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I can has audience??! O_o

21 March, 2013 Reply

In April 2009 I uploaded a video cover of Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower to YouTube. It got a few views here and there, and as I uploaded other videos I mostly forgot about it. Lately however I started getting an increasing number of comments on that video. Finally, when replying to a comment, I noticed the number of views, which had increased greatly.

And as of a little while ago, it reached a very cool-sounding milestone of 10,000 views.

… :shock: and 8) …

What’s that you said? I couldn’t quite make it out …

:P

But seriously, I think this is one of the cool things about YouTube. I was really taken with something Daniel Levitin talked about in his book “This is Your Brain on Music”: he wrote about music being primarily a social activity; the division between performers and audience is relatively recent. It used to be that everyone made music, and they shared with others that music – and the music-making activity itself. I started to think of YouTube in that way: while I’m not any sort of world-class virtuoso, I realised I really don’t have to be in order to make and share music. I can – and in fact should, in a way – do so, and interact with others through that music. Indeed it has led to my involvement in some (online) musical collaboration, which of course is that social aspect of music – for the internet age.

So in any case, when people ask why I would put up videos with bum notes, as I do, I can simply point out that music isn’t about perfection; it’s about connection. 8)

Oh, and for reference:

;)

Yet another online collaboration video

11 March, 2013 1 comment

It’s better to play with other people ;) More stimulating, more enjoyable, and challenges you to do better.

I’ve done a couple of collaborative videos with Owen Vickers, a mate in NZ, but none for a little while. Just recently however, two have been done/finished.

First it was the one I did with Jon Bloomer from Guitar Noize

Now Philippe Monti has finished putting together a monster of a collaboration, with guitarists from around the world. I’m in there for a little section, and some harmonies at the end. I think it came out pretty cool 8)

New Guitar Jam

9 March, 2013 Reply

Better than strawberry, or raspberry, or plum, or whatever other sort of jam you might think of …

This is a virtual online kind of jam, between me and Jon Bloomer from Guitar Noize. He got a new Suhr custom S4 at just about the same time I got my ASH Customworks guitar, and we decided we’d celebrate with a virtual online jam thingy … and here ’tis:

There will be more, as we enjoyed this one 8) We’re just deciding on what the next track should be.

My new custom guitar!!

22 February, 2013 15 comments

Oh. Baby. Yeah. I’m here today to tell you: there is nothing – nothing – like a custom guitar. No way will a production instrument compare. To illustrate, I will describe the guitar I have just collected.


Oh. Hell. Yes.

This is truly a fantastic instrument; I can hardly keep my hands off it. It plays like a dream, and the tones it produces are fantastic. It looks awesome, and is mine – all mine. Everything about it is how and what I wanted. It’s not the product of corporate compromise, or appeal to the lowest common denominator; the good stuff isn’t kind of “averaged out”. The care and attention to detail is something that of course doesn’t happen in a mass-produced instrument, and it really does make a difference.

Anyway …

Mostly custom

This all started some years back, when for the first father’s day after our daughter was born, my wife and I agreed that I’d get a custom guitar made by Adrian Hamilton – a friend, and wonderful luthier in Auckland, NZ. The result of that was actually more of a mostly-custom, as it involved a body from an old Rockson (though Adrian made it about a googleplex times better: fixing up screwy bits, putting in beautiful bevels in the cutaways, staining it up …) and an Ibanez neck (also modified, with the locking nut gone, and replaced by a graphtech nut – and little paua buttons in the back where the screws for the locking nut used to come through). Starting points/limitations notwithstanding, it’s a fantastic guitar, and attracts a lot of comments and questions on my YouTube videos.

When we had our son then, my mind was full of plans for the fully-custom guitar that I would get for him. (N.B. by “for him” I mean that if he wants it when he’s old enough, he can have it … and I haven’t yet decided how old that is. ;) Same deal goes for my daughter and the guitar I got for her.) Anyway … looking at what I had already, what was most obviously missing was a 2 humbucker fixed-bridge set neck sort of affair. Kind of like a Les Paul, only not – since I don’t like Les Pauls (except for Billy Gibbons’ Pearly Gates; Pearly is awesome, but all other LPs seem to have a weird fizzy, honky, quack thing going on – even with replacement pickups). Read more [+]

2 … no: 3am. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy?

23 January, 2013 Reply

Why? Ask my boy. Mr 2 has been awake – and keeping my wife and me awake – since a little after 1 this morning.

Since he has now decided he’s spending the rest of the night (morning) in our bed with his mummmmmmmmyyyyyy, it’s too hot to have all three of us in the bed, and I’m 100% sure that he’s going to be up for the day around 1/4 past 5 I don’t know what to do.

Maybe I should play guitar.

Righto – guitar been played. Tasteless/mindless shred over Laurie Monk’s Shred ThisThis Too competition. About to upload

Here’s my first (proper) entry from a few days back:

Then maybe I should go lie down somewhere …

Edit/update: my vid from this morning refuses to upload, for some reason. Well, iMovie says it’s uploaded, but nothing visible in any way on youtube. It was kind of crap anyway, so I deleted it. Never mind … ;)

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