Motorcycle Touring

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve updated the blog. I have a couple of updates I’ll be adding in over the next couple of evenings.

First off, I did stop lessons back in August. I wanted to take a couple of months off to work on the lessons I’d already received and to generally relax and absorb. I’ve also been poking about at different songs to find something I can learn right now with my limited skills.

A couple of weeks ago I hit upon Blue Oyster Cult’s Burning For You. I started with the intro and discovered it was the second guitar and not the lead (which is a bit more complicated). On the positive side, the licks are fairly straightforward. There are 6 different sections with another one that’s spliced into one of the 6. I learned each one pretty well but had trouble with the transitions between them. I finally got enough to try and record. It took several tries but I finally got a reasonably good run through.

I don’t have the YouTube link at my fingertips as I’m posting from my iPad but I’ll snag the link and update the post later.

It’s not as good as each of the sections that I can do. The transitions cause me to get a little fumble fingered, strings get muted or play when I’m moving between notes. I’ll get the technique down with more practice.

Found a good post on understanding guitar cables:

Well, there are two factors to think about in terms of cable–tone and construction.

The primary reason for tonal differences between cables results from a cable’s capacitance.

Cable capacitance, together with pickup inductance and pot resistance in a guitar equiped with passive pickups, form an oscillating circuit with a resonant peak at a certain frequency. That frequency is usually in the 2khz to 5khz range–above the fundamental frequencies of the guitar but in the “presence” range of the guitar’s upper harmonics.

The more capacitance–either by virtue of using higher capacitance cable, longer runs of cable, or both–the lower the frequency of the resonant peak, the darker and more focused the system will tend to sound. The less capacitance–either by virtue of using lower capacitance cable and/or shorter runs–the higher the frequency of the resonant peak, the brighter and more open a system will tend to sound. This effect will be signficantly more pronouced with lower inductance pickups (single coils) and lower resistance pots (250kohm, for example). It can be a fairly subtle difference that can be perceived numerous ways. For example if a certain peak accentuates frequencies associated with pick attack, a cable that produces that peak in a system can be perceived as sounding “faster.” The effects are also, as you can tell, system dependent. It’s not that a given cable as a tonal quality of its own, it’s the nature of how the capacitance of the cable functions in a given guitar signal chain.

Some people prefer higher capacitance cables like the Canare at 49 pF/ft. Some prefer lower capacitance cables–I use Gepco XBand at 23 pF/ft. It’s all a matter of tuning your system to taste.

There’s no correlation between cost and capacitance. Nor is capacitance a measure of quality. There are plenty of durable cables made from high quality materials at a range of costs and capacitances.

In terms of noise you want a cable that is well shielded from radio frequency and electromagnetic noise–so a double shielded cable with a braided or spiral shield is ideal. Foil shields are not as good. In addition, a cable with a semiconductive PVC shield layer as well–like the Gepco and the Mogami–will shield against microphonic handling noise.

Finally, you need to make sure the plugs are high conductivity and the quality of the terminations and stress relief are good. If you buy your cables from Lava Cable they’ll terminate with great G&H plugs and they do a fabulous job terminating.

So cable capacitance of your choosing, quality copper, well shielded, well terminated– those are the things that make for good cable. “Best” would be impossible to choose. If you’re looking to experiment with cable I recommend trying a bunch of well made cables of varying capacitances–Gepco XBand, Mogami Platinum, Canare, Dimarzio, and the super low capacitance Elixir (10 pF/ft) are all good relatively inexpensive choices–to see what works to your taste in your system.

Ok, it’s been a few weeks since last I blogged about this.

Zack’s been having me learning new techniques and focusing especially on 12 bar blues and embellishments and on breaking out of the rut of the single location on the fret (the b5 blues scales for instance). I’ve been learning all the other scales and modes that Zack passed on last time and picked up a few famous riffs from songs I really like.

Marty Robbins – El Paso – this is the one I’m concentrating on getting through. I have the chord changes but need to finish up on the leads.
Bob Seager – Mainstreet
The Beatles – Day Tripper

Add in:
Heart – Crazy on you
Tom Petty – Breakdown

The funny thing is that right now, they’re all coming along pretty easily. Certainly not the entire song (yet) but I can pull out the main bits that everyone associates with the songs. And these are just going “hey, I could probably play that with 30 minutes of practice” and sure enough I have the basic stuff down quickly and just need a little more practice to get it flowing smoothly. And I can play along with the song on my iPhone 🙂

So last week Zack had me going straight up and down the fretboard vs playing across the fret using one of the scales. Now he normally has me practice with the b5 Blues Scale but occasionally he’ll let me go outside that and into other scales (the b7 and b3 – that’s the ‘flat 3, flat 5, and flat 7’ scales). This time he had me shifting from each of the three scales but up and down. So the B string start with 5, 7, and 8 but keep going up or down to 3, 4 or 7, 8, and 9. These are the positions on the B string. Plus he had me start learning the whole notes on the fret as well but breaking it down by string. So E is open, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 12. So odd, odd, odd, odd, even, even, even. An easy pattern to learn really. And the B string is just as easy. The shift from odd to even is on the 5/6 positions on the fret. And of course since the low E is the same as the high E, you have three strings right away. In looking at the others (A, D, G), they’re easy as well from a pattern point of view. Open, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12 for A. It’s shifted down one additional odd for D; open, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12. And G is easy too. Open, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12. And 12 is the same as Open so you have the next set of whole notes too.

If you’re looking at it, you may not be seeing the patterns but they’re there. A and D are the same as B and E but shifted down 2 frets so shoot, you have 5 of the 6 strings by just memorizing two patterns. Then you just have the one odd one (which really isn’t odd, just shifted down two more frets than the B string). And G is a mirror pattern with an extra at the top. 1 skip 1 skip 1 1 skip 1 skip 1 1 skip 1.

Easy once you see the pattern.

Next is practicing until notes are habitual.