After thinking long and hard about it, tonight I took a plunge on both Strymon top-of-the-lines — Timeline and Mobius. If you know me, you know that I already have Damage Control Timeline. What made me go to Strymon instead? (Shootout is coming, by the way). Well, I’ve had Damage Control now for some…
I must confess that I am quite embarrassed by the quality of the videos I’ve put up so far. And by that, I am talking about both the quality of the video (I know that as handy as the webcam built into my MacBook Pro is, it’s really not adequate for a watchable video) and…
I’ve been saving money to buy much needed gear for my rig, and while I have many of the pieces picked out, there are many others where I am still open as to what I’m going to get. The researching and wondering about what to get is perhaps the funnest part of buying gear, because…
Last weekend I accompanied my wife on an acoustic guitar while she thumbed through a few children’s songbook, singing to my tired-and-needed-to-wind-down children. And this little family event reminded me of the importance of doing the simple things well. Finding the Challenge in Simple Things From a guitar player’s point of view, it can seem…
Well, thank you for asking. 🙂 What follows is my own theory about why single-coil pickups have a greater dynamics range and thus forces you to develop better control over your dynamics. I’m not an expert on electric engineering — so correct me if I’m wrong anywhere. Traditional single-coil pickups have weaker outputs, probably weaker…
One of many things that stuck out of Drive by Daniel Pink (a great book about business and motivation) was the bit about One Sentence. In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. “A great man,” she told him,…
So, since the goal of mastering the guitar is to express yourself, generally speaking, the more expressions you have under your command, the more expressive you can be. It’s like learning a language. If you can call up a wider variety of words, the more articulate you can be. The word “can” is the key,…
There have been enough of them, and many of them not-so-well-done, that I think best practices are starting emerge for doing demos of gear. Get straight to hearing what the product can do (no extended speech at the beginning running through tech specs) — with the exception of hearing the clean sound for a second,…
It’s an easy thing to do, particularly when you’re starting out. You stop the music, you drop out of the rhythm, to figure out where your fingers need to go next. It’s understandable, but this is a habit you want to get rid of ASAP. If you’re practicing strumming, learn to find your next chord…