Sorry for so many posts in so few days, but I've got all this stuff that is bursting out and just can't wait! The problem is that when I first started this blog I knew I was writing to no-one, whereas now I know there are more than three people listening - I feel as I have to approach blogging with a bit more restraint and respect!
Recorded sound from a guitar needs to be good. Note that I didn't say great. Great is great, but great can begin to mess with your life - visiting a recording studio or dedicating a room in your house as a studio, filling it with sound absorbing material, buying fancy microphones...great sound starts to take over from the actual playing.
Recording via a webcam onto youtube isn't good. So many guitarists, posting videos, wasted, because it sounds, well; crap.
So in my continuing efforts to simplify recording good sound I recently tried out USB guitar cables. I tried two, both are cheap Chinese units, one is a direct rip-off of a Behringer product, the other was essentially a modified microphone headset product. Both were approx $AUD20 delivered slow boat from China to my door.
The intent of both is that you have one end that plugs into your guitar, one end that plugs into a USB port on your computer. From a very simplistic viewpoint the cable consists of the right impedence at the guitar input, an A/D (Analogue to Digital) conversion, and the USB data stream to your PC.
Now I always talk about recording direct to PC. And when I say PC I also mean Mac. The bottom line is that PCs are everywhere, they are extremely flexible, they can be a bit of a pain, but you don't need to buy anything very special to be able to record good sound. You probably already have a PC, you are probably looking at it right now. So let's not talk about the other recording medium options, this blog is going to be long enough already...
In my article I wrote several years ago about recording direct to PC, I talked about using the built in soundcard. One problem with that is the input impedence - if you are going into a "line-in" socket on the soundcard (avoiding any extra pre-amp), then you'll probably have to max out the gain on the guitar and in software, if you are going into the microphone socket you probably have to turn the gain down to one click above zero. It's a hit and miss affair. It's how I've recorded for years, reasonably successfully, until I changed to a laptop that caused me no end of problems using the built in soundcard. Hence the experiment with USB guitar cables.
The immediate advantage of the USB guitar cable is it's built with the right impedence for a guitar and has the right jack. With any luck, the A/D conversion, done by a tiny little standard chip that lives in the USB connector (basically a little soundcard) will be even better than the soundcard in your PC.
If you've looked into this sort of thing before you've probably heard "latency, latency, latency." As in the delay between your signal being converted and recorded. There are (for Windows, Mac is not an issue) low latency drivers - the problem is that latest versions of Windows abstract hardware (a soundcard has to meander its way through layers of internal software to do anything) - so special drivers are required to bypass this and cut out the delay. Which means the drivers are dedicated to a specific chip, and worse, the sound editing software needs to be able to handle the driver. The main low latency driver I have come across is the ASIO driver originally developed by Steinberg, and if anything was close to a standard that would be it. Unfortunately, it is proprietary and something like the free sound editing program Audacity is not allowed to include it.
One of the USB cables I used was ASIO driver compliant. I found the ASIO driver tedious, and my favourite sound editing software did not support it. Whereas the other USB cable was not ASIO, you just plug it in and Windows automagically loads generic drivers and it just works with every piece of sound editing software I have - because really, it's just another soundcard.
The more I thought about the latency issue, the less important it seemed. The ASIO USB cable has an extra port on it for headphones - because an electric guitar player wants not only to hear what he is playing, but wants to hear it through digital effects as well. Yeah, head bangin' out some Metallica with a Kirk Hammet software effects plugin. Ah ha! - latency is about playing a note, gets converted to digital, goes into the PC software to get distorted, gets converted back to analogue and finally into headphones. Yeah, you wouldn't want that trip to take more than say 50 milliseconds, it would be very disconcerting.
But for us acoustic players, unless we are playing against some effects, it's not an issue. So what if your recording is 50ms behind realtime...doesn't make a difference, it still got recorded!
I did a test to gauge what the latency of the standard driver USB cable was - I recorded the normal driver USB cable and the laptop soundcard at the same time, then zoomed into the signal and you know what - there was less latency on the USB cable relative to the soundcard! Since I've never had a problem listening through headphones on the soundcard, the USB cable is not going to be a problem either.
Look I'm giving USB guitar cables a big thumbs up for just recording your acoustic playing plugged in. Going further, but being well aware your patience for this blog is at it's end, have some bullet points:
* Capturing Video and Audio - when you use your webcam, it is using the integrated microphone. Bleugh. What you need is some software (for example virtualdub) that allows you so say "no, don't use that crappy webcam microphone audio feed, use this nice USB guitar cable feed instead". I was very pleasantly suprised that virtualdub easily synchronised the audio and video feed, which had plauged me with problems on soundcards - nothing worse than audio and video out of sync!
* Signal to noise ration - yes, there is noise. I found it to be less than the soundcard, but it's not zero. I think the specifications talked about having a -80db noise floor, I was seeing more like somewhere between -60~50db, but I didn't do a proper analysis, that's just a thumb suck. With the guitar unplugged but the USB cable online, zero noise. That may be as a result of a noise gate. With the guitar plugged in, but not being played, an "insignificant" (good versus great) amount of noise, undetectable to my ear, but apparent on the recorded waveform, was present. Is this from the guitar or from the cable? I don't know.
* Multi-track recording - now this is where it gets interesting. The cable is suitable for any instrument, it worked fine with the electronic drums, and I'm sure a keyboard would be the same. Four USB ports - four cables - four multitracked inputs - instant band recording, with separate track editing and mixdown! This is something I'm hoping for. My concept: I'm playing through my guitar amp, my drummer mate is playing through the drum amp, we are hearing the sound and playing off each other. A feed is taken from each amp, and fed via two USB cables into multi-tracking software. The feed comes from headphone sockets that all amps generally have. It works just fine...but you guessed it...when you are plugged into the headphones socket the main speaker is turned off! Not so good for jamming. I'm going to have to think a bit harder about that one.
There is plenty of stuff still left to talk about, let me know if there is a direction you are thinking about to discuss!
JAW
Friday, 13 August 2010
Thursday, 12 August 2010
Play through your mistakes
I've talked about this before, but I was just emailing with Ryan G about it and I thought I've gotta bring it up again: play through your mistakes.
Our natural tendency as players is when we fluff it, to stop, go back and play the part again, or stop, or start again from scratch...sure, during the early days of learning a new song you need to practise little bits over and over to force it into your brain, but once it is in your brain, my rule is if you are going to play a song, play it from start to finish and play through any mistake.
Most guitarists will start as half-song playing guitarists and that's fine - but arguably we should move on from there. If you are playing just for yourself and the dog, or playing for a packed venue, I believe you need to play a song from start to finish. To do that, heh, you need to practise playing a song from start to finish :)
Once I realised that it doesn't matter how many times I practise a song I won't ever be able to play it perfectly every time, I had to focus on how to recover after making a mistake. If your first instinct when you make a mistake is to stop, then you won't ever learn how to play through your mistakes. Sounds pretty straight forward doesn't it.
Keeping on beat is everything. If you have made a mistake but haven't dropped a beat, you know, it's probably only you who is going to notice. If that's the first thing you achieve from practising playing through your mistakes, then that is half the battle won.
Linking back in - you've made a mistake somewhere, now you want to get back on track. What chord are you in? What is the next chord? If you just fall back to playing some notes or strumming in the chord, and link back in on the next chord change, you'll be fine. This requires you to actually _understand_ the music you are playing - not just a sequence of notes. I fall down a lot in this area, being a programmable guitar playing robot. But by paying a little bit more attention to the music - and practising playing through my mistakes - I've become more able to fumble my way through most of my repetoire.
I could keep going...and often do...but I'll cut this one short. As my regular readers will know (there are 14 now Roman!) I have a set of JAW's Laws that not everyone agrees with; playing through your mistakes forms part of it. Tracing the lineage of this law it goes something like this: Play the guitar for audiences - audiences want to hear full songs - practise playing full songs - you will make mistakes - practise playing through your mistakes.
JAW
Our natural tendency as players is when we fluff it, to stop, go back and play the part again, or stop, or start again from scratch...sure, during the early days of learning a new song you need to practise little bits over and over to force it into your brain, but once it is in your brain, my rule is if you are going to play a song, play it from start to finish and play through any mistake.
Most guitarists will start as half-song playing guitarists and that's fine - but arguably we should move on from there. If you are playing just for yourself and the dog, or playing for a packed venue, I believe you need to play a song from start to finish. To do that, heh, you need to practise playing a song from start to finish :)
Once I realised that it doesn't matter how many times I practise a song I won't ever be able to play it perfectly every time, I had to focus on how to recover after making a mistake. If your first instinct when you make a mistake is to stop, then you won't ever learn how to play through your mistakes. Sounds pretty straight forward doesn't it.
Keeping on beat is everything. If you have made a mistake but haven't dropped a beat, you know, it's probably only you who is going to notice. If that's the first thing you achieve from practising playing through your mistakes, then that is half the battle won.
Linking back in - you've made a mistake somewhere, now you want to get back on track. What chord are you in? What is the next chord? If you just fall back to playing some notes or strumming in the chord, and link back in on the next chord change, you'll be fine. This requires you to actually _understand_ the music you are playing - not just a sequence of notes. I fall down a lot in this area, being a programmable guitar playing robot. But by paying a little bit more attention to the music - and practising playing through my mistakes - I've become more able to fumble my way through most of my repetoire.
I could keep going...and often do...but I'll cut this one short. As my regular readers will know (there are 14 now Roman!) I have a set of JAW's Laws that not everyone agrees with; playing through your mistakes forms part of it. Tracing the lineage of this law it goes something like this: Play the guitar for audiences - audiences want to hear full songs - practise playing full songs - you will make mistakes - practise playing through your mistakes.
JAW
Monday, 9 August 2010
Drummer and Something...
Since my drummer mate Leith moved 25km's north and I moved 25km's south we haven't been together for a guitar-drum session. However, at work I found out that Rob, another electrical engineer, plays the drums. For a few months now we had tried to organise a get together, and finally it hashappened.
Playing solo instrumental fingerstyle with a drummer works quite well - the whole point of solo instrumental fingerstyle is to capture bass, melody and rhythm into one instrument. To some point you can capture percussive but generally it's not covered quite as well. Playing with a bass guitarist, lead guitarist even a singer, you might as drop back to "normal" guitar playing.
I knew Rob would be a good drummer, and I wasn't dissapointed. He's a bit like me in some of respects - he enjoys playing along with songs on his ipod - I like to work out arrangements of songs and play them to myself. Which means when you put two independent people like that together it's not so easy to mesh, both are used to "doing their own thing". Which means even more importantly those people need to be playing with other people! Music isn't a one man show (he says while still being a fierce solo instrumental fingerstyler :))
Rob sound is a bit more heavy rock/metal than mine (take note of the bass drum triples in "Sunshine of Your Love), but he slotted in with my mellow stuff just fine. Unfortunately the only recording device I could get happening for two instruments was the laptop internal mic, and I had forgotten even that was dodgy, so most songs got scrambled. A few survived, the mix is not good and the sound quality poor...and my playing was sub-par...but you've heard all that before from me so if you are game just have a listen :)
http://jaws.tips/jawmunji/mp3/JAW%20&%20Rob/
I was so annoyed about my inability to record good sound I had a fiddle with the laptop the next day, and managed to at least sort out the internal soundcard. However, on this new laptop I have not been able to get to synchronise video and audio...I've been ready to record a new video for youtube for a while, but I can't get the video and audio in sync. That's a problem with audio and video on PCs - hard to synchronise.
Well okay, easy to synchronise if you have an integrated device, for example a webcam - it clocks the video to the audio and pumps the data stream to the PC, you pretty much can't miss. But the microphone in a webcam is awful - what you want to do is use the video from the webcam, and the audio plugged in on your soundcard. However, when you can't get software to synchronise them both you will get nothing but frustration :(
I've got coming in on a slow boat from China a "USB guitar lead" - basically it plugs into your guitar, has an analogue to digital converter on the other end with a USB plug. You need fancy drivers to keep the latency (signal conversion delay) to a minimum; I'm hoping that will help with several of my issues. I'll report back on that in a later blog. If you can buy $AUD20 USB instrument leads I'll be buying several - each instrument in your band will just plug into a USB port and your multi-track software recorder can lay them all out into separate tracks, ready for post mixing and tweaking!
Meantime, While I was trying to sort out my laptop I recorded a song, link below. For a long time now I've wanted to arrange/cover "Something" by The Beatles. I took inspiration from Hiro who does a superb alternate bass version, but based it more heavily on Naudo's version. The key difference is while Hiro plays it in "proper" C, Naudo shifted it up to D which I just love. I haven't been able to put the George Harrison solo into it; not possible to play it in the right key (too much separation from the bass) and when shifted down an octave it just doesn't sound right...so I'm just going to do a rough transcription of Naudo's improvised solo. See, that's one of the places where Naudo's brilliance lays - he improvised against a very well know solo and managed to make it sound of the same style, and made it sound great!
So for now, try out this recording sans-solo, still in the learning stages so it's rough. Yes, I will have tabs and I will record a video for youtube in due course for those who like the sound of it!
http://jaws.tips/jawmunji/mp3/jaw-something.mp3
JAW
Playing solo instrumental fingerstyle with a drummer works quite well - the whole point of solo instrumental fingerstyle is to capture bass, melody and rhythm into one instrument. To some point you can capture percussive but generally it's not covered quite as well. Playing with a bass guitarist, lead guitarist even a singer, you might as drop back to "normal" guitar playing.
I knew Rob would be a good drummer, and I wasn't dissapointed. He's a bit like me in some of respects - he enjoys playing along with songs on his ipod - I like to work out arrangements of songs and play them to myself. Which means when you put two independent people like that together it's not so easy to mesh, both are used to "doing their own thing". Which means even more importantly those people need to be playing with other people! Music isn't a one man show (he says while still being a fierce solo instrumental fingerstyler :))
Rob sound is a bit more heavy rock/metal than mine (take note of the bass drum triples in "Sunshine of Your Love), but he slotted in with my mellow stuff just fine. Unfortunately the only recording device I could get happening for two instruments was the laptop internal mic, and I had forgotten even that was dodgy, so most songs got scrambled. A few survived, the mix is not good and the sound quality poor...and my playing was sub-par...but you've heard all that before from me so if you are game just have a listen :)
http://jaws.tips/jawmunji/mp3/JAW%20&%20Rob/
I was so annoyed about my inability to record good sound I had a fiddle with the laptop the next day, and managed to at least sort out the internal soundcard. However, on this new laptop I have not been able to get to synchronise video and audio...I've been ready to record a new video for youtube for a while, but I can't get the video and audio in sync. That's a problem with audio and video on PCs - hard to synchronise.
Well okay, easy to synchronise if you have an integrated device, for example a webcam - it clocks the video to the audio and pumps the data stream to the PC, you pretty much can't miss. But the microphone in a webcam is awful - what you want to do is use the video from the webcam, and the audio plugged in on your soundcard. However, when you can't get software to synchronise them both you will get nothing but frustration :(
I've got coming in on a slow boat from China a "USB guitar lead" - basically it plugs into your guitar, has an analogue to digital converter on the other end with a USB plug. You need fancy drivers to keep the latency (signal conversion delay) to a minimum; I'm hoping that will help with several of my issues. I'll report back on that in a later blog. If you can buy $AUD20 USB instrument leads I'll be buying several - each instrument in your band will just plug into a USB port and your multi-track software recorder can lay them all out into separate tracks, ready for post mixing and tweaking!
Meantime, While I was trying to sort out my laptop I recorded a song, link below. For a long time now I've wanted to arrange/cover "Something" by The Beatles. I took inspiration from Hiro who does a superb alternate bass version, but based it more heavily on Naudo's version. The key difference is while Hiro plays it in "proper" C, Naudo shifted it up to D which I just love. I haven't been able to put the George Harrison solo into it; not possible to play it in the right key (too much separation from the bass) and when shifted down an octave it just doesn't sound right...so I'm just going to do a rough transcription of Naudo's improvised solo. See, that's one of the places where Naudo's brilliance lays - he improvised against a very well know solo and managed to make it sound of the same style, and made it sound great!
So for now, try out this recording sans-solo, still in the learning stages so it's rough. Yes, I will have tabs and I will record a video for youtube in due course for those who like the sound of it!
http://jaws.tips/jawmunji/mp3/jaw-something.mp3
JAW
Monday, 12 July 2010
Naudo's guitar up for sale!
In the past I have emailed with The Master himself, Naudo; it's a bit tricky because English is his second language and I don't know any Spanish - but we managed to have a few emailed conversations. I've also emailed with possibly his greatest fan, Juan; who goes largely unrecognised but without him we wouldn't even know Naudo. Juan does all the videoing and uploading to youtube. Juan's English is pretty good, and in a recent message with him he mentioned that Naudo was keen to change to a new guitar, and they were thinking about selling his old one, signed, to the highest bidder.
Two things went through my mind: don't straight away sell it on e-bay, it needs to be out there for a long time so that enough people get a chance to notice it's up for sale and bid. Which means advertising that it's for sale, which I could try to help out with, for instance mentioning it here, and on my youtube channel. The other thing that went through my mind was: I should buy that :)
Similar to what my mate Roman mentioned in a comment on another thread, I pictured myself flying out to Tenerife, meeting The Man himself, listening to a set, shaking his hand and getting a photo of him handing the signed guitar to me. Daydreams...
Also as Roman mentioned, it would be quite a sound investment too. Imagine you had the oppurtunity to buy John Lennon's first guitar before the Beatles were formed, because he needed a bit of cash. Say you'd seen him in some underground club in The Quarrymen and you thought "hey, he's a genius, I should buy that guitar before the rest of the world realise it." I reckon Naudo is a similar situation; except that the world isn't quite like it was in John Lennon's heyday - easy distribution of music and wide variety of choice seems to mean no one person becomes famous over the whole world.
So perhaps more like Tommy Emmanuel; well known by people who know him, if you know what I mean :)
But anyway, it will be a wise buyer who hedges his bets and grabs it while he can. I know if I had it I'd probably play it a little bit every now and then, but for the rest of time keep it in a locked glass case. It's more of a historical artifact than an instrument of music! But, my missus would kill me if I bought another guitar...
The starting price was 700 Euros, bargain. I hope Juan will put up an auction spot on the internet, Naudo's blog sounds seems the right place, with the latest bid price. I suspect however he will just get it known that it is coming up for sale and then put it on ebay. In the meantime, here is where it was mentioned and for those of you who hadn't noticed, Juan has been posting a few new Naudo videos here Juan Ignaciomoreno.
Two things went through my mind: don't straight away sell it on e-bay, it needs to be out there for a long time so that enough people get a chance to notice it's up for sale and bid. Which means advertising that it's for sale, which I could try to help out with, for instance mentioning it here, and on my youtube channel. The other thing that went through my mind was: I should buy that :)
Similar to what my mate Roman mentioned in a comment on another thread, I pictured myself flying out to Tenerife, meeting The Man himself, listening to a set, shaking his hand and getting a photo of him handing the signed guitar to me. Daydreams...
Also as Roman mentioned, it would be quite a sound investment too. Imagine you had the oppurtunity to buy John Lennon's first guitar before the Beatles were formed, because he needed a bit of cash. Say you'd seen him in some underground club in The Quarrymen and you thought "hey, he's a genius, I should buy that guitar before the rest of the world realise it." I reckon Naudo is a similar situation; except that the world isn't quite like it was in John Lennon's heyday - easy distribution of music and wide variety of choice seems to mean no one person becomes famous over the whole world.
So perhaps more like Tommy Emmanuel; well known by people who know him, if you know what I mean :)
But anyway, it will be a wise buyer who hedges his bets and grabs it while he can. I know if I had it I'd probably play it a little bit every now and then, but for the rest of time keep it in a locked glass case. It's more of a historical artifact than an instrument of music! But, my missus would kill me if I bought another guitar...
The starting price was 700 Euros, bargain. I hope Juan will put up an auction spot on the internet, Naudo's blog sounds seems the right place, with the latest bid price. I suspect however he will just get it known that it is coming up for sale and then put it on ebay. In the meantime, here is where it was mentioned and for those of you who hadn't noticed, Juan has been posting a few new Naudo videos here Juan Ignaciomoreno.
Monday, 28 June 2010
What's happening June 2010
It's been a while since I did a What's happening, I've been blogging specific topics of late. However I find myself in front of a computer with an hour to kill, so it's a good oppurtunity to waste yours and my time ;)
On the arrangement side of things, I've completed my cover of "Hysteria", and am quite pleased with the result. I struggle with the solo, so I'm going to sit on it for a few more weeks until I can play it adequately. My covers on youtube are all rough, because they represent me only just being able to play the song...I really need at least 6 months to "bed it in". But, when the arrangement is complete and I can play it adequately, I'm all excited about it and could never wait the six months, so I throw it out there, unpolished and all. I don't think I'm the only one like that.
Now you'd think after thousands of years of people writing stuff for the guitar, and people playing covers of it, that arrangements would be a been-there done-that sort of affair. However I am constantly impressed and amazed when I see my favourite solo instrumental fingerstyle players churn out something unique and new, and wonder how we ever got this far without doing *that*! I'd never pin my lifes dreams or earning on my Hysteria cover, but I'm still excited and a little bit pleased that I've come up with something not totally groundbreaking, but kinda cool and never been heard like that before.
The joys of solo instrumental fingerstyle guitar :)
Meanwhile, my Esteve 1GR11 is finally starting to feel good. Let me clarify - from the moment I heard it unplugged I know it was good; after a month it felt good, and now, must be more than six months later, it is just starting to sound good plugged in.
The road has been a bit arduous - the task was to find a really nice classical guitar, install a really nice pickup, and end up with a really nice plugged in sound. My mate Roman recently pointed out "why don't you just use a mic?" which sounds way too sensible; worse still, in a shop I came across an Alhambra (Naudo's choice of guitar) which I though you could not get easily in Australia, and when I played it plugged in it sounded _great_. The unplugged tone was not as nice as my Esteve, but the plugged in tone exceeded what I had come up with, at least it did through the fairly nice amp in the shop. Let's just say it was a lot cheaper than how far I'm into my Esteve to date...
But now, the Esteve plugged in tone is nearly there. I need to make a new saddle, I filed the one I'm using at the moment a little too far in places - but you do need to do that sort of thing, probably several times, before you really nail it. Call it experimentation.
I grabbed an oppurtunity Sunday afternoon to sit out the backyard where I could crank my little amp and see how it sounds. It was there I hit a wall. Another bloody wall, excuse my 'Strayun.
I'm still using my little buskers amp, which has an okay sound and an okay volume. It was up loud enough that I couldn't really hear the unplugged guitar, all the sound was coming from the amp. It was sounding nice, so I started playing some of my usual stuff.
I began to tense up. I know when I'm tensing up, because I start to play fast, and pick really hard, press too hard on the frets - generally very unrelaxed. When I start tensing up I get frustrated and tense up more. A bottle of amber muscle relaxant can usually de-tense the situation, but I was all out.
I was fighting the guitar, fighting the sound coming at me, fighting myself. I realised then I had hit yet a wall. I'm not good (yet) at playing loud and amplified. Arghh! Why on earth does that make a difference!?
Well of course it will. You play to the sound you are getting, it's not like you can put earmuffs on and play just as you would normally play. Playing the guitar is a dynamic, fluid, feedback system, you respond to the sound you are getting, and play to it. I'm used to playing unplugged, or when plugged in I can normally still "hear" the guitar the amplified sound because I keep the volume down to appease the family. I just don't spend much time playing loud, and as much as I've tried to make the amplified sound just like the unplugged sound but louder - I'm not used to it.
Yet another wall blocking my path. I'm sure there are many more to come, in fact there probably is no end to the walls. But hey, if it wasn't a challenge, why would you bother? :)
JAW
On the arrangement side of things, I've completed my cover of "Hysteria", and am quite pleased with the result. I struggle with the solo, so I'm going to sit on it for a few more weeks until I can play it adequately. My covers on youtube are all rough, because they represent me only just being able to play the song...I really need at least 6 months to "bed it in". But, when the arrangement is complete and I can play it adequately, I'm all excited about it and could never wait the six months, so I throw it out there, unpolished and all. I don't think I'm the only one like that.
Now you'd think after thousands of years of people writing stuff for the guitar, and people playing covers of it, that arrangements would be a been-there done-that sort of affair. However I am constantly impressed and amazed when I see my favourite solo instrumental fingerstyle players churn out something unique and new, and wonder how we ever got this far without doing *that*! I'd never pin my lifes dreams or earning on my Hysteria cover, but I'm still excited and a little bit pleased that I've come up with something not totally groundbreaking, but kinda cool and never been heard like that before.
The joys of solo instrumental fingerstyle guitar :)
Meanwhile, my Esteve 1GR11 is finally starting to feel good. Let me clarify - from the moment I heard it unplugged I know it was good; after a month it felt good, and now, must be more than six months later, it is just starting to sound good plugged in.
The road has been a bit arduous - the task was to find a really nice classical guitar, install a really nice pickup, and end up with a really nice plugged in sound. My mate Roman recently pointed out "why don't you just use a mic?" which sounds way too sensible; worse still, in a shop I came across an Alhambra (Naudo's choice of guitar) which I though you could not get easily in Australia, and when I played it plugged in it sounded _great_. The unplugged tone was not as nice as my Esteve, but the plugged in tone exceeded what I had come up with, at least it did through the fairly nice amp in the shop. Let's just say it was a lot cheaper than how far I'm into my Esteve to date...
But now, the Esteve plugged in tone is nearly there. I need to make a new saddle, I filed the one I'm using at the moment a little too far in places - but you do need to do that sort of thing, probably several times, before you really nail it. Call it experimentation.
I grabbed an oppurtunity Sunday afternoon to sit out the backyard where I could crank my little amp and see how it sounds. It was there I hit a wall. Another bloody wall, excuse my 'Strayun.
I'm still using my little buskers amp, which has an okay sound and an okay volume. It was up loud enough that I couldn't really hear the unplugged guitar, all the sound was coming from the amp. It was sounding nice, so I started playing some of my usual stuff.
I began to tense up. I know when I'm tensing up, because I start to play fast, and pick really hard, press too hard on the frets - generally very unrelaxed. When I start tensing up I get frustrated and tense up more. A bottle of amber muscle relaxant can usually de-tense the situation, but I was all out.
I was fighting the guitar, fighting the sound coming at me, fighting myself. I realised then I had hit yet a wall. I'm not good (yet) at playing loud and amplified. Arghh! Why on earth does that make a difference!?
Well of course it will. You play to the sound you are getting, it's not like you can put earmuffs on and play just as you would normally play. Playing the guitar is a dynamic, fluid, feedback system, you respond to the sound you are getting, and play to it. I'm used to playing unplugged, or when plugged in I can normally still "hear" the guitar the amplified sound because I keep the volume down to appease the family. I just don't spend much time playing loud, and as much as I've tried to make the amplified sound just like the unplugged sound but louder - I'm not used to it.
Yet another wall blocking my path. I'm sure there are many more to come, in fact there probably is no end to the walls. But hey, if it wasn't a challenge, why would you bother? :)
JAW
Friday, 18 June 2010
Saddles?&#!
I'm having problems with pickups, and it all hinges around saddles. Go on, search around the internet for information about saddles. They will tell you all about fancy materials to use, maybe a bit about shape, but nothing about what is really going on in a saddle.
So, with a little guidance from one of my luthiers books, and revising some of my first year university physics, I'm going to try to explain some stuff to the best of my understanding.
How does an acoustic guitar work? You pluck the strings, sound is transferred to the soundboard and you hear the note. Yeah okay fine, but we'll need a bit more detail if we are to work out what is happening at our saddles.
Okay, in this simplified picture you can see the string (under tension) goes across the saddle and down to the (or through the) bridge, with the bridge glued to the soundboard. For simplicity I'll say the soundboard has rigid/fixed nodes on either end, even though in real life it is shaped in a figure-8 and there are non-rigid dynamics occuring at the soundboard to side interface...okay, that's too much detail.
When you pluck a string, what happens? It vibrates, creating a standing wave between the point it touches the saddle, and the nut or at a fret if you have fretted a note. The fundamental frequency is of a wavelength the full distance, but there are also many harmonics added by many other things resulting in a complex timbre of the sound...but again too much detail.
Looking at a plucked string, you can see it vibrate, maybe up/down, maybe left/right, maybe in circles, if depends how you plucked it. There's the clue - the _motion_ of the vibration isn't what is directly causing the sound, it is *pressure* (tension) that is transferred to the soundboard via the saddle and bridge. Tension is of course directly related to the motion of the string, at the peak offset of the string vibration it is at maximum tension, passing through the lowest tension at zero offset, heading for the opposite peak. Think about it, if you pull a string away from it's resting position, you create more tension, it is pulling harder against the saddle (and the nut, but the nut is a lot more fixed and solid than the bridge).
Ah, so the tension goes past the saddle, and pulls the soundboard up and down then? No; no it doesn't. That would be like trying to pick youself up by your shoe laces.
The saddle is fixed in place hard up against the bridge, so all that can happen is the bridge/saddle _twists_ the soundboard. That's right, _twists_. The bridge/saddle ever-so-slightly pulls forwards with the tension of the string; and because it is connected to the soundboard it pulls that with it, creating a "bulge" behind the bridge, and a "dip" in front of the bridge.
The soundboard thus becomes an air pump - as the back bulges up it sucks some air in through the sound hole, and as it goes back to the resting position the air is expelled.
I hope I have explained that well enough that you understand, because now I can finally start talking about saddles.
The saddle sets the amount of torque that is transferred to the soundboard. If you have a really tall saddle, it is "easier" for the string tension to twist the soundboard, giving a bigger acoustic sound...if the saddle is lower then less torque is transferred, and you get less acoustic sound. (Let's totally ignore action, it isn't a function of creating sound in this context.) The soundboard can saturate if the saddle is too high; if you start putting a massive load on it then you won't get a linear tension response in the soundboard and the sound will start distorting. I'm back to too much detail.
As long as the saddle is firmly held in position, isn't made out of a material that absorbs vibration (for example a saddle made out of rubber) then the pressure is transferred reasonably efficiently and you have a faithful reproduction of the string's vibration to the soundboard. Different materials will add different nauces to the timbre of the sound, for instance a highly efficient material would be a steel saddle, but we aren't after an exceptionally "true" transfer, what sounds best is a compromise, a material that transfers torque but also absorbs a bit, giving a sound that we like. Again I'm heading out into details land, and my main point in continuously doing so and then stopping myself is that the creation of acoustic sound from a guitar is _incredibly_ complex, and all I really want to touch on is the absolute fundamental principle, firmly remembering there is more involved than just the basics.
Now, lets put an Under Saddle Transducer (UST) underneath the saddle. You're going to have to think about this too. The pressure being transmitted by the string goes over the saddle and then some heads down and back at an angle, so we get a ratio of the force is directed straight down through the saddle. Note that this is balanced by the force pushing up from where the string attaches to the bridge - can't pull yourself up by your shoelaces, remember? But there is still a squeeze going on between the saddle and the bridge.
Therein lies the beauty - even though the soundboard is twisting to get your acoustic sound and it has nothing to do with the saddle downwards pressure - there exists this place between the saddle and bridge where an exact "sample" of the string tension is available. By placing an electronic gizmo (UST) in there which turns pressure into a voltage, we have a pickup!
Now I said the join between saddle and the bridge has nothing to do with the acoustic sound - if the saddle was a bit loose, or the saddle slot a bit rough on the bottom it's going to make no difference to the acoustic sound (so long as the saddle isn't absorbing pressure, for example, minutely bouncing around). This however makes a lot of difference to trying to catch that sample pressure. When an acoustic guitar is built, unless it is going to have a UST installed, they probably aren't going to care about the saddle slot quite as much.
I think you are with me. Once I had fitted my pickup, I was getting poor response, and it came down to the saddle. Here are some symptoms, and some resolutions:
* The saddle was a bit loose in the slot, so once it was under tension, it lent forward a little bit. Doesn't affect acoustic sound, but suddenly all the downwards pressure was directed on the front edge of the saddle, and the UST wasn't getting the full pressure sample. This is fixed by buying a blank over-size width saddle, and very carefully on a piece of glass or polished marble/granite surface with sandpaper, "thinning" down the saddle to be the exact same width as the slot. Too loose and it will pull forward, too tight and pressure is lost into the walls of the slot as it is "jammed".
* Having a nice tight saddle will then next show you the saddle slot is not perfect. My slot in fact flares out a bit at the top - not much I can do about that other than having a new wider slot routed in. But all the laquer in the slot, from when the guitar was laquered, also caused it to be imperfect. Armed with a trimmer blade, I carefully scraped off laquer on the floor and the sides of the slot to ensure they were as flat as I could get them.
* To fight a non-flat slot from two fronts, I bevelled the bottom edge of the saddle, just a tiny amount. If the bottom of the slot still had some lacquer or generally non-90 degree bottom leading and trailing sides of the slot, that is, "radiused" sides, even only a tiny, tiny bit - and even if you don't see it - the saddle would be jamming in that last minute section, losing pressure. If there was going to be any non-flatness in the slot, that's where it would be, so bevel the bottom of your saddle.
* Even still, I went one further step and put a spacer in the bottom of the slot, underneath the UST. The spacer I made was two pieces of normal paper glued together cut to the same size as the bottom of the slot, acting as a kind of gasket, balancing out any imperfections. Although this gasket arrangement will absorb some of the pressure; the pressure gained by it being there is far more than that lost. Give this a try and see how you go - if the slot is good enough, you won't need to.
* Balancing. As in, how much pressure is exerted by each different string - if you play all of the strings with the same touch, are any louder than each other? Typically on a nylon string, the G string might be quite a lot louder than the rest...or maybe the D string. Combat that by taking some meat off the bottom of the saddle directly underneath the string - basically you are removing some of the ability for the pressure to be transferred from the string to the UST.
If the higher strings are too loud compared to the bass strings, then file your saddle to have a top profile where the bass strings are higher. This will result in a greater break angle from the string to the bridge tie off, which means more downwards pressure on the saddle.
Alternatively, if your saddle is already crazy high on the bass then add a sliver of paper on _half_ of the bottom of slot, which will take away a little bit of pressure from the trebles/direct it to the bass instead.
There is so much to talk about with saddles, bridges and the acoustic guitar's general ability to make a noise, and so much I don't know. I've gone on here for long enough, I'm sure to go on about it again in the future!
Oh, and as a final note - no UST is good enough by itself to get exceptional sound. You must always mix it with an AST/SBT or built in condensor mic - the UST is too focussed on the fundamental frequencies, an AST/SBT/mic picks up all that other good sounds the guitar is making :)
JAW
So, with a little guidance from one of my luthiers books, and revising some of my first year university physics, I'm going to try to explain some stuff to the best of my understanding.
How does an acoustic guitar work? You pluck the strings, sound is transferred to the soundboard and you hear the note. Yeah okay fine, but we'll need a bit more detail if we are to work out what is happening at our saddles.
Okay, in this simplified picture you can see the string (under tension) goes across the saddle and down to the (or through the) bridge, with the bridge glued to the soundboard. For simplicity I'll say the soundboard has rigid/fixed nodes on either end, even though in real life it is shaped in a figure-8 and there are non-rigid dynamics occuring at the soundboard to side interface...okay, that's too much detail.
When you pluck a string, what happens? It vibrates, creating a standing wave between the point it touches the saddle, and the nut or at a fret if you have fretted a note. The fundamental frequency is of a wavelength the full distance, but there are also many harmonics added by many other things resulting in a complex timbre of the sound...but again too much detail.
Looking at a plucked string, you can see it vibrate, maybe up/down, maybe left/right, maybe in circles, if depends how you plucked it. There's the clue - the _motion_ of the vibration isn't what is directly causing the sound, it is *pressure* (tension) that is transferred to the soundboard via the saddle and bridge. Tension is of course directly related to the motion of the string, at the peak offset of the string vibration it is at maximum tension, passing through the lowest tension at zero offset, heading for the opposite peak. Think about it, if you pull a string away from it's resting position, you create more tension, it is pulling harder against the saddle (and the nut, but the nut is a lot more fixed and solid than the bridge).
Ah, so the tension goes past the saddle, and pulls the soundboard up and down then? No; no it doesn't. That would be like trying to pick youself up by your shoe laces.
The saddle is fixed in place hard up against the bridge, so all that can happen is the bridge/saddle _twists_ the soundboard. That's right, _twists_. The bridge/saddle ever-so-slightly pulls forwards with the tension of the string; and because it is connected to the soundboard it pulls that with it, creating a "bulge" behind the bridge, and a "dip" in front of the bridge.
The soundboard thus becomes an air pump - as the back bulges up it sucks some air in through the sound hole, and as it goes back to the resting position the air is expelled.
I hope I have explained that well enough that you understand, because now I can finally start talking about saddles.
The saddle sets the amount of torque that is transferred to the soundboard. If you have a really tall saddle, it is "easier" for the string tension to twist the soundboard, giving a bigger acoustic sound...if the saddle is lower then less torque is transferred, and you get less acoustic sound. (Let's totally ignore action, it isn't a function of creating sound in this context.) The soundboard can saturate if the saddle is too high; if you start putting a massive load on it then you won't get a linear tension response in the soundboard and the sound will start distorting. I'm back to too much detail.
As long as the saddle is firmly held in position, isn't made out of a material that absorbs vibration (for example a saddle made out of rubber) then the pressure is transferred reasonably efficiently and you have a faithful reproduction of the string's vibration to the soundboard. Different materials will add different nauces to the timbre of the sound, for instance a highly efficient material would be a steel saddle, but we aren't after an exceptionally "true" transfer, what sounds best is a compromise, a material that transfers torque but also absorbs a bit, giving a sound that we like. Again I'm heading out into details land, and my main point in continuously doing so and then stopping myself is that the creation of acoustic sound from a guitar is _incredibly_ complex, and all I really want to touch on is the absolute fundamental principle, firmly remembering there is more involved than just the basics.
Now, lets put an Under Saddle Transducer (UST) underneath the saddle. You're going to have to think about this too. The pressure being transmitted by the string goes over the saddle and then some heads down and back at an angle, so we get a ratio of the force is directed straight down through the saddle. Note that this is balanced by the force pushing up from where the string attaches to the bridge - can't pull yourself up by your shoelaces, remember? But there is still a squeeze going on between the saddle and the bridge.
Therein lies the beauty - even though the soundboard is twisting to get your acoustic sound and it has nothing to do with the saddle downwards pressure - there exists this place between the saddle and bridge where an exact "sample" of the string tension is available. By placing an electronic gizmo (UST) in there which turns pressure into a voltage, we have a pickup!
Now I said the join between saddle and the bridge has nothing to do with the acoustic sound - if the saddle was a bit loose, or the saddle slot a bit rough on the bottom it's going to make no difference to the acoustic sound (so long as the saddle isn't absorbing pressure, for example, minutely bouncing around). This however makes a lot of difference to trying to catch that sample pressure. When an acoustic guitar is built, unless it is going to have a UST installed, they probably aren't going to care about the saddle slot quite as much.
I think you are with me. Once I had fitted my pickup, I was getting poor response, and it came down to the saddle. Here are some symptoms, and some resolutions:
* The saddle was a bit loose in the slot, so once it was under tension, it lent forward a little bit. Doesn't affect acoustic sound, but suddenly all the downwards pressure was directed on the front edge of the saddle, and the UST wasn't getting the full pressure sample. This is fixed by buying a blank over-size width saddle, and very carefully on a piece of glass or polished marble/granite surface with sandpaper, "thinning" down the saddle to be the exact same width as the slot. Too loose and it will pull forward, too tight and pressure is lost into the walls of the slot as it is "jammed".
* Having a nice tight saddle will then next show you the saddle slot is not perfect. My slot in fact flares out a bit at the top - not much I can do about that other than having a new wider slot routed in. But all the laquer in the slot, from when the guitar was laquered, also caused it to be imperfect. Armed with a trimmer blade, I carefully scraped off laquer on the floor and the sides of the slot to ensure they were as flat as I could get them.
* To fight a non-flat slot from two fronts, I bevelled the bottom edge of the saddle, just a tiny amount. If the bottom of the slot still had some lacquer or generally non-90 degree bottom leading and trailing sides of the slot, that is, "radiused" sides, even only a tiny, tiny bit - and even if you don't see it - the saddle would be jamming in that last minute section, losing pressure. If there was going to be any non-flatness in the slot, that's where it would be, so bevel the bottom of your saddle.
* Even still, I went one further step and put a spacer in the bottom of the slot, underneath the UST. The spacer I made was two pieces of normal paper glued together cut to the same size as the bottom of the slot, acting as a kind of gasket, balancing out any imperfections. Although this gasket arrangement will absorb some of the pressure; the pressure gained by it being there is far more than that lost. Give this a try and see how you go - if the slot is good enough, you won't need to.
* Balancing. As in, how much pressure is exerted by each different string - if you play all of the strings with the same touch, are any louder than each other? Typically on a nylon string, the G string might be quite a lot louder than the rest...or maybe the D string. Combat that by taking some meat off the bottom of the saddle directly underneath the string - basically you are removing some of the ability for the pressure to be transferred from the string to the UST.
If the higher strings are too loud compared to the bass strings, then file your saddle to have a top profile where the bass strings are higher. This will result in a greater break angle from the string to the bridge tie off, which means more downwards pressure on the saddle.
Alternatively, if your saddle is already crazy high on the bass then add a sliver of paper on _half_ of the bottom of slot, which will take away a little bit of pressure from the trebles/direct it to the bass instead.
There is so much to talk about with saddles, bridges and the acoustic guitar's general ability to make a noise, and so much I don't know. I've gone on here for long enough, I'm sure to go on about it again in the future!
Oh, and as a final note - no UST is good enough by itself to get exceptional sound. You must always mix it with an AST/SBT or built in condensor mic - the UST is too focussed on the fundamental frequencies, an AST/SBT/mic picks up all that other good sounds the guitar is making :)
JAW
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Support group for non-musical guitarists
After two recent messages on youtube (Norty and Cory, similar types of guitar players to me) I decided we need a support group for non-musical guitarists.
Let me explain.
Ohhhh I'm a fraud, a big liar, it's all sham, woe is me; for I know nothing about music, I just know how to play the guitar.
There, got it off my chest. "Hi, my name's JAW, I'm a non-musical guitarist". Well in fact I've insinuated it many times in previous posts and messages, I've just never really boiled it down for you all to comprehend.
Now I can see a few of you are scratching your heads, but a lot of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Let me further explain.
I never play scales, if pressed, I could probably play a major scale, but I wouldn't know what key it is. I don't know the difference between a delorian and a septatonic key. "C7" is a chord where you additionally put your pinky on the 3rd fret 3rd string, which is in fact a Bb. Okay the 7 means something about the seventh tone from the root note C - you do pick up a few things even when you aren't paying attention.
I once sat with a guitar teacher, and after asking me some questions and watching me play he summed it up perfectly: "Okay, so you're a pretty good guitar player but you have no idea what you are doing."
So, what's the problem with that?
There is a lot of problems with that. Foremost, you can't sit down with a real musician and weave the language of music on your instruments with each other. At best, you could learn a part of a duet by rote, and line them up. You'll have trouble developing an ear. My ear is terrible, I find it almost impossible to follow even a very simple melody. Most of my arrangements I've pulled together from half tabs and midi files. Creating your own compositions - some understanding of music will certainly help that process.
So why aren't I doing anything about it, and why are there people like us?
It's not that important to me. It's not where I derive my enjoyment of the guitar from. Perhaps one day it will be, but it's been 30+ years and I still haven't bothered - sure, I've scratched around the surface and I probably know more than I give myself credit for, but it isn't a driver in my guitar experience.
But it does mean I am relegated to playing solo, not really understanding the very principles behind what I do.
So if you know exactly what I'm talking about; either get on learning music, or join in my support group for non-musical guitarists :)
JAW
Let me explain.
Ohhhh I'm a fraud, a big liar, it's all sham, woe is me; for I know nothing about music, I just know how to play the guitar.
There, got it off my chest. "Hi, my name's JAW, I'm a non-musical guitarist". Well in fact I've insinuated it many times in previous posts and messages, I've just never really boiled it down for you all to comprehend.
Now I can see a few of you are scratching your heads, but a lot of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Let me further explain.
I never play scales, if pressed, I could probably play a major scale, but I wouldn't know what key it is. I don't know the difference between a delorian and a septatonic key. "C7" is a chord where you additionally put your pinky on the 3rd fret 3rd string, which is in fact a Bb. Okay the 7 means something about the seventh tone from the root note C - you do pick up a few things even when you aren't paying attention.
I once sat with a guitar teacher, and after asking me some questions and watching me play he summed it up perfectly: "Okay, so you're a pretty good guitar player but you have no idea what you are doing."
So, what's the problem with that?
There is a lot of problems with that. Foremost, you can't sit down with a real musician and weave the language of music on your instruments with each other. At best, you could learn a part of a duet by rote, and line them up. You'll have trouble developing an ear. My ear is terrible, I find it almost impossible to follow even a very simple melody. Most of my arrangements I've pulled together from half tabs and midi files. Creating your own compositions - some understanding of music will certainly help that process.
So why aren't I doing anything about it, and why are there people like us?
It's not that important to me. It's not where I derive my enjoyment of the guitar from. Perhaps one day it will be, but it's been 30+ years and I still haven't bothered - sure, I've scratched around the surface and I probably know more than I give myself credit for, but it isn't a driver in my guitar experience.
But it does mean I am relegated to playing solo, not really understanding the very principles behind what I do.
So if you know exactly what I'm talking about; either get on learning music, or join in my support group for non-musical guitarists :)
JAW
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