That Went Better

It's been a while since I've written up anything, and that's largely because I haven't been playing much to write about. I did play last Sunday, though.

My #1 with colorful reflection and a skinny western-style strap.

I bring my #1, a 1988 MIJ Fender Tele, and my newer HH Squier Bullet Tele as a backup. I took to getting skinny western-style guitar straps, but with my recent weight loss, I've found they hurt my collar bone, so I swapped in the 30-year-old wide strap I've mostly used for my acoustic.

I've put my amp pedalboard (currently comp > Washburn OD > DigiTech Bad Monkey OD > EHX LPB-1 clean boost > EHX Signal Pad attenuator > Danelectro Tremolo > Morley volume pedal) in front of my Boss GT-6 because I've found it very easy to choose settings that change the sound without the volume that way, while doing the same with the GT-6 is more difficult, and the sound of GT-6 through a PA is different than the sound via an amp, so I can really only do it before practice/soundcheck/service where there's a time crunch.

What made it interesting to me was the styles I had to cover. We started with "Alive" by Hillsong Young & Free, which had me hit a bright and clean disco tone with a very loose right hand, followed with "Your Love Never Fails". I hit grainy arpeggios with the Bad Monkey while the acoustic player held the major part of it.

At the end, there was a surprise substitution of "Revelation Song", which was great for me, because it's a song I know by heart and have a lead in. There were a few train wrecks and we could've gone with another run-through, but by and large, I think we nailed it, which always feels good.

That Went Poorly

I played at church Sunday morning, and call time is 7:45am.

It snowed the night before, so the roads were slick, which meant that I was later than I wanted to be.

We play through Avioms for stage monitors, and they come with a headphone jack. I had a pair of Shures on-loan from the church, and they had been sounding worse and worse, to the point that, on the practice for this week's practice, I finally gave up on them. I brought my work headphones home precisely so I could use them for service. And somewhere between home and church, they broke somehow. I was able to use the worship-leader's pair, as he was using someone else's loaner higher-end Shures, but when I found out, I almost cried.

Because I slept well from 10pm to 2am, then woke up, and because of a headache that could've been illness, could've been caffeine withdrawal, or any humber of other things, I could not sleep for more than a half-hour after that. So, I was coming into this situation tired and with a headache. In fact, between the headache, the sleeplessness and the snow, I was considering calling in sick.

In general, when given a choice between playing a lead part and playing big chords that fill the sound, I'm asked to play big chords, and through the many years of playing, I have come very able to play the rhythm parts to songs I don't know, just by reading the charts. I find it improvisational and fun. But, I found at practice, he wanted me to play the lead parts. Which I did not know.

Practice was Thursday, and so was the funeral of the drummer's family member, and practice without the drummer makes everything suck.

The final two pieces are the first two songs. The first song has an unaccompanied guitar lead-in, and the second song is in a slower tempo, but the worship leader wanted them to segue, so the first song was given a slower tempo to match. I learned the lead-in on Friday, but I learned it at standard tempo, not the slower tempo. And even if I had it down on Thursday, I couldn't have practiced it slowly with the drummer, because the drummer was not there.

So, we never were able to have that intended intro come off as planned. I was too tired to adjust the timing. I was unprepared coming in to play that lead lick that slow. Broken gear and exhaustion pushed me off my game. (I had my walking-around headphones, which, having a third channel for the mic, did not it well in the jack, but it could've worked too. Remember, kids: Two is one, one is none.) There were other leads, and I handled them well, but the beginning is the one I judge that morning by, and by that, I judge that I came in and stunk up the place.

Give me a chord progression and a tempo, I can find something cool to do with it. Give me a strong composed lead and change the tempo from the recorded version and I fall down, it seems. And knowing how you suck is the first step to stop sucking like that.

After-Action Report

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This is my #1 Tele, in the middle of a string change. Mid-song, I popped the high E off the set of D'Addario .009s they put on at GearFest at Sweetwater. I think that five months is pretty good for a set of strings. Thing is, I had one set of Ernie Ball Slinkys (.010s) and four sets of Extra Slinkys (.008) in my gear bag, so I couldn't really just go back and grab one string.

I took my advice and worked through it, and when I got done playing, I got ready for next time and switched sets to an .008 set. I'm trying out B.B. King's advice to Billy Gibbons, that you don't need to work that hard. I tried .008s before and liked them, so I'll go again.

Lessons Learned:

• I need to stick with a string gauge. I do, except here I was scheduling a change at an inconvenient time
• I need to keep a string winder in the gear bag. I thought I did, but I don't. They're cheap.
• I need to keep a tuner in the gear bag. I pulled one onto my phone, and it worked, but it would be better to plug it into the guitar. 
• I think I need a spare guitar. My #2 is in desperate need for a level, crown and polish, and that could work, but there's a guitar at the guitar shop that I desperately love.

So, That Was Something

We just had our Christmas concert. Normally, the holiday-themed event is better explained as a play or a musical or the like, and there was a bit of a theatrical element, but by and large, it was the band -- bands, really, involving both Sunday bands, with the bassists switching off and the percussionists trading positions between the plexiglass cage for the kit and the bongos and shakers and such outside -- and the choir just playing music.

We guitarists simply decided that the other would generally play lower chords while I would play higher chords, because it is silly to have two guitarists playing the chord form. So, I'm up the neck, set to bridge pickup, and playing a chord form I learned from Richard Thompson. Listen to "Shoot Out The Lights" from the album of the same name and and you'll hear a bit that you will not immediately recognize as E-D-E, because of the joy of voicings. The first E is basically the D form barred and moved up two frets, roughly 022450, which you'll notice is all roots and fifths. When playing with distortion, the third makes the chord sound bad, so that's a nice chord to have. I've taken to that as a go-to chord form, the D-style barre, going there more often than A and E style barres, which we've come to take as standard.

So, I had roughly 2 hours practice on Tuesday, general playing on Wednesday, 2 hours practice on Friday, 2 hours practice on Saturday, 1 hour practice/soundcheck and 2 services Sunday AM, and the gig Sunday evening. And boy, is my shoulder still sore. But it was fun.

The Lick: Post-Game Analysis

I played the Lick a lot this weekend.

As presented to me when I saw it first, it was a Dorian lick: 1 2 b3 4 2 b7 1. I could force a Dorian mode lick into an otherwise major scale bit, but that's not thinking modally. Also, it's forcing a minor third where the listener is expecting the major third. So, as I played it, it was more 2 3 4 5 3 1 2. In the context I got it in, it was an F-heavy C song, and as it is in C, the 2 is D, and where I played it, it followed chords going to G, and of course D is the fifth of G, so it just layed on nice.

Note To Soundmen

I play with a multi-effects processor, into a D/I box. I generate no sound except what the guitar does acoustically and what you let get through the PA system.

During soundcheck in venues where there is no monitor mix, when we're asking for more or less sound, I will ask for enough volume that I can hear myself. I am sensitive to the idea that others don't want me to completely overpower what they're doing, and that, in a guitar/keys/vox setup, the singer wants to take most of the queues from  the keys.

This means, at the end of sound check, I am literally running at the lowest volume I can effectively hear myself at. If you decide to lower my headroom, there might be a place I can push myself, but you are giving me a choice between not being heard and sounding like a garbage disposal.

I do not want to be a prima donna.

I do not want to be silent.

I do not want to sound like a garbage disposal.

If given a choice between silence and garbage disposal, I will pack up my gear mid-song next time. Just watch me.

"Shoot the Hostage"

So, you walk in and find the gig's just you and a guy on vox and acoustic guitar. You're playing electric guitar through stomp boxes into a D/I box.

Acoustic guitars are very percussive, so he is doing rhythm, and this is very vocal-centric. It won't be like there's too much time to go on extended breaks.

First thing I did was keep above the fifth fret. Acoustic guitar guy was in first position, and there's no reason for two guitarists to play the same voicings.

I also played lots of sustained chords, maybe arpeggiating them when I thought there was room. Acoustic guitar is punchy, so he can handle the rhythm.

I sorta thought about Mark Spencer playing with Jay Farrar and decided that I couldn't be that busy. Except in one spot, and I didn't take that to the full extreme like I could.

So, when you're supporting a folksinger with an electric guitar, what do you do?

Leatherman: Don't Leave Home Without It

I play at church, two services every other Sunday. This Sunday, as I'm getting ready to play second service, my strap falls off the neck-side strap lock. This suddenly drops the neck and puts all the weight on the tail strap button, and the screw hole was all but stripped, and with this sudden weight, just came out.

It was easy to get the neck button back to normal, although this does argue that the Grolsch/Dalco solution is preferable to Schaller straplocks, but I won't go there too far, because the urgent issue is the second button. Here, I pull out the trustly Leatherman and screw a new hole in the already-tortured end of my Tele. I tell the worship leader, "Hold on until I finish", but I was not a reason for delay.

I did notice before too long that my high E was halfway to F, but I could lay out and tune up with the tuner pedal during the first verse and come in strong on the chorus, so I count it as a win.

A Leatherman (or other multitool) is great for these kind of last-minute things. Don't leave home without one.

Concert Review - Disfarmer Project with the Bill Frisell Quartet At Purdue's Loeb Playhouse

Bill Frisell - guitar
Greg Leisz - steel guitar, dobro, mandolin
Jenny Scheinman - violin, mandolin
Victor Krauss - bass

Isn't that good?

I could get into a bunch of gear talk, which of course is my wont. I will say that if an instrument had an amplifier, that amplifier was a Deluxe Reverb, but that's really beyond the point. The point is, the band is good. Yeah, they can do the weird distancing stuff in that video, but one of the songs in the set is a take on "That's Alright, Mama", and they rock it. I tell you, you wouldn't expect him to stand between Keith Urban and Marty Stuart on the Opry stage doing "Working Man Blues" like the video I linked a few days ago, but I'd love to hear him take a verse.

Well, That Was ... Fun

The FCC has kicked every everyone off the 700MHz range. By "everyone" I'm meaning folks with wireless mics and earphones and the like. I'm certainly not talking emergency services, which is the primary user of this band, now.

Specifically, our Wednesday Pack-1  and Pack-2 are history.

This meant only Pack-3 was available. So, out of vox keys drums bass guitar, only the keys got to hear what he was playing. Everyone else had to listen to the house, with all the speakers facing away from us.

But wait, there's more.

Keys' keys, they have onboard speakers. which can be switched off. Of course, there's one volume, not separate volumes for the output jack and the onboard speakers, which means if you turn down the built-in in order for him to not blow the band away, he has to have the board really push him.

I brought my #2, the white Rondo w/ .012s that is really loud. That was good. But if you're relying on the acoustic sound of electric instruments, that's not good.

Nailed It

There's a song we're doing, and the song has this kinda strange guitar part. Kinda like a staccato 70s Who sequencer bit, but more behind the band. I don't really know what the guy on the track did, but I figured that I could put the tremolo on a square wave, slow it down and sweep the wah and get close, and yeah, that did it.

I love it when a sound comes together.

Did I mention this? The other guitarist begged off this weekend, so I played two Sundays in a row (and will get a third next week). And it was fun. Let's discuss the differences between the bands.

• Drums - My regular band has a drummer who was so jazzed that he got to see August Burns Red recently. Here's some August Burns Red. C is for Christian Metalcore, that's good enough for me. I like him, I'd gladly play with him wherever, but he's slowly growing from a mindset where his dynamics go from 9 to 10. The sound guys are gladdened that now, he's getting to the point where they can have him in the house mix, and not mute his mics and STILL have him too loud. The other band normally has a guy that's closer to a jazz drummer, never too loud, but he also skipped out, so the normal Wednesday night drummer stepped up. I think the oddest meter we did was 6/4, which, as things go, is pretty simple, but I've seen drummers I was greatly impressed by fall flat on waltz time, but the new guy handled it.
• Bass - My regular bassist is a metalhead. He's picking stuff up, but he knows so little theory that my second favorite bassist joke ("How many bassists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" "1. 5. 1. 5.") fell flat with him. The other band's bassist is much more technically adept. 
• Piano - The guy I normally play with will tell you that he's a P&W keyboard player who's learning to play the roll of a piano player. Today, I played with a piano player. The biggest difference is that with the keyboard guy it's very clear. "Now, I will play chords" "Now, I will improvise a solo." Today's pianist is much more integrated in the way good piano players (pianists?) are.
• Guitar - no second guitar today. Which I do like.
• Sax - Our sax guy can't make it to practice on Tuesdays and sounds like he didn't practice with us. I don't want to say bad things about him, but I don't really know good things about him beside "he shows up". But the other band's sax guy was a gigging musician for years with a deep and abiding love for Tower of Power. 

I think I'd fit in a lot better with this band. I had a lot of fun.

What's the subtitle of this blog again?

A little background:

The choir just had their spring concert, which, by the way, was great. I signed on to be a musician for it, but it turned out that there was really no need for a guitarist. Nor drummer, nor bass. Just keys, piano, a couple strings people and some brass. I made the program anyway, which I find funny.

On topic with the choir, normally, when they do a special song and not just acting like a big group of background singers, they do it to a track. This leaves the musicians sitting there, twiddling their thumbs in front of the singers. This is not as good as it could be, so the leader is trying to teach the band to work from lead sheets, not chord sheets, and begin to handle the more complex arrangements that the choir wants.

Anyway, the other guitarist is taking some time away, so I'll be filling in on my off week. Practice was today. So, I showed up and practiced with the other band. Doing two of the choir numbers they're setting up. And the other guitarist was there. (I came early, so I was set up and warmed up well before he walked in.) And they were playing songs I hadn't worked out or even spent much time with, if any.

Also, as it was just after the spring concert, so the choir is taking a break and not working up a special for this week.

(Just to make the point, I play for a church. I don't see the roll of this blog as being a means to evangelize, so I don't bring it up that much, but let's face it, where do you find choirs but churches? Not many places.)

So, I'm there, dazed and confused, getting lost in the lyricless lead sheet for a song I'm just not going to do any time soon.

So I ask.

"What exactly am I doing here?"

It was a good time. I always like hanging with musicians, but really, no, I did not need to be there.

Guess what I did?

I taped Kirchen doing "Sleepwalk"! And got him to sign my Tele! That pic coming later.

Surfing With The Alien at Sweetwater

Photo from SweetwaterSound

2 weeks ago, during my kids' Spring Break, I had the opportunity to take my eldest to see Joe Satriani give a workshop/show at Sweetwater Sound. And it was awesome.

First, comments about the venue: As a walk-in music store, the floor space Sweetwater has is about the size of a decent-to-good local store with high-end gear, but when you work in the on-site recording studios, the cafeteria, and the absolutely huge warehouse in back, it gets to the "awesome" point. Then, there's the Performance Theater. I have never seen a performance space nearly as nice.

I started checking the registration page as soon as I heard about the event, and by the time it showed up, they were into overflow seeting. This is great, too — I was in the overflow to see Victor Wooten — and while the seats are not as comfortable, they use the state-of-the-art video production capabilities in the main room to stream to the overflow, and they make sure that the artist does some Q&A in the other room, too.

But, as it turned out, there were enough empty seats in the main room that my son and I were able to get upgraded. Yay!


I did not take notes this time, unlike the Wooten and John 5 events. For this I am sorry. I'm trying to give the notes as they come to my head.

Joe performed several songs to tracks on a laptop, and he mentioned how strange and refreshing it was to hear all the music that well, which he normally can't when playing with a band. This was an off night between Experience Hendrix shows, so he was playing with humbuckers with standard-tuned .009s instead of .010s tuned down a half-step on the Strat-style single-coils he used to play the Hendrix material. (OK, bladed humbuckers.) He said that his normal setup is noticably brighter. He detailed how, in the studio, he often has several guitars in different tunings or string gauges, set up for the specific use he wants, but on tour he needs to keep it down to just a few with similar setups.

He was using Marshalls instead of his signature Peavey. I'm fairly sure this was in part because this was an off-night thing — I'm sure everything he played was Sweetwater stock — but that was also his Experience and Chickenfoot gear. Because of the song variation, he generally sets his amp clean and sets his gain via his foot pedals, but with Chickenfoot he used amp gain.

Another comment about the gear being Sweetwater's: at the end, they gave away several Chickenfoot CDs, several signed DVDs (including his new Live in Paris release), a signed Ibanez guitar (not the JSBDG in the picture – they're not crazy) and the pedals. The guy who sat next to me won a signed DVD. Well, he would've, had he not left early and dropped his ticket. Thanks guy, the DVD is incredible.

He played five songs, I think. Maybe six. "Satch Boogie" , "Surfing with the Alien" , "Flying In A Blue Dream" , "Always With Me, Always With You" , and a blues track, at least. He talked about each, detailing how he approached the high-theory compositions and still made them rock songs. 3 of the tracks ("Surfing", "Blue Dream" and "Always With Me") are on Sweetwater's Facebook page and will likely end up on their Youtube page, too. The specific example I can give is that, with "Flying In A Blue Dream", he decided that he'd have play in the Lydian mode over each chord. I know that I'm very reliant on just a few scales and modes, wondering how to use the modes I'm inching toward learning in a practical sense. If there was one thing I needed Joe to say when I walked in, it was that.

Gathering Thoughts

I'm sitting at Outback, waiting for the beeper to go off. I don't expect the table for another 40 minutes.

This is as much a diary as anything else, so hello mundane details.

K's on a hunt for hot dogs to feed the kids, seeing how we have the huge wait, so I'm sitting, watching the cute couples stand in line.

I played today. It was good. Between services, I toldthe others the DVD I blogged about and how I thought I did horribly and the drums and bass were great. The leader told us about how he used to do the video editing too, and he'd wince at every little thing too. He showed the other band a service and they had two main thoughts: "too fast" and "I threw clams like a fisherman".

Makes me wonder about my heroes. Did Jimi think the first lead on "Watchtower" was crap? Does Clapton pull out the Beano album at alll, and does he still like what he did?

It makes me wonder. If I had expectations of going pro, I think I'd have to tape and critique everything, but right now, I can accept avoiding some of that self-critique.

A Humbling Experience

I got a copy of the last time I played. It's mixed live by amateurs, so it's not all it could be. And I am not high in the mix.

And I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing. Because there's a lot of things that are mixed back that are good, but there are a few things I did that pop up here and there that just ... suck. It's clear, I'm not bringing my A game.

The rest of the band ... well, I think the bass could be higher in the mix, both in the house and on tape, but I've always thought he played well. The piano guy, who I've played with on-and-off for nearly a decade, is good. The drummer is just amazing. I should really convert this and put some audio up some time.

If I'm not wrong, they just shut me up when I was going too wild, and in hindsight, yeah, it was the right choice. And, while I like the Albert Lee delay trick, it kinda goes outside the feel here. I must curb my tendency to bend. And when you have a noisy single coil guitar, a compressor and a tremolo pedal, you'll hear wub-wub-wub

But, to be fair to me, there are some nice points. It wouldn't feel so "Sans Shreds" if that wasn't what I was looking for. And I've been wanting to get one of these recordings for a while. It's all part of the learning process.

That was the Week That Was

There's a few different stories here, and they are wildly disconnected. Fair warning.

My musical week starts with "Behind The Nut Love".

It's a John 5 song, one where he bends above the nut to get a pedal steel sound. It's that kind of bending that inspired the B-Bender. Good stuff, despite the name. Anyway, the B string pops right next to the tuner. Folks, when that happens, you start thinking that there's enough to restring it and keep going, but really, there's not, and if you spend more than 10 minutes trying, like I did, you're just being a fool. Especially at 1am when your alarm is set for 6am.

Anyway, I had a choice. I could go for the EB Super Slinkys I have in my bag. I've said that the next set I go to is going to be, at least, Regular Slinkys. I don't have Regular Slinkys. I do have a set of Dean Markely strings that I got from Nick Catanese's roadie at Gearfest. And they're bridge cables, I gotta say. Low E is .060. I once had a set of GHS White Bronze mediums, which are acoustic guitar strings, and the low was .056. My baritone, with EB Not Even Slinkys, has a .056 as the low string, and that's tuned down three half-steps! But don't you know it, I love 'em. I've gotten into flatpicking, like Tony Rice and Clarence White stuff, and you just can't bash on light strings like that. Not that it works well amplified, but still.

That was Monday night. Tuesday was practice. Needless to say, I was a bit worried. Even when I give a stretch, I like to let new strings sit a day before I play out with 'em, because a string will stretch out and it's good to not have it happen when you're actually playing. Practice went well. Maybe I should be worried because when the leader has notes, they're never for me. Or, I can just be comfortable with the thought that every thing I play is the right note, even if what I play on the first pass and on the second pass have little to do with each other.

Tab time:

E -3-3-3-2-2-3-3-2-2-3-3-2-2-3-3-3--
B -3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3--
G ----------------------------------
D ----------------------------------
A ----------------------------------
E ----------------------------------

vs.

E -3-3-3-2---3-3-2---3-3-2---3-3-3--
B -3-3-3-3---3-3-3---3-3-3---3-3-3--
G ----------------------------------
D ----------------------------------
A ----------------------------------
E ----------------------------------

Both are essentially the same. A double-stop implying movement between G and D, in this place played in a fairly standard three-chord progression in G. The first, I believe, is what is on the album. The second, holding the F# and D notes instead of G and D, I think that just sounds cooler. What do you guys think? Maybe I should make another YouTube vid to make that point.

I brought my #1 with the heavy strings to play on Wednesday. I've started to prefer taking my #2, my baritone, but I didn't. There's not too much for me to say about it, except we're a bit bored with the arrangements. Which, in a way, why I got into playing the baritone. Years ago, there was an all-gear, no-tab guitar magazine named Guitar Shop, where they went on in one episode about how little it would take to turn your Fender-scale Tele into a baritone, and I wanted a #2 guitar so I could do that for over a decade. Now I have it. I tend to use it as an instrument where I almost have no open strings, which means I have to rethink, figure how to make the needed scales in other positions. And I can always drop down to D, which is nice. Being able to do some vibrato on what would normally be the low E? That's nice. But you know, I don't really use it like a baritone, really hitting the low notes. It's a guitar, but it plays just slightly different.

On Sundays, it's drums, keys, piano, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar (me) drums, sax, vox, vox, vox. On Wednesdays, it's drums, keys, guitar, guitar, bass. I heard once that, with a three-piece band, you want to play big chords. All six strings and such. I'm always with larger bands with sufficient harmonic support, so I find myself playing smaller chords, three notes across the D G and B strings.

E -------------------
B ----5----7----5----
G ----6----7----4----
D ----7----7----6----
A -------------------
E -------------------

These are A, D and E. Through the magic of relative minors, that's F# minor, B minor and C# minor. They say there's seven chords, but if you're not the only one responsible for harmony, you can really say there are four. I'm skipping past the diminished, which like gaslights and steam trains, just are not used much anymore.

And finally, I played this morning. And I actually got some complements for some hot playing, plust the sound man likes guitar and brings me up enough. There have been times, more than a few times, where the guitar was supposed to play the lead-in, but the sound guy hates guitar and had him down, so that nobody heard the lead-in. But not today.

Well, not totally finally. I play through a AX1500G multieffects unit, and my crunch and my clean tones were in totally different banks, so I can't play clean and just switch over to a raunchy tone for a break. Well, they were. I moved them over before crashing for an afternoon nap. We'll see how that goes on Wednesday.

Ever heard the phrase "pre-fade"?

Wednesday, I brought the baritone. I have it tuned to C#. That's kinda like the B string on a 5-string bass — you have that so you can play D like it's B and have some low notes a few frets higher where it fits in the hand more easily. C# means you get E like it's G. Which is nice.

It also means you have to rethink all your chords and the relationships. Which is good for your musical thinking, for your fretboard knowledge.

But there's a thing. My C# is a Rondo STL50, and it's got cheap tuners, and trying to get it right in tune with the lower notes is hard, and the cheap tuners make it harder. OK, part of it, a big part, is on me, but I think the hardware can take some blame.

Speaking of blame....

I have been having problems with monitors recently. With the in-ear, the monitor levels are in Aux 8, and Aux 8 should be dimed so each in-ear unit can mix an individual mix. But the guitars were turned down, so while I was absolutely pushing it and out loud in the house, I was buried in my head and could barely hear myself. But I know that problem and it is solved.

But on Wednesdays, we've moved rooms, and we now use monitor wedges. Like everybody else in the world, I know. I have been so spoiled by in-ear monitors over the years. It's sick, I have to say. Zappa called modern recording mixes "imaginary rooms", where a fingerpicked classical guitar can be heard over a blasting Les Paul through a Marshall stack, and with the in-ear, you can have your own imaginary room. It's great. Playing to a wedge monitor makes me sad.

I was jammin', getting in touch with the C#, D and D# I never had access to before, and the sound guy started tweaking and suddenly I had nothing. Nothing. Turns out, there's a switch, which controls pre/post fader. You want the monitors to be pre-fade, to split off before the fader, so I can hear myself in the monitor mix even when I'm tuned down in the house mix.

You don't need to be a sound guy. You're a musician and you're doing your job. But these are a few of the things you want to be able to ask about if you're having problems.

New Digs

The main room has the good sound. The main room has the playback setup. It has the Aviom system and piano and the glass cage for the drums. The choir is starting to do songs with the band rather than going along with pre-recorded tracks. So the choir is getting the main room, and Wednesday service is going to ... well, until this week, it was called "the choir room."

I didn't know how good I had it. Seriously.

Instead of a real piano, we have the kind of digital piano that people who want to start learning piano get. We have the drum set we had before we got the drumset before we got the drum set before we got the drum set. And the monitors. This is the first time I played there without earbuds, and the monitors were just nowhere near enough.

About a third of the way through the set, I noticed that I couldn't hear the bassist. This, unfortunately, is not an uncommon thing. I motioned to the sound man to turn up the bass. At least, I meant to. Thumb up, thumb down, that's universal for volume up, volume down, and I tried to do plucking like a bass instead of strumming, but he turned me up, then turned me back down. Then he dragged in a bass amp for him, and finally, for the first time in years(!) we could clearly hear the bass.

To the extent I heard myself, I guess I did well, but I knew we'd have technical issues, and there were.