AriKoinuma.com

I’ve said this before and I’m sure this won’t be the last time, but I can’t believe how many people don’t really use their public libraries.

It’s free, people!  Your tax dollars are actually doing something good for you.

As a person who listens more than he reads, I love to browse through the CD section of the library.  Some days I don’t find much I’m interested in, but today I found a good load.  They are:

• The Derek Trucks Band: Already Free
• Chicago Blues Reunion: Buried Alive in the Blues
• The Rolling Stones: Hot rocks 1964-1971
• Bruce Springsteen: Magic
• Staind: 14 Shades of Grey
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live at Monterey
• SlipKnot: All Hope Is Gone
• Sleater-Kinney: The Woods
• Sonny Landreth: From the Reach
• Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Son House
• Gary Moore: Bad for You Baby

So they include a health doze of blues.  Being primarily a modern rock guy, I tend not to discover any blues records I like, unless I can check them out and live with them for a while, and the library is the perfect place for that.  I discovered some albums there that I would have never encountered otherwise.

Plus, I just put a hold on Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod.  It’s book that my hero Derek Sivers is enthralled in right now.

So, what are you waiting for?  Go hit your local library, see what you can dig up!

Playing the guitar (or any instrument) is like learning to speak a language.  At first, you only know a few words or phrases.

But the only way to get better? Say What You Can.

I had a downer feeling yesterday about my guitar playing.  Although I didn’t have much time today, I wanted to play a bit to see if I can feel better about it.

Glad I tried.

The problem is that I have a great mind (if I say so myself ).  I can play some amazing guitar in my head.

You see, that’s really not a problem.  The only problem here is that my imagination is unlimited by my playing ability.  Or rather, I’m still not disciplined enough to confine my imagination to what I can play.

But just like knowing what you want to say but not knowing the words to say them, you have to start out by picking out words that are close enough in your head.  If you remain silent, then you’re most certainly not communicating, nor are you getting better at it.

So today I focused on simplifying — be creative with note choices and expressions and phrasing.

It wasn’t mistake-free, but it was much better.

A lot of guitarists play licks instead of musical ideas.  I am guilty of that, too.  Just play what my fingers have a habit of playing.  Not really hearing my phrases in my head before playing.

So I am trying to get out of that — but I’m still not that good at it.  I feel clumsy and my range seems so limited.

But I have to say what I can say.  That’s the only way I’ll get better at this.

And I will.

Well, yesterday I received my new audio interface, Echo AudioFire4, and today I plugged it in…. and it sure works.  The installation process was a no-brainer, giving me confidence about the supposed good reputation this company has on their drivers.

The playback seems a bit brighter than what I’m used to with the long-defunct Alesis IO14.  But it’s just a hair, though — nothing I can’t get used to.

So I opened up a recording of one of my songs I last worked on in Logic Express — only to discover that the drum samples are missing.  It somehow didn’t survive the hard drive crash I had a couple of days ago — I think I know why, though it’s really not useful to explain here.

I have the samples backed up elsewhere, but it’s among the stacks of backup CDRs I have — it was from the days before I had hard drives to back things up to.  This was an unexpected extra step in my current project to get me back into recording after a 6-month hiatus.

Some of the plugins didn’t work, either — I need to investigate that.

Then I was jamming to some King’s X later.  And I was struck once again between how clumsy I am on my guitar.  I’ve been practicing diligently and I feel that I am in a good shape, chop-wise — but my good shape is still nowhere near I want to be.

So today felt like it was one step forward, two steps backward.  I long to be in a place where I can creatively express myself effortlessly — my equipment is all set up and seamlessly working, and I have a command on my instrument that I can pull out what I hear in my head.

But in the mean time, I just have to say what I can say with what I got.  That’s creative and still fun, too.  I just need to get over these initial mini-frustrations.

Onward!

Guitarists can be very obsessive and their gear, and I am no exception.

That said, I’ve been playing the same Strat for the last 13 years.

A lot of times I look at it myself and go “why a Stratocastor?”  A Strat is the most generic of electric guitars.

Yet, I feel so comfortable with it, that there’s virtually been no occasion where I pick up another guitar and go “wow, I want this guitar.”  Over the years, other pieces of gear have come and gone.  Yet, my Strat stayed.  I have tweaked just about every parts on it now, it’s so personalized — that it’s hard for me to imagine that I’ll ever part with it.

Now, one of those other pieces that have come and gone are overdrive/distortion pedals.

To electric guitarists, overdrive/distortion tone is perhaps like brushes for painters.  Some use many, others just stick to one, but it’s all very personal.

I’ve been looking for my own sound.  Like my guitar, I don’t feel all that attracted to having many choices.  Choices overwhelm me.  I was hoping to find one, where everything is just right, so that it can allow me to cover the range of what I do with just one sound.  I don’t want to change like a chameleon from song to song, really.  I always thought that there’s one sound that manages to sound right in all my songs.

This week, I may have finally found it.  It’s called Lovepedal Gold Dragon.  A cheesy name,  yes, but this thing is just about the closest thing I’ve heard to that sound in my head.  I somehow feel so connected to it — I’ve only spent a couple of days with it, yet it feels differently from others that have come before.  They all have ranges, these tools.  And players have ranges.  Other pedals, their ranges didn’t really match mine — so even if they were good, and some I hang to for a while, eventually I start looking for others because my tool felt limiting to me.  It’s like drawing with a brush that’s either too thick or too thin.  I wanted the right width, right feel, right texture — a tool that allows me to express myself as I am, instead of making me adjust myself to it.

This one, I threw all the stuff I do at it, and it just seems to fit.  It’s like, it’s made for me.  Playing it feels somehow spiritual… and I came away thinking, Thank God I play an electric guitar.

I don’t know if this is going to be another marriage.  But wow, it’s fun right now.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a honeymoon, is there?

I love guitar gear as much as the next guitarist, and every so often I go through this upgrade phase — trying out new pieces to see if it improves my rig.

But experimenting takes time and money, and it seems that every time I get a bit overzealous — in search of improvements, I lose sight of things that are actually working well.

This last week, I made a mistake of trying 3 new things at once.  I changed to a different brand of strings, swapped all 3 pickups of my main Strat, and bought a new (to me) overdrive pedal.  The latter of which isn’t a problem, but switching both strings and pickups at the same time was a mistake.  It obviously changed my tone but I couldn’t tell which contributed to what!  To make the matter worse I don’t have any left of my old brand of strings.

Once again, my current lesson pops into my mind.  If you are in a hurry, go take the long way.  I should have changed one thing at a time, so I could evaluate accurately what I think of them.

Life keeps hammering this point in me, because I’m just not learning the lesson.  Sigh. How much of a stonehead am I?