Acoustic vs. Electric

When I got the Telecaster I wondered how I would split my time between it and the Alvarez. I figured I would gravitate toward one or the other and then feel guilty, as if I loved one child more than the other.

That hasn't been the case, however. I seem to split my playing time fairly equally between the plugged and the unplugged. Both have their charms and it's nice to have a choice.

The general self-imposed rule is that I stick with the acoustic when the rest of the family is home. But when I have the house to myself, which is quite often, thanks to my work schedule, I crank up the Telecaster with impunity.

I'm still finding the Telecaster to be fairly fascinating with all the different sounds and tones you can get out of it. And it's so much easier on the fingers, although sometimes I still find myself putting a death grip on the strings, like with the Alvarez.

And speaking of strings, I changed out the acoustic the other day. There's nothing like a new set of strings. It made me think, "Ah, this is what it's supposed to sound like."

I'm getting much quicker at changing strings, although there was one embarrassing consequence -- I wrapped the strings backward on the pegs (nice and tight and uniform, but backward), meaning I have to turn the tuning keys in reverse. I'll just have to adapt because I'm damn sure not going to redo them.

Miscellaneous

The guitar straps made by Eyeland Enterprises are eye-popping beautiful. We're not talking about just tooled pieces of leather but real works of art. They're priced accordingly, too, ($60 to $250 for the stock straps; you can also get them custom-made) but if I was real musician I'd be truly tempted.

Some of the straps have a macabre/whimsical touch like, from left to right, Chuck the Eel, Handy and Triclops ...

The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), which recently finished its big trade show in Anaheim, Calif., is pushing its Wanna Play? campaign to get people to pick up musical instruments. This page has some helpful guidelines for anyone looking to purchase a first guitar ...

You can own the guitarboat that Australian singer Josh Pyke had built. He's putting it up for auction on eBay next month and will give most of the proceeds to the Indigenous Literacy project.

Lighten Up With the Guitar Picks

What if you could put a whole light show in your guitar pick?

With a little circuitry and a couple of disc batteries, that's what the people at Santa Cruz Light Wells say they've done. And on some models they've added a metronome with an adjustable tempo. The light-up picks range in cost from $30 to $70 and come with tips of varying sizes. They'd be especially effective with the guitar with the light-up fretboard.

The Santa Cruz Light Wells people, who also make surfboards with headlights, side lights and fin lights, swear your listeners won't be able to take their eyes or ears off you, as you can see below.

Casa de Guitarra

Would your playing improve if you lived in a house filled with guitar-themed furnishings? Probably not but there appears to be no end to the guitar's influence on home decor.


A Google search accidentally took me to this desk set and lamp, which are sold at fretboyproducts.com, and further clicking led to all sorts of products that push the limits of credulity, as well as taste.



Like many guitar furnishings, this clock with
the swinging neck pendulum, is inspired
by Fender. The ad for it says it's
"twang-erific" and I have no reason
to doubt that.







These floor lamps have potential. You activate the three-way dimmer by strumming the strings and the lamp's power cord runs through the guitar's plug.








You'll need someplace comfortable to sit in Casa de Guitarra while you and friends discuss octave displacement exercises, the renaissance of analog delay and the merits of the Seymour Duncan SH-13 Dimebucker pickup vs. the DiMarzio DP195.


It's the little touches -- like this outlet cover -- that really set off a room.

And now, what a French guitarist would call the piece de resistance to complete your guitar-themed home.

Mama Tried -- And I Did, Too

I have nearly strummed and fretted Merle Haggard's classic "Mama Tried" into submission. I still have work to do on the intro but the bulk of the song is fairly simple -- alternating between D and G with an A7 thrown in every now and then at just the right spot (at least that's way it goes according to the tabs I'm working from).

It's that A7 chord that really makes the song. It adds just the right wistful, melancholy tone to a song about a boy who, despite all his Sunday learning, toward the bad kept a'turnin.'

"Mama Tried" isn't straight autobiography but comes close. The Mighty Merle wasn't an only child and he didn't turn 21 in prison doing life without parole but he did do a stretch in San Quentin for robbery. On the bright side, he got to see Johnny Cash perform while there and played in the prison band.

I first grew fond of this song back in college when it was a staple of an act that I used to catch regularly at a bar in Austin. It also was a regular feature in Grateful Dead shows for many years and Joan Baez and the Everly Brothers covered it.

The Well-Dressed Guitar

After you've spent those big bucks on your artificially distressed guitar, you'll certainly go to any lengths to make sure it doesn't get scratched or dinged. That's where the GuitarGuard comes in. It's a "skin" like you put on your iPod or cellphone to protect it and give it a different look. They'll fit your Stratocaster (it's called the Stratjacket) or Les Paul (the Gibskin) and come in three colors -- "classic black, raging red and Obama blue." The PR material says they're made from "sustainable eco-friendly materials," which I'm guessing is silicone-like, and sell for $30. 

Maybe if I tried a GuitarGuard it would put an end to all my guitar-destruction dreams ...

Apparently the GuitarGuard is what all the best dressed guitars will be wearing at the annual National Association of Music Merchants convention in Anaheim, Calif. It's billed as the biggest music products trade show in the world -- sort of the Super Bowl for the guitar industry -- and starts Saturday. Hopefully there will be more silly and/or cool gadgets and technology to come out of the show ...

Leo Kottke is one of those people who can make people like me wonder why we even try. In addition to being a finger-picking 12-string wizard, he gives his songs great whimsical titles like "A Child Should Be a Fish," "When Shrimps Learn to Whistle," "Taking a Sandwich to a Feast" and "Even His Feet Look Sad." In this interview the reporter mentioned a certain music-themed video game, which elicited this response from Kottke: "I don't know what Guitar Hero is."

Product Misplacement

You know those relentlessly obnoxious commercials for freecreditredport.com? The ones that make you want to throw a shoe at your television? I just noticed that in one of them -- the one set at band practice in the crowded basement -- the guy with the bad credit rating is playing a Telecaster and his bandmate has a Fender bass. In another, the singer is playing a Fender Jazzmaster.

Despite my Fender product loyalty, I still want to fling a size 11.5 at the TV when I see any of the commercials from that series.

If you find those ads especially hard to get out of your mind, it's because they're the work of the Martin Agency, the same bunch of master brainwashers who came up with the Geico gecko and the contemporary cavemen.

And by the way, the singer in the commercials is lip-synching. Supposedly he's a musician and singer but he's a French-Canadian and in real life has a heavy accent. Furthermore, the credit report isn't really free. You have to sign up for a credit-monitoring service that costs $14.95 a month until you cancel.

Random Music

By popular demand, the iPod Baker's Dozen feature will be appearing in this space each month in 2009. January's random shuffle sounds like this:

• 'Houston,' Dean Martin
• 'A Day in the Life,' the Beatles
• 'The Sun Is Shining,' Hound Dog Taylor
• 'You Don't Love Me,' T-Bone Walker
• 'Bed of Coals,' Warren Zevon
• 'The Ballad of Laverne and Captain Flint,' Guy Clark
• 'No Earthly Good,' Billy Joe Shaver
• 'With a Little Help From My Friends,' the Beatles
• 'Love in Vain,' the Rolling Stones
• 'Mannish Boy,' Warren Zevon & the Hindu Love Gods
• 'White Boots,' Jimmie & Stevie Ray Vaughan
• 'For What It's Worth,' Buffalo Springfield
• 'You're So Static,' Elton John (live)

Guitar Dreams, Part 2

The Alvarez has once again come to a tragic end in a dream, just a few weeks after it was destroyed by groceries in my sleep.

This time I dreamed I took the guitar to a very nice restaurant and leaned it against a wall while I ate. When I went to retrieve it, it was lying on the floor with the neck split lengthwise, as if someone had taken a cleaver to it. (Perhaps another patron whacked the guitar to ensure I wouldn't spoil his dinner by playing it in the restaurant.)

I have no idea why I keep dreaming about the destruction of my guitar but an online dream interpretation site says a broken or string-less guitar "signifies disappointments in love" so I guess I need to talk to my wife.

I solicited some opinions, a few of which suggested guitar-destruction dreams indicate I'm worried about damaging the guitar and am preparing myself for the worst. But for the record, I'm completely over that ding I put in the Alvarez last month. A couple of people said the dreams mean I'm angling for an upgrade.

Also for the record, I was fully clothed in both dreams.

Pinkies and Ears

Time for true confessions: Who's a pinky planter?

That would be the practice taking the little finger on your strum hand and planting it firmly on the pickguard while strumming. The purists frown on this, saying it limits range and flexibility.

Sometimes I pinky-plant, sometimes I don't. I find that I do it most often on power chords, where a lot of strumming range is not always necessary, because it seems to give me some stability and leverage.

Despite what the purists say, my exhaustive polling of guitar players shows that you should pinky-plant if it works for you ...

I might be the next Pete Townshend.* I don't mean playing ability, of course. I'm talking about hearing loss. I fear this Telecaster might finish off what's left of my hearing. After banging away for a while, I acquire a slight headache.

Do I sound like an old geezer or what? But I guess that's the rock 'n' roll lifestyle -- sex, drugs and hearing aids.

*Way back in 1989 Townshend became probably the first rock star to discuss his hearing problems. A couple of years ago he blamed it studio headphones, rather than The Who's notoriously loud concerts. He's warned the youngsters about cranking up the iPod too loud and has to take a 36-hour break between recording sessions.

Distressing Trend

Somehow the fashion industry persuaded people to pay $150 for blue jeans that came artificially faded and frayed with rips and threadbare spots. Now Fender is running a version of that marketing scheme on the guitar-playing public.

Fender has had "distressed" guitars (such as the Stevie Ray Vaughan signature model) for a while and also offered them through its custom shop but now is aiming at the mass market.

The "road-worn" guitars, as the promotional campaign calls them, are based on the classic Stratocasters and Telecasters and basses of the 1950s and '60s and then banged up to add "a killer aged design aesthetic that conjures up ghosts of past music lives."

To me, this sounds like paying top-dollar for a brand-new pre-dented car. If you really wanted a "distressed" guitar but don't have time to beat it up yourself, send it to me and I'll distress the hell out of it for a modest fee.

Speaking of guitar promotions, I liked this Taylor ad, which I came across in a catalog.

Pushing Guitarists' Buttons

Is your guitar outdated? By several centuries perhaps? Here's a provocative piece from a British newspaper in which the author, a Mr. Steven Wells, denounces the guitar as a "ridiculously archaic instrument that hasn't had a major redesign since the Middle Ages."

Apparently unaware of the advent of electricity, Mr Wells wails: "How the hell are we supposed to make the music of the 21st century with the instruments of the 15th century?"

He says learning to play a guitar would be a lot easier if the strings were replaced by buttons, a la Guitar Hero (you knew that was coming, didn't you?). As it is now, learning is too difficult, boring and painful. I guess he's got a point there but, like Dan Jenkins wrote, no one didn't ever say it wasn't going to be semi-tough.

I suspect Mr. Wells is just engaging in a bit of Swiftian satire, as those Brits are inclined to do. He goes on to call for luthiers to give us "living guitars made out of pain-sensitive clone flesh with screaming Jagger-lipped mouths at the end of the necks" capable of puking on the audience.

But hasn't Alice Cooper already done that in his show?

Come on Baby, Light My Fret

Here's a guitar-learning system that seems to have been inspired by Guitar Hero. You buy the Fretlight guitar, plug it into your computer with a USB cable and fire up the instructional CD. The trick is that the guitar's frets light up to show you where to put your fingers. That might be helpful but I could really use a device that actually picks up the fingers and places them in the right spots on the fretboard.

The Fretlights are real guitars that play independently of your computer. They come in acoustic or electric, including several Fender-inspired models, starting from about $400 ...

I should have done more research before I bought an amp cable for the Telecaster. I just got the basic black model with standard plugs. I could have had something with a theme if I had looked at this site -- something with plugs like these:

They also come with skulls, dice and crosses on the plugs.

"I Was Working in the Lab Late One Night ..."

It's as if I'm a mad scientist and this Telecaster is my laboratory. The trouble is I have no idea what I'm going to create. I could blow up the place at any minute.

There's so much to experiment with, so many sounds you can get between the guitar and the amp. The guitar has three positions for the pickups, which each give a different sound, as well as a tone knob, which is complimented by treble and bass dials on the amp.

The amp also has a "gain" knob, which, as best as I can understand, multiplies the signal from the strings before it hits the amp circuits. It basically makes things louder and adds some distortion (the good kind). And then there's the clean/overdrive button on the amp, which really ratchets up the distortion (more of the good kind).

(That's an uninformed layman's analysis and corrections and further explanation are appreciated.)

The good thing about all that distortion is that it can cover up a lot of bad finger work.

It's obvious that to get the full effect of the electric guitar -- to make it sound the way the way it was intended to sound -- you have to make it loud. Really loud. So I need to crank the volume and gain knobs way to the right. This probably will not help my playing gain acceptance in my own household, however.

Just wait until I get one of those "Spinal Tap" amps with the special "these go to 11" dials.