TV Yellow and Day 51

TV Yellow

This finish, more than any, made me raise an eyebrow when I saw it.  I would expect such a color from Fender, but not Gibson.  Fender used surplus car paint supplies, and did the whole art deco clean look.  Gibson, on the other hand, used stained and burst finishes that required much more time consuming, hand-crafted work.  So what is up with this yellow finish?

Well the hint is in the name.  TV Yellow.  The story goes that one of the Gibson people had visited the set of a medical drama during the 1950's.  To their amazement, the entire staff of the hospital were clothed in yellow scrubs and yellow lab coats.  It intrigued them, so they asked the people on the set.  They told him that the glare of the lights in the studio would smear and reflect weird into the cameras, which were all black and white at the time.  The Gibson guy knew instantly because they had the same problems with instruments used in live performances.


To a black and white TV, a yellow guitar appears as a very bright, white color.  Gibson went further though, and they established a yellow color that looked yellow to the naked eye, but would show the wood grain when viewed through a television camera, making it seem like it was a very high quality, time consuming translucent white finish on the instrument.

The days of needing the TV Yellow color are over, but enough musicians used them in the past that they are now considered a staple finish, especially for the more streamlined models of the 60's that Gibson came out with, including the SG body styled Les Pauls, the Les Paul Jr's, and Les Paul double cut Specials.

Day 51

Knockin' on Heaven's door is still going.  I'm doing what they recommend, and I've gone up about 10% mastery with it today.  I guess that's working?  I said I'd give the Rocksmith way of teaching songs a fair shake in these last 10 days of the challenge and so I'm sticking to it.  It really does not seem that hard of a song.

I looked yesterday at my Ubisoft account, an account so old it had a password I know I had not used since my Everquest days.  It says I have 3 games, but two of them are so old they aren't registering as games that the Ubisoft website can pull up lol.  I'm thinking it was Shadowbane that tied me to the account.  Anyway.  It says 9 hours played!  9 hours??!?  What the hell, I was past 9 hours in the first couple of days haha.  I have no idea how its reading it, but its reading it very very wrongly.  I know that I have not done all my 1 hour of playing inside Rocksmith, but I know from experience that I have waaaaaaay closer if not past 60 hours already.  I've spent entire afternoons, 3+ hours in session mode, especially at the beginning.

I am so excited about the future.  I do not see the 60 days being up as an "end" to the challenge, if anything I see it as a looming "its time to get down to business" thing.  I plan on taking up through the bass route, and doing more in the rhythm section of the game.  I'm going to put my nose to the grindstone learning 70's hard rock because it looks like I have a very good aptitude for it.  Sadly the non-Zeppelin 70's rock, but the power chord and blues rock, yes.  I'm already working Stranglehold, Black Betty, and Alright Now(by Free) into a combined melody.  This blog should continue, maybe not daily, but in some compacity.

Legendary: Lucy and Day 37

One of the most famous Les Pauls ever, Lucy was a red Les Paul Standard owned and used by George Harrison of the Beatles for many decades.  The most famous of the stories involving the Les Paul and The Beatles was that it shared the spotlight for The White Album.  Harrison had a song that he thought was great, but McCartney and Lennon were fighting too much to pay much attention to it.  They were saying it should be cut.  Harrison got angry and left the studio.  The next day he came back with the Les Paul and put it in the hands of Eric Clapton.  With Clapton in studio, the battling band was on their best behavior and created one of the greatest Beatles guitar-centric songs ever, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

The history of this Les Paul goes back to before Harrison.  Rick Derringer owned the guitar, getting it in a trade for an amp.  Back then, Derringer says it was a particularly grimey looking gold top '57.  His dad repeatedly told him that it looks old and worn out, so when they were near the Gibson factory they had it refinished there.  At the time the Gibson SG's were popular in a translucent red, so that is what it was refinished in.  Rick later sold the guitar because he said the re-finish had totally changed the sound to something he didn't like, and it was at the shop that Eric Clapton bought it.  Clapton had begun using his Gibson SG for all his Cream music.  Shortly after, Clapton committed to using SG's for all the Cream related material.  Not wanting the Les Paul to live in a closet, he gifted it to George Harrison.  George said it reminded him of Lucille Ball, and so the guitar was re-named Lucy.

Harrison kept the guitar and used it through the rest of the Beatle's career, and when the band broke up he used it in his own solo endeavors.  The guitar was stolen in the 70's, and sold to a pawn shop.  It was sold for a small sum of money to an unnamed patron.  The sale was tracked, and the man was revealed to be living in Mexico.  Using a 3rd party, the guitar was negotiated for and eventually returned in exchange for a new Les Paul and some other music equipment.  Harrison kept the guitar close by his side for the rest of his life.

Day 37

Not a big eventful day really.  

I said that later my memoirs might turn out to be posts like today.  I did my warm up in Rocksmith, and then switched to my regular amp and practiced all my clean material, then played some bluesy rock, and finally cranked the gain and played some metal sounding stuff.  I did not get around to learning the Funk strumming like I was saying yesterday.  Maybe tomorrow.  I really don't even know the word for the technique.  It is kind of like Palm muting.  You palm mute "chug" and people will think "metal".  You do a multi-string slide and people think "blues".  So I really need to learn the basic technique of Funk.

I did get my bass out and make some winter time adjustments to the neck.  Georgia weather...

I need to re-organize my play area.  I've got some wall hooks I want to use to organize my cables, and I need to move my bass amp into the same area as my guitar amp.  Nothing discourages you from practice like a hassle.  

The tech of Fender vs Gibson and day 15

Like a sports team rivalry, a lot of new players are going to come across fans that are very argumentive between the 2 guitar heavy weights in the industry; Fender and Gibson.  To a lot of non-guitarists its just going to be a style war.  Fender looks like they have 1950's car styling and Gibson has that old guitar look to them.

Gibson has been making guitars for 120 years, and they go back to the era of mandolins and banjos, and a lot of their guitar designs were based on that.  Many of their newer designs, like the Flying V and Explorer, were ways of combating Fender's success in the 50's and 60's.  Fender came in and said "we can do it modern".  Their guitars were light, they were based on ease of play in "modern" music, and weren't shackled by an old legacy.  So you have the "old vs new" thing going on too.

The real, applicable choice between the two brands comes down to sound.  There are really two distinctive sounds that come from choosing Fender or Gibson.  That is "single coil" vs "Humbucker".  Even today, with new types of pickups, they are described in these terms.

Those are single coils.  This is what Fender traditionally used.  We have wrapped magnets that are aligned in a single coil.  They are bright and very well defined.  Hendrix in his early years favored these, and Clapton in his later years favored them.  They have a crispness to them.  From a technology standpoint, they do have a problem, the 60 cycle hum.  When these coils are powered differently(adjusting the blend), you get a hum sound.  This hum is the sound of alternating current going through the coils, and it happens in more than just guitar pickups.

That is a Humbucker, patented by Gibson.  There were ways of eliminating the hum before, but Gibson's design is the mainstay of the industry.  Without going into too much detail, it is two coils wired in reverse polarity, so that one side's 60hz hum smashes into the other side's reverse polarity 60hz hum, and you basically get no hum.  You also get a darker, less crisp sound from the pickup.  It is a matter of preference on if you find that a down side.

Hendrix played Woodstock with single coils, but Clapton did much of his work in Cream with a humbucker.  Heavy metal is often associated with the dark sound of a humbucker, unless you look at Iron Maiden.  Jimmy Page's most used guitar live is a Les Paul with humbuckers, but recording he preferred a telecaster(an earlier Fender guitar using single coil).  So there's a famous trap where some knucklehead will talk about Page using Les Paul, making it the ultimate tone, and maybe even playing a song for you so you can hear... and its a telecaster on the recording.  You can get close enough with either to do the kind of music you want.  There's nothing wrong with having a preference either, just watch out chasing popular guitarist's "tone" because that can be a money pit.

Day 15

Ugh.  I am not a tall person, which means I do not have long arms.  This has not bothered me much with bass guitar(whose scale is about 10 inches more than a regular guitar) because I tend to play up near the neck.  In Motown, you want that thicker, rounder sound that comes from playing near the neck.  I rarely, if ever play near the bridge.  Well, in palm muting, my right hand is basically married to the bridge so that I can get the right sound.  This means new angles for my left hand, because palm muting also works best at the farthest end of the fretboard near the nut.  So my arms are extended, my wrist is at a new angle, all this meaning I have sore arms all the way through.

Its a good thing I like playing metal inspired riffs.  I've done over an hour of just that today, despite my arms aching.  Palm muting is such a game changer for me.  I can go back and experiment with EVERYTHING I've ever played.  Ever home-grown riff, every hacked together "song" I have ever done, and add palm muting.  I have done lots and lots of just muted sweeps to add percussion and keep timing, and now I can do actual palm muting.  I'm looking at what works where, and what sounds good, and I'm still working on getting my technique down.  This feels like "learning guitar" to me.  Sorry to maybe be a downer to any new guitarists, but learning guitar hurts.  There are ways to minimize things hurting, and definitely it hurts less if done "correctly" but there's no doubt about it, you're going to ache, get blisters, and get tired.  Its those that soldier on through it that get stronger and are able to do it.

That's not all I'm doing today though.

I'm working on songs.  I am still having problems learning songs using the game's interface though.  I think I am going to just have to use the Riff Repeater option to slow down and learn parts till I'm fast enough to play it normal.  The main game likes to dumb down the sounds in parts that I suck at, and then at parts where I'm almost 100% on, they keep it dumbed down, and I'm like "quit treating me like an idiot because I don't have the solo down, I've got the chorus, I've done the chorus, you've seen I can do the chorus 100%, stop adjusting the chorus already" and it gets my head all angry and next thing you know, I fuck up the chorus.

With one of the songs I'm working with, I'm getting the most known parts done using the riff repeater, and then going on youtube to see some "how to do" videos on other things, because sometimes I can see things better watching hands play the song, than just looking at notes coming at me head on.  So I guess that's a suggestion for Rocksmith 20XX.  Include videos of people playing the song, because sometimes that helps.

Jasper and Day 11

I am a dog person.

Growing up, there were a lot of dogs that came and went, but one of the longest lived ones of my childhood was a dog named Jasper.  I do not think he was technically "mine", he was more my father's pet.  I had a dog named Blackie, and years after that one named Buddy.  Both of these dogs were jet black.  Jasper was a dirty brown.  He was some sort of mutt, mixed between a hound and a poodle of some sort.  When it comes to that old dog that will never let you down "feeling", it is Jasper that I think of.  I was young, and I probably played a little too rough with him, but by the time he was an old dog, we'd become trusted friends.

I got my first SG in 2004.  I had just gotten my first full time, decent paying job, and I was going to do some things to get my credit going.  The bank would not give me a loan on my own, so my father co-signed and put up collateral for no other reason than I had asked.  One day I hope to trust a son of mine enough to do such a thing.  So it was with my father's help that I got a Gibson SG Faded, a Marshall 2x12 SS amp, a studio "amp modeling" pedal, a matching brown leather strap, and a nice SKB case to keep the guitar in.  The SG Special Faded was a model with a very thin finish on it. They had two goals with making these SG's, be inexpensive, and look like an old instrument.  They only achieved being inexpensive, because these things were ugly.  Except for a few of the brown ones.  I had all 5 that the shop had in, and went by a purely cosmetic evaluation and chose the one I now own.  No trapezoid inlays, no covers on the pickups, solid black knobs... but the thing had the same pickups as the $1000+ standards.  They were also about 500 bucks less than a Standard, but they were made in the USA, same factory, I was proud to own a real Gibson.  They also had thick necks, which is a plus for me, thin necks make my hand cramp.  EDIT: additionally I have a pretty good "sweet spot" production year.  By this time they had stopped reusing old SG Gothic materials.  They also still used Rosewood fingerboards, which is a rarity even with 1000+ dollar les pauls, and the electronics are classic handwired instead of printed PCB.

I then went to Hobby Lobby and picked up some metal stamped letters, and on the back of the headstock, between the tuners, I put "Jasper".  "That'll ruin the resale value" someone told me, "Great, I never want to be tempted to sell this guitar" I told them.  This guitar is my trusty dog, it'll stick with me through thick and thin, it'll take my rough handling, but eventually I'll learn responsibility, and we'll be the best of friends.

Just like Jasper.

Day 11

Fixed a few things today.

The Duck Redux thing where it can not tell accurately which fret I'm using on the E string above the 5th fret?  Well that's apparently solved by barely touch the string.  Coming from bass I have a strong fretting hand, so its counter intuitive, but apparently a common problem in just regular playing.  Pressing harder there doesn't make it more accurate, it makes it less accurate because its amplifying the natural flaw of guitar design.  Anyways, 99% fixed.  Played my usual warm up routine, did about twice as good as I have ever done in String Skip Saloon.  I like that game for its challenge, you have to keep a cool head, and that's good for if you screw up a part of a song and have to steel your nerves to get the rest of the song right.

The 2nd thing that was fixed, the bend thing stems from my USB cable I would guess, or just something not calibrated the first time I tried playing the Bends lesson.  I got it working and then stubbornly worked at memorizing and playing the bend practice lesson.  It is tracking it well enough, though there are still some mysterious "missed" notes that get me cussing out my PS3.  I got to 96% accuracy and called it a night for that lesson because that G string wants to shred my bass player callous.

I wasn't done for the night though, I started a few songs!  I know!  Crazy shit.  Sixteen Saltines is something I would play bass over on Sunday mornings when I felt all rock, bluesy.  So it is really cool that it is included in Rocksmith.  I also tried "We are the Champions" and "Peace of Mind".  Admittedly I pretty much just listened to Peace of Mind because I was in a Boston mood.  A much better session than yesterday's.

Gibson SG History and Day 04

I grew up around 80's hair metal because I had older sisters in the 80's.  My bathroom constantly smelled like hairspray(I can't drink anything with too much vodka in it because it reminds me of hairspray smell).  The music I found obnoxious was full of pointy, neon guitars, but the stuff I ended up liking was many times played on a Les Paul.  By all standards, I should have grown up loving the classic Les Paul guitar made famous by Slash, Joe Perry(Aerosmith), Steve Clark(Def Leppard).

However, there was another influence on my musical tastes: my uncle.  It was my uncle who introduced me to Highway To Hell, by ACDC.  Later, it was Black Sabbath that firmly established me in the heavy riff-verse that fueled my teenage years.  Both Angus Young of ACDC, and Toni Iommi of Black Sabbath, played the Gibson SG, and later when I wanted my own guitar, it was the practicality and styling of the SG that endeared me to it.

The history of the SG is pretty strange.  In the late 1950's, the Les Paul was seen as old fashioned.  It was a tree trunk around your neck, unlike the hip, new Fender Stratocasters that the new rock legends were playing, particularly Buddy Holly.  In 1961, the Les Paul got a new look.  It got a slab, double cutaway body.  The extra "old fashioned" accents like the body binding and flame top were done away with.  You had what we call "The SG" body, but at the time it was only called a "Les Paul".  The outdated Les Paul, of the original styles, were being sold cheap in pawn shops.  A lot of the new guitarists of the time bought these cheap Les Pauls before they got famous, and continued using them after.  This brought the popularity back, and in 1968 the Les Paul was re-introduced, and the SG finally got its real name.  As you can see, its hard to divorce the SG from the Les Paul when you're talking about history.

Some people that are associated with other guitars actually have had SG's in their stable.  Clapton and Hendrix are known Fender faithfuls, but both had SG's too.  Clapton has the famous "Fool" SG he used while in Cream, and Hendrix played a White "Les Paul" SG with 3 pickups in his last few years, during many of his television appearances.

Day 04

Ok, today I started on the Tone Sculptor missions.  If you read about the first day, I pretty much went into and started messing with that from the beginning.  With these missions they basically just have you put effects pedals into your tone settings so that you can get familiar with what they all do.  The descriptions are short and I generally agree with what they say about them.  I think they did the overdrive, distortion, and fuzz lessons out of order.  Many effects are tweaks to other effects or are related closely to them.  I would have liked to have seen this explained.  Still, for a beginner it is a good way to check through all the effects styles.  In the pre-game era I had to do this by going to the big rack of Boss pedals and just trying everything while wearing dinky head phones at a Guitar Center.

I took a break mid-session to have dinner, and I found something out that was pretty cool.  The sign that I should take a break was that I got a "play the Guitarcade game" as the next mission.  I was ok "oh, I guess that's all the pedal stuff for now", and I went and ate.  I had turned off the game, watched some youtube, and came back to the game ready to play the Guitarcade... only that mission was replaced by the next pedal mission.  It turns out, the game doesn't think you should just power through a lot of missions in one particular area, it is going to divert you and slow you down.  I actually think this is pretty cool.  For a beginner, going through all the pedals quickly is just going to get you confused and not commit stuff to memory.  So far it has always defaulted to the Guitarcade, because after about 3 or 4 more pedal missions, I got a suggestion to go to the Guitarcade as a mission again.  All work and no play makes jack a dull guitarist.

I played the Shooter game...  I feel like I want the strings in reverse order.  Did not have much fun in it till I put the pick down and used my fingers... but that's kind of cheating because I need to force myself to use the pick... I'll get to this game again later.  The Duck shooting game that I next tried was super fun.  I'll do more thoughts on the games and the Guitarcade as a topic later.

I decided not to power through all the pedal missions.  For about 30 minutes I went back to the jam session.  I got into the 8-bit Nintendo style bands, put some super fuzz on my guitar, and tried to copy some old Ninja Gaiden/Mega Man songs in riff form.  It was very fun.  Learning songs is still not fun for me at this point, and I've learned more in the jam sessions than I have in years of playing solo or reading theory.  I highly recommend new players to ignore the songs till you have your feet... unless of course its fun for you to learn the songs, then by all means do it.

TIP OF THE DAY

At the main menu, hit select.  At your path screen, if you click "X" on your path, your mission list will come up.  They don't really spell that one out for you in game in an easy to find area.