Shubb Capo

This post is for the guitar players.  Here's a picture of my Shubb capo from a few weeks ago.  A certain little girl who shall go nameless used it for a teething ring last year.  The rubber got all chewed up and the cap on the screw got lost.  The Shubb was a great capo to have for use on my electric guitar when such a need arises.  You can apply just the pressure you need without making your strings go out of tune.

So recently I was looking to get a new replacement capo and was considering getting a G7th because of a recommendation from a friend.  But then I saw the price and wasn't so excited.  So I planned to get the tried and true Shubb.  Before I pulled the trigger on a new one, I decided to visit their web site to check over their products. Much to my surprise, I found a replacement parts page for Shubb Capos that had the two parts I needed to fix up my old one for a dollar each with no shipping and handling--outstanding!  I ordered them and within a few days I had my old capo fixed up good as new.

The GrooveSpot

One of my most favorite groove-meisters has started a blog.

Fretless Bass

Last week I had a bad case of G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), which resulted in me picking up this new-to-me bass. I've wanted a fretless bass ever since I tried one out about 5 years ago. The sound of a fretless just sings to my heart like nothing else, but I haven't been in a place where I've felt like it was the right time to have one, until this deal came up.

Here are some of the vital stats:

• Zon Custom Sonus 5 string fretless bass
• Redwood Top
• Ash Body
• Phenowood Fingerboard, partially-lined (lines only extend under the B string), custom extension (28 frets on the G string side)
• Graphite Neck
• Bartolini Single Coils and an NTMB preamp (9V)

Todd Johnson and Kristin Korb Jazz Concert

A couple jazz musician friends of mine are swinging through Portland and are going to be performing on Sunday, September 30 at 5:00pm in Hillsboro at Our Place Christian Church. The concert is free with a pass-the-hat type offering.

Our Place Christian Church
1400 NE 48th Avenue
Hillsboro, OR 97124



Todd's site: http://www.toddjohnsonmusic.com/
Kristin's site: http://www.kristinkorb.com/

Amazon.com to Launch DRM-Free MP3 Music Download Store

Oh Yeah. I've been waiting for to Amazon to sell individual songs in downloadable MP3 format.

Mixing Sound

I've started mixing sound at Ethnos. Tonight was my first full night running things. It's been fun and interesting and a tad bit challenging. Challenging because there are quite a few things to remember, starting with hooking everything together. There are a lot of cables that need plugged into the right places. There's also quite a bit to be thinking about during the service as well. But it's all been fun and a good change.

All in all, I would rather be at the source making the music, but this is a very close second.

Oh, and thanks goes out to Joel, whose been a good teacher.

Kitchen Party II

The second Portland/Vancouver Kitchen Party for Musicians and Singers was a little shorter for me since Josiah was at his grandma's and I wanted to go out on a date with Angie that night. I had a good time though. My guitar chops were a rusty feeling though. It seemed like just about the time I started to get a feel for the song, it was over.

The surprise for me was when I picked up the djembe (drum) that Angie gave me for Christmas (and made by the talented Dave Keetah). It was the first time I'd played it in a live setting with other musicians. It was just really enjoyable because I didn't have to put as much thought into it. I could just settle into a nice simple groove and just enjoy the song.

The Pandora Podcast

For those who are interested in finding out more about various element of music, I've found the Pandora Podcast to be pretty interesting, educational, well produced, but way too short. You can learn more about techniques of drumming, vocal harmonies, vocal recording and guitar effects for example. Being in an audio format is great because you can hear examples of what they're talking about. Plus, there are more resources on the episode web pages.

It's been useful for me as a guitar player to get more insight into areas I might not be so familiar with on the specifics. With each episode being eight or nine minutes long, I alway find myself wanting more when it's done.

Kitchen Party

Yesterday, I went to the Portland/Vancouver Kitchen Party for Musicians and Singers. I had a good time. I met some interesting people and played along with my electric guitar and later with my bass.

I'm looking forward to the next meetup and also just seeing where this goes.

Desert Star

Here's first draft on a tune I'm calling "Desert Star". It makes use of the E-Bow Plus I got from my Mom for my birthday to lay down the ambient background. Thanks mom!



More details about the tune are available on the ODEO page.

eMusic

Sweet! I had a small birthday part at Angie's parent house tonight. I got a gift subscription to emusic.com from them as a birthday gift.

Thanks Tom and Dorothy!

Jazzy Tune Preview

Here's a little tune-in-progress that I'm working on. This is not a complete tune by any means--it needs a bridge section for one thing. However, I wanted to get what I did have out here to share. I was partially inspired by recent posts by Chris and Troy of their work, I've also wanted to share things I'm working on for a while now too.

All in all, this is a bit jazzier then I usually tend toward, but I tend to associate jazz with Christmas and well, that’s where my mind was.

More details can be found here.


powered by ODEO

Music, Science

One of the things I like about music is how mathematical it is. You can describe so many aspects of it using math and science. There is theory to describe how to put something together that "sounds good". That order and structure and way of analyzing in order to understand really appeals to me. But the best part is that music transcends all of this to be something so much more beautiful and meaningful than numbers, formula, and all understanding.

I think the whole universe is the same way. I've always been interested in the physics of things. I've been getting into astronomy and cosmology as of late and I'm just intrigued by the how things are work on a large scale. Dark matter, dark energy, black holes? Wow. But, better than all that, it does work and in just a way so that we can all live. Not only that, but things looks pretty spectacular from my limited, little perspective.

Bass Playin' Fool

I played bass at Westport Church out in Hillsboro this morning. It was good to play since I haven't played the bass anywhere for nearly a year.

I was filling in for their bassist who was out of town. I'm going to be playing a bit for them here and there for a while because they're a little short of bass and electric guitar players. I'm really excited to get a chance to play electric guitar because that's where my passion has been lately. I will say though, that it has been fun digging the bass out, dusting it off, and straping on that big slab of wood and letting the low notes rumble out. I'll get plenty of chances to play bass because I understand their bass player really likes playing electric guitar as well, so I want to make sure I give him a chance to fulfill that desire.

It's kind of an interesting story how I got connected with Westport so I'll try to give the condensed version. I'm subscribed to a email group called ChurchBass that has around 500 bass players on it from around the world. A message was sent out a few weeks ago that a church in Hillboro needed to borrow a bass amp for someone who was filling in on bass for them. I replied that I had one to borrow so that's how I got connected to Jamie, their Director of Worship Arts. The funny part was that the bass player turned out to be Todd of Ethnos fame.

Christian Musician Summit

I want to go to the Christian Musician Summit. Which is funny because a couple weeks ago I had totally convinced myself that I didn't need to go this year.

Oh well, I've got until the September 8 early bird registration cutoff to change my mind again.

Robert Fripp - Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

At first, it seemed odd to me that Microsoft would go to the trouble and probably decent expense to get Robert Fripp in the studio to record sounds for the new version of Microsoft Windows (Vista): Robert Fripp - Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session

But it starts to make sense as I pondered what Robert Scoble points out:

I was sitting in the studio listening to Robert Fripp a few weeks back play for hours. Why? To find one 2.5-second clip of sounds.

Why take that effort? Cause that sound will play trillions of times over the next decade.

Althought I'm not a huge Robert Fripp fan, I do recognize him as an excellent source for putting together soundscapes.

Anyway, this combined two of my favorite subjects to be geeky about (music, technology), so I had to post.

My Electric Guitar Setup

Chris asked about my guitar setup, so I thought I'd lay the basics out here.

I started with a Fender Texas Special American Strat, and added a L.R. Baggs X-Bridge (a piezo pickup) to get a pretty convincing acoustic guitar sound. The X-Bridge signal goes to a DTAR Mama Bear to pre-amp, neutralize piezo pickup unpleasantness, and add in acoustic guitar emulation as needed.

The Strat's magnetic pickups go into my DigiTech GNX4, which is just crazy all by itself. Sometimes I refer to it as my semi-portable MP3 player.

Anyway, I then mix in my piezo/Mama Bear signal into the GNX's line inputs so I can have straight acoustic sound, electric sound, or my favorite: the acoustic/electric blend. It's pretty fun and almost too flexible with all the tone-tweaking possibilities.

The signal currently is just going into my bass amp/cab--a Fender Bassman 60.

So no tubes--at least not yet...