The ability to blog and share thoughts on any and all subjects is still quite novel to me... yet at the same time it is really just the end result of the relentless pursuit of technology we have seen in the last several decades.
As a musician who favors the sound of acoustic based instruments, I have always had a love/hate relationship with the technology that allows my music to be heard by a wider audience - figuratively and literally.
The first excursions into technology was an old tube amplified radio. That thing was capable of tuning in AM, FM and five SW bands. Plus (and most importantly) it had a selection that allowed the user to plug into the amp's
inputs. I had an acoustic guitar and knew from reading (books printed on pages - not on a blog or a Wikipedia entry) that the property of a phonograph needle in reproducing sound from vinyl was that it created an electric current when the needle was dragged back and forth in the groove.
I knew that this was true because I could run the needle across the ridges of the fingerprint on my thumb and hear the sound as it was transferred to the record players amp... but how to make this work on an old Sears Silvertone acoustic guitar? I salvaged the cartridge from a record player that had bit the dust and with a little careful splicing and a bit of black tape had a pickup that I could place on the guitar - under the long tailpiece section behind the bridge. The other end of the wire was placed into the the user input section of the aforementioned radio receiver and... I had an electric guitar. I was hooked. But family's situation ruled out me getting a real one, so I did what all 12 year old's who have dreams larger than their bank account... I started cutting grass for the neighbors.
My part of town was populated with older near retirement folks who were glad to have someone that would take care of their mowing. I started with just a push rotary mower but soon convinced my Mom that really needed to have a power mower. As this was something that the family could use for our own yard as well, the suggestion was approved by my Mom's boyfriend (who held the purse strings tighter than a New England fisherman - I'll just call him "Jake" to protect his privacy - and no offense to the New England fisherman among the readers) and soon we had a new power mower. But to save on the purchase they got a self-propelled rotary mower. Picture a push mower with a 5 HP Briggs and Stratton motor balanced on the top. It did make inclined yards easier to cut but the silly thing weighed almost as much as I did! After a year and a half of saving up the money (took that long because as I later found out, the price of the mower came off the top of the monies I made) Jake finally told me one evening that he would check with a friend of his that owned a pawn shop for a good used guitar. This was back in the early 70's and I had visions of a Strat or Les Paul waiting at the house when I got home from school that evening.
Now I don't know if anyone reading this knows more about guitars than the models cited above, but I will say that the last thing I was expecting was a real Fender or Gibson. But certainly was not expecting a Teisco Del Ray EV 2T in black with a white pickguard ("A what???"), which was a copy of a VOX Phantom. Now if you think about what a guitar looks like from an acoustic view and you might think about the violin shape or a large flat topped creation with ornate engraved mother-of-pearl inlays.... like Elvis or the Everly Brothers. I had heard of the Hollies and the Dave Clark Five and liked their music but my heart and soul really loved what I heard Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck doing with the Yardbirds. They were not using VOX - they were using Fenders and Gibsons to get their sound (little did I know that Jimmy Page was using an old pre-Tele broadcaster though a small 15 watt amp in the studio to get those awesome tones on the first couple of led Zep albums I later heard somewhere... (and this could be apocryphal - but I digress)).
But a Teisco? The couple of guys who played at school would be beside themselves in laughter when they saw this monstrosity that I'd been cursed with for all my hard work. Looking back on this time, I realize a few things that have stayed with me through the years. I played that guitar as if I was a man possessed. I gave it my all to learn how to make a crappy guitar sound - and play - good.
No, not just good, but great. That attitude caused problems (with a big ego to go with it) but standing beside some really talented folks over the years removed the ego quite effectively.
I also learned the most important thing of all... that what we carry inside us as we go through life matters more than the things that we carry with us as possessions. I have learned that someone could take everything I owned even the shirt off my back... but they could not take my pride (self-worth) nor my experiences. Those things have served me well in the journey since that time. I still carried a grudge about the way that "Jake" had sold me a short bill of goods for the 300.00 dollars that I made those two summers. I know that the guitar he bought was probably worth 50 dollars to the pawn shop owner he traded with. but that guitar was a real turning point for me. I would have to make the folks in our small hick town hear me past the look of it (and their small town attitude over my family's circumstances... and I left the grudge behind about twenty years ago... I was the one suffering. It didn't effect Jake in the least).
I was able to get people to listen by learning not just the music I wanted to hear and loved but by also including that portion of the music spectrum that I did not care for but knew that others enjoyed - what they loved. Swing. Big Band. Soul. RnB. Jazz. Country and Western. These in addition to the blues based rock that had caught my young ears on the late night AM radio stations out of Chicago. Plus, Earth Wind and Fire, the Spinners, Chuck Mangione, War, and on and on... In addition, I made myself listen to 'older music' to be able to 'speak' the language of swing and jazz. Did I mention Dave Brubeck? There are so many others whose music and melodies have since became a part of who I am and how I approach playing the guitar and other instruments. And those styles that didn't catch my ear at first? Now I love them as well!
The downside to the technology is best described by stating that when I listen to myself after recording a part, what I hear is still is just a reproduction of what had just happened... not the real deal by any means. I can hear the lack of nuance and the way the electronics split and then alter the sound. Techies can understand the change with terms like THD and RMS but to one who does not understand that distortion is not always a good thing, it was internalized and I felt that I was doing something wrong because the sound on the tape did not sound like 'me'!
After a dozen years and many such recording sessions, I realized that the audiences were also being shortchanged. Even more so today. If one has never heard an acoustic instrument played live, they know that any reproduction is but a shell... and with the increased use of samples and synths (and further diminish the acoustic sound), many times it is almost impossible to decipher just what the producer/composer had in mind with the sound they'd used on a track. ("They used a clarinet patch for that bass line? Mmmoookay...").
The lessons learned in my journey have sometimes been painful and sometimes silly, at the time.
Yet, I would not trade them for anything. The best part of the anger/disappointment/hurt I felt was that it spurred me onto a higher plateau in my ability and appreciation for the muse that stirs a restless soul into communicating their heart and being with an instrument.
In all, the past is just that - I do not now carry a grudge for wrongs, perceive or otherwise. I did sell the Teisco to a good friend of mine from high school afer I started college. I later asked him why would he want such a POS. He told me that he wanted to own a guitar that was once played by me. I was humbled beyond description.
So let me say now, Henry and Candy, both of you were so instrumental in giving me the ability to see me through your eyes and to foster my own hope in my talents. For that I can not repay you. I only know that I was blessed to be able to play for the two of you at your wedding all those years ago
The past's burdens are just old burdens unless we continue to carry them into the future.
I prefer to travel much lighter now and because of friends and others I've met over the years, I can only say "Thank you"!
CODA - my "Teisco blues" story still needs to be completed. That VOX copy guitar opened my eyes to other brands and today I use VOX amps exclusively and have a stable of 'no-name' guitars as well as few name brands that others would recognize.
As a musician who favors the sound of acoustic based instruments, I have always had a love/hate relationship with the technology that allows my music to be heard by a wider audience - figuratively and literally.
The first excursions into technology was an old tube amplified radio. That thing was capable of tuning in AM, FM and five SW bands. Plus (and most importantly) it had a selection that allowed the user to plug into the amp's
inputs. I had an acoustic guitar and knew from reading (books printed on pages - not on a blog or a Wikipedia entry) that the property of a phonograph needle in reproducing sound from vinyl was that it created an electric current when the needle was dragged back and forth in the groove.
I knew that this was true because I could run the needle across the ridges of the fingerprint on my thumb and hear the sound as it was transferred to the record players amp... but how to make this work on an old Sears Silvertone acoustic guitar? I salvaged the cartridge from a record player that had bit the dust and with a little careful splicing and a bit of black tape had a pickup that I could place on the guitar - under the long tailpiece section behind the bridge. The other end of the wire was placed into the the user input section of the aforementioned radio receiver and... I had an electric guitar. I was hooked. But family's situation ruled out me getting a real one, so I did what all 12 year old's who have dreams larger than their bank account... I started cutting grass for the neighbors.
My part of town was populated with older near retirement folks who were glad to have someone that would take care of their mowing. I started with just a push rotary mower but soon convinced my Mom that really needed to have a power mower. As this was something that the family could use for our own yard as well, the suggestion was approved by my Mom's boyfriend (who held the purse strings tighter than a New England fisherman - I'll just call him "Jake" to protect his privacy - and no offense to the New England fisherman among the readers) and soon we had a new power mower. But to save on the purchase they got a self-propelled rotary mower. Picture a push mower with a 5 HP Briggs and Stratton motor balanced on the top. It did make inclined yards easier to cut but the silly thing weighed almost as much as I did! After a year and a half of saving up the money (took that long because as I later found out, the price of the mower came off the top of the monies I made) Jake finally told me one evening that he would check with a friend of his that owned a pawn shop for a good used guitar. This was back in the early 70's and I had visions of a Strat or Les Paul waiting at the house when I got home from school that evening.
Now I don't know if anyone reading this knows more about guitars than the models cited above, but I will say that the last thing I was expecting was a real Fender or Gibson. But certainly was not expecting a Teisco Del Ray EV 2T in black with a white pickguard ("A what???"), which was a copy of a VOX Phantom. Now if you think about what a guitar looks like from an acoustic view and you might think about the violin shape or a large flat topped creation with ornate engraved mother-of-pearl inlays.... like Elvis or the Everly Brothers. I had heard of the Hollies and the Dave Clark Five and liked their music but my heart and soul really loved what I heard Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck doing with the Yardbirds. They were not using VOX - they were using Fenders and Gibsons to get their sound (little did I know that Jimmy Page was using an old pre-Tele broadcaster though a small 15 watt amp in the studio to get those awesome tones on the first couple of led Zep albums I later heard somewhere... (and this could be apocryphal - but I digress)).
But a Teisco? The couple of guys who played at school would be beside themselves in laughter when they saw this monstrosity that I'd been cursed with for all my hard work. Looking back on this time, I realize a few things that have stayed with me through the years. I played that guitar as if I was a man possessed. I gave it my all to learn how to make a crappy guitar sound - and play - good.
No, not just good, but great. That attitude caused problems (with a big ego to go with it) but standing beside some really talented folks over the years removed the ego quite effectively.
I also learned the most important thing of all... that what we carry inside us as we go through life matters more than the things that we carry with us as possessions. I have learned that someone could take everything I owned even the shirt off my back... but they could not take my pride (self-worth) nor my experiences. Those things have served me well in the journey since that time. I still carried a grudge about the way that "Jake" had sold me a short bill of goods for the 300.00 dollars that I made those two summers. I know that the guitar he bought was probably worth 50 dollars to the pawn shop owner he traded with. but that guitar was a real turning point for me. I would have to make the folks in our small hick town hear me past the look of it (and their small town attitude over my family's circumstances... and I left the grudge behind about twenty years ago... I was the one suffering. It didn't effect Jake in the least).
I was able to get people to listen by learning not just the music I wanted to hear and loved but by also including that portion of the music spectrum that I did not care for but knew that others enjoyed - what they loved. Swing. Big Band. Soul. RnB. Jazz. Country and Western. These in addition to the blues based rock that had caught my young ears on the late night AM radio stations out of Chicago. Plus, Earth Wind and Fire, the Spinners, Chuck Mangione, War, and on and on... In addition, I made myself listen to 'older music' to be able to 'speak' the language of swing and jazz. Did I mention Dave Brubeck? There are so many others whose music and melodies have since became a part of who I am and how I approach playing the guitar and other instruments. And those styles that didn't catch my ear at first? Now I love them as well!
The downside to the technology is best described by stating that when I listen to myself after recording a part, what I hear is still is just a reproduction of what had just happened... not the real deal by any means. I can hear the lack of nuance and the way the electronics split and then alter the sound. Techies can understand the change with terms like THD and RMS but to one who does not understand that distortion is not always a good thing, it was internalized and I felt that I was doing something wrong because the sound on the tape did not sound like 'me'!
After a dozen years and many such recording sessions, I realized that the audiences were also being shortchanged. Even more so today. If one has never heard an acoustic instrument played live, they know that any reproduction is but a shell... and with the increased use of samples and synths (and further diminish the acoustic sound), many times it is almost impossible to decipher just what the producer/composer had in mind with the sound they'd used on a track. ("They used a clarinet patch for that bass line? Mmmoookay...").
The lessons learned in my journey have sometimes been painful and sometimes silly, at the time.
Yet, I would not trade them for anything. The best part of the anger/disappointment/hurt I felt was that it spurred me onto a higher plateau in my ability and appreciation for the muse that stirs a restless soul into communicating their heart and being with an instrument.
In all, the past is just that - I do not now carry a grudge for wrongs, perceive or otherwise. I did sell the Teisco to a good friend of mine from high school afer I started college. I later asked him why would he want such a POS. He told me that he wanted to own a guitar that was once played by me. I was humbled beyond description.
So let me say now, Henry and Candy, both of you were so instrumental in giving me the ability to see me through your eyes and to foster my own hope in my talents. For that I can not repay you. I only know that I was blessed to be able to play for the two of you at your wedding all those years ago
The past's burdens are just old burdens unless we continue to carry them into the future.
I prefer to travel much lighter now and because of friends and others I've met over the years, I can only say "Thank you"!
CODA - my "Teisco blues" story still needs to be completed. That VOX copy guitar opened my eyes to other brands and today I use VOX amps exclusively and have a stable of 'no-name' guitars as well as few name brands that others would recognize.
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