A couple years ago, my interest in performing gave way to an interest in recording. Previously, I focused on creating the best possible band that I could–achieving tight performances, keeping levels even, preparing for gear issues, and so forth. Knowing that gear and drummers and venues would come and go, I did my due diligence and showed up with a tuned, eq’d guitar and road-worthy microphone, and thought no more about how exactly the guitar would sound.
As I began to record, I started thinking a lot more about how to get the sounds I imagined. Then, being a true INTJ, I started thinking about how to learn to get those sounds in the most fruitful way with the least hardship.
I’m collecting the advice I wish I had been given when I picked up a guitar, with the fanciful thought that I would have known what to make of it at the time. I hope you enjoy it.
Tone Chasing: Preface
April 15th, 2009A Goofy look at 3pdt Wiring
March 9th, 2009If you’re just not getting the wiring for a basic guitar pedal, and need to go really basic, you’re not alone. This illustration uses a metaphor for the parts of the 3pdt that will seem like overkill to those who got it right away.
What I think is helpful is having a way to think of the connections that doesn’t require you to keep things like “the far pole and the middle throw on the in-most side” in immediate brain access. Using this illustration, you could just call that one “black lightening” (sorry, see title of this post).
The “3p” in 3pdt is for the “3 poles” labeled super, black, and wonder. The “dt” is for “double throw”, and the throws come in sets of superheroes or songs, all or nothing. So, you get super-man, black-lightning and wonder-woman as a set. Or, you can have super-freak, black-velvet, and wonder-wall. Those two states – songs or superheroes – are the only two available.
A Guitar Pedal Layout
February 23rd, 2009For me, the most challenging mental tasks involve things that flip flop, reverse, or have mirror images. This is a particular issues in making a guitar pedal. You need to connect the battery to the dc jack, but the dc plug disconnects the battery (what?). You layout the top of a perf board and solder the other side, wire a pot so that clockwise does what you want it to, etc. So, I thought it would be worth seeing a whole pedal with all the parts, all in one place.
The linked image is enormous to accommodate larger printing if you want (the ruler is at 300 dpi). I got a few helpful comments and suggestions over at Experamentalists Anonymous, which is my favorite place to learn these things.
Stereo Phone Jack
February 17th, 2009The input of a lot of guitar pedals uses a stereo phone jack. The thing that seemed tough when I started making pedals is that the lug for soldering the tip is the lug furthest away from the tip. After color coding it doesn’t seem so confusing to me.
Guitar: Triads
February 3rd, 2009This is a step up in difficulty, and something I wish I knew how to find earlier. The following fretboard again uses the key of G, but this time the overlay shows the most common chords for the key of G (G, Am, C, D, Em) as triads on the three treble strings. I found it difficult to get the hang of using triads because, as you can see, they are tightly packed. What helps me is to see where they fall in the pentatonic positions that I had mastered (mastered in the sense that I could move easily between them).
Guitar: The Pentatonic Scale
January 27th, 2009The pentatonic scale is just like the “regular” scale, but omits the 4 and the 7.
Guitar: The Major Scale
January 19th, 2009I’m a big fan of using graphics to understand music. My primary goal for the following “hi-res” guitar scale is to allow selective attention, meaning that the user can easily concentrate on what they want to see. So, if you want to focus on the positions – the scale starting from different notes on the bass string – you can. But if, for example, you want to find a way to play a lick further up the neck, you can easily ignore the position outlines.
The scale is the same top and bottom, with a few helpful postions lightly outlined. I could outline a scale position for each of the seven starting bass notes, but it quickly becomes more than one can filter through easily.
Guitar Chords in G
January 13th, 2009The following graphic is an oversized set of chords, those most frequent in the key of G. The overlayed dots are the G major scale, and you may notice that the overlayed scale does not change. So, this shows us that all of these chords are comprised soley of notes from the G major scale. More to come…
