Be A Man

A couple of weeks ago a wiry kid walked into my shop that I hadn’t seen before, or at least I didn’t recognize.  He is obviously a quiet guy but has some heavy news to deliver to me.  Mustering up the nerve to say something he tells me that his grandfather had just passed.  His grandfather was a man I knew as Mr. Amos.  Cancer finally beat a man that in my eyes was unbeatable.

Mr. Amos was a rare breed nowadays, he was a man’s man if there ever was such a thing.  He wasn’t too tall.  He wasn’t very bulky in stature.  He wasn’t a loud spoken individual.  What Mr. Amos had was an undeniable air of confidence and toughness about himself.  He walked and spoke with authority that only comes from years of experience in this ride of life we’re on.  He believed that he could do anything that he set out to do and proved it over and over again.  The man had a guitar that needed a fret job and he just did it.  This is something that scares the crap out of most people.  I’m not suggesting that you go out and tear your guitar to pieces trying to fix things that are out of your realm of expertise.  What I am telling you is that Mr. Amos’ knowledge of mechanics and woodworking made a fret job a simple task to him.   

The reason I am telling you guys about Mr. Amos is because it is a frightening thing to think that our society is no longer making new Mr. Amos’s.  When we lost him we didn’t just lose a man, we lost an ideal.  It seems that we have gotten so used to throwing money at a problem that we have gotten away from the idea of getting dirty and doing it ourselves.  We have abandoned the idea of MAN as our grandfathers would have defined it.   

Admittedly I am still young and dumb in comparison to Mr. Amos.  I will just give you a few of my thoughts on how his type are created and how maybe we can get back to it.  Some of my good friends are old enough to be my Dad.  I admire these people and what they know and can do.  I make it a point to try and absorb as much of their knowledge as possible.  Try and always be aware that the people you talk to can often offer a lot of insight into many problems you will come across.  

Get yourself a toolbox and learn to use it.  If the sink is leaking, fix it.  If your car needs brake pads, replace them.  With the internet you can figure out how to do so many things.  I literally learned how to work on an old Triumph Tiger (motorcycle) by watching videos on the internet.  Don’t be afraid of messing up, because you probably will.  Also, don’t be afraid to walk away and clear your head.  I solve a lot of problems while I’m lying in bed just thinking.  When you finally figure out how to fix something and it actually works it is one of the best feelings I have felt.  This just instills so much confidence, and if you didn’t know, women seem to be attracted to confident guys.  Whatever that’s worth to you.   

My little boy is 19 months old now.  There is a song I wrote a few days after he was born that has a line in it that says “l’ll be the man that all others are based.”  This is a very heavy load to carry for me.  Obviously being able to do things around the house is only part of this equation.  I feel that it is my job to be the man that I want Jack to become.  We have to raise more Mr. Amos’s.  The world needs men.

Play Jazz Guitar in 4 pages (or at least get started).

This is a guest post by my buddy Adam Strickland.  You should check out his band the Lo-Fi Loungers @ http://www.reverbnation.com/thelofiloungers

By Adam Strickland

We guitar players don’t learn to be musicians like people who play other instruments. Typically, while they are learning scales, we’re learning rock faces and posing in the mirror with our axe. While they are learning arpeggios, we’ve got one “power chord” and an overdrive pedal. When it comes time to solo, we only need one thing and that’s the minor pentatonic scale, probably only in one position, and maybe if we’re really advanced, we add a flat 5 and it becomes the “blues” scale. We don’t even learn that scale with our ears, we learn it with our eyes, normally from a pattern charted out with dots on a fret-board in a book. Who needs anything else, that stuff wails and if you’re like me, you started playing because you wanted to pick up chicks, not be an artist. People love it, just ask those thoroughly educated oboe and bassoon players what they think of guitarists, it’s pure jealousy and snobbery. I’m not judging, I understand them, and their thoughts of guitarists easily describes my first 15 to 20 years of playing. Hopefully it won’t take you as long as it did me to decide that I really would like to be a musician and not just a guitarist. It just so happens that I never liked jazz, until I was exposed to someone else who played it, and just like anything else in life, we like what we are exposed to. Jazz is a little more like wine, beer, or coffee. Your first taste of coffee is bitter and nasty, but if you stick with it very long, you can’t wait for your next taste, and it’s delicious. I advise everyone to give it a shot and I hope you get pulled in on this slippery slope.

First off, music is a language. Notes are the letters, some are vowels that have to be there, some are consonants that combine with letters forming words (these would be short combinations of notes), when you learn to put these together they become sentences and paragraphs, or the greatest stories ever told. Language was used to create The Bible, The Unabomber’s Manifesto, and plenty of dirty jokes. Speaking the language of music through your instrument can affect people emotionally and sometimes communicate just as effectively as the English language.

We’re going to focus on the ABC’s, but please remember how you learned to speak English. You didn’t learn letters and grammar first, you learned by listening and imitation. It was only later that you learned the rules, which may have advanced your language but it didn’t teach you to speak it. TO PLAY JAZZ, YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO JAZZ!!!! You need to try to steal licks from Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Grant Green, and especially Charlie Christian. Copying does not inhibit your creativity, copying will give you the basics of the language for you to build off of. I personally would rather hear someone who has 5 Charlie Christian licks move them around and play them all night over different tunes than to hear someone running scales and arpeggios. It’s the difference in someone reciting poetry and reciting the alphabet.

Many high caliber players really shun the focus on scales and the use of Real Books, but if you talk to them for any amount of time, you find out that they learned using Real Books and they know a ton of scales. Because of the way guitarists fail to learn the language to start with, we sometimes need to put the cart before the horse and start with those boring scales. We’ll fake it with those scales to fill in the holes between the licks that you are lifting, and before long you’ll find out that you aren’t faking it and you aren’t thinking of scales or arpeggios, your fingers will go where the music in your brain is leading them.

We’ll start with the basics in the key of C (there are no sharps or flats in the key of C) The notes of the C major scale are C, D, E, F, G, A, B – Simple enough huh?

The Chords in the key of C, are Cmaj7, Dmin7, Emin7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7, Bm7b5
(Why these chords you ask? Because they are basic chords that can be constructed with notes of the C scale with no other notes being used)

So if you were to play the chords listed above on your guitar in any order, and at the same time, have someone tapping various white keys on the piano, it would actually sound quiet good, with no out of tune notes and your chords would color those notes in a sometimes sophisticated sounding way. That is because the white notes on a keyboard are C,D,E,F,G,A, & B. This gets boring fairly rapidly, but that’s why we have black keys.

First, we need to learn where all the white keys are on the guitar. There are many ways to do this, I prefer using 5 different patterns across the neck (low E string to high E string and back including all the notes you can reach in a 4 fret span). First position for C would be starting on the third fret(G) of the low E string, to the fifth fret (A) of the same string, then to the second fret (B) of the A string continuing all the way across then neck playing only the notes (C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D,E....) Do this back and forth until committed to memory. Once you have this, it is movable just like guitar chords. Move everything up two frets you’re playing in D, starting on the A, two more frets and you’re playing in E starting on the B. Back to our original key. You now need to do the same thing starting on the 5th fret (A) of the low E string, going all the way across the neck and back. Now for the easy one, start on the 8th fret (C)or 7th fret(B) and do the same thing, remember you can change keys by moving this someone else. Now do it starting on the 10th fret (D), and finally the 12th fret ( E). Memorize the 5 patterns and you can play the key of C (the white keys) over your entire instrument, starting on the 5th of the scale, the 6th, 7th, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. You can move these shapes to work in all keys, you just move your white keys around.

Now most of us started out playing rock or blues and in such you can play one scale, the minor pentatonic through an entire song and it works. Not as much so with jazz. We want to sound like we are playing through the changes. However you can start by randomly picking melodies out of these 7 notes in the C scale over all of the chords in the key of C. It will sound surprisingly good, but it gets bland really fast. To make it a bit more interesting, play the scale in patterns such as C,D,E,F,D,E,F,G,E,F,G,A...... do this up and down the neck in all 5 positions. Or, try this, C,E,D,F,E,G,F,A.......this pattern focuses on thirds and is starting to sound a little jazzy.

In case you didn’t know, all a chord is, is a combination of 3 or more notes played at once. Most chords can be broken down into Major, Minor, or Dominant. CMaj7 consists of the 1, 3, 5, & 7 (C,E,G,B), this chord sounds happy. C7 or Dominant means that you flatten (move down one fret) the 7, meaning that a C7 is 1,3,5,& b7 (C,E,G,Bb) of the scale, Cminor7 involves flattening the third (which gives it a sad tone) and the 7th, making it the 1, b3,5, &b7 of the scale. Since you know how these chords are constructed, you should be able to construct them in all 5 positions of the scale. In the beginning you can get away with reducing chords down to their basic elements, it doesn’t matter how complicated the chord is, you can always choose to play the basic major, minor, or dominant version. As you progress you should learn to play the chords with the 3rd as the lowest note, and the 5th, and the 7th. As opposed to the music that

you may be used to playing, the 1 isn’t that important. You can leave the “C” out and If you play E,G,B, the C will be implied and this suffices for a CMaj7.

Arpeggios are simply the notes of the chord played individually, one at a time. They are important, because if you want to sound like you’re playing the changes, then you need to be hitting some chord tones. So to play a Cmaj7 arpeggio in two octaves, you would play C,E,G,B,C,E,G,B choosing these notes from within the confines of one position. You should learn the arpeggio for each chord in the key, Dmin7 would be D, F, A, C. Emin7 would be E,G,B,D. FMaj7 would be F,A,C,E. G7 would be G,B,D,F. Am7 would be A,C,E,G (note, these are the same notes as C6, which functions the same as CMaj7), Bmin7b5 is B,D,F,A. Now you can play the arpeggios up and down, or play them up and then come down the C scale from where you are. Remember guitar works in shapes, so if you can play these Maj7, Min7, Dom7, and Min7b5 arpeggios, then you can move them and they apply to every other chord.

Seems like we’re getting deep but this isn’t a one night thing and it’s about to start sounding much better. You should pick a backing track of jazz chord changes in C, at about 100bpm. Try to improvise over it using the C scale, and occasionally picking a whole arpeggio or part of an arpeggio, over the matching chord or even chords that don’t match the arpeggio. Try to make random melodies over the changes.

This sounds mechanical, but try playing the arpeggios over each chord, CMaj7 arp over CMaj7 chord, Am7 arp over Am7 chord. Slow down the track as much as you need and try to confine these within your 5 positions.

Note that through the course of this, you should also work on learning each string up and down the neck using the same notes, this will help you connect positions.

Now let’s think about something that I call Tonal Centers. Almost all jazz is broken down into ii-V’s or ii- V-I’s. For our key of C we can think of this as Dm7 – G7 and Dm7-G7-Cmaj7. The Tonal Center is C. Meaning if you are playing notes from the C scale over these chords, you will be playing the Ionian mode over the C, the Dorian Mode over the Dm7 and the Mixolydian Mode over the G7. All of which are correct, but you are only thinking C. What do you do if the song moves to Am7 to D7, you move your scale to G, because G is now the tonal center. Or if it’s Cm7 to F7, then Bb is the tonal center and a good scale choice. This will begin helping you sound like you are playing the changes.

Chords sure do move fast at times though, here’s an even better way to break down those chords and arpeggios. CMaj7, Em7, & Am7 can all be substituted for each other, so If playing either of those chords, you can choose to play the arpeggio of either of the others and you will be hitting chord tones that really give motion to the music. Since these are association with the 1 chord and the key that we are in, I refer to these as Tonic. Now it gets even better. Dm7, Fmaj7, G7, & Bm7b5 can all be substituted for each other, if you are playing any of these chords, you can use the arpeggio for any of the others. Since these are related to G7, I call these Dominant. Fmaj7 is technically sub-dominant, but that’s for later. So if the song calls for 2 bars of Dm7, then play an Fmaj7 arpeggio, a G7 arpeggio, the Bm7b5 arpeggio and then resolve to the Dm7 arpeggio using all 8th notes. You just played a pretty busy, and hip sounding 2 bars of Dm7.

Notice that the last line sounded much cooler than when you were playing the arpeggios over the chords like Am7 over Am7....CMaj7 over CMaj7. Try this. For any Major chord, play the minor arpeggio a third from it, such as over CMaj7 play an Emin7 arp, or over FMaj7 play an Am7 arp. For any minor chord, play the Major arp a 3rd away from it, such as over Dm7, play the FMaj7 arp, over Am7 play the CMaj7 arp......over a Bbm7 play a DbMaj7 arp. For a Dominant chord like G7, play the Bm7b5 arp, or for an E7 play the Abm7b5 arp. Finally for a Minor7flat5 chord like Bm7b5 play the arp a third away from it, which is Dm7. For an F#m7b5, play an Am7 arp. What you are doing here is a jazz stereotype which is playing the 3rd to the 9th of each chord. You should be very surprised at how jazzy this sounds.

Now let’s backtrack to everything we’ve done. All music is tension and release, we’ve been playing all the “inside” notes, so there hasn’t been much tension although the use of arpeggios creates some tension. Try out some of the notes that aren’t in the scale (outside notes), these are the black keys on the keyboard when in the key of C. There are no wrong notes, you can use all of them in every situation. Let me repeat that there are no wrong notes.

To incorporate these “outside” notes. First try adding the note one step below your target note. If you are soloing over C and you are targeting the E note, first hit an Eb as you are moving to E. This is a passing tone. They should be included on the soft beats. If you are counting one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four, you can always slip these notes in on the “and” of any beat and resolve to the scale tone on the beat. Try this with a CMaj7 arpeggio, play B,C, then Eb, E, then Gb,G, then Bb,B. The second note in each group is the target, but if you play this in 8th notes it will work outstanding over the Cmaj7. You’ve now got two notes for each one. The same works for the note a half step above.

You’ve turned each note of an arpeggio into 2, now let’s turn each note into 4 using enclosures. There are many ways to do enclosures, but my favorite is using the chromatic tone half a step below the target note and the scale tone above the target note. Remember the C scale is CDEFGAB. The CMaj7 arpeggio is CEGB. Let’s start with the scale tone above C which is D, then play C, then the note a half step below C which is B, then C again. You just played DCBC, but having played C twice, you’re listeners mainly heard “C”. It’s good to play these as 16th notes. Count this by saying One E And A Two E And A Three E And A Four E And A...... One is D, E is C, And is B, A is C in this counting. D fell on the beat. Now try the whole arpeggio with enclosures, this will require 4 notes for each of the 4 notes, resulting in 16 total notes in one 4 beat bar. Play D-C-B-C, then F-E-Eb-E, A-G-Gb-G, C-B-Bb-B. You just played the scale tone above, target note, chromatic note half a step below the target, and the target note for each note of the CMaj7 arpeggio, 16 notes in one bar. Now play those 16 notes of the enclosed CMaj7 over a Am7 Chord. Start doing this with all of the arpeggios.

Look at how far you have come in just 4 pages. During the course of this you should have been stealing licks from the jazz greats, and then using these tools listed above to fill in the blanks in between your next cool line. This only starts to scratch the surface. The next 4 pages needs to be on tri-tone substitutions, diminished chords and arpeggios, augmented chords and the whole-tone scale. Remember, as someone once told me, “It’s the first 30 years that are the toughest, after that it’s all downhill”. I didn’t really start working on this stuff until I was 30years old, so by the time I’m 60, I’ll be killing it. Remember what I said about language and the ABC’s as you tackle this stuff, and have fun! 

68' Ducati 250 single (part 2) the tear down

So, taking a bike completely apart can be a bit of a daunting task, especially when it's a bike that you just spent a small chunk of money on.  I have worked on bikes a bit in the past but never completely tore one down with the intent to rebuild it from the bottom up.  I hate the feeling of helplessness.  So, I typically try and figure out how to fix/ solve whatever problem I am presented, which means there have been a lot of things I have taken on in my life that were intimidating initially.  I find that the best way to approach a task like this is one bolt at a time.  That sounds cheesy but it’s amazing how your confidence grows when you take something apart and see that things aren’t as complicated as they seem.

So if you look above you can see a few hours worth of work.  I basically just took bodywork off of the bike, removed the motor, took pictures of what I was doing, and put parts in bags with labels stating where they came from.  My next step was to take the motor to Ray so we could take it apart and see what failed.  At this point I'm feeling like this bike will be in a million pieces when I get planted back into the earth.  What's sad about that is that I hadn't even taken the motor apart yet.   

When I first saw the bike back at Barber Ray mentioned that he thought that the crank was having problems at the connecting rod.  To me the fact that he diagnosed the problem before ever seeing anything was crazy.  Ray can just listen to a motor and get a pretty good guess as to the problem it is having.  So we tear the motor down and pull the crank (this took a couple of sessions with Ray).  Ray was spot on.  The guy kinda blows my mind.  Now that we had the motor apart and found the problem our next step was to get it fixed.  There is a company in Florida called Syd's Cycles that specializes in old Ducati's.  Ray called Malcolm at Syd's and got instructions on shipping and packing the crank, cylinder, and oil pump.  I didn't mention this yet but the piston has to be replaced too because of the issues with the crank.  We sent the oil pump for Malcolm to look over and make sure that it is good to go.  The reason Ray can't fix the crank is basically the crank has to be pressed back together once it is fixed.  This process involves some very precise machinery that we don't have here locally.  The motor is currently in Florida.  I still have plenty I can do to get the chassis ready.  I will give you some info on that next time.  

Intonation

So what is intonation exactly?  Intonation in regards to your guitar has to do with the notes being truly in tune up and down the fretboard.  For example: the low E string should still read as close to E as possible when fretted at the 12th fret of the guitar neck.  If the reading comes back as sharp or flat you can adjust your saddles to compensate for the difference.  Having your intonation set correctly will play a major role in how good your guitar sounds.  You definitely don’t want to be out of tune as you play higher and higher up the neck.  

Checking radius of fretboard

Saddles set to correct radius

Setting intonation on the guitar is the final step in the setup of any guitar.  The first thing you want to do when setting your intonation is to make sure you have a fresh set of strings on your guitar.  Set the radius of the saddles on your guitar to match the radius of your fretboard.  Tune the guitar to pitch and check the neck bow (we will cover this in another entry if you are unfamiliar with how to do this).  After you have completed the steps above you will be ready to set the intonation on your guitar.  

Saddles and adjustment screws

Most electric guitars nowadays have individual saddles you can adjust forward and backwards.  This is a fairly easy process if you understand what you’re doing.  I have heard a lot of people say that the way they check their intonation is to play the note open and then hit the harmonic at the 12th fret.  This isn’t totally accurate.  You still need to fret the guitar at the 12th fret to hear how far off the note is.  The harmonic is just a way to gauge whether or not the intonation is off bad.  When you press the string down to the fret you are bending the string slightly.  This bending makes the note sharp.  So the further you go up the neck the sharper it will become because the string gets further and further off of the fret board as you get closer to the bridge.  

Get a good tuner and get every string as perfectly in tune as you can.  Do this a couple of times because if your guitar is way off the neck will move (bow slightly forward) and by the time you get to the higher strings the lower strings have dropped pitch.  You may need to stretch your strings a couple of times and retune.  Getting the guitar perfectly in tune is critical.

Now go one string at a time and check the tune at the 12th fret.  Start with the low E open and then check it at the 12th fret.  Literally fret the guitar at the 12th fret, no harmonics here.  If the tuner says it’s still in tune move on to the A.  If it is sharp you need to lengthen your string.  To do this tighten the saddle which will pull it back thus lengthening the string.  If your reading comes back flat you will need to shorten the string.  To do this loosen that saddle.  This will shorten the string because the saddle will move forward.  You don’t want to turn the screw in the saddle much at all.  Small adjustments go a long way.  I would adjust about a quarter of a turn per reading.    

After you have turned the screw whichever way it needs to turn, go check your tuning again.  The open string will now be out of tune so tune it first.  Then you will need to fret the guitar again at the 12th fret of the string you’re working on and check the tuning there.  If it is still off go back to the previous step and adjust a little more.  This is a bit of trial and error but you will get better at judging how much to adjust every time you do it.  

You will begin to notice that the saddles will form a certain pattern pretty much every time you set the intonation correctly.  Once you have done this several times you will be able to get the saddles pretty close to the position that they need to be before you ever do anything in regards to setting the intonation.  Good luck and if you have issues come see me. 

Go Somewhere

Typically I wake up to Jack hollering “Mama.”  I drag myself out from under the covers and try to get presentable for the day.  Jack pretty much destroys the bathroom on a daily basis as I get ready to go to work.  He feels the need to empty every drawer in the bathroom as if he may find something new this time.  I finish that up and move on to coffee.  While the coffee is making, I play a little guitar as Jack runs around getting into anything he sees.  The guitar thing gets old for Jack pretty quick so we always end up rocking on the front porch listening to some tunes until Cindy’s folks get there to watch the little dude.  Tomorrow morning will be different for me.  I have my bike loaded down with only the things I have to have, ready to head out for a long weekend trip to the mountains with my brother and Big Al.  

I usually get a little uptight right before we leave for our little adventures because of all the unforeseen things that may or may not happen along the way.  The distance seems so far until you get going.  Like anything else in life the first mile is the hardest to get under your belt.  Once you get on down the road a piece you begin to settle in to the sound of the wind and the bumps in the road.  You realize everything will not only be okay but will be something worth living.  

The reason I tell you this is that I think we all need to get away with our guy friends (girl friends if you're of the female variety).  The fact of the matter is males and females are different.  Guys will act different when it is just other guys around.  I’m sure girls are the same.  You build tighter bonds with your friends when you go somewhere different for a few days.  There will be memories that you create that will last you forever.  Going away also makes you appreciate home and the people back there that miss you when you're gone.  So pick you something to do, get some people together and go be as ridiculous as you want to be.  

Buying Your First Acoustic Guitar

Buying your first guitar can be a bit of a scary thing if you don’t know what you’re looking for.  Salesman can be annoying, pushy, and hard to trust.  My goal with this post is just to give you a few things to consider when you’re looking around.  There are so many good guitars available now - at reasonable prices - you can surely find something you like that should last a long time.

The first place you need to start is to decide how much you want to spend on your first guitar.  There are decent guitars in all price ranges.  I have seen guitars that cost less than $100 that were totally playable.  For this post I will assume you plan on spending less than $500 on your first guitar.  If you are one of the few that can get whatever you want, more power to you that’s awesome.

A lot of people consider the country of origin to be the ultimate test of whether it is a good guitar or not.  To an extent this is a totally relevant approach to buying a quality guitar.  The trouble with this mentality and you wanting to spend less than $500 is that it is hard to get something made in the USA for that price.  Nowadays, there are plenty of guitars made in Korea, Japan, Mexico, China, and Canada that sound and play great for not too much money.  You can get a lot of bells and whistles for your $500 or less if you’re buying a foreign made guitar.

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Sealed Tuning Keys

To me the first place I look to see if a guitar is of any quality is the tuning keys.  How well do they turn?  Are they sealed tuners or open gear tuning keys?  Is there any play when you turn the key?  You want a good solid key that turns smooth.  You don’t want a lot of play in a tuning key.  If it’s an open gear tuning key make sure the construction of the key is solid.  There are a lot of guitar manufacturers that use quality open gear tuners that are great keys.

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The type of wood a guitar is made out of has a whole lot to do with the tone and quality of sound the guitar will produce.  First you need to find out if the wood in the guitar you’re interested in is made of solid or laminate wood.  There are also different combinations.  You may have a guitar with a solid wood top and laminate back and sides.  There are different arguments for whether laminate is all bad.  A good thing about a laminate guitar is that it will tend to move less.  Real, solid wood will move and change shape over time.  Solid wood also ages nice in regards to sound.  In my opinion, if you can get a solid wood guitar you should.  An easy way to tell if the guitar you’re looking at has a solid top is to see if you can follow the wood grain into the sound hole.  A laminate top guitar will have the wood grain just stop and you can see where the next layer of wood begins.

Here you can clearly see that the grain of the wood goes down into the sound hole of the guitar

The type of wood your guitar is made out of will also play a huge role in the sound.  A denser wood grain will produce a brighter tone.  Maple has a bright sound where cedar has a deep warm tone.  About the most common type of wood you see on the top of a guitar is some form of spruce.  Spruce has a good in between sound to me.  For the back and sides you see mahogany and rosewood used a good bit.  In this price range finding solid rosewood back and sides will be difficult.  There is no right answer as to “What type of wood should I get?”.  You need to use your ear and decide what you like.  

Bone Nut

Bone Saddle

The material that the nut and saddle are made of will also really make a big difference in the quality of sound the guitar makes.  My favorite material for this is bone because it looks nice and is really dense (hard).  The density of bone makes the transfer of vibration from the strings to the top of the guitar very efficiently.  That is the ultimate goal.  You will see a lot of inexpensive guitars use plastic for these parts, which is my least favorite.  There are a lot of other materials out there that have their pluses.  A few other materials you see are: graphite, brass, metal, Corian, TUSQ, and buffalo horn.

A lot of people think that the brand of guitar will tell you whether or not a guitar is quality.  This isn’t a terrible way to look at things but shouldn’t be the only way you look.  These companies are familiar to you because they did something right.  Most manufacturers now make inexpensive guitars.  Not all inexpensive guitars are equal.  What I’m saying is don’t think that just because it says something on the headstock that rhymes with blender makes it a good guitar.  Be open minded when it comes to this, look for quality over the name brand.

There are many different body styles and scale lengths available.  A smaller body guitar will sound a lot different than a big jumbo body guitar.  This is another place where you have to decide what you like.  I like all different types based on what my application is at that time.  The scale length has to do with the distance from the neck nut to the saddle.  The scale can effect the sound and the way a guitar plays as well.  A shorter scale guitar will have less tension on the strings and make it feel a little easier to play.  This doesn’t mean you won’t like a longer scale.  You should play both and decide.  

So I’m guessing you want a pickup in the guitar so you can plug it up?  I’m a bit old school when it comes to this.  I personally do not like pickups in my acoustic guitars.  I get that they are convenient and it’s nice to be loud.  There are a ton of pickups available now that sound great.  I just don’t care for them.  I buy an acoustic guitar because I love how it sounds.  I have yet to find a pickup that I can make sound just like my guitar.  Another problem I have with this is that a lot of pickups are underneath the saddle of the guitar.  This is something else that will absorb the vibration from the strings before it gets to the top of your guitar.  All this being said, I understand that if you play your guitar out a lot you may really need to get a guitar with a pickup.  I choose to mic my guitar when I play out and it does present some challenges occasionally.  

The finish of the guitar is something else to consider.  You can’t necessarily say a certain type of finish will always be the best.  A lot of this is just preference.  You should just look at the quality of the finish.  Check for flaws.  This will be a good indicator as to the care taken in the construction of the guitar.  

The playability of the guitar is absolutely something to consider when buying.  Is the neck straight?  Does it need to have the saddle adjusted?  Are the nut slots cut right?  Are the frets all level (this is a biggie and can be an expensive repair).  Here’s the thing though, this stuff can all be fixed.  If you have a guy in town that knows much about guitar repair chances are he can make your guitar play well.  

Finally, the absolute best way to determine if this is the guitar for you is to decide if you like the sound.  The sound of the guitar to me is the ultimate factor in whether I like a guitar or not.  I recently bought a guitar for $50 that I think sounds as good (different of course) as some $2000 guitars I have played and owned.  Trust your ears, everyone will have their own opinions.  You need to decide if you like the sound.  Hopefully if you like the sound it will inspire you to keep picking that thing up.

68' Ducati 250 single (part 1)

Every year Barber puts on a vintage bike festival.  I’ve been going the past few years and love every second of it.  This is basically where people of all different ages from all over the country come together to camp out and bring their old motorcycles to show, ride, talk about, race, and just enjoy the bikes.  They have a swap meet with tons of old motorcycle parts for sale or trade.  They have motorcycle races all weekend.  Watching these guys fly around the track is reason enough to check it out.  There are motorcycles everywhere.  You’ll see cafe racers, bobbers, old motocross bikes, and even some Harley’s.  You can hear the guys on the two-stroke motors well before you see them coming.  There are motorcycles lined up and down the road for what seems like forever.  I usually wind up eating fish tacos at some point from this Mexican food truck that is always there.  Not to mention the track itself.  The place is surrounded by bright green, well manicured grass.  Trees put in just the right place to catch some shade from the Alabama heat.  And, for some reason, the sky just seems bluer at Barber.  

They have a part of the track specifically set up for cafe racer type bikes to congregate that they call Ace Corner.  Up at the top of the hill you can see turn 17 as the old bikes fly by screaming like they still have something to prove.  There is no way for me to accurately describe to you how cool this is.  You really need to go see for yourself.  Last year I’m sitting up there with Pops and I ask him “man, don’t you just want to do that so bad?”  He replied, “no, not really.”  My brain can’t understand that for some reason.  

So after sitting a while we decide to check out the swap meet area where my buddy Ray is working trying to sell some stuff.  Ray is probably the best mechanic I will ever know.  He works on anything from Ferrari’s to old Triumph’s.  I met Ray through Bill Mitchell of Mitchell Classics.  Bill always had about 3 vintage Ducati race bikes he kept that Ray raced.  I am a pretty big fan of Ducati and a bit of an old soul so naturally I always wanted one of the bikes.  Lo and behold Ray has one with a blown motor for sale.  It would have probably have been in my best interest to leave it be.  I sometimes do things that aren’t in my best interest.    

I mulled the idea over for a few days but eventually gave in to the fact that the bike would be my next purchase.  The bike is so light weight Caleb (my brother) and I loaded it up in the back of the Green Bean (Honda Element).  Ray told us that the bike would run but made a sound that made him think something was wrong with the crank.  He suggested I try to get it to run to hear it for  myself.  So that was the plan.  I took it home and drained all of the old gas out of it, got the battery charged up, fixed the clutch cable, and few other little things.  You have to push start the bike because of it being a race bike- the kickstarter was removed.  We decided that the hill at the top of my neighborhood was a good place to get the bike rolling.  So, we loaded the bike up and pushed it down the hill.  We would get a rumble and a sputter from the exhaust occasionally but that’s about it.  This was still enough to keep us pushing.  We were pouring sweat, like Strickland’s do, trying to get this thing to pull its own weight.  After several attempts I finally felt it pull.  We were convinced that the next try was it.  Little did we know the engine had just completely locked up.  We decided that pulling the bike behind the car was a lot easier way to get it running.  After dragging the thing around the neighborhood I realized that the back tire was not going to move.

The following Monday I called Ray to give him the news.  He gave me a couple of numbers of some guys to contact.  I also called a few of my buddies that I thought may have some insight.  The problem with an old bevel driven Ducati race bike is that there aren’t many people that know much about them and the ones that do are not cheap.  At this point I was kind of clueless as to my next move.  Fortunately for me, Ray called me and told me that he had decided he was going to help me rebuild the bike from top to bottom.  With Ray this involves going through every nut and bolt.  Needless to say I was excited to get this news.  My next step was to completely tear the bike down.

This is how it started.

So, you should learn to string your guitar.

Stringing Your Guitar

As a guitar player you have to know a little about guitar maintenance.  Most of us will never be able to have a guitar tech on hand at every gig or living at home with us that helps maintain our guitars.  Over the next few months I will discuss some basic guitar maintenance you can do at home with some simple tools.  I learned a lot of what I know about guitar repair through trial and error.  So don’t be afraid of messing up because you probably will at some point.  Being able to keep your instrument in good shape will make it play better, sound better, and make you a lot more willing to pick it up and practice.  We will start with how to string your guitar.  How often you do this is obviously determined by how often you play.  This doesn't mean that if you never play your guitar you never need to string it.  Sooner or later environmental conditions will kill the life of your strings.  Basically if your strings sound dull or have turned a dark black/ rusty color it's probably time.  

Basic tools needed:  Strings, string-winder, dikes, finishing rag, and polish.

String Selection

The first thing you will need to do is select the proper strings for your guitar.  There are so many different types of strings out there that it can be a bit daunting trying to understand the differences in them all.  Really you can break it down to about 3 different types:  Steel, Electric, and Nylon.  These are the three types you will see most often and believe me, there are variations in those.  It is important to select the proper type of string for not only tone reasons, but using the wrong type of string could affect the way your guitar plays and the structural integrity of the instrument.  Example:  If you put steel strings on a classical style guitar you will eventually pull the bridge completely off of the guitar.  The bracing inside a classical guitar isn’t made to withstand the tension from steel strings.

3 Basic String Types

Remove Old Strings

Remove the old strings and wipe the guitar down to remove dirt and nastiness from the guitar and fretboard.  I use a micro fiber or finishing rag to clean the guitar along with some type of guitar cleaner/ polish.  This helps break up the old grime and the proper type of rag keeps the guitar from getting surface scratches.  

Install New Strings

Put the new string in bridge.  Start with low E and move towards high E.  You can put all 6 strings on at a time if you want.  Pull the ball of the string against the bridge pad. Basically push down on  the bridge pin and pull string up until you can see the thicker windings on the end of the string come through the bridge.  You may not be able to see this depending on the thickness of your bridge.

String Balls Against Bridge Pad Inside Guitar Body

Getting The String Length Right

After you have the string installed in the bridge pull the string approximately 1.5” past the tuning key you intend to use.  This can be longer or shorter depending on what string you are on.  The thicker the string the less length you will need.  This is critical because you want to have at least 2-3 windings around the tuning key head.  This helps to make sure your guitar will hold tune.  Once you have the length figured out, go ahead and cut the string.

String Tension is Critical

Put the string through the tuning key and use your fingers to keep tension on the string while you wind it onto the key.  Keeping constant tension on the string is a big deal in making sure your string goes on nice and clean. This will also aid in keeping you guitar in tune.  You want to tighten the string to the inside of the headstock.  Move through each string using this same process.

Wind String To Inside Of Headstock

Make sure you have a decent amount of tension on each string.  You should be able to pull the string about 1.5” off of the fretboard with little effort.  Do not get the strings too tight or you risk breaking them.  

Once you have all the strings on the guitar, stretch each string side to side and up and down.  Don’t stretch too hard because you can tear the strings right off of the guitar if you're not careful.  After you do this, tune the guitar.  Once you have the guitar in tune stretch the strings again.  Tune again.  You may repeat this process 2-3 times.  This gets any looseness out of the strings and helps keep the guitar in tune.  This is a major step in keeping your sanity after putting on new strings.  Your strings will still continue to stretch when you first start to play it.  Just be patient and tune it again.  I believe you should tune your guitar every time you play it and sometimes during playing depending on how hard you play.

Using A Tuner

There are several ways to get your guitar in tune.  You could tune it to another instrument, you could use a pitch fork, you could just tune it to itself (terrible choice if you want to play with other musicians or even a record).  For the sake of this blog entry I will assume you have a tuner you can use.  There are countless types/brands of tuners on the market.  The type I prefer is a tuner that clips on the headstock of the guitar and tunes off of vibrations from the guitar.

A tuner has no brain which means to an extent you have to think for it.  A chromatic tuner is able to tune all 12 notes.  A guitar is tuned E, A, D, G, B, E starting on the lowest/ thickest string.  So if you're tuning the E string on your guitar, but for some reason you are closer to an F, the tuner will assume you want to tune to an F.  You have to know that if your tuner is reading F, you are too sharp and need to tune down until the tuner recognizes E.  The notes are in this order: A, A#/Bb, B, C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, and back to A.  You can use this information to know whether you are sharp or flat.  

Conclusion

I hope this helps if you have had a hard time stringing your guitar in the past or have never attempted to do so.  You will get better every time you do it.  The trick is be patient and keep trying.  Another option is to just bring it to me (if you’re in the area) and I’ll string it for about $10.  If you have any questions feel free to ask.

New Website, New Perspective

Somewhere on the Blueridge Parkway Summer 2014

"Playing guitar really isn't a whole lot different than riding a motorcycle."

My garage on a hot Alabama day with Dylan playing in the background while working on a motorcycle - one of my favorite places to be.  There's no better feeling than a sweaty shirt and scrubbing off grease from the task accomplished at the end of the day.  Sunday afternoons riding motorbikes with friends down roads only locals use to get to town.  Getting together with my bandmates and working on a new tune that seems to be there but somehow needs our help to be brought into an audible existence.  That moment at the end of the night into the fourth set when my amp and guitar come alive and seem to play me. These are the moments in time that I try to collect. 

Playing guitar really isn't a whole lot different than riding a motorcycle. Riding a motorcycle isn't much different than working in that garage.  These things that we do are just a lifestyle.  We need to be free of marketing, politics, judgement from others, and ourselves. The aforementioned activities are an escape for a moment. These lifestyle choices, to an extent, determine how we dress, spend money, time, and the people we interact with.

The world is dying for something real.  We all need an escape from the constant demand for our attention.  We are bombarded with advertisements everywhere we turn.  This demand for our attention is very overwhelming.  It seems to suck the very life out of everything that I cherish, i.e. music, family, quality of life and goods.  We all have our escapes, yours may differ from mine but isn't it really the same?

 So here I am, a businessman preaching to you about "The Man."  I assure you I am anything but that.  I just want to create a community of people that are all on the same team.  I want you to walk into my store and not feel intimidated or out of place.  I want you to feel at home and a part.  I want to help you make music.