music journal

about 4 years ago I sold my first instrument, a pretty nice Gibson bass that made me fall in love with playing music. at that point I had moved on to mandolin and never played bass any more, and we needed money for a new kid on the way. it didnt take long to realize that was a mistake and implement a no-selling-instruments policy (except for trade-ups). well there’s a bass back in the house now, and it’s a 5 string too. it belongs to a friend who left town, so I’m not sure how long it’ll be in my care, but it’s fun to get back into it a little. I think my playing on the mando has translated some, since I was surprised how much came back to me. we’ll see if any bass grooves make it on to some of my new songs.

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to me! thanks to everyone who went in together and got me a great little recording device (Zoom H2) so I can make better-quality recordings of my stuff. this thing is pretty nifty, and best of all it makes good quality home recordings very easy. my little iPod recorder was nice as far as it goes, but this thing blows it away, so I’m pretty excited about the possibilities.

so for the record here’s a sample of me messing around with one of my little tunes. to me it sounds pretty much like the real thing (complete with my mistakes of course), and I havent even started messing with any of the cool features like surround sound. so thanks again to all who made this possible, epecially Michelle. I’m looking forward to lots of (hopefully) good stuff this year with this thing.

oh and in other Christmas/music news, we got my dad a lap dulcimer, which he seemed pretty excited about. hopefully soon we can jam together.

my little iPod recorder is nice for what it is, but the quality isnt so great. the on-board mic isnt good, and when I do my external mic I get a high-pitched whine. I’ve found it wouldnt take long to spend a ton of money on recording gear, but I have no intention of doing that any time soon, since I am the very definition of amatuer still.

but if I get some good arrangements of my songs that might be worthy of something better than “crude recordings” this nifty device (the Zoom H2) looks like a good yet not-overly-expensive upgrade. available at Jake’s store (but not on his site at the moment).

I just got back into the land of the electric guitar, and I’m loving it. I’m not very good yet (except for the minor pentatonic scale) but it’s a lot of fun. but I dont have an amp yet, so I’m borrowing one. but I’ve had my eye on a small one that’s a good value, and I was thinking maybe for Christmas.

when I got my new job and a nice raise that comes with it, I was thinking of celebrating by getting the amp a little early, but I didnt say anything. I know we’ve got a lot of stuff to pay down. so I figured I could wait and borrow stuff for a while.

but Michelle is very good to me. today is our anniversary, and she gave me some music I’ve been wanting (scripture songs set to contemporary, somewhat folky tunes). we’ve both been getting more excited about playing music together, so the new album was very appropriate since it’s songs we might like to try to play. I was very happy, but she didnt stop there.

she did her research, even called Mitch at work (he got me back into electrifying my music) to make sure she had the right one, and she headed to the music store today, with full intentions of surprising me with the new amp. but unfortunately she was thwarted, so came home sadly empty-handed. when I got home, she spilled the beans, so we plotted together how to get me the amp today, much to my delight. I called Humbucker music (the best music store around — and owned by my friend Jake) and one of the guys told me yes, they had that model for that price. so I was off! but I was thwarted too! they were out of stock. bummer.

so yes, my wife rocks, but I’ll have to wait until next week. it’s so encouraging to me that she’s so into me making music and exploring new things, and even better, she’s excited about playing and singing with me too. I’ve been very acoustic for a while, but I’m looking forward to rocking out a tad. soon. very soon.

as chronicled here, I got a new toy recently. here it is on the left along with the other new addition (Caleb’s uke) and the rest of the line up.

Epiphone Dot Studio Hollowbody Electric Guitar
Yamaha FG411S VS Acoustic Guitar
Trinity College TM-325 Octave Mandolin
Epiphone MM30 Mandolin
Rogue RU12 Soprano Uke

our walls are getting crowded, and I’m starting to feel a little gluttonous with all these instruments. and I even sold my bass guitar a little while ago (big mistake). but I feel a little better in that they’re all fairly (or very) low-end and they suit my needs well, and each does get played pretty regularly. I’m thinking I’m good to go on gear for a good while, except for an amp of course…

I had a strange dream last night…a bunch of us were on some sort of game show and we all took home various amounts of cash. I remember Jeannette G took home the big haul: $200,000. I came away with a more modest sum: $20,000. I think I was planning on giving away half of it to our church building fund (which thankfully has been blessed with enough pledges to cover the cost, by the way), but a big part of the dream was being excited about buying some music gear. I think I went to Jake’s store in my dream too and I remember talking about getting an electric guitar, bass and amps. but even armed with a good deal of money I’m still too cheap to buy the high-end models, plus I’m not good enough to justify it, so I’d probably stick with something like:

a guitar like this or maybe like this if I was feeling generous to myself
maybe an amp like this (not that I know much about amps)
a cool bass would be nice and some sort of bass amp of course
of course I’ve always wanted an upright bass
might as well get a nice mandolin while I’m at it, or maybe one like this if I’ve run out of funds by now. and we would of course need to upgrade the octave mando too.
and if there’s anything left, an electric mando could be cool too…

a guy can, and will, dream…right?