MY FIRST ORIGINAL TUNE IS NOW ON THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!

FYI - MY FIRST ORIGINAL SONG IS NOW LIVE ON THE INTERNET ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Whew, it sure took long enough.

Here's the link:

http://home.att.net/~born2playtunes

Then, go to the Links tab and it's the song Nude Day. The song reminds me of a newborn baby, since it was my first original song I ever recorded, and of course we are all nude when we're born. Unless there's something really wrong that is.

It's a play on words with 'New Day'. Get it, new day, nude day? They sound the same in English.

This song was recorded in 1996. I was in a band at the time, and Ollie was our lead guitarist. He had a 4-track cassette tape recorder and we recorded this tune with a drum machine, guitars/bass, and the cassette machine. Ollie programmed the drum machine, I recorded the guitars & bass, and he recorded it all. If I recall, he owed me a debt of some kind and this was easier than waiting for him to come up with the cash.

Oh, and always follow your dreams - and this song is one of my dreams - to have an original song live on the internet. Woo-Hoo!!! THE DREAM IS NOW REALITY ! ! ! Now I just need to write some lyrics and vocal melodies...

SRV - One Great Guitarist

This post is a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughn. One great guitarist and bluesman, may he rest in peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSpbuFSr2o

Pictures From A Past Refurbishing Project

Here are some pictures I stumbled upon while doing some recent spring cleaning (even though it's officially summer in like 1 day from now).

This is my Digi-Tech guitar effects unit. It's one of those all-in-one units, with guitar effects like distortion & overdrive, EQ, all kinds of different reverb and echo sounds, and it has 40 prepared sounds in it's memory, and it allows 40 user-defined sounds, all saved in flash memory. It's really a simple computer tailor-made for manipulating audio from guitars. Ok, so when I say "simple computer" it's really a contradiction of terms.

Anyway, the pedals are intended to be operated by your foot, so you can change your sound without having to stop playing guitar, since the guitar takes up both hands to play.

Well, eventually the pedal switches started to become less and less responsive until some of them no longer worked at all. I decided to take it apart and investigate.

I just love staring at electronic stuff. I don't know why. I'd rather just stare at a hot female, but if there's none around, electronics are ok. Or hot cars.

I found that the plasic part that touches the switches was flattening out a bit from wear. I cut out and taped a thin piece of cardbord to fill in the gap.

I put it back together and the switches were then working great, almost like new.

Of course, my cat Lexus just had to investigate my guitar gear. As soon as I go to play something though, she hauls ass to get away from the sound. She does not like guitars or basses that are making music. Or, maybe she just hates my music.

Finally Recording Original Music

Yesterday I finally got back into recording SOME OF MY ORIGINAL MUSIC ! ! ! !

So please excuse all the excitement.

One of my friends got hooked up with a digital recording interface so we can record music into the computer using some really cool RECORDING STUDIO SOFTWARE!!!!!!

First, he's got this interface from Presonus. You can record like EIGHT CHANNELS OF AUDIO AT ONCE !!!!!!

Wow.

Here's a mixing board. We used this to control the music signals coming from guitar, bass, and a vocal microphone.

On the computer - CUBASE RECORDING STUDIO SOFTWARE !!!!!!

Pronounced Q-base.

I'm trying not to get too excited while typing, but it's not working.

I started off by copying some drum & guitar loops into the audio tracks. Then we added some guitar solos, to boost our guitar-hero egos, of course.

Then I worked on a totally new tune I just pulled out of thin air (or as we put it, out of my ass). Normally you would never want to make up a song while you're in a recording studio, since you would probably be paying at least $40 bones an hour. However, when you have your own gear, you can just throw down whatever you want!!! If it sucks, you just start over, and you haven't wasted oodles of cash, just a little time. And you're not really wasting time, since when you write your own material, you have to write 5 or 10 things before something good really shows up.

The tunes we did yesterday were pretty rough, but when we work on them more and they sound better, I'll try to post some sound clips RIGHT HERE BABY!!!!! Can you sense any excitement from me?

Fixing Up My Old Practice Guitar Amp

Here are some photos of my recent project to rejuvinate an old practice guitar amp.

I am using a power supply to power it up. It's your typical 12-volt/13.8-volt DC power supply from a surplus electronics place. Better than batteris, although I could hook up a 12-volt battery in it's place if I want to use it somewhere away from AC current. Or I could use a bunch of D batteries.

It's got a nice power transistor on the back with a heatsink, to dissipate all that heat from crankin' up the volume. Cool (or Hot, however you want to look at it).

Here's a close-up shot of the amp chip. This amp is actually powered by an integrated circuit amplifier. All the transisters and what-not are on a single chip! This has some advantages and disadvantages. The main thing is it makes the whole circuit nice and small. The chip also has a heat-sink on it, to dissipate all that heat from crankin'up the volume.

I've got the amp board wired to an 8" speaker that was once a woofer in a small set of bookshelf speakers. It seems to have a decent treble response, at least for a practice amp.

Here's the amp hooked up to the power supply.

I hope to put this thing into a real cabinet sometime soon. Right now it's just sitting in a cardboard box, which isn't the best way to go.

Here's a little sample of that powerful tone. Actually, it's not that loud. I think the chip is only capable of about 8 watts of output. Not much, but this is only intended to be a little practice amp.

Rock on people.