Musicians check in here. If you play, tell us about it!

[DaveP]

Nothing wrong with making a little money playing music in fact it's my opinion that it's some of the best money available. It doesn't have to be a lot. Food tastes better when it's bought with gig money. Tip jar money is the best.

Some of our best nights were when we announced "last song" and someone came up and asked how much we would charge for one more set! It was usually worth the effort. They'd pass the hat around and drunks would drop in 5s, 10s, and 20s. By the time they came back, we usually made good overtime pay. By that time of the night, party goers are loose with the cash.

ETA: I saw your links, Bassnut. I'm about to leave the house, but will listen when I get back. Thanks for posting them!

 

[Pipeous]

Tom is down with my business plan. we'll get gigs. we are going to just do a duet until we find the right supporting cast. taking my drum machine to work tonight to start programming backing tracks. time to start some gigging again baby. Tom is a reporter and has contacts I would not be able to get.

Now I have to get him to do some singing. I have a vocal harmonizer. TC Helicon voice live touch. it reads the guitar chords and adds a vocal harmony based on the notes you play. pretty cool. you can use scales or midi to trigger but I just use chords. it even works with bass as input as that is what I originally started using it with. some people don't like them but I have to have harmonies one way or another.

 

[bassnut]

ETA: I saw your links, Bassnut. I'm about to leave the house, but will listen when I get back. Thanks for posting them!

I believe you've already seen them. I originally posted them months ago.

 

[bassnut]

"I'm fat, bald, old, and grey but i can still do it!" hehe! .

LOL
That was Bush (Rick) the drummer. I believe he'd had a few....

 

[DaveP]

I believe you've already seen them. I originally posted them months ago.

Maybe so, but I enjoyed listening to them again. Good stuff!

 

[Pipeous]

My DYI kit arrived. I start building my first instrument. Octave mandolin

 

[DaveP]

Pipeous, looks like you have a good Winter project to keep you busy. I've always said I would build a solid body guitar one day and haven't, yet. I have a wood shop in the basement with all the tools I'd need.

Keep us posted with your progress!

 

[Pipeous]

Since playing mandolin, I have had to learn to do a lot of setup stuff I never did before. Got the bug to try a kit. we'll see about scratch building after this. front and back are flat not arched so should make life easier.... and no scroll to try and put a binding on. I am using hand tools for most everything here aside from drilling and putting an inlay in the headstock.

I was reading the booklet on stains and dyes and crap. I was just going to seal it but the more I read the more I want to try a stain to bring out more grain. Just got home from work and now 4 days off. going to scan the instructions and make notes on what I need and go hit the hardware store later today. hardest part will actually be the binding and purfling for me. the rest looks pretty straight forward

 

[Pipeous]

Today was a good day in music world. I took both mandolins to an old friend's place to jam tonight. He just picked up a Parker acoustic (absolutley amazing guitar, I am so jealous). I let him play both. He likes heavier music and I wasdoing licks over alice in chains and stuff I'd never heard before. fun. I mentioned I was pretty happy with all my gear but wanted to upgrade my squire strat to a les paul. getting to like the gibson shape from mandolins... he says he wants to sell a couple guitars.... he collects guitars. I got to play a BC Rich Dagger, a kramer, the parker, an ibanez, some custom made thing... fun going over there. I feel like a kid in a candy store

well he went to the closet and pulled out a couple cases. first was an epiphone les paul, bird's eye maple. holy heavy guitar. second was a Gibson Les Paul Studio Vintage Mahogany. it felt so good. so I left and said let me know how much and when I can come grab it. wow I love wood. Looks just like this one

 

[DaveP]

I'm stuck on Les Pauls for a decade now after playing a 79 Strat (in the picture) for about 20 years previous. There's just so much more tone and depth available with humbuckers.

Don't dismiss the Epiphones. You can get a quality LP for a fraction of the price and even if you have to change the pickups, it's only a little over $100 for a good set of Seymour Duncans you can install yourself. The Flametop on the right is my favorite LP. The pickups are SD Pearlies.

 

[Pipeous]

The Squire I picked up does have the bridge humbucker over the 3 single coils. I'll still keep it. sometimes just gotta have that single coil neck pick up sound too. I don't play the electric guitar much anymore. my roland midi pickup has a sweet bracket made for les pauls. fits to the saddle so always stays same height. I had to screw it down to my pick guard on the strat.

I still mostly played mandolin tonight. I got to do the solos for the most part. I think my bud was shocked that a mandolin can rock too hehe

played around with an eBow tonight too. electronic thing creates vibrations in a string. have to move it string to string or just do stuff on one string. star spangled banner for me hehe. it was like having infinate sustain in one mode. the other as you held it went to a harmonic that faded. intersting gadget

 

[DaveP]

Mandolins have held the solo position in mountain music for centuries. They are easier to carry than a 9 or 10 pound solid body, too!

 

[Pipeous]

ya other than having white fingertips after a long session, mando is low fatigue. nice being able to stretch 7 frets. I am like you I watch tv shows and find some cool tunes and learn them on the fly from that or just jam along. you get to play with so many styles that way.

I have to post this. mike marshall and chris thile ... would love to own a mandocello. these guys can shred
The Gator Strut - Mike Marshall & Chris Thile - YouTube

 

[DaveP]

ya other than having white fingertips after a long session, mando is low fatigue. nice being able to stretch 7 frets. I am like you I watch tv shows and find some cool tunes and learn them on the fly from that or just jam along. you get to play with so many styles that way.

I have to post this. mike marshall and chris thile ... would love to own a mandocello. these guys can shred
The Gator Strut - Mike Marshall & Chris Thile - YouTube

Those guys are good. Their music is a testimonial to scales and right hand development. The fretboard hand can always outpace the picking hand until you develop a fast double picking speed. Then, you sync the two and it's back to expressing your mind with ease. My right hand suffers most when I don't practice scales and technique often enough. For some reason, it's always easier to get the left hand back in shape first. The picking hand takes a little more work.

 

[Pipeous]

I have had to learn new picking. it's all about up and down with mando and not wasting a direction.

I went crazy on the octave mandolin build. I have the body together. back is cut and just needs final sand. top needs trimming but is gluing now. fretboard has inlays and frets and filed/sanded. just have to glue the fretboard on now and shape the neck plus finish sanding. oh and drill holes for the tuners and shape the headstock. I glued an ebony face to the headstock. should look cool

not sure if I am going to add the binding this build. I don't have a router and that'd be a hell of a free hand cut. next build I'll buy me a proper binding tool from stewmac

 

[DaveP]

Binding is probably the thing I fear the most in building an electric guitar. it's why my first one will probably be a Fender knockoff. I can't see me routing all around the top and not making a boo-boo. After spending all that time cutting, fitting, and gluing, ruining it by a router slip would be enough to make me livid.

You mentioned a binding tool from Stewmac. I have the catalog. Is that something that does it without all the power routing?

 

[sandybeach]

I love mandolin! I play guitar and piano. I tried learning mandolin and it was like a foreign country! Upside down and backwards

Ever hear Rhonda Vincent play?

 

[DaveP]

Pipeous said: I have had to learn new picking. it's all about up and down with mando and not wasting a direction.

Double picking is the only way to achieve speed. Hammerons and pulloffs add speed, too, but double picking is crucial. I find that my right hand loses picking speed much faster than my left hand when I don't sit around and pick every day. It's much harder for me to regain losses in the pick hand than it is with my fret hand.

Turning the pick at an angle helps a lot. It's easier to slide back and forth if you aren't using the flat of the pick. The angle of the edges make it much smoother going back and forth. I use a heavy 1.0 pick. In the past, I used .33 and it's much easier to double pick, but you can't dig in and produce harmonics like you can with a thick pick.

 

[Pipeous]

Ya there are router attatchments that have depth guages. a wheel runs along the body and it has a depth guage. This kit was to teach me how to build. Now I know what goes into building, and also what mistakes I made I can correct. I have the plans to build another and just need some wood. I'd like to use maple and spruce next time

Rhonda Vincent is great. She sings like an angel as well. The Rage has 3 great vocalists and do harmonies that kill. and being upside down and backwards is what I think draws me to the mandolin. it makes sense to me for some reason. Hell I even had the fiddle out trying again. cool but for the life of me I can't figure why fiddles haven't joined the 20th century and added gears to the tuners. I hate tuning the fiddle (my metal buds say I have to call it a fiddle cuz violin players have too much attitude). To me the way they move in and out from a mic depending on who is playing what is such a cool complex dance

I built an A style because I can't even see how to router out a scroll without buying the dremel binding attatchment for doing tight areas. by the time I bought all the tools I could have just bought a really really nice octave.

Mandocello will be in my collection in the next couple years at most, hopefully this year. though I might have to settle for an acoustic bass. I am liking acoustic stuff more and more as I get older. Less crap to pack and plug. I like all kinds of music and this bluegrass stuff is a new world opened to me this year. very technical and love how everyone gets their limelight spot to do a break. no egos.

 

[Pipeous]

oh and looks like my deal for the les paul is going to fall apart. he paid too much used for the instrument and when I mentioned I can get the same guitar new for $850 (he paid 1100 used) he was kind of taken aback. I'll just have to go hit my fav toy store after my car is done with the upgrades and go put something else on the account. the guitar needs to hold my midi pickup. Guess it's a good excuse to go play a bunch and see what I want