assed guesses wise and well-informed predictions about our brave new fretboard future.
The author of the most compelling prediction wins one of my hand-built stompboxes. So does the author of the one that makes me laugh hardest.
Post your predictions to comments. I’ll go first. 🙂
My pal Linda B. is a killer rock and roll drummer who also plays a pretty mean guitar. She’s decided to form an all-female Sex Pistols cover band, with her assuming the duties of guitarist Steve Jones.
An avid rock historian, Linda did her research, which quickly led her to Gibson’s limited edition Steve Jones signature model Les Paul Custom, a slavishly accurate replica of Steve’s iconic axe.
(The original, which had previously belonged to New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain, was not used on the Sex Pistols’ early singles or the Never Mind the Bollocks album, but was his main stage instrument.)
Just one problem: the $6,706 price tag.
So Linda bought a used white Epiphone Les Paul Custom for $299, ordered the same pickups that are in the original and the signature model (a Gibson 498T “Hot Alnico” humbucker in the bridge position, and a 496R “Hot Ceramic” humbucker at the neck), and found some sketchy online vendor who sells replicas of the original’s pinup-girl stickers, plus an even sketchier vendor who sells fake Gibson logos. We popped in the pickups, slapped on the stickers, and made a darn good replica for a bit over $500.
Wanna hear it?
My incoherent headline is inspired by one of my favorite music quotes, from the 1947 film The Song of the Thin Man: Detective William Powell is pursuing a clue based on a classical music theme, and suspicion falls on a hipster jazz musician. Powell asks another jazz musician whether the suspect was the sort of player who would use classical themes in his solos.
Absolutely not, sniffs the musician: “Swingin’ the classics is strictly off the cob! A gate who knows his dots takes his Beethoven and Brahms straight.”
Vintage translation: “It’s corny to mix classical and jazz. A swinger who can read music tends to prefer classical music in its unadulterated form.”
Modern translation: “Fusion sucks. Gimme the pure shit.”
Do you know your dots? Do you care? I happen to be a dot geek, and I don’t regret it. But really, it’s not that big a deal. And if I rattle off my favorite non-classical musicians (especially guitarists), well, the vast majority ain’t readers. I wish I could play as well as any number of guitarists who wouldn’t recognize middle C if it poked them in the eye.
During the Maker Faire a few months back, I wrote about the new wave of absurdly inexpensive 3D printers, and fantasized a bit about a not-too-distant time when many of us will be printing our own guitar parts at home.
Create Digital Music — one of the music sites I visit daily — has been all over this topic recently. A few days ago, CDM kingpin Peter Kirn posted this excellent article discussing both the current limitations and eventual promise of this emerging technology. And this week Arvid Jense added this fine post focusing on six digitally printed instrument, including the eye-catching Atom guitar picture here. There are more interesting examples of luthier Olaf Diegel’s work at the Odd Guitars site.
It’s hard to get a take on how good these instruments actually sound. Veteran electric guitar tinkerers know that you can slap strings and a pickup on just about anything, and a good player can make it sound pretty decent, and the plastic compounds used in most current 3D printing aren’t likely to be coveted for their acoustic properties. But it’s hard not to be intrigued by this smooth performance from multi-instrumentalist Dean Marks:
So what would YOU print if you had one of these gizmos?
I’m not a huge fan of drummer jokes. I know plenty of smart drummers, and it seems to me that we should accord them every bit as much respect as if they played an actual musical instrument.
Still, I bridle at the notion that they are more verbally skilled than we are.
I’m talking about the drumming tradition of referring to stereotypical licks via funny, short phrases. Shouldn’t we guitarists and bassists have a similar shorthand for our clichés? It won’t necessarily make us play any better, but at least we can display a little verbal creativity, especially on those days when musical creativity calls in sick.
For those who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, allow me to link to a few examples. Here’s a nice explanation of the ever-popular “Pat Boone, Debbie Boone” fill:
There’s an interesting thread over on the Forum, started by reader Double D, who asked:
“Do you have a central core concept or inspiration that drives your playing? Are you squirrelled away with obscure harmony texts, or practising modes till your fingers bleed? Do you have go-to chord substitutions that define your sound? Do you have a creamy harmonic centre?”
Like most great questions, it’s really hard to answer (though some folks managed to reply in extremely articulate and compelling ways). I’ve been pondering it myself for the last few days, and the best answer I can come up with is something along the lines of what I hinted at in this recent post on chromaticism, namely a liquid sense of modality based on the notion that most of us Westerners really only perceive two modes — major and minor — but that there’s a vast amount if “wiggle room” when it comes to placing individual scale degrees.
To put it another way, most of what I play is based on simple tonic triads, major or minor, but the placement of all the other scale degrees is highly negotiable. For me, the advantage of viewing scales this way is that they remain grounded in harmony, and vice-versa. As opposed to the way many of us were taught modes: as purely mathematical sets of intervals divorced from their chordal implications — or just a bunch of diatonic scales that start on the “wrong” notes.
Hey, why is everyone nodding off, staring out the window, or checking their phones? Wake up and talk about the methods of your madness!
Writers and musician always steal from each other. How many great novels and stories take their titles from music? How many great songs and compositions are inspired by works of literature? (Answer: a metric buttload!)
But strangely, musicians have been slow to pick up on one of best practices of modern writers. I refer to the writers group, a gathering of struggling authors (they all struggle) who share their work in progress with each other, seeking constructive criticism, general encouragement, and a chance to schmooze with their peers.
For years I participated in a novel-writers group here in San Francisco. It was a fantastic experience, and one that made me regret the fact that musicians usually don’t have similar outlets. Sure, you can play your work in progress for friends and family, but that’s not the same as sharing it with other artists who are grappling with similar issues.
Submitting your work for peer critique can be scary. The feedback is occasionally misguided. Egos can intrude. But in my experience, at least, the helpful conversations outweigh hurtful ones by a hundred to one.
One cool thing about going indie with tonefiend is that fact that I can finally host my own geek forum! It’s already up and running — but it’s a sad, vacant space that desperately needs to be populated by cool people and cool ideas.
How to get there? Sleazy bribes! Cool prizes!
Here’s the deal: I’ve pre-populated the forum with a few topics and threads. Just come on over, register, and chime in on any thread that interests you — or better yet, start one of your own. And on September 1st, 2012, the three forum members who have consistently contributed the liveliest content as judged by some dork me will get a bitchin’ stompbox laboriously hand-built by the same dork me. I can’t disclose exactly what the pedals will do, but I can promise they will be cool, useful, and genuinely unique — original designs, not some lame-ass Screamer clones. And if I manage not to vaporize my hand with the TechShop laser-cutter I’ve been learning to use, they’ll even have wicked laser-etched enclosures.
Naturally, I hope the tonefiend forum will also be cool and unique, and that you’ll enjoy geeking out there even when there’s no contest. But hey, I’m not above greasing the skids with free stompboxes as needed.
Please read the forum rules, though.
FORUM RULES: Be cool.