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.

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.