Break /Lunch Report ------> Tuesday October 18,2011

[jwebsmall]

Tuesday:

G&L: Not Lap as in Dance but Lap as in Steel

With the recent discovery of the Leo's plans that lead
to the introduction of the Ascari GTS and Fiorano GTS
set neck guitars and a new headstock design, that poses an
interesting "what if" question. What if George and Leo
had decided to introduce a lap steel guitar into the
G&L line up? (Leo's first musical instrument was a lap
steel guitar I believe.)

Suppose you were picked to work with Paul Gagon, VP of
engineering, to come up with a lap steel design. How
would you configure it? Would it have the saddle lock
bridge? An S-500 pickup perhaps? What about the control
configuration. A 3 control PTB would be very flexible
but would it be necessary? In other words imagine
you were custom ordering one - what options would it
have?

Alternatively suppose you aren't into design but are
instead tasked with naming and marketing the G&L lap
steel guitar. Since we're into the race car/track era
of G&L branding it might be convenient to continue with
that strategy. You'll need to let the design team know
what price point you think you could move the mechandise.

Part of your market research digs deep before drawing
any conclusions however. Is a lap steel guitar just for
country music or could it be used to complement
shredding for example? Has anyone ever tried slide
tapping on a lap steel? What about an arpeggiation
capo/slide for the lap steel that acts like the dual of
alternate turnings perhaps? In other words not just
a straight edge slide. The capo/slide might even
have dampers for some strings. Using two of these
one in each hand may totally reinvent the way we look
at the lap steel guitar just as tapping changed the
ball game for the conventional guitar! The lap steel
guitar may just be waiting to be plucked (or tapped)?

Does your new lap steel guitar even need strings? You
can think outside the box on this one. Perhaps your lap
steel guitar will be a software application that runs
on an iPad. Leo never stood still - he embraced
technological innovation. Or better yet why not a
linear touch/optic sensor mouse music pad with USB
and 1/4" connectors. Perhaps we're going overboard and
it might just make more sense to dust off Leo's
original plan and run with standard parts laying around
unused in closets at the factory. But you want to do
due diligence before turning in your final report with
recommendations to Paul.

One final thought. If the lap steel you design is the
traditional one with just a slab of wood then it wouldn't
require plek'ing or specialized setup. That means it could
in fact be offered as a kit requiring only a screw driver and
pliers for final assembly (provided the electronics were pre-
soldered or had connectors. This would save not only on
assembly labor costs but also transportation and final inspection
costs of the typical tribute import! This would really bring
down the price point!


Non G&L: Lunch?

I had my vinegar already this morning. It is
loaded in B complex vitamins and organic minerals
including magnesium and potassium. This stuff cleans
out your arteries like nobody's business! For the rest
of my vitamins I eat/take a touch of royal jelly with
bee propolis. Plants put the maximum energy into the
blooms and the bees grab it. Like vinegar (with the
mother) it too is loaded with vitamins and minerals.
Bee propolis is loaded with natural anti-biotics too!
Every day I do my 5 rite exercises for longevity. I
think I've missed maybe 3 or 4 days in the last 20+
years. These really work! And after you work up to
21 reps you can do these in about 6 minutes.

http://www.mkprojects.com/pf_TibetanRites.htm

Oh I forget to mention I'll also had a swig of
Norwegian cod liver oil today. It's brain food -
high in EPA & DHA too! I found a brand that isn't
obnoxious to take: Carlson's Norweign Cod Liver Oil
with lemon flavoring. I actually like the taste!
You are suppose to take this with a meal - what the
heck. Oh I just noticed on the bottle it won the 2010
superior taste ward from the International Taste &
Quality Institute in Brussels. Never heard of them.
I just took another swig. I better put it back
in the refrigerator before I drink the whole bottle.
BTW when you get the proper fats in your diet that
stops some of your cravings for junk food!

P.S. worked out some more lyrics last night. Sometimes
I'll wake up with the solution to song problem I've
been working on. I find you can paint yourself into a
corner with licks or something compelling in one part
of the song that traps you and you need some kind of
sonic device or lyric switch up to extricate you. Don't
know if this will solve the problems on this
particular song but I'll try to work on it some at
lunch time today. I found I'm most creative when I'm on
the edge of sleep either when I'm tired at night or
first waking up in the morning. I'm guessing this has
something to do with our brain's dreaming mechanism
which can really come up with some doozies. Too bad
our brains don't come with a USB port to connect to the
DAW so we can sleep our way to the next hit song. I found
if I play music just before going to sleep it really kicks
in the subconscious and starts working on music problems
while I sleep. You probably don't want to do this with
other problems though because if you come up with a
solution it will wake you up in the middle of the night.
Music is relaxing compared to other work so I do use
this trick sometimes with good results.

I hope everyone has a good day today or if it gets
rough at least you know your G&L guitar is waiting to
greet you when you get home along with your other
best friend. There is always something to look forward
to. I'm dreaming of a G&L lap steel guitar for example.

[darwinohm]

Good morning John.

Lap Steel from a development idea I would think would be very expensive with a very limited market. We use a steel player at times (Lonesome George) and I love steel music. There are some excellent steel builders and I know you are talking about a lap steel. G&L could build a fine one but I would question the economics of such a decision. Steel construction seems to be quite different anyway and it is very mechanical and pickup driven. We have a vintage store in the twin cities that has several vintage lap steels. They are cool. My lap steel would not be digital electronic but a mechanical wizard. Look at the popularity of the recent high tech guitars (Fender VG,Gibson Robot,Line 6 and soon to be Gibson Firebird X) all going the way of the Edsel. I have a Fender Cybertwin Se, actually a fine amp but a huge marketing failure for Fender. It is too complicated for most musicians to program.
Computer wizards program them very well but not many of them are musicians.

I am a morning person and am anything but creative at night. I do get brain storms at night but wait till morning for the implementation. I did do a lot of editing and mixing on our last CD but the final passes were done during the day. I had another fellow listen on the final mix as my hearing is not what it used to be. I have a loss of higher frequencies.

Good bass discussion yesterday. It is obvious why manufactures offer different models as we all have a different idea of the perfect guitar.-- Darwin

[jwebsmall]

I didn't realize that lap steel guitars were that difficult to make.
But then again I never made one. There is no neck to carve or
pocket to cut out. No fret work, etc. It's just a neck through
fretless guitar with a flat radius.

[youtube]vPjGm6hv4_M[/youtube]

I realized the market would be limited and that is why I
suggested a kit version so that a production line wouldn't
have to be set up. But that is also why I tried to think up
patterned slides instead of straight edge and other gimmicks
to broaden the application of a lap steel to more genres.
Here's a '56 Leo special:

[youtube]vyOv6iRYWMM[/youtube]

Peavey makes a power slide guitar that you can play standing
up either as a slide guitar or laid out flat like a lap steel again
while standing up.

[youtube]2Lo1ZNIbh9Y[/youtube]

MF is selling them and say they are a best seller!

To my ears the lap steel guitar is the ASAT in embryo.
It's a primitive raw sound but it can be sweeping beautiful too.

I would rather use G&L parts and was looking around in the online
store for a ASAT bridge pickup and saddle lock bridge which would
total about $200. I could get a piece of lumber from Home Depot
and order a nut from Graphtech and I'll be almost there. I think
I could build one for around $400 using G&L hardware.

[willross]

A G&L lap steel would have to either bring something new to the table or focus on quality, making it stand out. Throwing a "cheap" one into the market, maybe not. Kits? That's a can of worms they will most likely avoid... or not.


Cheers,

Will

[Kit]

I really don't know anything about lap steels, but Sleepwalk was one of the first songs that made an impression on me when I first starting listening to the radio with my older sisters in the late 1950s. I like the video you posted with the 56 Fender lap steel where it sounded all swampy.

I have never been impressed with software that emulates a guitar sound. The actual and release of a picked string just seems to escape emulation that they never sound right to me. Perhaps some day someone will be able to get it right. In the meantime I'll just pluck my guitar the old-fashioned way.

Thank you for your great reply on songwriting. I learned quite a bit from you, and I plan to check up on the book you recommended. The only book I have is one called "How to write songs on the guitar" or something like that. It is actually quite a decent book on songwriting. A few years back I took "guitar" lessons from a teacher who has a music degree, but really what I wanted to learn was theory pertaining to songwriting. Before those 18 months of lessons I did not even know how chords fit in a scale, how to effect a key change, or things like V to I resolution. I really learned a lot with this teacher, and it has made learning songs a lot easier. It also make it so I can recognize how certain songs throw in stuff that does not fit into the scale, but the result is that it makes the song sound more interesting.

I mentioned yesterday that I recorded a bit over the last 10 years or so. You can find what I did at http://home.comcast.net/~kitn13. I really did not intend for my recordings to be widely heard so I don't devote a lot of time polishing up the recordings. I know every single recordings took less than one week from beginning to end except for one. One of the recordings is a version of Sleepwalk.

Melodies come to me while I sleep. Some of them sounded really good at the time, but I can never recall them well enough to be able to reproduce them after I wake up. Once of twice I even tried while laying in bed to remember the melody, but it has never stuck.

Kit

[jwebsmall]

Kit: wow this is great. I paused Will Ross's web site that I'm listening to while I work
so I could listen to your records (far better than my crude attempts).

http://home.comcast.net/~kitn13/

I'm listening to 130 seconds now. I was getting
some lyrics ideas but by the time I got down to
the improvization the lyrics just starting popping
right out

Two minutes and change
never again
never the same
I know there's no one else to blame.
You took two minutes and change

Well maybe not. LOL. What guitar are you playing
Chinese takeout on? A SC-3? IS that a mandolin
in Capri or a regular guitar fast picked? Your guitar
playing is really good.

Oh and you have one of those awesome GbyL LE.
Oh this is over the top.

Thanks for sharing! And now we'll return to our
regularly schedule broadcast of Will Ross's music
to work by!

[Philby]

Hey Kit, those are really good, harmonically interesting tunes. You've got a knack for arranging minimal instrumentation well. My own approach is to throw on another instrument till it sounds right, but I'm always aware that I should be taking your approach and making less sound better.

The songs remind me very much of listening to early Mike Oldfield as a teenager.

[jwebsmall]

Here's a homemade piece of lumber like something I had in mind
but using G&L hardwire and pickups I would buy from the G&L
online store:

[youtube]dP3NXG5aDEQ[/youtube]

Imagine what this would sound like with a ASAT special bridge pu.
If this were a kit you could assemble it in one evening. This is what
I would call playing by ear.

Lap steel are used in Rock and even finding their way into jazz.

Here's a dated example of a Legacy style guitar used with a lap steel:

[youtube]EWlCD68oeu0[/youtube]

You can see the Legacy style guitar and Lap working together around 1:54.

A B bender can be thought of as a take off of the lap steel perhaps.
And there is some crossover between slide guitar and resonator.

Here's an example of folk rock on an acoustic guitar with strings
lifted so high it is essentially a lap guitar. Why not a lap steel with
a piezo bridge?

[youtube]EdMhmvhBD8k[/youtube]

I think we could use the lap steel in a lot more arrangements that we
are currently.

[Kit]

John and Philby, thank you for the kind words.

It is the Godin on "Chinese Takeout," as it was the only guitar I had at the time that had a whammy bar. On Capri the thing that sounded kind of like a mandolin was just tremolo picking on a guitar, and double tracked to the left and right. The LE was used in the lead track on Midnight and Sleepwalk.

I spent hours listening to Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells back in the day. Did not think any of it had rubbed off on me though, if it did it must have been subconscious.

Kit

[jwebsmall]

Kit went back and listened to Sleepwalk and Midnight again.
You're playing is very precise. And as someone else mentioned
already your arrangements are very good and not just a wall of
sound with 20 tracks. Are you playing the middle and neck pickup
on the foreground and the bridge on the back ground track of Sleepwalk
on your GbyL LE?

[Michael-GnL-Michael]

....Melodies come to me while I sleep. Some of them sounded really good at the time, but I can never recall them well enough to be able to reproduce them after I wake up. Once of twice I even tried while laying in bed to remember the melody, but it has never stuck....

Kit,

Maybe you should study music and become fluent with notation. Perhaps you would dream with visuals to support the audio? I have asked several people who were bilingual which language they thought in. Surprisingly most have said English regardless of whether it was their native language or not. If you are musical to the core and interested adding notation ought to be a smooth process.

Just a theory.

[jwebsmall]

The musical part of the brain seems to speak in a quiet whisper and it
is most audible when the active mind is really tired or just waking up
and not yet drowning out the quiet whisper. Or at least that is how
I describe what I've experienced. I'm learning how to listen to
that better so I can hear it louder when I'm fully awake but it takes practice
to relax and tune in. For example if I'm writing something while
playing the guitar my mind will tend to drive the music to where
it knows how to play it or is familiar with or otherwise take
over analytically instead of letting the seed idea flow where it
wants to go to be a "continuous" emotion. Any analytical disruption
tends to make the composition and arrangement "discontinuous"
and you loose the emotional momentum and focus (same is true
with the lyrics). And this ruins the quality of the music composition
IMO. Sometimes I able think up the melody in my head when fully
awake and hear the arrangement and know what I want it
to sound like but when I pick up an instrument to figure it out
I drown it out playing the wrong things and I loose the idea before
long as my analytical side bullies its way in to take over the process.
I have favored the analytical all my life and it interferes with composition
and jamming. This is why learning to jam and play by ear is going
to pay off which I haven't learned yet. I think this is why some of the
best musicians are unschooled having learned to play by ear. So I'm
going to just start playing along with songs and jam until I can play
what I'm hearing and naturally move to where the music is leading me.
I want to associate what I hearing with the places on the neck to play
it so the music moves my hands without thinking. I'm not thinking
about the letters I'm typing on the keyboard now for example. Then
my playing part of the brain will start learning to follow what I'm hearing
instead of dominating like it does know. This will make the composing
side stronger and louder (and not just when you are tired or dreaming -
after all it's coming from your same brian just different parts!) There
is a similar phenomena when learning to speak a foreign language. When
you are able to say what you are feeling instead of trying to figure out
what you can say from the rules you already know only then can you
become fluent. If you are trying to parse grammar rules to produce
a sentence you are going to drown out the part of your brain that
wishes to express itself. The fastest way to train this associative memory
is to feel it or experience it with the analytical rational part getting out of the way.
You can still get there by associating the effects after lengthy analytical
deductions but only after years longer learning this muscle/emotional
associate at the end of lengthy deductive chains. When we first compose
we are dated by the vintage sound that was charting when we were teens.
Those sonic atoms are imprinted in our emotional brains at the most
emotional time of life when we were identifying who we were. So typically
this is the only sonic emotionally developed part of our brain. We can
compose what we hear charting today but our brains are very weak
in what we are hearing. We have to train our ear to hear to hear the genre
pf the day so we don't drown it out. We think we can't compose it but
its just because the brain muscle hasn't been developed. And nobody
seems to be able to tell us exercises that will train it. Certainly not
musical grammar. That's why we need to just jam along and imitate
everything to learn it the fastest and pack it into our emotional associative
memory. For example I can sight read Beethoven Sonatas playing the piano.
Chopin Polonaises are harder because the hand reach is further with the open
harmonies he uses. But no problem otherwise reading the notes. I can sight
read even pieces I've never played before playing them at half speed or better
if they aren't too tricky. But that is precisely my problem. Without sheet music
I'm a mental cripple and can't play a bloody thing because I never learned to
play by ear. I need to learn to play the keyboard all over again. If try to jam
on the piano with a band I'm totally lost like a stuttering idiot. I never built
those pathways. I have a visual path from the sheet music short circuited to
the keys. I can hear the result but I can't hear back from the music to the keys.
That's a different pathway. I don't have that in associative memory. I don't
even think about the notes playing in both hands -it's been wired up directly
pushed down into my spine and muscle memory - I see note and the key plays
- not analysis involved - no identification of what the notei is. All that has been
short circuit by thousands of repetitions. That's all I learned how to do. I only
played for myself pieces I loved and never even bother to memorize any
pieces. I just got the sheet music and played. But when I got the
guitar I thought great I can play keys in a band as an end until I can
learn to play the guitar better. Wrong! But I definitely think theory
is vitally important to both performing and composing. I also think all people
are musical but need to train their brain to hear the typically quiet part of the
brain that is creative at composing in their dreams and not drown it out
when they are awake. You'll never remember your dreams unless you are
near the edge of being conscious. You can even wake up in the middle of
the night and swear I'll remember this in the morning. Fat chance.
And you won't hear the music in your head until you learn how to let it
out and train that ear to hear it without interruption. Learning new pathways
is not easy. If the analytical brain kicks in it will drowned it out for sure.
You can use the analytical theory to set up and experience the moods of
the sounds but then you have to let it flow back until these other routes
are trained and you become sonically fluent. Every pro athlete knows you
have to cross train. Learning to play your instrument well helps give
you a vocabulary to compose with but you still have to cross train in
composing and learn that just like learning your instrument. Whew I've
never had any formal music training (self taught but from an analytical
approach mostly from books and brute force) so I might not have a clue.
We probably should ask a real musician like Will Ross how he does it.
I've finished reading one book on harmony theory from Musicians
Institute (self study) and am about to start studying another advanced
book on writing 4 part vocal harmony I found written in the 1890's.
The musician institute book although longer can't touch this old skinny
book. Everything is so dumbed down these days. This is favoring my
analytical side again (Hey I'm software programmer - I love mathematics) but
I finally realized that I have to learn to play and compose by ear. So
I'm starting on that. I thought music was going to be easy. Oh my
it is a full time life time job to be a pro. I run into people all the time
who think these high school whiz kids are computer geniuses. Hardly.
To get really good takes analytical training as well as years of associative
real world experience. My friend who owns one of those local recording
studios majored in art. I drive him nuts sending him last weeks rules
about song writing I've learned. But I'm learning finally what came
naturally to him. But then again he's learning from me that rules do
matter for learning deep structure outside of his sonic imprint from
his youth. And he now realizes it won't kill the creativity to analyze
his songs after the fact. He thought anything analytical will destroy
his creativity and I understand why now. He emailed me a few days
ago and said he applied some of my rules on a new album he is recording
and its working. Hopefully they don't drown out what he is
tyring to convey. He's learning that there is such a thing
as deep relational structures and I'm learning to hear far
more complexity than analytical structures alone could ever
convey and to turn off the analytical when I'm trying to hear
a composition in my head. I can console myself that I can analyze it
all I want after I've finished composing it. But the first step (another
rule!) is to learn to hear it louder and lastingly. Since we have
recorders we can add the notation after the fact unless we do it
so much it becomes an associative path and they we can captured
directly. But the speed of capture isn't the problem it seems. It seems
the problem is hearing something that is fleeting and relatively quiet
and turning up the volume (turning up the emotion) and making
that music dominant us instead of the other way around (turning down
the analytical so we can hear the emotion).

[Kit]

John, my playing is nowhere near precise. There is one major flub in Midnight. I did not realize it until I started to work on the mix and did not have enough motivation to go back and redo the entire lead track. The flub is there every time I listen to keep me humble.

Sometimes these songs are more complicated than they appear. For the guitar parts Midnight has one lead track, one arpeggiated chord track, and 2 strummed chord tracks panned to either side.

For Sleepwalk I know the lead track is on the LE either on pickup position 2 or 4. It sounds like middle and bridge to me although I don't remember precisely. The rhythm I think is played on my Yamaha SG1500. When I was first learning how to mix I spent many hours on home recording forums. One thing I learned was to record the rhythm track twice, then use them both but pan one toward the left and the other to the right. Since there will be slight differences in the 2 rhythm tracks it actually gives a stereophonic sound to the mix. Since I learned this trick I've been pretty much using it on every song I record because it does give a much better mix.

Michael, I can read standard notation, but I'm painfully slow at it. When I dream of a melody I doubt that I can visualize it as standard notation (even if I only do it in the key of C). The best suggestion someone gave me was to keep a mini recorder by my bed and sing the melody into the recorder when one came to me. I never bother to act on the idea though. I have heard some musicians carry a personal recorder with them just for this reason.

Kit

[jwebsmall]

Kit you have a really good start in arranging a song bed.

I'm flipping off the computer now. I've got tomorrow's
G&L topic planned on ASAT's so it won't be so boring
as the lap steel - I made a mistake on this topic I think.

[bassman]

Lap Steels are a GREAT topic!

I have just been swamped at work so I don't reply much but I appreciate the discussion.

I love the sound of Lap steels and I want to build one.
I heard of a pro player who specified that a concert hall provide a Lap steel for him to play. He didn't care what brand it was or the quality or configuration. He just wanted one to play and he did.

Cool stuff on Lap steels. It was Fender's first instrument.

[jwebsmall]

Bill the Bassman's band will be playing
on December 2, 2011 at the New Deal Cafe

http://newdealcafe.com/