Baggas' Blog

Super hot day here today – 39 degrees (thats 102F). So hot in church that the best place to be was the baptism pool. Certainly on stage under the lights was a bit unpleasant – and I blame the heat for the number of mistakes I made – of which the worst was definitely when I mangled the lyric of ‘Salvation is here’ to sing “I don’t care that the world will know your name.” Not sure if anyone else noticed but I apologise – I’m definitely not so indifferent that I would sing about it.

Anyway, before I got jump in the pool it’s time for another pedal board update. Non guitarists can tune out now… I’ve made a couple of alterations – adding in an EQ pedal so I can shape or boost my tone when necessary. The other is the addition of the Digitech Jam-man looper, with another Boss volume pedal to control the volume. I currently have this running completely separate to the rest of my chain, with an output going into the direct line-in on the amp. The reason I’m running this separate loop is because I’m using some of Karl’s ambient guitar pads (see here for more info) to provide backing for some of the songs. They sound awesome and free the keyboard player to do some different stuff. We’ve had some nice ambient jams through communion.

So there it is. Click on the photo for a bigger version. I’d write more but this laptop is starting to burn a hole in my lap… (did I mention it’s crazy hot here today?) Cheers.

Super hot day here today – 39 degrees (thats 102F). So hot in church that the best place to be was the baptism pool. Certainly on stage under the lights was a bit unpleasant – and I blame the heat for the number of mistakes I made – of which the worst was definitely when I mangled the lyric of ‘Salvation is here’ to sing “I don’t care that the world will know your name.” Not sure if anyone else noticed but I apologise – I’m definitely not so indifferent that I would sing about it.

Anyway, before I got jump in the pool it’s time for another pedal board update. Non guitarists can tune out now… I’ve made a couple of alterations – adding in an EQ pedal so I can shape or boost my tone when necessary. The other is the addition of the Digitech Jam-man looper, with another Boss volume pedal to control the volume. I currently have this running completely separate to the rest of my chain, with an output going into the direct line-in on the amp. The reason I’m running this separate loop is because I’m using some of Karl’s ambient guitar pads (see here for more info) to provide backing for some of the songs. They sound awesome and free the keyboard player to do some different stuff. We’ve had some nice ambient jams through communion.

So there it is. Click on the photo for a bigger version. I’d write more but this laptop is starting to burn a hole in my lap… (did I mention it’s crazy hot here today?) Cheers.

Now this is an area where I think I’ve only barely scratched the surface yet, but the iPhone is a veritable treasure trove of useful apps for musicians and music lovers. Here’s a few of the ones I’ve tried so far…

Shazam

This is one of the Apps that iPhone users love whipping out to impress their friends. And there’s a reason for that – it’s just cool. Basically if you hear a song playing and want to know what it’s called and who sings it, Shazam listens to the song through your iPhone’s microphone, processes it, and then gives you the answer – as well as the option to purchase the song for yourself on iTunes or search for it in YouTube. Seems to work about 90% of the time. I’ve used it in the car, and even in a crowded restaurant, with surprisingly good results. Definitely worth downloading.

ooTunes

This is an internet radio program which you can use to listen to streaming radio stations from around the world. I first downloaded this when I wanted to listen to the JJJ Hottest 100 live instead of our usual 2 hour delay here in Perth, but have since discovered plenty of other cool stations from Australia and around the world. There is something cool about being able to tune into country radio live from Nashville, plug my iPhone into my HiFi and enjoy. Some stations are very high quality and even support listing of the currently playing song, lyrics display and links to buy the song. Other stations are poorer quality and some don’t even work so it takes a bit of experimenting to find the best stations. Also a warning this is probably an App you’d only want to use when connected to a WiFi network as I’d imagine this would use up your 3G download quota pretty fast. But keeping that it mind it’s well worth downloading.

Y! Music

Another app suggested to me by Deano, this is a similar program where you can tune into a range of radio stations. Seems to be less range than ooTunes (though still huge) but in general the stability is better with less drop outs and fairly good quality. I’m just tuned into a Reggae station at present. This program offers the ability to skip forward tracks so must work differently somehow. Free, and very useful.

Guitar Toolkit

There’s a myriad of guitar related apps out there. This is a paid one which I think was $9.99 – you can probably get much of the same functionality by getting a few different cheaper ones, but I found this to be the most elegant and powerful one I saw. It combines the following features :

• Tuner – accurate, works well, allows alternate tunings
• Fretboard / Scales – playable fretboard where you can display a huge range of different scales in different positions along the neck
• Metronome – Set your bpm and time signature (from a large selection) and off you go. Very useful
• Chord library – extensive chord library showing a large number of inversions/positions of just about every chord you can imagine. certainly more than I would ever use. And you can strum them all too.
• Instrument – this app can be used for 6 and 12 string guitars, 4 and 5 string basses, and includes a huge library of alternate tunings, as well as settings for left handed players

As I said, this is not free, but it’s an incredibly versatile and powerful app that I would recommend to all guitarists…

I still need to find a similar app with chord library and scales for my Mandolin. Must add that to my to-do list.

MiniPiano

Free single octave piano keyboard. Works fine, but very simple.

Piano Sharp

Similar to mini-piano but allows you to switch to higher and lower octaves. Also includes a library of classical tunes that it will play for you, and you can record your own compositions. Worth investing a few $ if you’re a keyboard player.

My Songbook

This is a very cool litte program, which basically stores a library of songs with lyrics and chords on your iPhone. Perfect for sitting around the campfire or a small group singalong or if you just feel like playing some music (I always keep a spare guitar in my car boot for such an eventuality…) It includes a built in search function so you can find songs on Google or Chordie.com, which has a large database of user submitted songs. You can also add your own songs but the uploading process is a little convoluted. There is an auto-scroll feature so you can use it hands-free while playing, and it will also transpose for you so you can find the perfect key to suit your voice. Definitely a great app to have. I’ve got 100s of songs ready on my iPhone for whenever I need ‘em

iPod

Ok, so this is not an App you can download in the store, because it’s a standard part of the iPhone, but I had to mention it because it’s just cool. This is about my fourth iPod to date, but it takes things to a new level. I love having my music constantly in my phone in my pocket. I can play any song in an instant and don’t even need to carry headphones around (although the sound is so much better with them – the in-built speaker is not too bad). Navigation on the iPhone (and iPod touch I guess) is a vast improvement over the classic iPods – I can find what I want so much faster. Also scrubbing within a song to find a particular part (eg a guitar solo I’m trying to learn) is easy and efficient. Cover Flow is just cool, like flipping through CDs on a shelf – great for getting ideas if I’m not sure what to listen to. And I really like the Genius feature – pick a song and it will create a playlist of related stuff – and the playlists are really good. Having access to the iTunes store on the phone is nice too in case I ever want to purchase a new song when I’m out and about.

This iPod is becoming much more a part of my daily experience than my old ones. The only limitation is that it only has 32Gig or less or space, but I still have my 160 Gig iPod classic for when I want to carry a more exhaustive music library around (or when I want to save my iPhone battery) – look forward to a 64 or 128 Gig iPhone in the years to come perhaps?

Haven’t done this before now but it’s a widespread practice on some of the guitar blogs I frequent to post a photo of your pedal board, so here goes (click on the picture for a higher resolution view)…

A couple of months ago I was fortunate to find on eBay this Gator pedal tote for thirty dollars. It’s brilliant – solid wood construction with a sturdy carry bag. All I lacked was some velcro to stick my effects down. A trip to Bunnings this weekend solved that and with a few hours work we have my current pedal board setup. Easy to carry and just requires plugging in to my amp, power and guitar and I’m ready to rock!

The current setup is :

Guitar —>> Boss FV-50H Volume >> Boss TU-2 tuner >> Boss AW-3 Auto-wah (to Boss FV-500L expression pedal for manual wah control) >> TC Electronics Nova System (with G-switch for preset selection) >> TC Electronics ND-1 Nova Delay —> Amplifier

I haven’t previously mentioned the Nova System but it’s a great unit with excellent effects including a range of reverbs, modulation effects, pitch shifters and of course delays. All of these are of a very high quality as one would expect from TC electronics. It also boasts analogue distortion and overdrive circuits which are quite good, and which I’m currently using as my main distortion sounds (until my own personal GFC passes and I can afford to invest in some new stomp boxes…) The added G-switch means I can change patches and still have complete control over the full palette of effects for each patch… works nice.

Nova system doesn’t include Wah – hence why I’ve added in my Boss AW-3. I’ve only recently tried this with the expression pedal and am very pleased with the quality of the manual wah. It’s better than my Cry Baby. With this on-board I can choose between manual-wah, humaniser (which I haven’t found a use for so far… maybe one day), and the quite handy auto-wah with tap tempo (good when I want to do a wah rhythm and sing and/or avoid the dreaded ‘wah face’).

This morning when I played I didn’t have my ND-1 Nova Delay on board but I decided to add it in, because really you can never have too much delay options at your disposal. And it’s too good a unit to leave gathering dust on a shelf with all my other lonely effects. The delays in the Nova system are very very good but the Nova Delay itself sounds just a bit better and is easier to adjust, in my opinion. This way I can program a range of other delays in with my presets on the Nova System, but always have my Edge style dotted-8th delay available on the ND-1 whenever I need it (which is increasingly often). I also quite like some of the other delays in this box, like the Slapback for example.

Anyway, that’s where it stands for now… might post more pics if I change it around (when I either solve my personal financial crisis or feel the need to swap in one of my other stomp boxes).

I don’t know if I would want to nominate my “favourite Beatle” – they are all awesome, although I’d probably if pushed lean towards the more serious ones (or the dead ones) John and George. Similarly I wouldn’t want to have to choose my favourite Beatles song, but certainly “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” would be right up there – not only is it an awesome song written by George, but Eric Clapton played guitar on the original. Few would probably immediately nominate the artist known once again as Prince in the same category of guitar heroes as Clapton, but check out his amazing, theatrical solo in this tribute to George… this man can wield a Telecaster with style!

And while we’re on the topic, here’s another great but different version of this song, from a Ukelele maestro Jake Shimabukuro. I picked up this guy’s CD while we were in Hawaii a couple of years ago – it’s amazing. I often get tired of people mistaking my mandolin for a Ukelele (it’s got twice as many strings and looks and sounds completely different people!) but if I could play half as good as this guy I wouldn’t mind so much…

Greetings from sunny tropical Queensland, where aside from missing my wife and kids I am suffering from serious guitar withdrawals. I can’t find any station on my TV where I am staying except ‘Max’ and have had the radio in my hire car alternating between my iPod, some new CDs I got, and the local country FM station (Kix – the Best Country in the World!) – why doesn’t Perth have a country music station?? seriously one of the worst things about Perth… anyway I digress… so yeh, I’m listening to lots of interesting music but have no guitar to play – very frustrating!

I seriously think that the airlines should allow guitarists to take one guitar in addition to their usual baggage allowance.. would make for a much happier, more melodic travel experience. How bout it, QANTAS?

When I got my first Fender from Nashville I flew with it half way back around the world to Perth, but at that point I was able to just count it as one of the kid’s pieces of baggage. Sadly I have no kid with me this time so no baggage allowance to co-opt. I shall have to think of some cunning plan to bring a guitar for my next 2 week trip here…

I did visit one of the local ACC churches here on Sunday : here’s my ‘mystery worshipper’ review. Smallish church but the music was good. Lots of energy courtesy of the excellent young guy who was worship leading and the youth who were moshing in the first couple of rows. The band was simple – they didn’t play any super complicated licks (except the bass solo in Salvation is here), but they were really tight and it was a nice mix (my only complaint would have been I couldn’t hear the girl plying lead guitar). Overall I took out of it that you can have a really quality sound without doing anything too complicated if you have a tight band who knows the songs, a good mix, and a dynamic worship leader who can really take the music in the right direction. I liked that they also (in a couple of songs) left space for people to worship freely, although even that was fairly brief and the worship leader had his finger on the pulse and the band followed him diligently. So nice to have a great worship experience away from home. I think it is valuable for us as worship leaders and musicians to visit other churches from time to time and get a feel for what others are doing.

Anyway I should turn out the lights… getting late here in Qld and I have another day of biostatistics awaiting me tomorrow (actually make it today now… zero hours). Just one last plug if you want to listen to some classic music – I just watched the movie ‘The Boat that Rocked’ – not bad for a laugh.. think Austin Powers meets Titanic and you’ll be on the right track. I can’t say I can recommend it as a good wholesome Christian movie (don’t say I didn’t warn you) but if you want a fun movie with some awesome old 60’s music… check it out.

And on that note I’m signing off. Keep on rockin’

My first good electric guitar was my Epiphone Les Paul Black Beauty. Prior to this I had an Ibanez TR series strat copy for many years but when I started getting more serious and playing on stage regularly this no longer cut it. So, since I couldn’t afford my dream guitar, a real Gibson Les Paul (one day it will happen), I went for the next best thing, an Epiphone. And the 3 pickup gold hardware Black Beauty custom model just looked so hot I just couldn’t resist.

It’s a guitar that looks awesome, and sounds great too, with a nice thick full tone and heaps of sustain. It was my main axe for a long time but in the last couple of years has languished while I’ve primarily used my two Fenders – my VG Stratocaster that I bought in Nashville and my beautiful Custom Telecaster. Both of these are fantastic sounding versatile guitars that are a delight to play and are perfectly suited to worship music… but a Les Paul is still the ultimate guitar as far as I’m concerned.

Recently I’ve been inspired to get my Black Beauty out again and start playing it, although it needed new strings and had a couple of little crackles in the input jack and toggle… so I decided to give it a complete overhaul to make it better than ever.

The Problem

My main criticism of the Black Beauty has always been that you can’t take full advantage of the 3 pickups in the factory configuration, in which your three way toggle switch selects between the following 3 combinations of pickups :

• neck
• middle & bridge
• bridge

I never liked it that you can’t have a typical Les Paul middle position neck & bridge combination, and also that you can’t isolate the middle pickup on it’s own or with the neck pickup. Ideally they should have put in a 5 way switch to give a strat style combination of pickup options. Years ago when I first googled this I discovered some methods of adding a new switch and rewiring the guitar, but they seemed overly complicated and I was never brave enough to do it since it was my main guitar at the time.

The Solution

This time I discovered a simple more elegant way of rewiring the Black Beauty that didn’t require any new parts. Basically the aim is to create a guitar with a volume control for each of the three pickups, and a master tone control (who really needs two tone controls anyway?). The toggle switch would switch between pickups in the normal Les Paul style, ie :

• neck
• neck & bridge
• bridge

However the middle pickup would always be “on” independently of that switch so using it’s volume control I would have the option of dialing it in to any of the above combinations, or dialing out the other pickups if I want the middle one on it’s own.

I found some wiring diagrams online which portrayed this setup. Here are the two most useful ones I found (click on the pictures to see larger versions) :

Now I’m pretty much an electronics newbie, but on first glance these didn’t look too complicated to me. Unfortunately, once I’d removed the plates on the back of my guitar and looked into the control and switch cavities, I found myself totally bamboozled by what I saw. Anyone who’s not such a tech-newbie like me would hopefully find it somewhat less confusing. But anyway, I managed to disconnect all the existing wires, and re-route the wire from the middle pickup which was going to the switch, and instead point it down towards the control cavity. At this point I “phoned a friend” and called in my talented brother Kyle who knows much more about this kind of thing. He took the guitar away and got it all wired up just the way I wanted it.

Results

So now it’s like I have a new guitar all over again – and all polished up and shiny and with a new set of Elixir strings. Nice to be able to isolate the sounds of the ‘normal’ Les Paul pickups in the neck and the bridge and to be able to add in that middle pickup when I want to. Also never having been able to use that pickup on it’s own I didn’t realise what I was missing – the middle pickup has a nice treble sound to it but with a little less bite than the bridge pickup… nice for playing clean arpeggiated rhythms or U2 type stuff (have always loved listening to their stuff but only now getting game enough to try playing it… spent half the evening at our home group the other night jamming out some U2 stuff on Gav’s new guitar… also helps that I have an awesome new delay pedal, which I may or may not get around to blogging about.. a TC Nova delay).

Anyway it makes the 3 pickup Les Paul the versatile instrument it always should have been… sounds great and I will definitely not be neglecting it as I have done over the last couple of years. It’s actually good to give me another tonal option in addition to my Strat and Tele – both of these are still a good fit for a lot of the worship music we do at church – the challenge will be picking the songs where the Les Paul will be a good option. My favourite song we used to do which sounded great on the Les Paul was ‘Take Me In’ which we did in a lot heavier style than the Kutless version. It was in F#m which is an awesome key for Slash sounding lead work and also allowed me to play in drop-D for heavier sounding power chords… but it’s been a while since we’ve done that one… I still haven’t got a song list for this Friday’s service, but I will definitely find a way to include the Black Beauty in there somewhere (especially since it’s my last service for a few weeks as I’m off to Queensland for Uni next week..)

Worship Guitar Guy – cool blog this. well presented with some useful posts. Just wish he would update it a little more consistently than he does. But for church guitarists, it’s definitely one worth checking out.

Craig linked to this list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of all time and as a guitarist I had to check it out. In general it’s a pretty good list. I agree with most of them and have a big chunk of them in my collection already but it’s perhaps pointed out a few gaps I need to fill. But seriously, number 40? Steely Dan? Who’s idea was that?

Anyway, here’s the top 10…

1. Jimmy Page – Stairway to Heaven (of course)
2. Eddie Van Halen – Eruption (can’t argue)
3. Lynyrd Skynyrd – Freebird
4. Dave Gilmour (Pink Floyd) – Comfortably Numb (nice)
5. Jimi Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower (yeh baby!)
6. Slash (Guns n’ Roses) – November Rain (sweet)
7. Kirk Hammet (Metallica) – One (good choice)
8. Don Felder / Joe Walsh (The Eagles) – Hotel California (classic)
9. Randy Rhoads – Crazy Train
10. Eric Clapton – Crossroads (would be a crime if EC didn’t make the top 10)

I’ve already introduced you to Mia, but my other new baby is a Fender acoustic/electric mandolin, which I got the other day.

I’m afraid I got a bit mixed up about which one belongs in the case though

Plenty more new photos (of Mia, not the Mandolin) online at flickr….

This Mexican duo are amazing - Rodrigo y Gabriela. And if you like this, you should definitely check out their album, which includes a version of Metallica’s Orion amongst other things. But for the meantime, enjoy Stairway to Heaven…

If you’re a musician then this piece of software is almost reason enough to consider switching to a Mac. GarageBand is my new favourite piece of software. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this program can do but basically it’s a powerful multi-purpose recording studio that can be used for anything from podcasting to creating a demo CD or just jamming around. We started off with some simple vocal stuff (Jenni recording some stories onto CD for the boys to listen to) and then mucking around with the boys using various vocal effects (like echoes, monster, mouse, and chipmunk voices). Now I’ve got myself some decent quality digital/analogue interface hardware so I can connect my guitars to my MacBook Pro. Even the basic level guitar effects included are not bad. The nice thing is you can lay down your raw guitar tracks and then change the effects after so as to experiment with different sounds.

For those instruments that I don’t possess and/or can’t play myself, Garageband fills the need, with a huge range of software instruments and a nifty “musical typing” keyboard for adding piano or any other virtual instrument. Of course you can also plug in a Midi piano but I’d have to work on my keyboard skills to make much use of any of that. One of the coolest things is that there is a huge database of pre-recorded loops to jam along to or I can create a “Magic Band” in moments in a range of styles – an instant backing band! It also integrates well with other iLife software like iMovie and iTunes so any tracks I record are instantly available to download to my iPod or mobile, or to use in any video projects – watch out YouTube!

As I said I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this software can do but so far I’m having a lot of fun

Continuing to work with my Mac – now starting to deal with connectivity to various devices. Firstly I was pleased to find that I could get my Windows Mobile 6 PDA phone to sync with my MacBook without too much difficulty. All it took was a download of a beta version of a program called Missing Sync and within minutes I was able to use Bluetooth to synchronise my calendar, contacts, to-do list and more with the relevant applications on my Mac. Changes were reflected accurately in both directions. It also enables you to sync a whole lot of other items including photos, videos, call and sms logs etc, but I haven’t really explored that. But being able to get this working so quickly was a bit of a bonus. I hadn’t expected it to be so painless.

A different story with my Digitech GNX4 guitar effects board. For many months I have had problems with this since Digitech were extremely slow in releasing drivers for it to work with Vista (they finally have within the last few weeks). And now it seems I can’t get it working with my Mac. Not sure if this is a problem relating to the new Leopard version of OSX or what but it’s quite frustrating. Not only can I not install the X-edit software for editing my effect presets on the GNX4, but I cannot even use it as a recording input via USB. It shows up in audio preferences and I can even “see” the sound when I play guitar on the little input meter – but when I load up recording software like GarageBand or Audacity it complains of MIDI driver clashes and refuses to work. Very frustrating – mostly I blame Digitech for this – releasing a product and not providing adequate software support to ensure it works on all platforms. I’m still exploring the forums and hoping for a way around this but I’m not holding my breath.

Finally I’ll just mention the cool iSight camera that is built in to the MacBook Pro. Very handy for recording little video clips like in the intro to the video below of Luke playing piano. The picture quality is very good and it’s quick and easy to use. The iChat software for video chat seems pretty cool, with some fun background and picture effects the kids enjoyed playing around with. Sadly it is not compatible with MSN which is where my few chat contacts hang out – but I’ll see if there’s a workaround for that. I’m not a heavy duty chat user anyway, but this camera may well come in handy for other things.

In the meantime, enjoy Maestro Luke…

Getting late here but I haven’t updated in a couple of days so time for a quick recap.

Monday morning I got up nice and early, bundled the boys in the car and drove halfway across Tennessee to Memphis, birthplace of the blues and home of The King – Elvis Presley. Was a smooth 3 hour drive through some beautiful countryside before we arrived at Graceland. And Graceland itself was well worth the effort, not only to see the 70s style home decorating, and Elvis’ cars and planes and gold records etc, but to really step back into history and connect with a man whose legacy is still with us today.  Graceland, and the city of Memphis, would have to be the rock ‘n roll Mecca. It’s a shame Memphis was such a drive because there was so much more I wanted to see there – Beale St, Sun Studios, the Gibson factory – but after a drive through the city along the edge of the Mississippi, we had to head back East to Nashville, along the aptly titled “Music Highway” – between these two cities there is an awful lot of music history.

Today I created my own piece of Nashville related music history (well sort of) – I visited a couple of guitar shops and picked up that Fender VG stratocaster I’ve been wanting. The first shop didn’t have any but when I walked into the second there it was hanging on the wall, in the exact colour I wanted – Suburst with maple neck. Actually it’s the same colour as the strat in the domino picture I’ve had in my blog banner all these years which is kinda cool. So far I’m quite impressed. The essential strat tone is great, and the simulations seem very good. The alternate tunings see to track flawlessly, and there’s virtually no noise from any of the guitar sims, even the acoustic ones. Before now all the acoustic simulators I’ve ever tried have had a terrible hiss. I also grabbed a Roland Micro Cube amp so I can plug in and play for the rest of this trip, and as a useful practice amp for back home. Wish I had the money and the luggage space to pick up some more guitars – they had a huge range of beautiful Fenders, Gibsons and others at pretty good prices – but until the next trip this one versatile guitar will have to suffice. Oh, I also visited the Gibson store on Sunday after lunch – never seen such a fantastic range of Gibsons in my life, including some quite unusual models. Might try and get back there tomorrow for another look, since we’ll be over that way again.

Anyway everyone else is snoozing so I’d better log off. If it get time over the next couple of days I’ll post some more pictures (including Graceland), and my overall (very positive) impressions of Nashville and more updates on what we’ve been up to.

Tuesday night Jenni and I went and saw Keith Urban in concert in Perth. For those who are not in the know Keith is an Australian country music artist who moved to Nashville in the 90s, was hugely successful over there, and ultimately married Nicole Kidman. I’d never listened to any of his music until a few months ago when we first started thinking about going and visiting friends in Nashville – since then I’ve bought 4 of his CDs and I really quite like them. And from there I’ve gone on to explore a bit more of the country genre.

Keith is nowhere near as popular here in Australia as in the USA – he probably gets more publicity here because of his marriage and rehab problems than he does for his music. So I was interested to see what sort of demographic the crowd would be – would it be just middle aged women, hard core country music fans, or teenage girls? In the end it was a mix – not too many cowboy hats in sight, but there were plenty of 30-50 year olds and a sizeable minority of younger people. Women certainly far outnumbered men.

The warm-up act were West Australian band The Waifs who played a tight and enjoyable set, however most of the crowd were impatient for the main concert. Keith did not disappoint. Visually the show was great – he had a great lighting setup and they made good use of the video screen including live video and synchronized video clips. But most importantly the music. Keith is a very talented musician. He sang a good mix of mostly up-beat songs from his last few albums. He’s got a good voice and is a surprisingly good guitarist. He played the majority of the lead guitar and solos for most songs although was backed up by a very able band playing a range of instruments including electric and acoustic guitars, mandolins, and banjo. Keith himself brought out an impressive armory of guitars including Gibson Les Paul and SG, Fender Stratocaster, Telecaster, and Jaguar and a couple of acoustics. He probably favoured the Gibson SG and Fender Tele most of all though. Keith seemed friendly and relaxed although he didn’t talk a whole lot between songs. I was surprised at how strong his Australian accent was when speaking – I expected it to have more of an American twang to it after so many years in the USA, so that was nice. Overall it was a very enjoyable show. As Jen remarked, he’s definitely one artist who comes across even better live than on his albums. I would certainly go and see him again if I had the opportunity.

Since the concert was at Burswood we stayed at the main Burswood hotel overnight (where the service was not as good as one would have expected from “Perth’s Best Hotel”), lost a bit of money at the casino and then went into Perth the next day to do some shopping.  Was nice to get a bit of a midweek getaway from work and the kids.

I love Wikipedia and I love guitars, so this is the perfect site for me : Wikipedia Guitar Portal.

Links to all the Wikipedia articles about the guitar, a guitar related article of the day (today’s is George Harrison), pictures, trivia, annniversaries and much more. Totally excellent!

Today has been one of those steady days at work. No major crises, no babies born (yet) and plenty of gaps between patients to catch my breath.

Just had a very pleasant lunch with a drug rep – good food (no dodgy sandwiches thank God), good gifts (a USB coffee mug heater and a really nice ceramic travel mug), and good conversation. I think we barely touched on the drug he was supposed to be selling but talked a bit about church and a lot about guitars, including what might be some of the best places in Nashville and LA to pick one up…

This weekend could be quite busy though. I’m on call for the hospital so how busy I am depends on how many babies are born. At this stage since we’re still planning our trip another baby boom would be most welcome to help pay for it all and for the shopping I want to do.

Also we have Owen’s first soccer match for the season tomorrow so hopefully I’ll be able to get away from the hospital and cheer on the kids as they chase the ball around the field.

This is awesome. I found it this morning via Phil Baker.net and immediately thought of my mate Joel from our band at church, who’s a bit of a Pachelbel fan. I must say though, the music/mix just seems a little bit too good to be just some dude playing along in his bedroom, but then again there are just enough wrong notes to make it seem authentic … anyway enjoy…

EDIT : after browsing YouTube a bit more it seems this guy (“FunTwo” aka Lim Jyong-Hyun from South Korea) is a bit of a phenomenon. There’s quite a few videos of him playing on there as well as a CNN story about his rise to fame. Inspiration for bedroom guitarists everywhere!

Over the years I’ve had a number of interesting free stats plugins on my website but most of them have either been inconsistent or stopped working entirely after a while. So I was very interested when my mate Dean showed me Google’s stats offering that he uses on his website. For him this tool is invaluable, enabling him to keep a detailed eye on the progress of his e-commerce and track the website’s effectiveness at transalting visits into sales. For me the interest is more just on how many people are coming and where they are from, but I’m still very impressed with Google Analytics. Plus being from Google, it’s most unlikely to stop working or disappear. I’ve only just started to scratch the surface but thus far Google analytics seems to be a very powerful tool. My digital life is becoming increasingly googlefied – first the ubiquitous search engine, then multiple gmail accounts for home, office, mobile (with fairly effective spam control), my customisable Google homepage, Google RSS reader, Google documents and spreadsheets, and now Google stats – all of these are tools I use on an almost daily basis. No wonder they were recently rated the most powerful brand in the world.

I’ve only had analytics running since Friday but the stats so far are interesting. At present the most popular posts are my review of Hillsong United’s newest album, and my post on the Fender VG Strat. The most referrals to my site have come from Google of course. Interestingly I’ve I search in Google for Fender VG my post is the second result after the Fender site itself, and if I google Fender VG stratocaster, I’m third, after Fender and the Harmony Central review. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the great people at Fender took note of all this traffic I’m generating and sent me my very own VG Strat to review?? Ahh it’s fun to dream…

Looks like it’s a week now since I’ve posted any kind of YouTube Video on this blog (and some of you are probably saying that’s a good thing), but I’ll make up for it now. It’s not a video of the kids or scenery this time but rather a demonstration of the latest product from Fender. Now for me, as both a guitarist and a techo-gadget-geek, this new VG Stratocaster seems to be the ultimate toy – a fully fledged American strat with the discrete addition of a small Roland pickup and two small control knobs which allow you to instantly change the tone and tuning of your guitar. No additional effects or special midi cables or anything required. Check out the demo :

I’ve already been wanting to get hold of a strat for quite a while now but this new product looks awesome! Time to start saving hard and praying that the exchange rate holds up and maybe, just maybe, I can check one of these babies when I hit Nashville in a couple of months. Sweet.

Take a look at Matt Van Stone’s in depth review, also this review and the Fender site for more information.

Also here’s another good demo video from the NAMM 2007 convention. The guy demonstrates how you can play all the parts to Stairway to Heaven just by flicking a switch on your guitar

Aussie dollar hits 17-year high. 13/04/2007. ABC News Online

Well this is not necessarily good news for everybody, but for those of us who like to shop online it’s not bad. Hope it stays like this (or higher) through into July and August as it will make our trip to the USA that much more affordable (plus it’s my birthday while we’re away and I’ve got my heart set on one of these…)

For any of you who doubt that the Ukelele can be cool, check out this awesome video by Jake Shimabukuro. I came across it while searching for the music/lyrics to one of my favourite Beatles’ songs, and was absolutely blown away. Makes me want to put my guitar down and pick up my uke, aside from the fact that I’m a total novice on the instrument. Anyway check it out – this guy is phenomenal!

Slacktivist: All the good music

Just watched a YouTube video on the Slacktivist blog that was annoying, sad, and yet bizzarely entertaining at times. Entitled “Satan’s Tool : The truth about contemporary Christian music” it is comprised of excerpts from a sermon given by a guy called Alan Ives. His thrust is that there are certain elements in the music itself that make a song ‘ungodly’, no matter how Christian or biblical the lyrics might be. Specifically he focuses on aspects of the rhythm such as the Boogie-Woogie (think Chopsticks), back-beat, and break-beat, that are so wrong. I’m sure glad he hasn’t visited our church – he would be horrified at some of the ’sinful’ rhythms we play. And what he would make of my amplified, distorted Les Paul guitar and the Jimi Hendrix effect tone I was using yesterday I shudder to think!

As Fred, the slacktivist pointed out, what is truly incongruous about this clip is that Ives is actually a fairly talented multi-instrumentalist with a reasonable singing voice, and when he gives examples on piano and guitar of the evil music styles we should be avoiding, he actually seems to be perversely enjoying himself. As Fred says :

Alan Ives desperately wants to rock. Standing at the piano, demonstrating the insidious way that boogie-woogie rhythms have tainted sacred music, he seems to be teetering on the brink of letting loose his inner Jerry Lee. Ives’ presentation reeks with the scent of frustrated musician — frustrated not by a lack of talent (he seems at least competent at the three instruments he plays in the clip), but by the fervent belief that God doesn’t want him to do what he seems passionately to want to do.

I think God wants us to worship him in whatever style we feel most comfortable, whatever helps lift our hearts towards him the most, be it Gregorian chant, old time rock n’ roll, or modern techno or metal. There is no single musical style that is inherently godly or otherwise. Obviously there needs to be compromise, since a metal church would drive certain people away, just like a church which does only the drawling 4/4 march tunes espoused by Ives would drive others away – however we should appreciate and validate that not everyone will want/be able to worship God in the same way that suits us. People like Ives are just another example of those ‘crazy Christians’ that turn people away from church.

PS – speaking of music, I committed the ultimate error a guitarist could make yesterday. I rocked up to church complete with my amp, effects board, music & leads … but no guitar! Was kinda embarassing to have to dump my gear on stage and drive home to collect my axe. I’m blaming the change back from daylight savings for messing with my brain – lol.

I’ve now been using Windows Vista for a few weeks on my home PC and laptop and I’m still liking it a lot. Very few crashes, and when a program does crash it recovers very quickly. The GUI is nice – looks good and functional, and the new explorer features are mostly an improvement.

But yesterday I struck my first serious snag. To date 95% of the software I have tried to install has worked fine, and those that haven’t worked have not been very important programs anyway so it was no great loss. But yesterday I discovered that x-Edit, the software for my Digitech GNX-4 guitar multi-effects board, simply will not install on Vista. This is a real shame because one of the coolest features of the GNX4 is the ability to be able to edit effect patches on the PC and hear the changes in real time as you play. I can also backup my effects onto the PC and use or edit downloaded effect patches from the web, including a great site called MFX supermodels which has a huge selection of different Amp emulators and Artist presets (eg Clapton, Hendrix, The Edge, Metallica, Satriani and just about any other guitarist/band you can think of – he does a great job at emulating their tones). The other benefit of the PC interface is that you can use it for multi-track recording although I haven’t seriously played around with that much.

But for the time being I can’t use any of that functionality on Vista, which is a real shame. I’m not totally helpless as I can still edit the patches on the board itself (it’s just a little more fiddly that way) and I do have an old XP laptop lying around somewhere that I’ll probably use purely for this reason. Will have to keep an eye on the digitech website for some updated software though.

Reminder to self : must ensure guitar is clean before playing it in public.

I was most distracted in church this morning during the message by the huge white smudge on my (black) acoustic guitar. probably no-one else noticed but it was not good. Time to get myself one of these guitar cleaning cloths I think.

I mentioned a week ago that I was selling some of my old guitar effects pedals in order to get myself a multi-effects board. Well the auctions went quite well and on the recommendations of the guitar shop guy and one of the other guitarists at church, and after doing a fair bit of research on the net, I ended up getting myself a Digitech GNX4 Guitar Workstation, with the sale of my other effects covering most of the cost.

Thus far I’ve only had a few hours to play with it and have only scratched the surface of what it can do, but already I am very happy with it. The quick list of features on board is :

• Built-in 8 track Digital Recorder
• Hands-Free Recording
• Built-in 24-bit USB Audio/MIDI Interface
• Built-in General MIDI Drum Machine
• Built-in MP3 Player
• Built-in Compact Flash Card Reader
• Built-in Direct Box with Active Speaker Compensation
• Unlimited Guitar and Bass Amp Models using GeNetX Processing
• Huge range of effects, using up to 11 at a time
• Internal dbx Mic Preamp with +48V Phantom Power
• Stereo Balanced XLR and 1/4″ Outputs
• 24-bit A/D/A Converters
• 80 User/80 Factory Presets/Additional 80 user with optional Compact Flash card

I must say I agree with what some other people on the net have said in that the factory preset effects patches leave a fair bit to be desired. Many of them do not sound all that great and some are unusable. However, the GNX4 redeems itself in the fact that it’s effects patches can be edited on the computer via the USB connection. The software is very versatile and allows easy manipulation of a huge range of settings for each patch. Within each individual effects patch you can actually get a greater range of tones as you can select between two different Amp models (or a warped combination of the two) and have the ability to assign the various pedals to toggle multiple effects at once. Changing settings on the software controls the GNX4 board in real time so I can play my guitar and hear the changes as I make them on my computer. There are over a thousand user presets which have been uploaded to the Digitech website, many of which sound excellent, particularly those produced by ‘guitar3456′ who also does this kind of thing commercially. Loading these presets onto my GNX-4 with a bit of extra tweaking myself, I have been able to achieve some absolutely brilliant tones, hampered only by my own mediocre guitar playing. I’ve ran the board through my amp, headphones, and the PA system at church, and the sound quality is superb, particularly in stereo.

There’s so much more that this baby can do that I haven’t even touched yet. I’ve only briefly fiddled with the drum machine, and have yet to go near the 8-track recorder, looper, MP3 player, and vocal effects, yet it’s already one of my favourite toys.

Also today I discovered another cool thing about this unit. I picked up a Guitar World magazine on the way home and it includes GNX 4 settings for each of the songs listed (and you can even download the patches from the website) – so now I’ll be able to play the Star Spangled Banner and sound just like Jimi … well maybe.

Well yesterday I finally had the RACGP written exam, which was composed of two papers lasting 3 and 4 hours respectively. It certainly wasn’t a walk in the park and there were a few curly questions right out of left field. I think that doing months of study probably wouldn’t have made much difference, and I still have my doubts as to whether this is really a good assessment of how good a GP a person is. I won’t say too much more but I think I probably passed, and I’ll let you know in a few weeks. The second part of the exam, the practical component, is in another 4 weeks time.

Today we’re off to see a concert in Perth from Australia’s highest paid band, who according to today’s paper earned $45 million last year, and are international superstars. I’ll write a review of it later, perhaps. Anyone got an idea who the band might be?

Oh, and for any guitarists reading, I’ve got a few effects pedals selling on eBay at the moment. I’ve decided to offload some of the pedals I don’t use much and use the proceeds to get a multi-effects board. I was thinking about the Boss GT8 (since I always tend to be a Boss man – love their gear) until a guy in the guitar shop tried to convince me to get the Digitech GNX-4, which in addition to amp modelling and effects, also has a built in 8 track recorder, MP3 player and drum machine, and much better computer connectivity. The effects sound good on both, but they are the kind of units that will require hours of tweaking to get it right. Biggest downside to the Digitech unit that I can see is it lacks an Auto-wah, and I love my Boss AW-3 autowah pedal. Anyway I need to sell my old pedals first so if you’re interested, take a look at what’s on offer.

During the long wait while my car was being serviced yesterday I happened to walk past Music Force in Mandurah (that’s in the mall near the foreshore opposite where Edwards Restraunt for anyone who might want to go there – I believe they also have a store in Rockingham near Hungry Jacks) Whilst there I had a play with this guitar, an Ashton SL29/12CEQ. which is an electric acoustic 12 string guitar. Sure it’s no Maton ECW80/12 but for a pretty cheap guitar the sound wasn’t bad. The onboard equalizer controls also featured a built in tuner which was a cool feature I haven’t come across before. It also had 2 inputs, one for a standard guitar jack, and another to plug a 3 pin mic lead into it, which is a good idea for the stage. All in all it seems like a pretty good instrument at a very cheap price, and ideal for someone like me who wants to dabble in a bit of 12 string stuff alongside regular electric and 6 string acoustic stuff. In fact I’d imagine it would make a great birthday present as well… In case you didn’t catch it the first time, the store I saw it in was Music Force Mandurah

Guitar players be prepared to turn green with envy. I got my new toy yesterday – an Epiphone Les Paul Custom Black Beauty guitar. It was delivered to my work after being shipped from Melbourne on Thursday, a pretty impressive turnaround time. It’s such a sexy looking guitar, and had all the girls at my surgery gathered around within minutes (single guitarists take note…)

And it sounds even better than it looks! I couldn’t believe how the difference between this and my old Ibanez strat copy. It’s phenomenal. Makes even me sound good. Its got such a rich fat lead tone with incredible sustain. The rhythm tone is a lot brighter than I’m used to in the neck position – took a little getting used to to start with but already I prefer it. Certainly one of the best things I’ve ever purchased.

I walked through the doors of the music shop and the man behind the counter said “hi” – I replied “hi” back and walked into the shop, intending to have a look at some guitars. I was not prepared for what came next…

“you can leave your backpack at the door there mate.”

Stunned for a split second I didn’t know what to say, so I just dumped my bag there at the door. But as I walked around the shop I got more and more irritated. Did he think I was going to try and steal something? Treating me like I looked like some kind of teenage delinquent. Even if I was going to steal something I don’t think I could’ve fitted a guitar or anything of value into my small backpack. I was tempted to say something to him, like “I probably earn three times what you do mate, I’m not gonna steal your crappy stuff” but I wisely held my tongue and left the store, unable to comfortably browse, but from what I could see they didn’t have the guitar I was looking for. Neither did the other store I went to, although they were much nicer, letting me walk around with my backpack, and test out a couple of their guitars through this monster 4 channel amp. They told me it would take 4-6 weeks to get the guitar in I wanted so I didn’t go with them either.
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