Jack's Utopish social media and recording a Quip

Gotta love what Jack Conte tries to do. All the creatives out there, feeding the social media beast which has turned into a piece of crap algorithm driven attention seeking advertisement focus killing machine so billionaires can make more billions...creatives don't stand a chance of being truly creative if they need to feed that machine or are creative as a hobby with the day job pays the bills. I like my day job, but I also love creativity and I have been dabbling in sharing my creativeness with the world via the internet for more than two decades now. When Jack started up Patreon several years ago I jumped onboard - it's a way for fans to support artists.

So he's just released a bunch of updates which included the concept of "Quips" - shortform videos on the platform, with the idea that they are just quick and not overproduced. Behind the scenes style. I can get onboard with that! I have been making Jawmunji Talks videos on and off for years, generally I go longer form, but I have also done a few Youtube shorts. Seeing as I'm a recovering perfectionist it's good for me to be less-producey, so I just recorded a Quip and popped it into Jack's machine. Will that machine turn ee-vil? Maybe, but I want to say no. People will game it for sure, but will it intentionally be made ee-vil like the social medias? I want to say no. Will it get traction? Maybe! It will if we feed it! Can Patreon be the vehicle where fans can actually support creatives? I kinda think it already is! I love the "1000 Fans" notion - that you "only" need 1000 fans to pay you $100 a year and that is a decent income. I think of my youngest daughter in her various bands, I know she has followers, and she sells merch at gigs, and it gets devoured. I helped her make 30 high quality CDs for Hyperfest - all sold (note to self - write a blog about that). The lino print cheap t-shirts she makes move easily at a greater profit...heh, I think the CDs are much better value for money, but there you go!

The point being that she is already supported by local fans who show up and buy merch at all her gigs. So that, applied world wide on the internet seems like an obvious step. But the current social media, the streamers, all the internet machinery for it - designed to make the maximum amount of money for shareholders and if the creatives got nothing from it then that would consider that great.

Stepping off my soapbox, I decided to post a Quip. I love to talk about creative stuff that excites me. I love to engage with people who also love to talk about the creative stuff that excites me. I don't need to make a living from being creative, but I wouldn't stop people who want to support me as well! I do have a bunch of mates already on Patreon - in the early days I used to offer stuff so I amassed a number of supporters - but I stopped offering stuff (it was in a very very grey legal area) - and encouraged supporters who were expecting stuff to cancel their subscriptions - but offered cheap tiers for anyone who wanted to keep supporting me. Some did! Thank you supporters - it is great to engage with fans but when someone supports financially it changes things...people making a sacrifice because they believe in something. They don't have to sacrifice but they want to.

Let's switch to tech talking.

I would dearly love to have a dedicated room with cool gear set up to make it super easy for me record a video whenever I am in the creative mood. I do not have that. So just now I spent more time setting up the gear than recording the video. Shame. So here are some notes to Future JAW to help him out:

• OBS Studio: still amazing. Keep using it for this sort of thing.
• Web cameras: I'm running a classic Logitech C922 Pro and a C920. Both are dated - I'm going to buy a more modern replacement for the C920. Important - don't saturate your USB bus with webcam feeds, try to make sure each one is plugged into a different USB bus...currently I have one on the laptop and one on the dock.
• Microphone: my ever-useful Zoom H1D. Turn it on a set it into audio interface mode. Plug it into USB, it's low bandwidth so it will be fine. In OBS Studio go into Settings->Audio and point a Mic/Auxiliary Audio to it.
  Remember! Windows->Sound Settings for Input and Output definitively show what is connected. All apps refer to the devices there including OBS!
• PeSonus Studio 1824 interface, via Reaper DAW: this is the complicated bit. Guitar instrument cable -> PreSonus interface -> USB to laptop -> Reaper DAW -> OBS + headphones. I use the 1824 in ASIO mode, which is the best way to interface with an interface, and Reaper can apply fx and send them back to the interface, so I plug my headphones into the front of it and get near-zero latency. HOWEVER that isn't shared on the Windows laptop I use UNLESS you turn on Loopback=virtual in the PreSonus Universal Control application. Once you do that, you will see in Sound Settings an input for PreSonus Virtual - which you can then add to OBS as another Mic/Auxiliary Audio.
• OBS Studio again: brings it all together. I've tried different picture-in-picture/split/shifting/etc methods for the webcams, I went for portrait this time, one webcam on top another on the bottom. In Settings->Video I went Base of 1080x1920 (ie portrait HD). Then it is a case of adding the two webcams, cropping and moving them to fit. The Zoom HD1 microphone I initially added a gate filter, but the electric guitar acoustically was getting through the gate when I dug in. If I increased the gate I had to shout to trigger it. So I added a mute/unmute hotkey and remembered to deal with it. Not great.

When in doubt, just talk through your problems with a chatbot - that's what I did. General life tip with chatbots: you have to have some basic knowledge of what you are trying to achieve, you have to half know the answer or they will lead you down a never ending garden trail to nowhere. You have to have  a year's worth of built up a knowledge of knowing how to get what you need from a chatbot, accumulated from trial and error...hence I wrote the notes above to help Future JAW when he forgets things.

What I need to do to be a little better for next time (and there is always a next time, I have been doing "behind the scenes" videos for 20 years) - at least one better webcam, and a microphone stand that puts a microphone close to my mouth so I don't have to worry about mute/unmute, so I can just use gating.

Oh and I played Pink Floyd Learning to Fly. I was aiming for a more "Pulse" live feel, so more bassnotes, wasn't quite getting it, still undecided whether I should be hitting it that hard. The G string rings a bit too much, wasn't happy with my playthrough. BUT THAT'S ALRIGHT...if you want perfection use AI slop.

Short on You Crazy Diamond

Since I'd been learning Part I to Shine on You Crazy Diamond, and since it is a public holiday here in Western Australia, and since I seem to have come down with a cold from my kids, and since I have been practising it on an electric, and I am getting better at Reaper DAW, and I have a decent interface, and two web cams, and people seem to like shorts...that was a long list...anyway, I recorded a video.

My play through was okay - this was the second full take I did. I punched in - looks like 8 bits from the picture below - that I didn't like. The tone was the electric with neck pickup only, tone knob at 3, with a lot of treble added in Reaper, and Magic 7 reverb set to Chambers - Small & Dark, wet at 20%. Sounded okay to me, but I'm no tone guru...I spend most of my time playing classical guitars.

I set the two web cameras on top of each other which is a trick I saw my mate JS do.  Since I'm sitting under a staircase at a desk at home with only a fluorescent light and the glow of the monitor, so the video is kinda gross. It would be good if it didn't reflect so much light off my bald forehead and show up my too-much-good-living belly...not to mention how old I'm looking these days!  My call however is that we are in the last days of any videos ever being real - so enjoy some reality.  (He says having edited out the audio bits that he didn't like).

One day I will have a nice place to record!  Won't be getting any younger, but maybe I'll be using an AI skin by then :-)

So this arrangement is heavily inspired by Yoni Schlesinger, who has been playing variations of it for at least 10 years, he reposts it every few years. These days he sings with it as well, very nice. But I didn't grab his tab, and I didn't really study what he did, I just took a lot of direction from his videos. I actually played more of the studio recording, and my arpeggios come out differently to his. "But JAW, isn't this something you could write down in tabs?" No. I'm only really concentrating on the lead notes. What my fingers are doing in the other places is up to them, I'm not really controlling them. They are just doing their own thing. Which is good, because I already have enough to think about!

I have only played with Part I so far, and the very start of Part II.  So this is going to upset a lot of people who were just getting into it.  I kept it shorter than 3 minutes so it would be a YouTube Short. I did acutally play on for an extra 30 seconds, which you can find here

In deciding to do this I thought of my mate Steve who loves this song and at work I have inflicted my practice/learning on once per week for maybe two months now...and I know my olde internet buddy Ryan G will be happy with this...and sorry Yoni if this takes views away from you, I'm not expecting it to, you play it much better than me. Thanks for the inspiration!

Cole Clarke CCFL2EC-SRE and YouTube Shorts

"Birthday present." That was the rationale behind buying a new acoustic that is worth more than my car. Okay, I drive an old car.

It's a Cole Clarke CCFL2EC-SRE dreadnaught, serial 241142042, as mentioned in my last post about acoustics. I went back the next day and bought it. Managed to convince them to knock $100 off and throw in a set of strings but it still came in at $3.3k. Cole Clarke do many different woods for the CCFL2, and the price seems to vary within the $2k-$3k brackets...but of course I had to like the one with the increasingly rare gold standard of soundboards, a Sitka Spruce top, a wood that is hundreds of years old, Indian Rosewood back and sides, and my absolute favourite, Ebony fretboard and bridge. Neck/headstock is Australian Queensland Maple. So woods - kinda as good as it gets and therefore priced appropriately.

I showed it to my wife "yeah, looks boring, about what I expected" "But the exotic rare woods! And the simplicity of design with clean lines, it's beautiful! (looks at the rosette, which is two circles) Oh, okay, maybe it is a little boring. But listen to this!"

Acoustically it sounds great. I did a side by side with the Maton and the Cole Clarke and my wife immediately recognised the better tone. Plugged in is sensational, which is the primary use I'm going to have for it - playing through a house PA. Definitely needs an introductory video.

...which I decided I would have another crack at making a YouTube Short. I kinda tried a few years back and it all seemed too hard I gave up very quickly. After an extremely brief internet search, all I had to do was make a portrait video, keep it short, heh, and upload it. YouTube will recognise it is a short and deal with it accordingly.

Now I've seen some shorts, and I could picture one in my head, it's interesting how they always wrap and restart. So I mentally prepared it with a cool epilogue as a wrapper. Mentally reminiscent to Pink Floyd The Wall wrapper "Isn't this...where we came in?" or maybe a bit more like Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds "a green flare, coming from Mars". Yes I do think about these things. But ultimately it is wasted, only 15% of viewers made it to the end.

I set up the video camera in portrait mode and recorded me playing a few songs both with a mic and through my audio interface. I spoke a little. I played "Heart of Gold" fingerstyle, I played "Shine" with a pick, I played the first verse of "Wish You Were Here". Ultimately I only used Heart of Gold as the mic demo and Shine as the plugged in demo, which was a little unfair - I should have just played the same song and A/B'd it. I had too much going on in my brain at the time. And I failed on two and a half important points - I forgot to put my wedding ring on (I don't wear it overnight), I forgot to shave (it was Easter and I hadn't shaved for two days, being unshaven makes me look really old) and I should have put some lip balm on (my lips are always dry, the Australian sun was not kind to me as a child). So the one closeup made me wince a bit...when I was editing it "Argh, I need to do that again. Nope, I'm not doing all that again."

Shorts are a strange beast. Sure I'd had 1.5k views in the first day, but that is completely at the whim of YouTube. I've seen this profile before with my standard videos, was even more pronouced with the short. They give you a run, back off, give you another run, then stop. If you pay them money, you can be promoted. I guess that is great if you have something to sell, so the cost of promotion is less than the money to be made from selling. Maybe I will try that one day, record a short of me playing a favourite like Wish You Were Here, link it to a full playthrough, link that to my tab, and promote. As an interesting experiment. Not that I need to make a living from music and haven't agonised about what to do with tabs including my initial foray into Patreon.

So here's two interesting stats, views over time and percentage watched, blue is subscribed green is everyone else:

I can see why so many YouTubers are turning to shorts - they get a lot more eyeballs, and while it looks like the retention drops off really quickly, it's on par with normal form videos. YouTubers always ask you to subscribe - audience attention is much higher. But the real tell is still the same - you are still totally at the whim of YouTube how many eyeballs you get - look at this video, 91.9% of views are decided by YouTube!

My answer to YouTubers who are looking to make a living? You must have something to sell, ad revenue is just a bonus. Promote your videos as much as you need to convert viewers into customers. The cost of promotion is not free, just pay it, so long as the cost of promotion is less than your revenue, you can tweak around the edges as you go to maximise your cut.

Lucky I'm just an engineer dabbling in playing guitar purely for enjoyment and interest - being a YouTuber seems incredibly stressful!

Reaper, you've done it again. ReaSamplOmatic5000.

As I mentioned earlier I decided to make some drum tracks to play along with for my fingerstyle arrangements, equally to improve my tempo and equally to make them more engaging to audiences. I've played with drummers many times over the years, solo fingerstyle, it makes sense. Solo fingerstyle already incorporates a bassline so don't need a bassist, it incorporates a melody so don't need a singer, it incorporates a rhythm so don't need a rhythm guitarist are out...there's some but not a lot of percussion so drummers are a good fit! I've talked about playing with drummers many times as far back as 2009 and 2010 and at an open night a decade ago not to mention a gig I did this very year at work with my mate Geoff.

I'm not a very good drummer. I own an entry level electric drum kit, a Yamaha DTX Explorer, I dabbled a bit years ago, decided drumming is best left to drummers. But I've always had a love for the drums and how they fit with guitars, and it goes right back. Let my wax nostalgically for a moment.

In the mid 80's I was a Commodore 64 nut. It's where I learnt to program - C64 basic and even hand coded 6502 assembler. Musically, there were a few programs I used on it, one was "Funky Drummer". I would make drum loops and play along with them endlessly. Sadly no recordings of that exist anymore...I do have a few cassette tapes with various stuff on it, perhaps one day I will stand up a cassette player and see if I can find any!

In the mid-late 90's a mate of mine at work introduced me to the DOS multi-track sequencer "Impulse Tracker" which was a whole new level of drum machine, with actual drum samples! I had a lot of fun with that. That eventually gave way to "Modplug Tracker", being Windows based, but I never enjoyed it quite as much. I wrote several original songs in the late 90's early 2000's during the time I was getting more into arranging fingerstyle covers. Fingerstyle had always been my first love, but I had a fun experimental "full band" period of time which ended around 2001.

Impulse Tracker

ModPlug Tracker

Yes, recordings exist from that era...I need to find the masters and remix them...one day. I've never shared any here before, I'm not sure why - possibly because they just aren't any good - but why not. Have a listen to these badly mixed songs I wrote - using Impulse Tracker, my electric guitar, bass and some vocals. Ask me if you want me to talk more about songs from my distant past :-)

Blue Metal:
Sheister Meister:

Which brings me back to the topic of the day, making drum tracks. I'm not going to revive any of that old software, but I have my DAW Reaper, and I have Kenny Gioia, The Legendary Reaperian of Lore. He showed me the FX called "ReaSamplOmatic5000", which is EXACTLY what a sample tracker in the context of Reaper should look like. Good job Repearians. It took me a while to get my head around it, but it is just what I needed. Essentially using MIDI to track samples, making it the drum machine sequencer I loved from my youth. I've already churned out a backing drum track for "Wish You Were Here". What really makes ReaSamplOmatic5000 special for me is that I can us my little AKAI MPK mini mk3 MIDI device as a drum trigger - OR - I can use my Yamaha DTX Explorer as an actual kit through my PreSonus interface to record the drum hits, when I have drummer in the house. Or even, olde school, just click away in the MIDI editor and make them all like I did when I was a kid.

So nice. I've got my WAVBVKERY vintage kit drum samples, I will need to look for others for the various songs I do - but the 70's Ludwig is a great starting point . It will take some time, but it will be good to make these drum backing tracks.

JAW's guide to using ReaSamplOmatic based on Kenny G's tutorials

References: Youtube 1 Youtube 2

Note for Windows OS: In Options->Preferences Device, if you are just using your computer soundcard, then don't use DirectSound, it is gross and laggy. You could use ASIO (either the one that came with your MIDI controller or ASIO4All) but the driver takes over windows sounds so you wan't be able to listen to youtube/music/etc. A good option however is WASAPI, which is Microsoft's answer to ASIO. If you use it in Exclusive mode it is pretty close to ASIO, but then you may as well use ASIO. In Shared mode it is quite good - not too laggy, and you can listen to Youtube at the same time. Change your Block size to be low for low latency, but high enough that you aren't hearing crunchiness.

• Make a new track called Drums. Set it to Record, set the Input to MIDI, All Channels.
• Right mouse click Input, Track Recording Setting, turn on Quantise to 16th notes.
• Right mouse click Input again, set Record MIDI to Overdub. That way each pass just adds drums.
• Make another track called "Kick". Add the FX ReaSamplOmatic5000.
• In the ReaSamplOmatic5000 drag in a Kick Drum sample. The View->MediaExplorer is a great way to browse your sample library, when you have found the one you like, drag it into the waveform window.
• Set the Note start and note end to both be the MIDI number for your target MIDI note. It's a good idea to turn on View->Virtual Keyboard so you can see what number/what is happening.
• Set Min vol to -inf if you are using a touch sensitive (velocity) MIDI trigger. If you are just using your computer keyboard, not really an issue, it's only on/off
• Make sure the Mode is set to Sample (Ignores MIDI note).
• Route your Drums track to the Kick track by dragging the routing icon from one to the other. Set Audio to Off, you only want to route MIDI.

You are now at a stage where you have a MIDI track to record your MIDI triggers, it passes the MIDI down to a drum track, the drum track listens out for the one specific MIDI note and then plays the sample when it gets it. You can add other normal FXs to it, adjust faders, panning, etc, like a normal track.

A few other tips/tricks:

• Obviously, add a track per drum type!
• You can include multiple samples per track, for instance I will have a "Hat" track, and it will include an open and close hat sample.
• In the case of an open hat which rings out, you can make it stop ringing if another hat strike is made. Add an FX "JS: MIDI Choke", set the Choke Note Range Start to the the MIDI note that you want to kill the ringing drum, set the Affected Note Range Start to the MIDI note of the ringing drum. In the ringing drum, set "Obey note-offs" to true. Now, if you trigger an open hat, then a moment later trigger a closed hat, the open hat sample will stop ringing, so more like a real drum kit.
• When in the MIDI editor, setting to "Named Notes" view is nicer, and double right click on a note to name it.
• You can change the Grid size in the MIDI editor in the drop down box at the bottom of the window.
• If you need a different time signature, for example there is a 2/4 bar, then right click on the bar in the main window, Insert Time Signature/Tempo Marker, set it to your new time signature, and then repeat the proces in the next bar to change it back to the previous timing.

What's happening October 2024

I've continued to do a lot of mixing. It's easy to load an SD card into the deck at my local church and record all 32 tracks, and then you have 4 songs to experiment with. I have a mate from work who has been doing that sort of thing for years, and trained, so it's great to pass mixes to him for a critique. It is a universe into itself the world of mixing, I've got at least my toe in it now. The more I do, the more I practise, the better and faster I am getting at it. I'm not aiming for perfection, I'm aiming to be competant at it - so when it actually counts I might be able to mix a song with some skills.

From a fingerstyle guitar point of view, you may think "What's the point JAW?" I have noticed it is making me think more about production. What does a song need? How can I fit the bassline in? Percussive strums to make a strong beat? The melody IS SO IMPORTANT! There is no doubt that mixing a multi-instrumentalist song will improve your overall musicianship - and it helps improve your ear. So would many other musical pursuits - like learning more theory! What is the best bang for buck? I don't know. But I do know that I'm enjoying the world of mixing and I'm more likely to do something that is fun than something that may be more beneficial, but I don't currently have any interest in.

Meanwhile I need to do a stocktake on fingerstyle arrangements that I really should record. Before I forget I can play them :-)

• Don't Dream it's Over - Crowded House
• It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards - Tame Impala
• Come on Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners
• White Room - Cream
• I Want to Break Free - Queen
• Horse With No Name - America
• Rain - Dragon

There's few others that I have put effort into but I'm not sure if I will continue to pursue them...

• Got What You Need - Eskimo Joe
• Live it Up - Mental as Anything
• Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
• Toccata - Bach (Sky Version)
• 19-2000 - Gorillaz
• It's All Over Now Baby Blue - Bob Dylan/Graham Bonnet
• Fly Like an Eagle - Steve Miller Band

Mmm. Fly like an Eagle.

Mmm.

<Some Time Later>

I'd forgotten how groovy that song is! I noodled further with my previous efforts from a few years back, started developing a cool bassline. I needed to refer to the chords (ultimate guitar) and a quick check of melody (musescore). I had a rough for the verse and the chorus pretty quick just from memory. I then re-listened to the song again :-) So much cool electronics in it. But I can't really emulate that. The bassline rocks, but the studio recording relies on the synth and the electronics to carry the, um, chord extensions progression? You can hear the chorus and verses moving through some chord extensions, but it's not in the bass. The bass is just hanging onto an A, popping up from a G on a beat, but it's hanging on the chord of Am. I couldn't come up with a chord progression and hang onto the A without it sounding a bit boring. But I can make the bassline emulate the chord extensions.  Maybe the first verse could be just on the A?  So much I could do!

And so groovy! I hooked up my practise electric guitar, dialed in a tiny bit of distortion and recorded a quick rough so I'd remember what I was playing with, have a listen!

Fly Like an Eagle rough thoughts:

Custom Neck Installed

It finally happened, but not what I had planned... Back in March I bought an electric guitar, and then ordered a custom neck which arrived in May at which time I realised I had accidentally specified a Strat neck pocket instead of a Tele neck pocket.  While I _could_ have made it fit, I sat on my hands for a few months agonising over it, and then eventually snapped and bought a cheap second hand Strat copy from the pawn shop and installed the neck on that.

It's been an interesting exercise, I've learnt a lot.  Here is some of it!

Thanks again Leo Fender for standardising bolt on necks. The Strat copy I bought is the same neck as a real Strat and the same as what a bloke in China made with his bare hands. So it fits just fine. Fair enough, you changed the design between Strats (overhanding fretboard in the neck pocket) and Teles (flat ended in the neck pocket) to get an extra fret, but that really threw me!

Looks pretty! I like the classical guitar
fretboard and the overall simple clean lines

Handmaking the nut is not complicated, but it is tedious.  There are numerous tutorials on the interwebs so I don't need to write it up here, but I am going to talk more about spring spacing in another blog. By the time I had finished the nut I was already dissatisfied with it and I will be re-making it, but it will do for now. Shout out to Mr Manchester for his handy spacing calculator. When I make my next better one I will talk about it some more then.

Aligning the neck is nerve wracking.  Clamp the neck into the pocket, put on both E strings and then rotate it until the neck is square.  Then drill!  I reckon I was pretty close - I won't need to fill the holes and do it again.

Something as simple as drilling tiny screw holes to hold the machine heads in place.  This seems so obvious in hindsight - but screw on the machine heads first, wiggle them so they are perfectly lined up, then screw the little holes to lock them in place so they don't rotate. Not before! Streuth, I don't know what I was thinking - I was rushing it.

Enough talk about the build! What is it like to play? How does it sound?

Ha ha - I don't know yet!  I think I like it! I think I don't like it! I am going to remake the nut because the intonation for the low E is awful - the action is too high - and the top E needs to come in, it's too close to the edge of the fretboard.

But it sounds like an electric guitar, so I took a moment to record something electric guitarish:

A shout out to my Patreons who help fund projects like this, and keep me supplied with fresh guitar strings 👍

Musescore Swings!

"If you gotta ask, you'll never know" - an old response to "What is swing?"

My hands found swing a long time ago - my brain had no idea what they were doing, but it sure felt groovy.

So when I started tackling arrangements with swing, I just couldn't get down what I was playing. I generally left the swing out with an instruction "just listen and play it like that". Occasionally the swing was so prominent and important I had to put it in the sheet. For example in 2019 I attempted to write out "Gold" by John Stewart as swung and got this:

Which I quickly abandoned because "something just isn't right, and wow, that's hard to type in."

But it's actually a good insight into how swing is notated - that above is text book "shuffle" - so I discovered. Secret let out - swing is delayed offbeats. Forcing the notation into triplets like I did above is a hard shuffle where the normal offbeat (the "and" note between main beats) is pushed out from 1/2 of the way to 2/3 of the way to the next note.

So when I recently took on "Horse With No Name" I once again came up against how to get that swing feel into Musescore. Because when I played the song I realised that my hands were playing swing. (How do they do that? How do they know when something swings, and when something doesn't? See opening sentence.)

So in my frustration I googled "Musescore swing". And what do you know, it's been there all this time! Musescore for the win!

In Musescore version 3, you actually just add text to a note, and that brings up a properties option, and in this case you can set the swing options. In version 4 it's right there in Format->Style->Score. And the people who write the Musescore software are clearly music geniuses - there is a percentage setting for the swing delay, so 50% means the offbeat note is "where it should be" out to 100% meaning the offbeat note is actually on the next beat (ha ha - let's call that "ultimate swing").

But let's not just talk about it, let's see it in action! Here are the first 4 bars "straight" to begin with and then "swing" at 60%, which feels about right.

Look, this is big improvement, but it is a strict rigid swing. I can hear that my hands actually vary the swing per offbeat as they go - for instance, "the" in "all the life" doesn't quite sound right in the above. I experimented with the swing setting after I did this, and discovered my hands actually swing "the" around 65% rather than 60%.

At least half of my arrangements need swing turned on I reckon - the text "Swing" at the top, and then when it plays back you hear the delayed offbeats.

"If you gotta ask, you'll never know" - but now we know, and luckily you never asked 🙂

JAW

Something revisted

It's kinda nice when you revisit a song you haven't played for a while and then get right into it. It tells me that I still enjoy my "back catalogue", even if I haven't played a piece for many months if not years, that I can still get passionate about a song I was once passionate about. Such happened with the well-covered yet quite beautiful "Something" by George Harrison/The Beatles as transcribed/rearranged from Naudo. I found myself adding a bit more McCartney bass to it and dusting off the expression. So much so that I just recorded the first verse of it on my Zoom H1N. Here, have a listen:

Something Revisited:

Give me some interest and I will update the tab for it and post on Patreon!

See how it has changed from 2010:

New year, new tutorial!

I started developing a "Tips and Tricks" for my fingerstyle guitar tabs a while back, and kept putting off finishing it, but with a bit of spare time over the holidays I knuckled down and got it done, yah!

Since slowly re-publishing my tabs in (the even more beautiful latest version) Musescore format and releasing them on Patreon, I knew that I needed a little primer video to get everyone started. While the tabs stand alone, and there is always the video I record of me playing them, there are a few tips and tricks I wanted to talk about.

Making videos like these, by yourself, is a big undertaking.  I reckon around 15 hours from start to finish for this little 10 minute video.  All those professional people out there, making amazing looking courses and tutorials - huge huge effort, well done.  I like making videos, but wow, this sort of video, just so much work.

I've also transcribed it, with tab bits, for people who prefer to read than watch a video.  Yah!

Nothing is new under the sun, but maybe there was something in here you'd never thought about!

I'm never happy with the end result when I record, well, any video, I can pick so many faults in them, but each time I make a video it's a little better than the last one. If I keep going, one day I might be good at it.  But for now, it's about looking after my Patreons, and this was something I really wanted them to have access to.

Go have a look! Enjoy! Here is the Transcript and watch the video below:

JAW

Did I inspire Sammy G?

I find Sammy G quite an engaging internet personality and quite often watch his videos when they pop up in my feed. I was watching this one and he mentioned he'd seen a cover of "Here Comes The Sun" when he was in grade 11 or 12, and then played a bit of it. It sounded _a lot_ like my cover, the timing is about right (I posted it in 2006), and that video has over a million views as it was featured back in the day.

The arrangement is basically a copy of an arrangement by John Keans, I changed very little. But he never played it on youtube as far as I know (I wish he had!) So... maybe I was there just at the right time for Sammy G and I didn't know it. There sure were a lot of other players who were there at the right time for me...the universal cookie jar continues to supply cookies! :-)

Check it out below, I've set the relevant start times for you.

JAW

What's happening June 2019

So busy, mostly with volunteering for kid things.  It's nice, I have a netball team and I am the chairman of a kids orchestra organisation, but it's left no time for me! No gigging, no youtube, no blogging...but I'm not sure I could ever stop playing. See previous blogs about obsession.

So quick one in between work/family/commitments (must remember to so "no" next year) - a few weeks back I happened across an Ennio Moricone piece, which I have always loved, and always wanted to play.  I checked a couple of fingerstyle versions on youtube, the only one I liked was by Luciano Renan, but some of the ways he was approaching it didn't fit my style, and more importantly I wanted something "quick and easy". So in true JAW style I started making my own arrangement based heavily on his one.  Still needs work and I'm not sure if I like the structure just yet, but here's a demo :-)

JAW

Ecstasy of Gold demo:

C64 High Score with Rob Hubbard

A while back I arranged and played Rob Hubbard's "Commando High Score". If you were born circa late 60's early 70's and had a Commodore 64 you are probably just started humming it in your head. Danny over at No Reason got in touch with me - another fan of the song - he was doing a podcast on this obscure little song and wanted to interview me! Of course I said yes!

During the interview he mentioned he was interviewing Rob Hubbard, the composer. I was dumbfounded and awestruck...yes I am a huge fan of Rob's chiptune work in the 80's, he was a monster in the scene, so many terrible C64 games but with fantastic soundtracks. His music had an impact on my life that remains to this day.  What he could get out of the 3 channel SID chip in a C64 was simply incredible.

Now "Commando High Score", circa May '85, has what I consider a sibling tune in "Monty on the Run High Score" circa June '85. Both have the very familiar doo-wop 50's chord progression I-vi-IV-V (eg Stand By Me), albeit in different styles, but the "feel" is very familiar between them. I mentioned to Danny to ask Rob if after creating "Commando High Score" (which apparently he did very quickly) if he then took a bit more time and expanded it into "Monty on the Run Game Over". I look forward to the answer!

Both songs feature a soulful melody but it's what else is happening in there that is really interesting. The doo-wop chord progression is found in the bass note. But there is a mid ranged arpeggio that plays exactly the same notes throughout the progression, so those notes move between being minor/major/7th/etc in the underlying changing chords, a very clever "trick". The internet tells me this trick is reharmoonisation, but is quite likely an "ostinato" derived from the Latin for "stubborn" which is both apt and funny. The melody also stays in its own same notes, also creating fascinating chord sounds.

Anyway, I then was inspired to arrange "Monty on the Run High Score" as well, it's much longer and as per usual I have made it very difficult to play.

...but I also arranged it for my kids to play as a trio. My kids primary instruments are double bass, cello and alto sax which is perfect for this arrangement. They have been on holidays and their brains have turned to mush, but I've made them play it through in 3 separate sessions, it needs plenty of work but I'm loving the sound of it. Dare I say I like it more than when I'm playing it myself! The part for the girls is very easy and they pretty much nail it, the melody is on the edge of playability for the lad, he's getting there though. Decided to record an "early version, warts and all" so that one day we can all look back and laugh :-)

JAW

Zoom H1 versus H1n

Recording sound quality is upmost important for music. I used to consider the plugged in sound feed, direct from a pickup, the highest quality sound you could get from a guitar. But many years ago I bought a Zoom H1 stereo condenser microphone/recorder, and it blew my mind. The sound is *so* much better! It makes sense, you are capturing all the other subtle nuances that a pickup misses. I had already gone to dual pickups in the guitar, one that captures the soundboard as well under the saddle, which is great, but a quality microphone; that is hearing like your ears do; so much better!

The Zoom H1 has done me well for a long time, and I have an application coming up where I want to use two microphones, to capture an orchestra sound from both sides of the stage. I was going to buy another Zoom H1 but I noticed the new Zoom H1n is available, the upgraded version.

I has a lot more "stuff" like dubbing and playback at different speeds and other things I don't need, about the only feature I thought might be useful for my purpose was the limiter. However, it's only $20 more than the old model, and perhaps the microphones themselves are improved or something, so I bought one.

As a test I put them both in front of me playing guitar, one to the left, one to the right, and recorded both in the same mode being 48kHz 24bit WAV.

I attempted to match the levels at recording time but I didn't get it very close so I adjusted amplitudes in post, I also applied the same graphic EQ to both. I always apply some EQ to drop down the mids and boost the lows and highs a bit. Makes the sound more punchy and less AM radio. Or maybe that is just my tinnitus speaking. I do all this listening through Sennheiser HD280 Pro monitor headphones with a quite flat frequency response, so it should be pretty accurate.

What did I find, what was the difference?

The visual look of the WAV files showed some differences, like the H1n was maybe slightly more sensitive? But listening, no, they sound the same, other than a difference due to the location of the mics; you can tell they weren't in the same place.

...which was part of the reason I didn't have them next to each other - even though they are stereo microphones, if I combine the two files how would that sound? The answer - clearly better than either one! I went with 50% left on the H1n and 50% right on the H1 (100% either side seems excessive). I wasn't sure what putting stereo on an already stereo signal would be like, but I can tell you, I will be doing that from now on. A little bit more work, but it adds another layer of depth to the sound.  Here, check it out:

Zoom H1 demo:
Zoom H1n demo:
Mixed demo:

For interest, that was a sound grab from an arrangement that popped into my head last week, Bob Dylan "It's All Over Now Baby Blue", although I gone with more of the Graham Bonnet 1977 more rock less folk as that's the version I remember, more my era. I will probably talk about that more another time.

Enjoy!
JAW

Orchestra fill in...well kinda

All my kids are in bands/ensembles/orchestras. It's great, I never got that when I was a young aspiring musician. Playing in groups teaches you good skills. My youngest daughter's string orchestra, in which she plays cello, recently invited parents to join in, whatever instrument you have. Why not eh?

A few of us turned up, a clarinet player, some violinists and me on guitar. I pulled up a chair next to my daughter, but cello is bass clef and I can't read bass clef fluently. I moved back a little, and hit violas, they have that other clef. I can't read that one at all. Pulling back further, violin 3. Treble clef. All good, I stand a chance of reading that.

The music was new to the orchestra, first time seeing for everyone, they are all primary school kids and novices, but it wasn't "simple". Check key signature, there's an F# and a C#, okay, I'm pretty sure that means it's in some key, I will remember to play those notes sharp. A bunch of quarter notes, interspersed with eighth notes, oh, it's 3/4 time; it's a waltz.  Yeah, I got this.

Off goes the conductor, yep, I'm good. 4 bars later whoa, the conductor has slowed down...no wait, I'm speeding up!  Oh, oops, that was three eighth notes and then an eighth rest then a quarter note.  Uh oh, where am I? Looking for a hook back in...looking...looking...

Ha ha. I got a bit better on the second and third play through, and then better still in the next song, but wow! These kids are doing better than me! I thanked the conductor afterwards for the opportunity to join in, and for reminding me my ability to sight read is poor, and my tempo is even worse.

Bottom line is when you are largely self taught, and have only ever played solo, jumping into a band or ensemble or orchestra does not come natural. I said to one of the mums afterwards "If I grabbed a heap of pieces and sight read them playing to a metronome for a while I would get much better at this...but what would I do that for?" :-)

I do however encourage you to play in a group, and learn to read music as part of your musical adventure, especially if you are not getting tuition. I do feel like I missed out not playing in groups.

Not to be perturbed, I sat down later that night, turned on the mic and played Dark Side of the Moon through. I do this at least once a week, I really want to keep it at a good level and develop it further. I stuffed up and restarted twice during Great Gig in the Sky, which I edited out of the audio, but the rest is all warts and all like you were sitting with me. I record stuff occasionally to listen back to see how I sound, helps me to know what expressions and dynamics to concentrate on. I should be able to _play_ it to start with, the icing on the cake is putting the emotion into it.

So here it is, not because I recorded something beautiful that I want you to hear, but because I had already put it on the web so I could listen to it at work, and adding a link to a blog is pretty straight forward.

Enjoy!
JAW

FotM 8 Aug 2018:

Mumbling about Pink Floyd "Time" again

After I had recorded my 2017 progress of Fingerstyle'd Dark Side of the Moon I was immediately inspired to take on a bit more work. I took to "Time" which I had played badly; added more bassline appeal (easing back on the freestyle'd verse) and most importantly started on the iconic solo. I have put that off for a decade, because how do you play a *huge* soulful solo while driving away at a bassline and filling in the mids? Well, turns out, at least to start with, it's not as bad as it seemed! See how useful it is recording progress - it drives further progress!

So have a look and a listen at the new parts, it's a bit rough, I accidentally over exposed the video and I'm mumbling about it as I go, but as a minimum Ryan will be pleased :)

Fingerstyle of the Moon progress 2017

I haven't been gigging recently (slowly going rusty) but it has turned my head back to arranging. After my recent other pop/rock songs (The Angels, some Cream and even Van Halen), I've gone back to my old friends Pink Floyd.

Some of my internet mates know that I've been working on a fingerstyle cover of the whole album "Dark Side of the Moon" for longer than a care to mention, with no real update since 2014.  I've further enhanced "Breathe", gone backwards on "Any Colour You Like" and "Great Gig in the Sky", the rest are largely the same. I decided to sit down and play them all back to back for the camera, even though some aren't finished.  But most importantly, I have begun documenting the work in MuseScore.  Only scatterings of tabs currently exist, it's mostly in my head.  One day I'd like to have a book/video.  There is a good chance that will never happen, but if all the songs are documented then it wasn't all a waste of time :-)

Se here you go.  I messed up quite a few times; it is hard to play continously for 19 minutes without bungles.  Much of the work isn't yet done.  But that's why this is a "progress" video, not a "complete, done and dusted" video.

0:00 Speak to me.  JAW can tap the guitar body!
0:10 Breathe.  More freestyled now than just fingerpicked. Now features intro solo with an "innovative technique" I'm still trying to master, check it at 1:08
3:02 Time.  Forgot what I was doing, pretty awful play through, I normally do a lot better. Sorry.
6:19 Breathe Reprise.
7:25 Great Gig in the Sky.  Only the intro, been too long since I played the vocal part I didn't attempt.
8:36 Money.  Still in progress, I need to make it more interesting than just the verse/chorus.
10:36 Us and Them. I can normally make the detuning to Drop D fit in nicer, and get it a bit more accurate.  The pressure of the video camera.
13:40 Any Colour You Like.  Forgot what I was doing again, this needs a lot of work, I almost shouldn't include it.  "Progress".
14:55 Brain Damage. Occasional brain fart.
17:50 Eclipse.

If you make it to the end here, have this kudos ribbon, and pop on a comment letting me know which bits didn't work for you (I have broad shoulders).  Thanks!

Rockin' with The Angels

Playing Aussie rock covers fits in well with a pub scene in Australia, I have a number I bring out but you can never have enough Aussie rock.  The Angels "Am I Ever Going to See Your Face Again?" is an absolute classic with it's MA+ call-response titular question, so it is obvious arrangement material. I had tried a few times over the years, but it hasn't been until now that I considered I had the skills to take it on.

It's pretty much all power chords, with that standard blues rock perfect fifth-major sixth rollicking riff underpinning everything, so that had to be prominent. In E, it's pretty easy, the bassline looks like this:

-2--2--4--2--2--2--4--2-
-0-----0-----0-----0----

That however uses up too much left hand, and is a real drag to do for long periods of time. It would be very difficult to put a melody over that. But since Drop D tuning has been my best friend for a long time now, the riff in Drop D will become:

-0--0--2--0--0--0--2--0-
-0-----0-----0-----0----

Much better!

The overall structure is a twelve bar blues chord progression so going from the E to the A means going up the neck rather than to the next strings, to keep the Drop D working, but that is fine.  I wanted to keep the key in E, so putting a capo on the second fret brought the Drop D back to E.

So now for the melody on top:

------------------------|------------
------------------------|------------
-------2-----0--------0-|------------
-------------------4----|----4-----0-
----0--2--0-----0--2--0-|----0--2--0-
-0-----0-----0-----0----|-0-----0----
       went  down  to san    ta    fe

Strumming the bass line would work to get the bass note on each beat and then the 5th-6th interval would be every 8th note, but I find strumming bass note chord fragments clumbsy. It might be the classical guitarist in me coming out - there are a few songs I play that I need to strum two or more bass strings, it forces your wrist down close against the soundboard to get the right angle, and this starts limiting what your fingers can do. You could train yourself to play fluently like that...or pluck the 5th string with alternating index-middle fingers.  Which is what I did.

And now, your annular (ring) finger can pluck the melody.  This is kinda hard, and the 4th string gets a lot of sympathetic vibration (and the odd accidental pluck) but it's completely in chord (the octave!) so it's okay.  I find I can't play right hand middle and annular fingers where the strings aren't next to each other, so my index finger gets busy on the riff when I'm picking the melody, but then reverts to index-middle when there's no melody.

You will have to mentally disconnect your ring finger because the melody is not on always on beat. The first three syllables "went down to" are all on beat, but "san ta fe" is all offbeat.  This is challenging, especially because the riff is always on-beat!  But, playing through slowly and then speeding up once you have made the mental adjustment does the trick.

It's another song that was a bit too rough for my youtube channel - too fast, bad picking - still needs work, but have a look, tell me what you think! :-)

Why can't this be blog, again?

The last post of mine has created an unprecedented 3 comments so far, I'm inspired to keep posting works in progress. Ha ha, well I post as a cathartic release "I don't post because I want to, I post because I *have* to!"

When I sat down to record a few weeks back I rattled off five new arrangements, only two I deemed good enough to go on my youtube channel but the others weren't too bad so I'll keep posting them here. This song I talked about a year ago and I've been ticking it over from time to time in the background.

Arranging a song is one of those things were I get all excited and filled with euphoria when I begin, and once that addiction wears off, if I haven't finished it it falls in a hole.  But the sensible engineer in me says "You put in a lot of work, and there's only a bit more to go, finish it."  Which I duly ignore, but the sensible engineer never goes away: "You loved that arrangement when you started.  Find that love again, and finish it."

So this song is close to finished, but I didn't play it well enough this time to release it on my YouTube proper channel, it's still too rough. Sorry, the video and the audio goes out of sync, not sure what happened there (another reason to not post). Anyway, enough! Have a look already!

Playing in the white room

A few weeks ago I noticed Jake Reichbart had posted "White Room" by Cream which to me, is a pivotal quintessential psychedelic rock song harking from 1968.  Okay, my dad was heavy into Cream so this song was burned into my formative youth.

I was so impressed with Jake's cover I had to try it myself.  And much like the psychedelic nature of the song, I became addicted to his arrangement, like a drug, and stayed up late one night turning it over and over.  He plays it up the neck, I found it more at home in the open position.  By the time my fingers were hurting and I was really tired, I'd sussed out the main structure.  I have been playing it every few days to drill it in, it needs some variation so I'm not playing the same thing over and over again, but it's already kinda cool.

With that said, I have fallen further into the bad habit of playing sloppy, playing too hard, playing too fast, too much slapping...kinda the opposite of what a classical guitarist should be doing.  I'm happy enough with that but sometimes I think I need to scale it back and play something clean, accurate, and pure.  Or maybe it's time I go back to steel and dig in further...

Have a listen, I stepped from "White Room" into "Sunshine of Your Love", keeping the Cream feel, until I was disturbed; crashed and burned. Tell me what you think:

Yamaha CG-100A student guitar

The second guitar I bought for my students is a 1989 Yamaha CG-100A. I have a soft spot for old Yamaha classical guitars. This one was a level up from a student model, slightly better woods used and a glossier finish. A good clean up and fresh strings got it back to its original glory. As with the Musima I grabbed a few weeks ago, the more I played it the more it opened up.

The dimensions of both guitars are almost exactly the same down to the millimetre. I didn't realise there was such a standard for the shape of a classical guitar! The Musima is about 1mm narrower on the neck and the action is a bit lower so it's slightly easier to play. Both shall make good beginners guitars.

The Yamaha is Japanese specification but made in Taiwan, and the Musima is German...sooo Asia versus Euro :-) I had my wife listen as I played the same songs on both to see what she thought.

Results are Asia has a better bass, it felt like the bass was deep inside and not so much projecting out but booming from within like a subwoofer. It makes the guitar sound powerful, but muddy. Euro on the other hand has a mid and treble projection that leaps out of the guitar, but the bass is subdued. My Esteve on the other hand has clear trebles, mids and bass.

But don't take my word for it, have a listen! All captured exactly the same on my Zoom H1, unproceeded, all guitars wearing brand new D'Addario EJ45 strings

Musima 130:
Yamaha CG-100A:
Esteve 1GR11:

So, next stop, see if I can teach two twelve year old girls how to play some classical guitar!