Guitars, Music, Reviews!

On 8/24/11 the feds raided Gibson and seized 2-3 MILLION dollars of Indian Rosewood and Ebony, plus some guitars and computer files.

There is a lot of confusion about this whole thing because the DOJ hasn’t really charged Gibson with anything. They haven’t even directly told anybody what they did to justify a SWAT team raiding they’re workplace and shutting down Gibson’s Nashville and Memphis offices. A similar incident happened in 2009 with some wood coming out of Madagascar. The government took over a million dollars of materials then too. Gibson is still trying to get that wood back!

From what Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz said in a press meeting the wood was shipped from India and allegedly was violating international law. If Gibson can no longer import wood from India and other more exotic countries, Gibson guitars will have to be built in India or somewhere like it. Meaning America will lose millions and millions of dollars of labor for American workers and destroy on of the best completely American companies left.

Gibson’s factories were shut down for about a week but are now running, but they aren’t really doing much do to the fact they don’t have any fingerboards!

This is a really big topic and I don’t think i can do justice for all of it as I am not a very political person. So I have some links to videos and other articles about this incident for people to read if you want to know more:

Gibson Guitar Corp. Responds to Federal Raid

Feds raid Gibson guitar

Gibson: Plants ‘Up and Running’ Following Raid

To keep Gibson in America and make sure they treated fairly, there is a large movement of people “protesting” this raid. One thing I think is a great thing to do is use this picture as your profile on facebook till this is all over. If you want to help out in this effort just check out Gibson’s facebook page. Lots of people have put up lists of politicians to call and email.

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Mumford and Sons are a really great group of musicians. If they kept everything less explicit, they would probably be my favorite band. A song I wanted to learn by them called “The Cave” Is one of they’re songs that sound great yet aren’t full of junk in the lyrics. Weird how you can still write good music without cussing huh?

The original is tuned D A D F# A D with a capo on the second fret and I was planning on playing live in a set that was in standard, and I hate retuning my guitar (cept to DADGAD) and I hate capos almost as bad. So I found a tab in standard. It is probably a lot harder than the original but it’s still isn’t all that bad. Besides, dudes who don’t use capos are cooler!

Here is the tab in standard:
The Cave – Mumford & Sons
The tab is basically right on. The chords don’t seem quite right but they point you in the right direction.

I don’t have a MP3 for the song so I had to use YouTube.

This is the best one to play along with.

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I set out to make a Techno/House song earlier today and in the planning I decided I wanted a bass drop, one of my favorite things. Bass drops are great for transitions especially to a particulary powerful section of a song.

I didn’t finish the song but I figured I’d go ahead and put it up (kinda got sick of the lead probably trash it) for the bass drop. I admit it’s a little overdone. I was just messin’ around and cranked it as much as I could without completely distorting it.

Da Drop by play4theworld

Here’s the videos I learned from:

This one doesn’t have sound when he plays the kick but it teaches you what you need to know. He has a link to a audio file presumably being the drop in the videos description.

So they both have they both have they’re flaws but I think a combination of the two methods and a little extra tweaking for you preferences is the way to go. I used the 60hz signal and then I put a bass synth over top. Also I played a lead in note an octave above. Another tweak I did was to put in a little fade at the beginning to add a little more shape and presence.

These videos and tips should get you started but I think when it comes down to it it’s mostly preference and creativity that get it right. For instance, I cranked the track I had the drop on to nearly full blast to get the extra presence and to purposefully have a little clipping. A lot of people would hate that but its the sound I was going for.

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I  recently made the switch to Android from iPod. When I did that I found out I no longer get TabToolkit (My review Here and another Here) which is by far my favorite guitar app. So for a long time I wasn’t really using my cell phone for learning songs and when I really needed it I would use the browser, but I decided to try out the UG tab app.

The app costs 3 dollars. What you get for that isn’t really THAT much better than just using your browser. The main differences are that you don’t have to click through the ads and it fits to your screen. Also it has auto scroll and a really cool feature that will play the song your learning if its on your phone or find a tab for the song that is currently playing.

Honestly I think this should just be an ad supported free app, but if your like me and really use it alot the interface is much faster and easier to use than opening a browser.  Another thing I noticed is it loads WAY faster than if I just went from the browser. That’s a big deal when your next in line during open mic and you forgot the bridge to the song you want to play.

The app is avalible on iPod, iPad, and Android. It costs $2.99.

BOTTOM LINE:

I think it was worth it but I would of rather it had more features for a paid app. If you don’t use your phone for tabs and music often, stick to the free apps and your browser.

Read more about Ultimate Guitar and all they’re avalible apps here.

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I don’t know if it’s just me,  my computer, or what but I always seem to have one problem or another with my music software or my MIDI keyboards and stuff like that.  Manuals are worthless, customer service is slow and in the case of Avid and Digidesign, often expensive.

So the only way I find to get good, helpful, and usually quick answers is using forums. Every once in a while I’ll use an M-Audio forum or a Gibson forum but most of the time (and there are LOTS of times) I use the Avid Audio Forums – AKA DUC (Digi User’s Conference).

There is always lots of experienced people online to help you out and many different forums for certain issues or OS (Mac/PC). These aren’t a bunch of hobbyist either, a good bit of the active members are professionals and have they’re own studios. You even get the digi customer assistance guys on there sometimes (If you call em up they want like $60 to talk to you).

Long story short, the best way to get help in my opinion is the DUC. Tons of information on there and a great community to keep your downtime as short as possible.

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I just recently went on a trip to Nashville, TN. While I was there I bought a Gibson Jumbo at Gruhn’s Guitars, a very famous vintage guitar shop on Broadway.

I played lots of extremely valuable guitars there including a 1944 Martin that was for sale at over $12000. I played lots of others around the 7k mark but I found a Gibson on the back wall that I fell in love with, and that was before I plugged it in or even tuned it!  It is a very beautiful guitar with star burst inlays and harmonics like I have never heard. I really need a picture to describe it but I couldn’t find anything but J-185 stuff, which seems to be the replacement and from what I’ve read about it the 180 is a by far superior guitar. Don’t get them confused!

Another thing to note about this guitar is the Fishman pickups and preamp. It has a great sound that picks the whole top of the guitar rather than just the strings which gives a much more natural sound. Also, the preamp has a phase switch which is really something that I never though of using. Now I am convinced they should make phase switches standard! It makes a huge difference! Another cool thing is instead of a mid slider you have a “contour”. The way it works is there is a separate slider that chooses the frequency range and then the actual contour slider which brings it up or down like a traditional EQ.

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I recently decided I wanted to work through my iTunes library and learn all of my songs. Of course this is going to take a while, considering I’m adding songs much faster than I’m learning them, but I have found some interesting new techniques.

The most prevelant being the rating system. You can rate a song from 1-5 stars, it is intended to sort out your favorite songs but I’ve found a much better use for it. I needed a way to mark the songs I had learned and also a way to note if I knew the song well or it needed work.

I started using the star system to mark the songs I had learned and it works REALLY well. I will put four or five stars for a song I feel I’m pretty good at and three for mid range etc. One thing I did that most people may not like; I use one star for songs that I don’t know very well but I don’t really care to learn anyways and two stars for songs I know but I want to learn better. Its a very variable way to do things.

Another thing I found out about is that I can put the URL of a tab or youtube video in the comments section of a song and then un-hide it on the main screen and that works really well. No more going back to find the best tab all over again!

This isn’t as related but I am a real sound quality snob. So I’m always changing EQs around and tweaking presets etc. Now I found out that you can right-click the sorting bar towards the top of iTunes and choose to show EQ and then you can easily set a different EQ for each song that automatticaly starts when the song plays!

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I can never decide when I want to use a quick and easy TAB or if I want to download a .PTB or .GP file and work through it.

For those of you who don’t know;  Power Tab and Guitar Pro (among other programs that run the same file type) are  ”Tab Editors”. What they do, among other things, is they play downloadable TAB but in the software you get to hear the notes more like a song. Another thing I love is it has standard notation also so if I want to switch instruments I can get a lead line nice and easy.

But I always have trouble deciding whether to go through the process of downloading and opening a file (even though it’s really quite easy) or just clicking on the standard text version of a tab.

What I usually do is if it’s an easy song I will just look at the TAB or if its a sorta basic chord based song skip the standard TAB altogether and look for a chorded version with lyrics to line everything up. Standard TAB is great when your in a hurry or you just need to figure out a simple riff.

When there is a lot of solos (really, you cant beat tab players for learning solos, it is 10x easier with them playing through and showing you the bends and tapping) I go straight to the downloads. Also if I know the song has a lot of picking or fills I use them too because it makes it much easier to keep track of where you are and where everything is placed while you memorize the song.

So essentially, tab editors are overall a way better option, but if your in a hurry for a simple song it may be better to just stick to text tablature.

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The Boss OC-3 is a pretty awesome pedal, but with a few annoying characteristics.

I got the “Super Octave OC-3″ a while back in place of a bass (didn’t have room for any more amps).  It does pretty much whats advertised but I wish it could get a little farther down. It has the ability but when you crank the knobs to max in order to get that sound it starts to sort of go in and out of the octave. It’s really a kinda of subtle but extremely annoying sound. Other than that though its a pretty decent sounding little pedal.  Also I think it’s just me but sometimes you can here a little bit of a dry signal from the guitar in the background.

As far as different settings, there are 3 modes: Poly, Oct(ave) 2, and a Overdrive mode. I’m not much of a fan of Poly. Poly and double octave aren’t that much different but Oct 2 has a better sound quality to me so I use that over Poly. Overdrive, now that’s where the fun is.  On the drive setting and a cranked up amp you can just vibrate the building until the walls fall down…in other words it sounds awesome.

Other than that there are a couple of other settings that don’t make a whole lot of difference, there is a direct level knob and a oct 1 level knob. I usually just keep those about halfway.

So if I had to give this pedal a rating I’d say it pretty much does what it’s supposed to do and is pretty reliable; so I’d give it a 7 out of 10, though I think it could be a lot better.

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