Frammin'...

Oh I should put a title here I guess.

Wow it's been over a month since I've posted here so, I guess I should do something about that. Things are plugging along with the band. Progress seems to be slower than I thought it would be but it is fun and that is all that matters.

I have written 6 songs and also have 3 instrumentals so that is pretty good, and we have several cover songs, of course.

The topics of my songs are all kind of depressing, I have to admit, though I usually throw a dash of hopefulness in there. The good news is I think I've gotten all the depressing subjects out of my system and now I am ready to write some happy songs. I started a new one that is about a day at the beach. Nice.

I think my overall playing is improving as well as being able to play and sing at the same time. So that is a good feeling. Gotta keep it up.

Ok hopefully I'll write again sooner than a month from now. I still need to record some demos of these songs. I am usually so tired from work and getting the kids settled that by the time I am ready to do some practicing and potential recording, I am just too beat to mess around with the recording part and just want to get in a good practice. One of these days I'll have the energy to record, even if they are crappy recordings with no bass and fake drum loops.. If I ever get some of them done, I may post them here, or I may start a myspace music page and put them there. We will see how it goes.

Fram on.

Ya knob

Well I spend a couple hours turning some knobs and pressing buttons on the digi-tech foot pedal last night.

I think I got it tweaked pretty good with a couple good setups saved. One is set up for rhythm and another is set up the same way, just louder and more gain, for solos and a 3rd setting I made has the same thing but with wah pedal enabled.

I thought the settings I made sounded pretty good so we'll see how the guys in the band like it. I still don't like it as much as simply plugging into the amp and turning up the gain but, I think if I keep tweaking it I can make it work. We'll see. It certainly is a useful tool to have and I think the more I use it the better and more refined I can get with the sounds and tones.

One thing having the pedal now adds is another element to the stuff I need to learn how to do while I'm playing; guitar, vocals, leads and now, when to press the the right button on the pedal at the right time!  It's easy to mess up and press too many times! This pedal has about a zillion pre-set effects in it so you wind up with some interesting sounds that way. Ha.

Anyway it's lots of fun and practice makes perfect!

All these knobs and buttons and settings..

One of the guys in the band has a PA set up at his house so we have been practicing there and using that lately. Mostly ok except I have been bringing my digi-tech modeling pedal and plugging that in to the PA instead of bringing my amp to practice.

Overall it is ok except I don't have the digi-tech set up with my 'sound' the way I like and I end up spending way too much time noodling with the knobs and settings.

The guys say my solos are not 'standing out' enough. Well turn me up then!

Seriously, I guess I am going to spend a bit of time at home messing with the digi-tech to try and refine a good sound that I will like and that will also stand out a little more. We'll see how that goes.

I prefer to just plug straight in to the amp and go. A straight-forward sound for a pretty straight-forward guy. I wonder if I could take the headphone out of my amp and put that into the PA? Maybe I will bring it next time just to try it and see how that sounds.. Hmm.

I may end up ditching the digi-tech, for band practices at least, and getting some individual stomp boxes down the line if I need to make more changes.

Fram on.

What's goin on.

I recorded another song last night with Garage Band. Spent the first 45 min or so dicking with the dang software because I couldn't hear my guitar monitor. Turns out there was some kind of glitch with the app because I rebooted my computer and it all started working.

Once I got the recording gear working I got down to turning the knobs and pressing the buttons and actually recorded two songs. One is an original song with vocals for the band to hopefully work on, the second is an instrumental that I wrote for my Wife several years ago.

While I am not unhappy with the result of the recordings, I consider them to be demo quality. They need a lot of polish. The song I did for the band has no bass and the drums are just a really lame built in drum loop from Garage Band.

On top of that I still have a lot to learn about using Garage Band and really, recording in general. I am having fun with it though, when it works and I'm not rebooting my computer that is, and that is all that matters in the end.

The instrumental I did is a tad difficult for me to play, so it took me several tries to get a decent, mostly mistake free recording of it, and I am still not happy with it when I listen to it. I need to be able to play it all the way through without errors, but it is good to have a recording of it just the same. I will go back and work on it some more and hopefully I will eventually get a take that I like..

I have a couple other instrumentals that I will be trying to record as well. I'm trying to decide how much echo and reverb and all that I should add to the tracks. Don't want to go overboard but a little delay or something might sound cool.

Fram on.

Channeling Vince

Disappointed in myself over the last couple nights practice work. I've been tired the last few nights and have not really been 'into it' but felt that it was important to get some frammin work in even if I was not really feeling the vibes.

Vince Lombardi once said, "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect." I think that is true. If you are sloppy when you practice you will be sloppy when you are in the real thing, whatever that 'real thing' may be.

To a certain extent, when I am practicing, I am trying to build muscle memory so that I will be able to do things like strumming, etc without having to think about them, so that things will just come naturally and without effort, almost like a reflex. I want these muscle actions that I am trying to get ingrained to be accurate and precise, not messy.

At the same time, is it better to entirely blow off practice because you're just not in the mood for it on a particular day? I think no. Better to get some level of work in than no work at all and realize that you have areas you will need to concentrate better on next time in order to improve.

In the end, even though maybe it was not your best practice effort, the effort you put in will still pay off in some way down the road, whereas sitting on the couch watching  multiple episodes of 'Rescue Me' will not.

Fram on.