A very considerable step up from Fender’s lower-end Classic ’60s Strat, the Classic Players ’60s Stratocaster pushes Mexican-made quality into a whole new arena.
The guitar, while being assembled in Mexico, was designed by none other than Master Builder Greg Fessler of Fender’s famous Custom Shop, and it shows––the instrument sports a number of top-shelf components that belie its rather meager street price of around $800.
Those features include better electronics (a pair of Custom Shop ‘69 singlecoil pickups,) noticeably better hardware (a two-point vintage bridge that’s apparently available for the first time outside of the Custom Shop,) fatter frets, and a thoroughly modern (read: flat!) 12” fretboard radius. Read more…
This post is less of an article and more of a story. Last week there was a music festival in my area (Portland, Ore.) that featured indie bands from across the country including the amazing Blitzen Trapper. I was not at the festival myself but I know one of the people behind it and he passed this story on to me.
Things were going smoothly up until the last day of the festival when a band failed to show up on time. Apparently, most of the band was ready to go at the scheduled time, but the bassist had disappeared. Postponing the set for 5, 10 minutes is not a big deal, but pretty soon 20 minutes had gone by and the bassist was still no where to be seen. The bassist had been seen around the festival earlier that day so they suspected that he was still in the vicinity. The band, in an attempt to speed up the search as well as keep people entertained announced the problem to the crowd and got everyone involved in the missing bassist fiasco.
After 30 minutes, my friend who helped put on the event decided that they needed to put someone – something – anything on stage to keep people from getting bored and leaving the festival early. While thinking about this he happened to hear someone playing guitar. He looked around and found a guy in the corner of the lounge singing and strumming his guitar. The guy had never played a major gig in his life. He was just a nice dude that liked to play guitar. The staff member approached him and asked if he would be interested in going on stage. The guitarist didn’t hesitate to think about the offer. He gladly accepted, agreeing to play 2-3 songs until the bassist situation was settled.
The guitarist went on stage and played his heart out, an opportunity he may have never had if he was not prepared for anything. The story has a funny ending, too. While the unknown guitarist rocked out on stage, the bassist was found asleep on a couch. His band, I imagine, was royally pissed off.
An easy way to get better at playing guitar, or even just to warm up before playing, is with scales. A scale is just a series of notes differing in pitch. The blues scale is one of my favorite scales to warm up with. The Blues scale involves the following notes: C Eb F Gb G and Bb. If you don’t understand music notes yet, don’t worry. That’s a different article altogether.
Play the scale below starting with the first note (C), first finger, on the low E string, at the 8th fret on your guitar. Then play the fourth finger position on the low E string. Next, play the first finger position on the next string down (A). Then play the second finger position on the A string and so on.
Numbers indicate fingers: 1 = index, 2 = middle, 3 = ring, 4 = little 8th fret
|--1--|-----|-----|--4--| - high E
|--1--|-----|-----|--4--| - B
|--1--|-----|--3--|--4--| - G
|--1--|-----|--3--|-----| - D
|--1--|--2--|--3--|-----| - A
|--1--|-----|-----|--4--| - low E
Play the scale from low to high until you are comfortable with it. Then try playing backwards, from the fourth finger on the high E down. Combine the two and see how fast you can “surf” the scale. Good luck and practice hard!
Several days ago I discussed how to start the equipment side of your home recording studio on $75. The other side to recording is the software. Obviously, the assumption behind a cheap home audio setup is that you already have a computer at home. The question, then, is do you have a Mac or PC?
If you have a Mac, you have it made as far as recording software goes. Using the included GarageBand software on your Mac, you can easily record tracks, create layers, add effects, and manipulate the audio.
If you have a PC, you will need to download the free, open source program Audacity. Audacity is not nearly as nice as GarageBand, but it will do the trick for your initial home studio.
If you went the route of my suggested $75 studio setup which includes one microphone, you will capture better sound if you record each audio source separately. In other words, don’t just play your song into the mic. You will need to put the mic against your amp and record the guitar track, then record a second track for the vocals, and so on. Layering the tracks is very easy to do in the software mentioned above.
I have been wanting to record my music for a while now, but was scared away from it after walking through the Pro Audio dept. at a local music store. However, after some shopping around, I am happy to say that it is very possible to hook-up a very basic home studio for about $75.
There are even cheaper routes that you can take… like using a USB plug-n-play mic, for example. However, if you are even semi-serious about recording, I recommend investing in a foundation of very basic audio equipment that you can then expand on in the future.
Here is my $75 home recording studio:
$24.99 Nady SP1 Microphone and Stand Package (includes mic, mic clip, stand, and XLR cable)
$29.99 ART Tube MP Studio Mic Preamp (includes power source)
$1.99 Musicians Gear Microphone Windscreen Black Foam
$9.29 Hosa XVM105 5′ XLR to 1/8″ cable
This dirt-cheap setup has everything you need to capture sound – the mic is clipped to the stand and connected to the preamp via an XLR cable, and the preamp is connected to your computer via the XLR-1/8″ converter cable.
If you want to upgrade the microphone to something a little nicer, opt for the Shure SM58 for $99.99.
This package would cost a little bit more ($165):
$99.99 Shure SM58 Microphone
$12.99 Musicians Gear Tripod Mic Stand
$7.89 Musicians Gear XLR cable
$2.79 Musicians Gear Basic Mic Clip
$29.99 ART Tube MP Studio Mic Preamp
$1.99 Musicians Gear Microphone Windscreen
$9.29 Hosa XVM105 5′ XLR to 1/8″ cable
As you can see, things can get expensive fast. It just depends on how much you are willing to spend for the initial studio. I found all of this equipment at Musicians Friend with the exception of the Hosa cable, which is from Sweetwater.
At your parents over the weekend and have the urge to shred? Here’s a guitar flash game that might fix your craving. Use the S, A, and arrow keys to play. http://www.strumstrum.com/games/scgmd.swf
My high scores are 26502 for Into Infinity on Amateur and 23176 on Professional. Shouldn’t be to hard to beat my score, or show me up on the Guitar vs Piano level.
This video is a bit old, but it’s one of my personal favorites. If you aren’t familiar with Flea and Chad, they are the bassist and drummer (respectively) for Red Hot Chili Peppers. Flea is absolutely one of the greatest bass guitar players of all time. Chad does some really cool stuff with him in this clip. If you’re interested, there is a short instructional bit at the end.
