February 22, 2009. RG60 Brings the Sorrow for Every Animal.

There I was, a-drivin'. If there's one thing I love to do when I'm dead tired, it's drive. The thrill of arriving without crashing. I live on the edge. No...the edge lives on me.


It all began last year. About this time- the 4th Sunday of February, 2008, which was the 24th, to be exact- I bought Echo. Echo has served me well. He picked up Star Wars lingo and thinks I'm a Sith Master. He's the apprentice. I guess.

Whatever. This is the 4th Sunday of February. Which is when I buy my sound equipment. Every year, 4th Sunday of February. With some exceptions expected in the future. Here's what I boughts this year:




DUNNA! No, more like DUNNA! Oop, that was the same thing. It's an amplifier!

The reason I chose the RG60 is because it sounds better than the other amps I tried. Except for the acoustic amps, but those have a bad wattage/price ratio and don't do electric guitar stuff.

Now, I surely couldn't use more than 30 watts, as I never expect to play for more than 100 people. But I don't like the sound of a strained amplifier. I have so much disdain for it, in fact, I prefer the RG60 at 7 o'clock and barely working than a 30-watt at 11 o'clock and using half of its volume.



It came in a good sized box. I do most of my shopping at Guitar Center, due to no other "shop" being near...well, anywhere. If you know GC, they do the same receipt-checking as CostCo. Which means that on the way out, they check your receipt.

As I walked up, I said to the lady, "Gee, I was hoping to sneak this by, but..." Then, it fell a little and hit the ground, and I said, "Well, that's why I got the warranty!" The only way I could have outdone that is if I had said, "I hope I don't forget it on top of my car."

What else...lots of loud...oh, the post title, right. The animals? They don't like it. They hates it, in fact.


As Echo would say...the weak will die out to make room for the strong.

It is the way of the universe.

"Our Guitars Good For You To Play"

Have you ever been to the Asiaman's Guitar Depot? It's a neat-looking guitar shop on the east border of downtown Phoenix. Or northeast, whichever. Anyways, it looks great from the outside.

Then you see the inside. It looks normal.

It really does. Then you meet the high-pressure salesmen. Plural. Two of them. Per person...but I'm getting ahead of the story.


"HIII!" he shouted and popped up in the air like a piece of toastt. I mean, toast. He landed very stiffly. Then another one behind me. "HALLO!WELCOME TO ASIAMAN'S GREAT GWEETARRS!"

I swear, if he could have turned that exclamation mark upside-down, he would have. Then the other one hit him really hard and said, "NO, you unfortifitable (?) dolt! It's ASIAMEN'S GWEETEAR DYEPOTT!"

It escalated. Shouting, screaming, popping up into the air like toast. Then landing and screaming some more.

It had to be the most uncomfortable argument between two Asian men I've ever had the misfortune of happening to be standing between them while they were arguing, ever. And I mean that.



Then they calmed their feud and we got to the gweetars. I must say, they were expertly tuned. I commented on it. "Wow...so who tunes all of these guitars?"

"YOU play them, and WE tune them!" one of them shouted angrily as he slammed his fist on the wall.

I'm not so sure what I said; he went from telling me that he recently taught his daughter how to braid her hair to trying to put his fist through the wall. I ...can't think of what I said. His daughter sounds awesome, though. He named her "after his grandfather's son's great-great granddaughter." I couldn't seem to figure that one out.

The other one has three boys, "all of them twins, all of them born several years apart." "Wow...those are some neat twins," I said. I couldn't figure that one out, either, but I wouldn't want to start a fight by asking how in the world that's possible. Usually we called three children triplets, and usually they're not all born several years apart.


Anyways, the guitars. Taylor, Takamine, Martin, Gibson. I told them I needed an acoustic electric...they told me I can turn any acoustic into an electric. I said, "How?"

They said, "Just buy an acoustic electric!" and burst into laughter. I was in stitches. Really. But I maintained my cheery demeanor...and after viewing thousand-dollar guitars, three-thousand-dollar guitars, and fifteen-hundred-dollar guitars...where was I. Too many numerical...ah, after viewing those expensive guitars, I asked a question.

"So why are these so quiet and gutless compared to my cheap, $200 guitar?"

Silence.

(1)"No, no, no, you did not say that!" one said, his disbelief manifesting as hilarity. They talked in...whatever they talked in (Asian pig Latin?), seemed to come to a conclusion, and walked away. Thirty seconds later, they were back. (2) "YOU DID NOT SAY THAT!" one shouted with angry, bitter tears. I stared. He walked through the store yelling, cursing, and popping into the air like toast.

(3) "Oh fine, oh fine, oh fine, oh fine," the other pleaded. I felt like I was in a house of mirrors. "What if you bought it at 80% discount?! Would they be better then?" I should have said yes, but "I really need one that you don't have to amp to hear," I said lightly.

(4) They wilted. Hunched. Hung their arms. Became all puffy-faced. And kinda pale.

Then something occurred to me......and a minute or two later, after they had finished sobbing, one faced me.

(5) "I understand your concern, valued and esteemed customer. We will pursue for you the loudest acoustic-electric not-amped gweetar in this land or ah-nee other." They bowed. Awkward pause. The other one popped into the air like toast. I cleared my throat and backed away.



Then I decided I don't really need an acoustic-electric that badly.

Where Hal Leonard's Guitar Hymnal Goes Wrong

My mom got me a hymn book (thanks, Mom!). It arrived, as these things usually do, and I set to opening it. I said, "I hope it's a guitar hymnal." A couple seconds later, I saw that it was an "Easy Guitar The Hymn Book 146 Glorious Hymns by Hal Leonard." My dad thinks I'm psychic now.


Hal Leonard is a creepy looking guy who wears what is likely a Satanic cross around his neck and looks as if he might not have a head and has a terrible ring on his finger which looks as if it needs to cast into the fires of Mount Doom. Sorry.

I didn't have high hopes, even once I found out that Hal Leonard was a publisher and that the creature on the cover likely wasn't the man who proffered the book. If this is the guy that they choose to represent the book...I mean, what, they ran out of funding so they reanimated a corpse?


According to all previous experience, if they're selling it, there's a catch. The catch for this book happens to be rearranged sheet music. Blessed Assurance goes from D Major to G Major, and the time goes from 9/8 to 3/4.

This results in the student being blissfully unaware that the actual key is D. From what they see, these hymns are all wondrously, perfectly suited to guitar...and once you realize it's been transposed (there is no mention of this in the book), you'll have to constantly consult real sheet music.


From what I can see, this guitar hymnal goes wrong in that it tries to get a lot of muscle (146 hymns) with no bone structure (just 1 page of instruction, and it only deals with strumming, and 2/3 of the page is devoted to pictures.)

Another kick in the side of this hymnal is that, while it would have been psychotically easy to have three lines of lyrics under the sheet music and chords, he opts to put these second/third verses separate from the sheet music and chords in a section called "Additional lyrics." At least the additional lyrics are on the same page.


The only good point I can see thus far is that he mostly refrains (get it? Refrain? Nevermind, it's hymn humor, you wouldn't understand) from intricate chords, using majors, minors, and sevenths with only a few cases of Asus4 or G/D. The result is that most of the hymns are playable to the beginner.


All that said, I do believe it will have some worth. It's really an extraordinary hymnal when you consider the cesspit that is guitar hymnals at large, but I won't use it except for secondary reference. There's gotta be a shining hymnal on a hill somewhere. Someday I'll find it. We'll be friends and maybe one day...something more.


Wait, that's creepy. Forget I said that.

Jesus Appears In (On) Guitar

Wazzzamyo 13, West Michigan.


I'm waiting for a Holy ...um...


...can't think of anything clever...

...must end post somehow...

Echo Says, "No More Hymns"

DA, DA DA-DA DA DA DAH-DAH-DAH! DAH, DAH-DAH-DAH-DADA DAH, DAH, DAH! DAH, DA-DA-DA-DA-DA DAH DAH DAH at CAL--VA--RY!


Echo says it's time to stop hymning for the day. I'm seeing that guitar become grungier and grungier, and not in the usual grungy way. It's hard to explain.

Regardless, (and regardless is a word I am beginning to love), I've been hymning a lot in the last two days. The last time I hymned like this was perhaps eight months ago. Then, eight months ago, I spent nearly seven hours creating the original The Probably Inaccurate Compilation of Guitar Hymns. It took a while, that's for sure. And that was just finding the chords; to find the hymns for which to get the chords took five to six more hours.


Half of what I did was unusable.


Anyways, onto my point. Echo says no more hymns for tonight. I know what you're thinking; guitars can't talk, Kev. Is Echo magical?

No, no humble fool, he isn't magical. Let me explain what he said through interpretive picture:



Get it? A string broke! The first string I've had break. Wanna hear the action-filled tale?

No! Because it actually happened while I was tuning. There is no action to tale about. Tale...tell...whatever. It kind of made a muffled/muted "twik" and went limp. Broke right at the tuner, where I was busily tuning it.

That's all there is to the story. I bought an extra pack of strings last time, so I get to replace them tomorrow. Joy.

After that, I'm buying a 10-pack- I'll never want for strings again!

Guitaring Pains: I think I'm trying to tell me Something

My fingers hurt. My hands hurt. My throat is probably bleeding. Echo is really, really ticked off. And Echo usually does the ticking.


In case you can't tell, I've been hymning something fierce. I dis...ouch. Sorry, hand cramp. Finger cramp, actually. Hold on.


Hush little babies stop hurting so, it'll be OK in a day yes oh, stop your fretting no pun intended yo, it'll be OK in a day or so...



Sorry about that. I had to sing my fingers a type of nursery rhymeluby/lullarhyme. They love that kind of stuff. They move and sway and curl and ...retract... And stuff. Irregardless, I think I'm trying to tell myself something. I think what I'm telling myself is that I'm not playing hard enough, and I'm not singing loud enough. That has to be it!

Mr. dataDyne says that pain is weakness leaving the body...I'm sure it's the way that most things that he says actually, somehow, through some witch-like force of spoken spell, come true, but I think I've learned that when he says something, I should expect within a few days or weeks for the order of reality to be rearranged according to his mandate. Or maybe he just knows when the rearrangement of reality is going to occur, and it just seems like he does it.


Irregardless, if pain is weakness leaving the body, then I must have some weakness in my hymning character, because I am aching. One of my grandest, greatest, most splendid dreams is for some special people (but they have to be special and under special circumstances!) to lovingly create for me a nametag that says something about my guitaring on it. Like, "Hymn Guitar," or "Saint Guitar," or "Guitarzan," or something (and I want the necklace part of it to be expensively durable!). And a matching steel plate that can go inside Echo but with his name on it. We'll be matchies!

Why did I say that. I would guess I had a point. I forget it. Irregardless...forgot what I was going to say. I keep forgetting the points I'm going to make. Uhh, hold on.


\


Right. So, my point is, whilst I may be in pain, the greater problem is that I think Echo is not doing good. Hard strumming makes him sound...off. And I may need to strum hard if I'm making a Pentecostal musical point. The only remedy I know for this is...you guessed it...thicker strings. I make it sound more dramatic than it is, sure, but it'll be tons harder to do barre chords. Yeah, so there.

Uhh...and I may need to have the action lowered. But lower action = more fret buzz, and if thicker strings = less fret buzz, then unaltered action + thicker strings = very little fret buzz but hard to play.

We'll see how this pans out.


And no one get any ideas about making me a name plate necklace. If I want you to make it for me, I'll very well tell you to. You have to be a special person/people under special circumstances. So if you want to make me a name plate necklace, try to get yourself into a special, circumstantial position, OK? OK. Fair warning, it won't be easy for you. I will give you nothing but hell for your efforts. Like a baby that you are trying to feed ground peas to.

Guitar Update #2: It's Official

On the 24th of February, I bought M.P. Echo, my guitar. It's an FG700s. Get it? FG? FGGJP? I'm so great, I amaze myself. See the Guitar Update #1 for other "valuable" guitar related materials. By the way, welcome the "Guitar" tag, for all things guitar and partially applying to musical performances!

So now that it's the 26th of March, I have no option of returning it. Therefore, I'm keeping it. I like the guitar. I need to learn some more songs for it, that's for sure.


You'll note that I bought the guitar on February 24th, and my first recorded performance was March 24th, 30 days later! Yes, on Monday, I sang at a wedding, and I also played my guitar. I'll post about the wedding soon. But for now, listen to my performance, below! I didn't include the video. The file is 2 MB in size, according to Blogger.




...yeah!


It was quite a day. If you can believe it, I randomly got a guitar lesson the day before in church which gave me a little bit of inspiration. The teacher was none other than Dave Spider, who has a "variety show" which he performs. Apparently, he's a real jokepot. All I know is that he's a patient guy. I learned so much, I can't believe it. It was like his knowledge was crushed walnuts, and I was an apple coated in caramel, and I was rolled around in his knowledge.

David dataDyne is also learning to play the guitar, and even though he's ages ahead of me, he was also absorbing. Dave (Dave Spider; they're both named David) conned him into becoming my teacher, so now I'll be learning how to play the guitar from David dataDyne. It'll mostly consist of me and him getting together once a month and him telling me I do everything wrong.

Then, it will advance into once-a-week, two-hour-long meetings where we practice the hymns for that week. We're going to become the players for the church...Mr. Bruckner will still sing, but we'll play. He may start performing before I do, but I'm sure I'll be able to grasp some basic songs within a few months. I want to learn the one song he played. Maybe he has TAB (guitar musical language) for it.


As of (around) March 15th, my fingers no longer feel like they've been cut, burned, and crushed simultaneously, but they do get pretty sore and tender after I've been playing a long time. When you play for even one person, though, you don't feel it. I was nervous. Also, my strumming hand doesn't lose its coordination nearly as quickly. I can now play for about half an hour, whereas before I could only play for about 3 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 10 minutes.

I'm developing the calluses at a good rate, too. Time to end this post, though. I still only know the chords Dmajor, and Amajor, and Gmajor. I remember them quickly and easily by Delactation, Antigalactic, and Galactometer...D, A, G. What?...don't give me that "You've made yourself look like a freak" look again. Do YOU know of an easier way to remember the chords?!


I'll make another update some other time. For now, it's time to do laundry. Off I go.