Our Father, who art in Heaven

Will I ever be satisfied with the configuration of my frickin’ pedalboard?

Forgive those of us who spend recklessly on pointless shit…

Like that $26 bucks of cables I bought yesterday at TY Music Centre

Just so the lengths from the FX loop of my new Boogie

Would be just nice.

Amen

Kudos to Sweetwater. After I reported that the guitar they delivered to me had a broken switch tip, they Fedexed me one – original Fender part, free of charge. Great customer service throughout.

I don’t know about you other guitar players, but I feel constantly compelled to work on my technique and to learn fast flashy stuff that will impress the pants (or knickers) off people. So while I should be diligently learning the Cycle of 5ths (and 4ths) or mapping out the arpeggios of G7 or analyzing the notes of the 7th mode of the ascending Melodic Minor (the Super Locrian/Altered Scale) against the root of the current chord in the name of trying to learn to be musical, instead, I get easily distracted by yet another article on How to Shred (even though I can already shred) or how to do some outlandish tapping exercise, an example of which I succumbed to this week.

You see, flippin’ Guitar Techniques magazine is too frickin’ awesome. And its contributors are too frickin’ awesome. I bought last month’s issue (“Acoustic Issue!”) because I had dusted off my Baby Taylor, grown my fingernails a little and wanted to get down some Beatles fingerpickin’ licks. Instead, I’m confronted by an article by the superb (and now clean shaven) Martin Goulding on doing two-handed tapping ala Nuno Bettencourt on He-Man Woman Hater (Pornograffiti).

Anyway, I spent about an hour with a metronome practicing these licks and aside from some muting flubs where I can’t get the 3rd string to stop ringing (or I mute it too hard and too early resulting in a muffled note) and by the end of the practice session was getting prettttyyy good at it. I cheated though and tied a cloth round the neck to stop notes ringing.

Anyway, here’s a C major 7 that I ended up practicing. I think the notes are right, but I’m away from my guitar right now. The key new technique for me is the left hand tapping, i.e. ‘hammering on from nowhere’ as we ascend to start up each string ringing.  Slurs are not indicated, but obviously, there’s no picking – it’s all hammers, taps and pulls.

Beatles licks have still not yet been attempted as Shredding trumps Beatles fingerpicky parts any day in my book.

I’m the proud owner of an Yngwie Malmsteen Signature guitar cable, plus some other normal DiMarzio cables. I love them. I like the cloth braid instead of some nasty rubbber. Yes – I’m shallow – I’ll buy virtually anything with Yngwie’s name on it except the dumb DOD overdrive which I bet he doesn’t even use.   Anyway, being a fan of DiMarzio cables I went to the site to see what they had that I could get to connect some stuff to my Boogie’s effect loop.  Under the instruments section, I noticed that John5 has a new sig cable; cool. But Yngwie’s was no longer there. Further, he’s not under the Featured Players list (despite being the top proponent of the HS-3 pickup) and his name isn’t even in the full list of players.  Have Larry and Yng fallen out?

The boys went to bed early (good!) but they are light sleepers (bad!) so while I got a chance to sit down in front of my new Mesa Engineering Mark Five combo, I did so with it on rather quietly. It’s kinda hard to really appreciate the Electric Guitar and associated ampage at late night babies-asleep-in-the-next-room volume, but nevertheless I used this time to get more to grips with its features.

One feature I like is the EQ function which can be preset per channel, or use the slider positions. In addition, you can assign per channel again, EQ always on, always off, or by the footswitch control. This is great. Further (phew) you can set the preset depth per channel. All cool.  Another thing I like is the Mute button that turns off the speaker – I think this is a great addition.

Anyway, sounds wise, I spent a fair bit of time playing around Channel 3 and the Mark IV setting. One thing I noticed on this channel is that I can really get pinch harmonics to jump out. Even with my fat handed technique, these squealies sound awesome – fat rich and singing without being piercing. I did not notice a difference between full power and Variac mode however, but perhaps I would at higher volume next time.

Some of the Mark V sounds have a lot in common with my former Nomad I think, but with a greater degree of control.

We talked a lot about modes of the Melodic Minor during this lesson as I brought along my Mark Levine Jazz Theory Book to ask Master for some clarification. Specifically I was trying to understand the harmonization of each scale degree in the ascending Melodic Minor and why we ended up (in C) with chords such as Dmin7b9 (instead of Dm) this and Emaj7#5 that. This digression highlighted some weird properties of the Melodic Minor. Example – when harmonizing the Altered Scale (Super Locrian or 7th mode of the MM) you end up using the 1st and 4th and not the first and 3rd as in ‘normal’ harmony, i.e. you skip the b9 and #9.  still trying to understand this.

Following on from this, we jammed to a progression with the following MM-derived chords and playing C Melodic Minor lines over it. Groovy.

Master also showed me basic chords to Summertime and we will delve into this at our next lesson.

My 20 year lust for a new Mesa/Boogie Mark Series Amplifier is sated. Introducing my Mark V which arrived the evening before last about 8pm. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to plug her in and turn her on yet because I’ve been busy with domestic things, but hopefully tonight I will get an hour to mess around with some settings.

There was a little bag of sweets inside. Not certain if they originate from Boogie themselves or from the online retailer.

Chord progression of the Jobim original for 16 bar bridge:

| Dmaj7   |          |  G7(9)    |         |

| Dm9      |          | Bb7(9)   |         |

| Ebm9    |           |B7(9)       |         |

|Fm7       |  Bb7b5 | Ebm7    |   A7b5  |

Approach Master showed me, based on Pat Martino ‘reduce to Minor’ method:

• Bar 1/2 Dmaj7, play Bminor (key D major)
• Bar 3, 4, 5, 6, over the G7 and the Dm, think D minor (when he says ‘minor’ he usually means Dorian’), so playing in C major.
• Over Bars 7/8, Bb7, think Fminor (Bb7 is the V in ii V I of Eb), so key is Eb maj
• Bars 9/10 over Ebm9, think Eb minor as ii chord of Db, so key is Db maj
• Bars 11/12 over B7, think F#m (ii in ii V I of E maj) so key is Emaj
• Bars 13, 14, 15, 16 – this is a iii vi ii V in key of Db – home key of Db

So we are moving keys from D, thru C, Eb, Db, E and back to Db. Phew!  Great – so I’m learning a whole bunch of weird keys which is good. Spent some time jamming over this progression last night, just getting used to the switching of keys and getting the notes under my fingers, trying to overlay the melody on to the chords, and sticking various arpeggio shapes over each chord.  Now I need to think more in terms of the minor, plus the chord.  I’m sure there are many other approaches, but this one sounds natural to me.

Another awesome digression with Master yesterday as we talked through the bridge changes of GFI. Too much for me to type out. Plenty of nice voice leading chord changes with 9s and 13s and drop-2 voicings on middle set of strings. A lot for me to practice.