End of another era.

[Bridget Murphy]

9 hours ago, Grem said:

LOL!!! Great analogy!! Those things would rust up and tear the end of my fingers up!! I had forgot about that!

Yep. I had a guitar from Western Auto as my first guitar. I don't remember if it had any name on it. But I do remember that very high action!! That didn't bother me as much as trying to play chords up the neck. Further up the neck I would go, the more out of tune it would get. Just no intonation on it at all!!

 

On 1/4/2024 at 10:23 PM, Notes_Norton said:

I'm old enough to remember when strings were typically sold individually.

A guitar player I knew bought Black Diamond brand strings, bought a banjo string for the first string, a first string for the second, second for the third, wound third for the fourth, fourth for the fifth, and fifth for the sixth. It was a home-made light gauge string set, before they started selling light gauge sets.

He said he learned that trick while in Nashville.

I used to buy individual reeds. I'd go to the music store, hold the reed up to the light to see if the grain was even, and reject the bad ones. You can't do that anymore, either.

So I guess the individual string and reed era ended decades ago.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

It's always interesting to hear about these creative solutions musicians come up with.

[Zo]

On 12/31/2023 at 5:58 PM, Shane_B. said:

https://www.davephillipsmusicstore.com/blogs/news/the-end-of-an-era

This was the place I bought my first guitar. First 3 actually. I still have them. I bought my first 2 amps there, my band got all their PA gear there. My first guitar rack gear, mic, keyboard, 8 track recording machine. Countless strings, cables, and a 100 other pieces of gear over the years. Basically from the time before I was in a band, all through my 16 years playing out, till the day I moved away, everything I bought that was music related came from there.

The first time I went there was with my brother when I was a little kid back in the 70s. We went together one last time on Friday. They were selling the guitar racks off the walls and everything else was gone by the time we got there.

It was the last music store in our area. Oh well. I still have Sweets I guess.

I cliked on the thread thinking "woah they're talking about Brics and the end of the petro dollar " ? lol 

 

Always sad anyway .... 

[Notes_Norton]

My first guitar was a Gibson ES330.

I'm predominantly a sax player, but on songs where there was no sax part, I'd either play bass and let the bass player play guitar, or play rhythm guitar using the guitarist's 'other' guitar.

He played a 335 on stage, which I never got to play, instead, I played rhythm on Tele.

After I quit the band, I saw a 330 in a music store, thinking it was a 335, I bought it. I later learned the difference, and decided the 330 was a better match for me, anyway.

Years later, when I got serious about guitar (my 7th instrument) I bought a Parker Dragonfly/maxxfly because I didn't want to take the Gibson out and play it outdoors near salt water.

 

Notes ♫

[Zo]

1 hour ago, Notes_Norton said:

My first guitar was a Gibson ES330.

I'm predominantly a sax player, but on songs where there was no sax part, I'd either play bass and let the bass player play guitar, or play rhythm guitar using the guitarist's 'other' guitar.

He played a 335 on stage, which I never got to play, instead, I played rhythm on Tele.

After I quit the band, I saw a 330 in a music store, thinking it was a 335, I bought it. I later learned the difference, and decided the 330 was a better match for me, anyway.

Years later, when I got serious about guitar (my 7th instrument) I bought a Parker Dragonfly/maxxfly because I didn't want to take the Gibson out and play it outdoors near salt water.

 

Notes ♫

I bough Ample sound plugin because i don't know how to play guitar , tried to understand the plugin (and i'm no noob) and the amount of knowlegde need to create a simple strum line , made me come to that conclusion : learn how to play guitar and bass zo lol 

Edited January 8 by Zo

[craigb]

As a guitarist, I needed to include keyboards occasionally, but those I could cheat on since my keyboard allowed me to transpose the key and just use all the white keys regardless of what key I was actually using.  Much harder to do that with a guitar! ?

Edited January 8 by craigb

[57Gregy]

16 hours ago, Grem said:

I had a guitar from Western Auto as my first guitar. I don't remember if it had any name on it.

My oldest brother got a red Truetone electric guitar from Western Auto for Christmas when he was 14. After he went away to college, my other brother and I painted it blue and converted it to a bass guitar with some bass machines we had lying around. Talk about bad intonation! If you stayed on the lower 4 frets it wasn't too bad.
In Germany, we bought Black Diamond strings from this little booth between the PX and the beverage store. They were the only strings he had.
You could ride the S-bahn to Hruby's music store in downtown Frankfurt if you needed good strings. We were 14 and 15; we didn't know what good strings were in 1972. ?

[Grem]

6 hours ago, 57Gregy said:

we didn't know what good strings were in 1972. ?

No we didn't!! I don't think I bought a whole set of strings until I got my first Les Paul. I brought it in to the music store (Rock World Music on Veterans Blvd) and had them change the strings. Yep, I had no clue.

Edited January 9 by Grem

[Notes_Norton]

I get along with the guitar better than I do with piano. I can play things on the keys, but I can't do that left-hand bass+comp and right-hand melody. Probably because I haven't taken the many hours it takes to achieve that.

I can sing and play bass or guitar, though, even though that also consists of doing two different things at once. But one is voice, and one with hands, not different things on each hand.

I suppose most of the guitarists and pianists on this board are better than me, but my main axe is sax. Even on that, what I've learned through the years is there is always someone better than me, and always someone worse. It doesn't matter, it isn't a contest.

I suppose my gigging era will end before I die, if I live long enough.

Rap is now over 35 years old, and when rap becomes mainstream for the adult market, it'll be time to hang up my spurs.

All eras end sooner or later.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

[Grem]

15 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

what I've learned through the years is there is always someone better than me, and always someone worse.

Learned that very early on. I learned to play for the people I was paid to entertain. Not other guitar players!! LOL! 

 

15 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

it isn't a contest.

I agree... but some live for that.

I was never like that.

I always did it for the enjoyment of it. 

Don't get me wrong, we were very proud of how we played. We worked hard for it too. Many hours of practice alone keeping our chops up. Many hours of practice alone learning songs. Many hours of practice together getting it all parts of the song right. Then many hours of practice getting the show right.

Not to mention the hours of setup/teardowns. And trying to keep all the drunks from "helping" !! Bless their hearts, they meant well. But boy could they tangle some s**T up!!  

Edited January 10 by Grem

[Notes_Norton]

23 hours ago, Grem said:

Learned that very early on. I learned to play for the people I was paid to entertain. Not other guitar players!! LOL! 

 

I agree... but some live for that.

I was never like that.

I always did it for the enjoyment of it. 

Don't get me wrong, we were very proud of how we played. We worked hard for it too. Many hours of practice alone keeping our chops up. Many hours of practice alone learning songs. Many hours of practice together getting it all parts of the song right. Then many hours of practice getting the show right.

Not to mention the hours of setup/teardowns. And trying to keep all the drunks from "helping" !! Bless their hearts, they meant well. But boy could they tangle some s**T up!!  

Just because it isn't a contest, doesn't mean we don't take it seriously.

And IMO there is no way to judge art and doesn't belong in a contest.

Example: I was playing in a hired horn section. The alto sax player was a monster. He could sightread complicated charts that I would have had to woodshed.

One day on break, a gal came up and gushed about my sax playing, telling me how sexy it was. After she left, I told him it was embarrassing for here to do that in front of him. He said, that he wished he could play a ballad as passionately as I do. That's when I realized, there are dozens of skills involved in being a musician: reading, phrasing, improvising, playing dynamically, tone, and so on. And what one listener thinks the best tone, phrasing, and dynamics are, another listener might disagree.

So, how can you have a contest. Was Jimi Hendrix better than Terry Kath? Was Stan Getz better than Stanley Turrentine? Was John Bonham better than Bernard Purdie? I could go on and on.

For gigging musicians, it's about showing up, using our strong suits to move an audience so that the club owner makes money while we are there. Or selling recordings, so the label makes a lot of money. If we do our job right, we make money, too, and then we get to go grocery shopping and pay the mortgage.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

 

[Grem]

3 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

IMO there is no way to judge art and doesn't belong in a contest.

Agree 100%

 

3 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

there are dozens of skills involved in being a musician

Agree here also.

I would add that the level of musician your playing with has an effect on your playing. I was playing in a blues band. Singer was pretty good. And I thought that the drummer, bass player, and sax player were ok too. But one night the singer (who also was the rhythm guitar player) let a friend of his talk him into letting a guy come up and play a song. So the singer agreed and gave him his guitar. He told us a blues vamp in G, and then started to play and intro that shocked us all!! This guy was like you say, a monster!!! But what surprised the hell out of me was the level that the rest of the band jumped up too!! I mean we were killing it!!

After the gig my wife told me that when the guy got up there and played, we were like another band. She asked "Why don't ya'll play like that all the time?!!" And I tried to explain... but it was no use.

The level of musicians you play with has an effect on you. You were playing better because you knew that "great" guy was there. And he played better because he knew a "passionate" player was there!! And that's the interaction, connections that we have with each other that play/perform. Nothing like it in the world.

[craigb]

4 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

...there are dozens of skills involved in being a musician...

Oh, crap!  I thought there was only four or five!!! ?

 

Explains a lot actually... ?

Edited January 11 by craigb

[Notes_Norton]

20 hours ago, Grem said:

The level of musicians you play with has an effect on you. You were playing better because you knew that "great" guy was there. And he played better because he knew a "passionate" player was there!! And that's the interaction, connections that we have with each other that play/perform. Nothing like it in the world.

Exactly!!!

When I tried to see what it was to be normal and have a real job, I was a Cable TV Field Engineer (a technician with an engineer title to impress the customers). I flew out Monday and, worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday was a flight day, but I could take the red-eye out Thursday night.

That allowed me to play weekend gigs with other part-time musicians. But the caliber of the other musicians wasn't what I was used to. I don't mean this as a negative, they had real jobs and families competing with their music time. I don't think I was playing at the top of my game then, either. It didn't have the same spark.

I'd much rather play with musicians who are better than me, than I would to play with ones who are not as good.

In my current duo, Mrs. Notes is a far better singer than I am. She is also a solid rhythm guitarist and synth player. Me? I play better sax/wind-synth and lead guitar than her (she doesn't play them), and I make the backing tracks. We inspire each other. Playing music is the most fun we can have with our clothes on.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[Grem]

3 minutes ago, Notes_Norton said:

That allowed me to play weekend gigs with other part-time musicians. But the caliber of the other musicians wasn't what I was used to. I don't mean this as a negative, they had real jobs and families competing with their music time.

Yep, and that's where I find myself today. My job doesn't offer any type of flexible schedule. Nor much time to practice on my own, or even with the band. SO the caliber of musicians I found myself with were great guys, just not much interest in getting better. And when your in that environment, you just get by. Human nature gets the better of you and you take the easy way!! : )