I dug out the guitar pedalboard from where it's been hiding the past five
months and dedicated some time to reattaching pedals that were hanging off
the board. At the same time, I changed the position of some of the pedals as
I removed the distortion pedal1 that I barely use and don't like. I added a pedal that arrived a
few days after our last performance2: a noise gate pedal. Like the tuner pedal, it doesn't affect the sound; it
simply 'turns the guitar off'. When the threshold is low enough, no signal
will be passed through it. The idea is to prevent all the various clicks
that the pedal board makes when pedals are turned on or off inbetween songs.
I don't know whether I will keep this pedal as its utility is limited but
obviously I identified a need. That's the white pedal on the far left -
obviously this pedal should be at the end of the signal chain, which here
runs from right to left.
Those who examine the picture very closely and compare it to an earlier
picture (see the earlier referenced blog where I wrote about the distortion
pedal) will notice that the power supply, the rectangular block on the top
left of the board, has been rotated. I have noticed that the plug that
charges the supply is always falling out and that it is hard to reconnect it
as there is very little room between it and the left hand side of the power
distributor. Turning this around should allow for better access to the
required socket.
Last week we discussed which songs we would play in our first practice.
'Twist and shout' was the first number suggested, although I suspect that
this won't be a keeper. I understood that the other song was called X by
group Y, so yesterday afternoon I found this song on YouTube and notated the
chords. I then printed the words to the song so that I could add the chord
symbols, only to discover that the words that I had printed didn't match the
words being sung. It turns out that this group has two songs whose names are
almost identical. I had the chords to one song and the words to the other.
Not only that, I was then informed that in fact we were going to play a
completely different
song
by that group. I had to laugh when I heard this song as it rips off the
chord sequence to the verse of Bob Dylan's "Lay lady lay". The song itself
is quite interesting as the verse is in A whereas the chorus is in G. A
modulation at the end brings the chorus up to A.
I was working with the Stagg guitar but it was very uncomfortable. I get
the feeling that I swapped strings around - the B string is thinner than
the E which is wrong. I'll restring the guitar yet again. My left hand had
problems with the guitar: it felt like I was playing an egg slicer (like I
used to do in my youth). I also had problems with the rounded neck, so I
decided to take the Washburn guitar to the rehearsal. This was much easier
on the left hand, but the guitar kept sliding from my lap as its body is
much larger. No one commented that I was playing this guitar.
It seems that after my vocal debut last time, I will be adding the
occasional backup vocal to songs. I have to admit that I found it difficult
to continue playing whilst I was singing, although I'm sure that I'll get
used to this.
Internal links
[1] 1798
[2] 1983
This day in blog history:
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 155 | Another day, another RDBMS | Programming, Delphi | |
| 794 | Less pleasant memories from early 1975 | Health, 1975 | |
| 795 | Research questionnaire (5) | DBA | |
| 1103 | Business rules in Priority which do not apply to specific users | Priority tips | |
| 1884 | David Lodge, RIP | Obituary, David Lodge |
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