Things To Do When Your Not Sailing

 Things To Do When Your Not Sailing

In  December of 2019 I decided to act on something I had been thinking about for a very long time. I decided to restart my guitar practice hobby that I had back in the 70's. My old J45 Gibson acoustic guitar was stored at my sons house in Austin. I called him up and told him about my plans and that I planed this time to buy an electric guitar suited for Jazz and the Blues, a hollow body electric, double cutaway with duel pickups. He said why do you want to buy that? I've got one and I will give it to you. Well, that would be the best of two worlds, I could try one out and make sure that's what I wanted. We were soon to make a trip to Austin anyway so I just brought it back to Seattle.

Washburn HB 35S

This guitar turned out to be my Lucille, but since that name was already taken, just for fun I named her Elvira from the song: https://youtu.be/-4Hd9p30rck 

I had some headphones already but I needed some way to amplify the guitar without making a lot of noise since we lived in a small high-rise condo building. So I chose this type of mini amplifier that you just plug into the guitar and the headphones into the mini amp. They actually sound really good and have some typical  controls like gain and reverb. Some are available with a full blown array of audio enhancements.

Now I needed a place to start. I had saved all my old song and practice books from the 70's. I relearned major and minor chords then opened up my well worn Mickey Baker book. I made it to page twelve before I realized I was going to need more help. Fortunately online lessons are readily available so I thought I would give that a go. I searched for the "top three online Guitar course". After reading several online reviews I noticed that GuitarTricks.com always came up in the top three. So I dived in. My 70's experience included hanging out with a real musician, Jay Gabbard, two  years in the School of Music at University of Texas Austin, and attending countless concerts at The Armadillo World Headquarters.

I knew to fill in all the gaps I had that it would just be best to start
 from the very beginning. So I started with Lisa McCormick's fundamental lessons.

I spent nearly a year getting Lisa McCormicks' Fundamentals I & II done. 

Lisa McCormick is the best of the three instructors I have had ( they have many more)  on GuitarTricks. Her well organized curriculum and musically progressive lessons plus her teaching methodology are excellent. Being a retired educator I really appreciate all the time she spent planning her lessons and her thoughtful online teaching. She is great for all ages of learners.

The Fundamentals courses allowed me to get back what I had lost over the years and fill in many gaps that existed back in the 70's. Music theory and learning to read music notation are threaded through out so by the time your at the end of the course you are ready to take on intermediate level challenges. Jazz has always been an interest but this time I wanted to pursue the beginning and intermediate level blues  courses that are part of their core learning systems (see Pic above). Eric Clapton said "If you want to play Rock &Roll you need to know the blues first", That goes the same for Jazz as the genre certainly evolved from American urban blues.

We moved back to Austin during the beginning months of the C-19 pandemic so having plenty of time to devote to guitar practice. Before long I was ready to start the Blues course and with a new instructor:

Anders Mouridsen is the real deal. What he lacks in methodology and strict musical progression he makes up in encouragement and, let's just call it music spirituality.  I did find myself paying a lot of attention to the video of his left hand and sometimes his right hand playing. His one important refrain is " Do not play it like I play it" or like the originating musician plays it, play it your way. Well that means a lot to someone emerging into their 70's, for one thing playing anything 120 BPM (beats per minute) or faster is a difficult challenge for my fingers and brain ++ there are complicated rhythms  and some musical phrasing that may or may not come to fruition. So playing it MY Way is the perfect Mantra.

I have recently begun to record my tunes. This puts added pressure to perform ( or else you have to start all over) So if the next note was good, then great recording!

Since we were back in Austin my son loaned me his Marshall 
tube amp. This was great, no more headphones and this amp was made for the blues.

 Another nice feature of the lessons on GuitarTricks is that you can print out the music notation. At first I just used an iPad, but I needed the versatility of paper. I now have three binders full. and that has come in handy since I decided to revisit the summary lessons from each of the subheadings in each chapter to create a MyTune.

My way of progressing through the course material is if I played a lesson through perfectly once then I moved on to the next lesson. Anders was careful to organize his lessons in terms of easy to moderate to difficult technique.  My technique continued to improve daily, even though I did not linger to memorize the lesson piece, when I looked back I found I could quickly recover and play the piece easily since my technique had continued to improve. 

Here an example of other instructional tools during the videos. the split screens showing both left and right hand technique.

I returned the Marshall to my son and I asked my Nephew Zack Logan who not only played in a band in Austin for years but also worked at The Guitar Store for a couple of years what the best small portable practice amp was. Orange Crush! so I bought one and I am amazed at the new technologies. This amp sounds huge, you could easily use it play at a  small venue. This one is a Crush 12.

Then I asked Zack about a reverb pedal, he said get The Hall of Fame, I got the mini since it was cheaper and it had all the features i would ever use. Then later some of the lessons suggested some distortion, So Zack said get an Ibanez. Great these will surely be all the special effect pedals I will ever want for Jazz or Blues. 

Another great feature is that most lessons come with a Jam Track of Backing Track to play along with. The value of this feature can not be understated as it is similar to playing with a live band helping to keep time. The drums/percussion are king! And often they have piano/organ and/or a horn and/or other guitars. Not until recently did I need to download the backing tracks but now it is an invaluable as I use them when I record my tunes.

Christopher Schlegel was just what the music doctor ordered. After finishing Anders course work I wanted to be able to just start creating tunes from all bits and pieces I had at hand. There was a missing link and Chris had the answer with his Blues Orchestration Series. Chris organizes his lessons so that by the time you finish a chapter you have a fully orchestrated tune, so you learn the music theory and how to along the way. He gave me the confidence to take Anders and Chris content and begin to produce my own songs. So I went through all of the previous work I had done and picked out mostly the summary lessons of each section to revisit and create a "Mytune". I needed a way to record my work so that I had a record of my progress and I needed some recording tools. I tried using my iPhone several times but the sound quality was lacking even with an add on microphone. So I searched YouTube to find out how solo artist record their music and I found that one of the tools they use is an audio interface to connect to a computer with USB. You also need a decent microphone to connect to the audio interface, you also need a microphone stand.

So I chose a Focusrite Scarlett Solo. Perfect for solo artist who also sing, but I don't. So I use the microphone input to mic in the amplifier. You can plug your guitar in directly to the interface but you get a electronic sound that I did not want and after watching more youtube videos I discovered it is best to just put the microphone in front of the amplifier.

Here you can see the simple set up with the mic in front of the amp, If I use my acoustic guitar then I just mic the instrument.

My 1970's Gibson J45 and Ibanez AF-85 a family friend gifted me, each of these has it place in the repertoire.

The last piece of the puzzle is the software for the audio interface. Thank Goodness that decision was made for me since Ableton Lite 11 software came with the Focusrite interface. Installing the software was easy, learning how to use it took about 4 days of YouTube videos and that was just to do the most basic part of recording. They have 2 year college courses at the Austin Community College for prospective sound engineers on this stuff. I was talking to my nephew Josh about it and he said " a sound engineer can have coffee and conversation with a musician who wants his work recorded and come back a week later with their complete album ready to go" This could easily be a true statement if you know how to use the thousands of endless features in the software.

As you can see from the picture above, I have two audio tracs recorded, the top track is my guitar and the bottom is a backing track that I downloaded and pasted in from GuitarTricks. I use my headphones to listen to the backing track as I play and record my tune. It is absolutely fantastic to play along with the Invisible Band, they keep me jazzed up and in rhythm (most of the time and that's improving). Never before have I been able to play along with drums, pianos, organ, horns, other guitars etc. You can also in the lower center of the picture, see an audio effect that I pasted in from the software to enhance the recorded sound. The audio effects thing is a rabbit hole that could distract you forever, but I just don't have time for all that so I have found a couple that just brighten the sound so it better or easier to listen to. Its kind of like having endless selection of foot pedals. Imagine a stage that is so crowded with foot pedals the performing artist have to be suspended by ropes.

I have heard this from Jon Batiste when he won Album of the Year  at the 2022 Grammy's, except he said "The music writes itself" I have experienced this on my  intermediate level of music experience. When your in the groove the music is the director, conversely when you struggle to get in the groove of the rhythm it is just plain guesswork and it never sounds as good, it is just an exercise of sorts. Perhaps a way to practice technique or attempt at trying to mentally fit in or understand the melody. Countdown is one of the tunes I recorded where I struggled, I recorded it because I wanted to try and burn the particular required guitar technique  into my experience. 

Music is just like the Universe, no matter which way you look it goes on forever. As soon as I achieve some part of this magic another need to learn another part shows up. 

To date I have recorded two series or albums of tunes with 12 songs in each series. There are two ways you can access these tunes for free or without having to register on a website. Both of the links are located in the Bar on the upper right of this page if you are viewing on a laptop or desktop computer.

The First link is my Google Site page: https://sites.google.com/view/just-happy-to-be-here-tour

This link works great if you are on a computer, if your using a smart phone or tablet there are a couple of more hoops to jump through:

This is what the page looks like on a cell phone so just scroll done to the tune you want to here and click it, then:

you have to click the down arrow in the upper right corner, then:

Click Allow for the popup, then:

Click view which

gives you this screen that will play the tune

OR you can just go to https://soundcloud.com/  You do not have to register or have an account just scroll down and search my name Steve Steakley Then you will get a page with all 24 tracks listed, you can play them individually or play the whole set. If you go over to the left side of the screen and click playlist you will get the tunes listed by the series or CD name :

1. Just Happy to BE Here Tour 

2, Pushing IT                            .

SoundCloud is a German owned web site that is very popular with emerging artist where they can post their music and get some exposure. Search you favorite genre of music and you will find some great music by people from all over the world. I just want a free place to put my music so friends and family and my readers can get to hear what I'm up to. 

My Saving Grace