After-Action Report: That Was Swell

Ach. I'm sure I used that one before.

This was a six-piece band: drums, bass, electric guitar, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and vox, vox, vox. I was guitar number two. My pedalboard is comp -> boost -> volume pedal -> Bad Monkey OD -> dirt 2 -> tremolo -> kill switch -> Flashback delay, set up with minimal warble and about 4 repeats. The boost was on all the time, giving me a little more volume. I plugged into a D/I box connected to a mic'd Egnator backstage, and there was a grounding issue that lead to a persistent buzz in the connection. I know that's not my board's fault, so that's not an issue that I'm going to spend too much mental energy on.

I had a recurring lick in the first song that required slide, and I liked it, but there were three notes, defining a D chord: A- F# D-A-F# D-A. I had my pedals set to make my slide sing -- comp, boost, Bad Monkey, delay -- and I rode the volume pedal. I'm told the effect was great, that my parts worked well within the song, but I am not a huge fan of standing around with a muted guitar, waiting for the end of the chorus for my part to come around again.

Much of the rest of the set list had me taking the place of the keyboard, playing long swelled chords to take the place of a synth pad. Another guitarist suggested I tune between songs, especially while doing that, because sour notes run into a delay pedal stay sour a long time. Problem is, I own a tuner pedal, but I don't use it because it's huge and I want the pedalboard space. So, I've been using a headstock tuner. I love it, I really do, but I left it on another guitar, which I noticed in practice, and somehow, it had been left on and now is dead, which I noticed right before we started to play.

I love that phones and tablets now have tuner apps, but while they're great for bedroom players, they really don't work onstage, especially if they're playing music over the PA while you're trying to tune. So, I was stuck with no way to determine if I'm in tune.

The SEALs say "two is one, one is none", and I left myself with no means of tuning.

Tuner pedals have other benefits besides being able to tune. First one is that they're a kill switch. I don't play with terribly high gain, but even when you don't have a rig that'll make horrible noise without you if you don't kill the signal, they're useful. Another wonderful thing about tuners is that you can use them to tell where your signal problem is. Put the tuner toward the end of the board and, if you can still tune, you know that the problem causing no audio is after the board.

So, next on my guitar pedal wish-list is a tuner. Thinking a used Korg PitchBlack or the like.

Beyond that, I'm thinking that something that's less OD and more distortion would be a good addition, so I can get a solid angry GRR when I need it. My previous dirt 2, a Washburn Soloist, has recently started being the quietest thing ever, which is exactly what I do not need. Of course, I have a Digitech Death Metal pedal that contains all the gain, which makes it unusable for any music I expect to play. I think getting something Klon-like will be in the same class as the Bad Monkey, so the EHX Soul Food is off the table, so I'm thinking about something fuzzy, like a Big Muff Pi.

I like the idea of adding a reverb pedal, like a Catalinbread Topanga or EHX Holy Grail Nano, but the venue I play in is large enough that it gets that effect naturally.

I played decently, at least as far as being-in-tune could carry me. I enjoyed myself and, by and large, didn't bring the side down. Most problems were beyond my control, so I didn't worry about them. If the only things to mention in the after-action are technical issues, then it's a good day.

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.

A Technical Fix would've Helped

On the reference tape for one of the songs we did Sunday, there's a melodic bit that starts sounding very mandolin, and in practice I brought my mandolin to play the bit, and switch to guitar.

To pull this off, I need to

• Play the part on mandolin
• Hit the volume pedal
• Unplug the mandolin
• Put the mandolin down
• Plug in the guitar
• Switch from the clean channel to the dirt channel
• Hit the volume pedal again
• Play the part on guitar

The timing is such that the verse is over and it's time for me to play again that quickly. There is not much time after I hit the volume pedal for me to get into the mindset of guitar.

I handled it reasonably well in practice on Tuesday.

I flubbed it badly in soundcheck/warmup on Sunday.

I did it poorly during first service.

I did it better but still not well during second service.

If I owned an AB box, I could've streamlined it to:

• Play the part on mandolin
• Hit the volume pedal
• Put down the mandolin
• Stomp the AB switch
• Switch from the clean channel to the dirt channel
• Hit the volume pedal again
• Play the part on guitar

But I don't have one. I think I'll put one on my Christmas list.

But the lesson is, if you have a tricky part or transition, practice it. The more you practice it, the more it gets in your hand and not in your mind. It is helpful to be able to think through things on the fly, but use that to handle it when the unexpected happens, not get through the expected.

Great Guitar Lesson

If you don't know this lick, learn it. Now.

Because everybody else knows it and uses it.

Everybody.

How To Not Suck, Chapter 23: Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail

I am subscribed to the Flatpick-L mailing list (although I rarely read these days) and I checked in and saw poster Bryan Kimsey post the following:

I'm reading the FGM with Grant Gordy on the cover and I saw a statement that struck me; "if you don't have a goal when you're practicing, then you're not practicing."

He went on to explain how, to him, he plays guitar without goals because it is the one area in his life where he allows himself to not be goal-oriented. Good for him, but not everyone is him. Personally, I have two or three points providing goals for my guitar playing. There's what I want to play and what I actually play.

What I want to play tends to come with technical limitations. I want to learn to play against a tap-tempo delay. I want to play with a guitar synth. I would love to have a computer interface and program effects that relate to how I'm playing the instrument. I have no audio interface or software. I have no piezo bridges. I don't have a tap tempo delay pedal, and I cannot interact with those goals until I take steps forward in my gear acquisition, which is not going to happen any time soon.

What I actually play is what I play every Wednesday and every other Sunday at church. Each song has challenges and parts to learn, but very little of it is challenging. My goal, at best, is to get a sense of the changes, a sense of the melody, and get this lick or that lick under my fingers so I don't have to think about it when the time comes. Sometimes, I have to work through the sounds on a track -- it has a sitar-like bit and a digital delay set for the U2 thing here, and then a distortion here -- but that's not really practice.

So, my suck comes from a lack of direction (see blog title), but the way of not sucking is to set goals and practice to work toward them. Without the goal, you're just playing.

A Reflection on "Stop Doing Stupid S***"

Most of my bedroom playing is me sitting up in bed. Not too surprising, as I have a queen-sized bed in a not-big bedroom, but there are downsides. I can't play out laying down in bed, and there's bits I'm trying to work into my playing that are probably negatively impacted by my playing position. Slide is I'm sure largely uneffected, but I'm very sure that I'm not gonna get anywhere by continuing to try to start progressing with sweep picking if I'm not standing up while practicing, and I'm sure my current status in sweep picking shows that.

How To Not Suck, Chapter 22 or so: Stop Doing Stupid ... Stuff

Saw this blog post through Hacker News. Basically, the way to be better is to stop doing stupid ... stuff. (I decline to curse.) He started in chess, and the stupid stuff he was dealing with was falling for stupid tactics. He then adapted it to piano. There's short shrift given to the specific stupidities he was falling for, because he was hurrying to get to the application in a developer context.

I suppose, then, that each person has their own stupidities to deal with, and identifying them is the first step.

No Secrets to Conceal

Every see something that directly related to you, like it was written for you?

This blog is named "Sans Direction" for a reason. A faux-French interpretation of "No Direction", which is an early band for Rich Show, who then lead Flag With Hank, a band I loved in the early 1990s as a student in South Dakota. It's from a Dylan lyric on "Like A Rolling Stone".

But, it is also a statement of where I was, and kinda sorta am, as a guitarist and musician. I hit a point that I can play songs. I know how to break apart most songs and figure out a good way to play them, and if I can't break it apart myself, I know the wonder of adding "tab" to the end of the song title and searching on Google, or looking for demo vids on Youtube. I find myself finding the structure of songs and asking my kids if they can figure it out, too. (For those who don't know, "Wipeout" by the Surfaris is a 12-bar blues. Not remotely bluesy, but there you go.)

So, for most anything I want to figure out, I can. But what I can't figure out is what I want to figure out next. I have no direction.

Guitar Player Zen has a four-year-old post on that subject, called "If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Take You There". The author takes inspiration apart and focuses on different parts. What excites you? What are your abilities? Very good for the "How To Not Suck" portion.

"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.

I Brought The Frickin' Fury

We've been having monitor issues on Wednesdays, so what I did was take my acoustic. I really haven't had it out for a good long time, relying on my Teles. With my Tele being strung with .009s and .010s, I've been working on having a lighter touch. And it really carried over to the acoustic. I was loud — I'm not gonna back down — but as I've stopped trying to play by pushing a pick through the center of the string, I'm sounding better. Or at least I think I am. A lighter touch will do your playing wonders.

How Low Can You Go?

Andy Ellis of The Guitar Show makes a Case for D-Standard Guitar Tuning. D-standard is dropping each note 2 half steps, turning EAGDBE into DGFCAD. In essence, put on the next highest gauge of strings, detuning, and you get the following benefits:

• fuller, deeper, stronger tone
• higher tension when you tune to open tunings, such as Open D, Open G and DADGAD.

I am sold. More than sold. So sold, when I got a bone nut put on my #2 Tele, I asked them to cut the nut to take EB Not Even Slinky strings. I've gotten it down to B-Standard before going for C#-Standard. C#-Standard ( C#F#BEG#C# — That format for describing a tuning really falls down when you start throwing sharps and flats in there, doesn't it? ) is what Pepper's guitar was in for Down's "Stone The Crow", but what attracted me to it is the fact that all my flatpicking G licks are now in E. That, and the fact that B, while it put all my E-barre chords as A-barre chords and A-barre chords to D-barre chords, the strings were just too floppy to sound in tune.

The problem, I found, is that it takes a while to remap all the chords. That remapping process takes a little time: The G comes up and rather than going "G! Got it!", you're going "G. The guitar is down a minor third, so to get a G, I have to move it up three frets. Can't be an open chord, so we're thinking Bb, which is here!" Problem with that, is, by the time that thought process has happened, you should be playing the next chord. And you haven't remapped it permanently and completely yet, so the next time the G comes around, you might or might not have it memorized. And again. And again. Next song, it might or might not be the same G. And, if you're jamming with friends or simply playing "Guess the Key"^* with the radio or your playlist on random, this is fine. But if you're playing in front of people, it's really not a good time to start trying to find your G chord. It makes you look and feel like a rank beginner, which doesn't feel good when the tempo is passing you by like truckers on the interstate.

Definitely a good idea, but you have to learn to live with it a while before you can gig like that.

^* "Guess The Key" is simply this: You start a song, preferably a song you don't know. It starts playing and you start trying to guess the key of the song (e.g. "A" ), then you start trying to piece together the chord structure ("A D F#m E") and finally start trying to figure out something to play over the top of it. One time, I had the Sirius "Outlaw Country" channel on, and I went for a lick and heard the session guitarist go for the same lick. This is a good exercise to develop your ear and your genre-related knowledge.

Victor Wooten at Sweetwater

On Monday, I took my two biggest sons to Sweetwater Sound in Fort Wayne to see a clinic with Victor Wooten and J.D. Blair.

OK, just in case you don't know, Wooten plays bass for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. He plays Fodera basses and Hartke amps. He has been featured before on this blog, in the inaugural post of the 'man that's deep' label. There's also some points to add to the 'how to not suck' label. But we'll get to that.

On improvisation vs. repertoire:"The fewer songs you recognize, the better night we're having."

Of course, he's a massive player. He, a looper pedal, and a great drummer can make all the music you'd want.

Gearhead Paragraph: He had two bassists, one a 4-string yin/yang bass tuned EADG with a Hipshot D-tuner and another bass tuned ADGC: a 'tenor bass' in his terminology. Both have 24-fret necks. He uses nickel strings, a Boss RC50 loop pedal, a Peterson tuner pedal and had a Hartke stack with a 4x10 cab for high notes and a 1x15 for the low. He uses a hair tie to mute the open strings — I call it the Greg Howe trick because that's where I saw it first — He has basses with Kahler tremolos, fretless basses, five-string basses with MIDI pickups, but he didn't have them there that night. But that is what he uses. If you try what he likes and don't like it, he doesn't want the blame, and if you try what he likes and like it too, he doesn't want the credit.

On endorsements "Don't buy something because someone uses it. Try it out because they use it, but only buy it if you like it."

On the transitive nature of instruments "Bass is more a role than an instrument."

The coolest thing, the thing I want most to try, is his groove/rhythm exercise. Set up a long drum pattern on your drum machine. Set your drum machine so it plays that measure four times. Find your groove in that. Get into it.

Then replace the fourth measure to silence.

This will tell you your tendencies, if you tend to rush the beat or lag. And, if you know, you can start to work against it.

This is when you swap out the third measure.

Then the second.

Then just have one beat, one note floating in a sea of silence.

I have yet to try that exercise. But it sounds like a perfect get-the-groove don't-suck kind of exercise, doesn't it?

On warming up "I'm 45 years old. I've been playing for 43. I should be warmed up by now."

If you get a chance to see him playing with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, do it. If you get a chance to see him playing in duo format with J.D. Blair, do that. But especially, if you get the chance to do a workshop with him, jump on that.

The final point: it is far more pleasant to be in the electric guitar room at Sweetwater after a Victor Wooten clinic than after a John 5 clinic. Bassists who play with each other are much more pleasant to be in a room with than guitarists who don't.

How To Not Suck, Chapter 20: Tune Your Ears

I busted a string on Sunday, and proceeded to do the fastest string change on an acoustic that I've ever done. I had clippers, capo and strings, but what I did not have was a portable tuner. The only one I had along was integrated into my multi-effects unit.

Tuning a guitar to itself is doable. Fifth fret to the next string's open. Fifth fret harmonic to the next string's seventh fret harmonics. 12th fret to the next string's seventh fret. Counting the beats and all. All that is a good to practice, to work on, to know. Magic boxes are good to have, because pitch pipes are horrible for tuning to, but you should still know how to tune your guitar to itself.

But that's one thing. The trick, the thing to learn, is a way to remember what a concert-pitch. And I thought I had that trick. "The Theme to Peter Gunn". One of the first things I ever learned on guitar. I get that riff going, and it sounds right, I thought, then I know I have the low E right. I honestly thought I had it.

Until I got back to the tuner.

I had it tuned to C. Not E. 4 half-steps flat.

Back to the drawing board.

How To Not Suck, Chapter 19: Pardon the Transposition

A quick graph.

           1     2m    3m     4     5     6m     7

C  Major : C     Dm    Em     F     G     Am     Bdim
D  Major : D     Em    F#m    G     A     Bm     C#dim
E  Major : E     F#m   G#m    A     B     C#m    D#dim
F  Major : F     Gm    Am     Bb    C     Dm     Edim
G  Major : G     Am    Bm     C     D     Em     F#dim
A  Major : A     Bm    C#m    D     E     F#m    G#dim
B  Major : B     C#m   D#m    E     F#    G#m    A#dim
C# Major : C#    D#m   E#m    F#    G#    A#m    B#dim
Eb Major : Eb    Fm    Gm     Ab    Bb    Cm     Ddim
F# Major : F#    G#m   A#m    B     C#    D#m    E#dim 
Ab Major : Ab    Bbm   Cm     Db    Eb    Fm     Gdim 
Bb Major : Bb    Cm    Dm     Eb    F     Gm     Adim 

Learn it. Know it. Live it.

You cannot capo a voice. Singers move songs higher if they can and lower if they must, and songs you've played for years in one key, you might have to play it in another.

Like I did this evening.

With chord sheets and no pen. Always trying to remember F Bb Dm7 C is now C F Am7 G, next to three other guys with no pens, trying to remember that it's now C F Am7 G too.

How To Not Suck, Chapter 18: Zero In

I follow Tom Hess on Twitter. Making musicians better and making music teachers better is pretty much his thing. And seeing that one of his free articles is calles An Analysis of "SUCK", it seems like that's a natural for this part of the blog to hit on it.

Here's two bullet points from Mr. Hess:

• Do NOT compare yourself to your friend. Do not let your friend (or anyone else) set the standard for you to aspire to. One should have fixed in his/her mind the vision of the type of player one wants to become. Generally speaking, you don’t want your “next door neighbor” to be the definition of your ideal long term “vision”. If I could magically take your friend’s skills away would you feel better about yourself simply because he was not as good as you? Keep in mind that your skills would be the same as they are now, the only difference is that your friend’s skills were taken away or diminished. Your attitude about your own progress should be centered completely around where you are in the journey to realize your goals.


• After you have reconciled your thoughts with the first piece of advice, you are ready for the second. In general, the greatest players are not great because they were naturally talented. In every case, truly great players become great (and make a lot of progress in relatively shorter periods of time) because their practice habits are EFFECTIVE. You see, they not only put in the time and effort as you do, but that time and effort is focused and effective. It appears that your practice habits have not been effective. I do not believe you lack the necessary potential to make significant progress. You just aren’t being effective. You seem to believe that you “CANNOT”. I propose that you can, but that you simply “HAVE NOT”. Certainly you are trying, but the efforts are bearing little fruit…

That is two pieces of great general advice: You suck or not on your own merits, not the relative merits of others, and greatness comes from effective practice. As I started out, "practice makes permanent, perfect practice makes perfect".

He further goes to how of the practice, getting to a very specific piece of advice on the subject at hand. He had a student who had problems playing the intro to "Stairway to Heaven". Now, I personally cannot and do not want to learn the intro to "Stairway", but that's the facts of this case. The student played the intro from the beginning, but had the problem at the fourth chord, a D/F#. The solution for him was to stop hitting the parts he knew (the first three chords, in this example), and focus on the specific part that was the trouble.

Hitting the previous chapter, the video uses the example of Tiger Woods working on sand traps. He went to the sand trap and practiced that. He didn't start at the tee. If you have a problem point, don't use your practice time dawdling on the stuff you can do well, but jump directly to the part where you suck.

Look here for further reading.

How To Not Suck, Chapter 17: Push It Real Good

Talent is overrated, he says. You take that talent and you push it. You can play this fast, but can you get faster? You can grab the seventh with your pinky while playing a jazz chord, but can you hit the ninth? You can play 3/4, but can you do 5/4?

They call it woodshedding, the time you spend with your instrument. Why? Because when you pick up the instrument, when you are practicing, you are taking something that you know sucks, and working out how to make it not suck. You are, in essence, sucking big time and annoying everyone around you, which, in the woodshed, should just be you, your instrument, your firewood, and the bugs you're supposed to not move your firewood because of. You are taking this opportunity to suck wildly, with abandon.

(Niel, this means you don't bring your guitar to the table and noodle during dinner. Never let 'em see you suck.)

Connections on a technique

First, listen to Paul Gilbert talk about warming up his picking hand. The nutshell is this: You're doing up-up-down picking on the E B and G strings.

E -0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0------
B ---0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0----
G -----0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0--
D --------------------------------------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

Paul then moves it up to the fifth fret, where it moves from an E minor to an A minor

E -5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5------
B ---5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5----
G -----5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5--
D --------------------------------------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

He then suggests you try it with other A minor forms, with ornamental notes, to keep your ear and left hand from being bored.

E -5-----8-----12----8-----11----8------
B ---5----10-----13----10---10-----10---
G -----5-----9-----14----9-----9-----9--
D --------------------------------------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

Which is all sort of interesting in and of itself. But I first saw this pattern (up-up-down, or UUD) on an Al Dimeola instructional video from 1992. He put that pattern somewhere else.

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

That is G,D and G#, for those keeping up at home. That's G# flat-5 major-7. Or Gminor2? Any way, there's lots of tension that gets relieved when you drop it back to G5.

E --------------------------------------
B --------------------------------------
G --------------------------------------
D -5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5------
A ---5-----5-----5-----5-----5-----5----
E -----4-----4-----4-----3-----3-----3-- 

Now, remember my term for that? I have been drawn toward bluegrass, and specifically flatpicking. You have heard me go on about Clarence White, and from the guitars I have pointed to and the videos I have linked to, you might have thought he was just a chicken-pickin' country rock guy. He started out being a bluegrass picker, a master of the crosspicking style, where you use one flatpick to mimic the fingerpick style of banjo players.

"Bury Me Beneath The Willows" from 33 Acoustic Guitar Instrumentals

Listen to the first verse, where by controlling his picking dynamics, the melody is clearly hearable above the stream of notes. Listen to the third verse, where the floodgates are loosed and the notes fly out as fast and hard as bullets from a machine gun. They generally work from the D G and B strings, where the open strings for a major triad, unlike Paul Gilbert's minor triad from the video.

E --------------------------------------
B -----0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0--
G ---0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0----
D -0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----0------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

Do you see it? Do you see the change here? They generally are trending down instead of up. The Gilbert style would be considered a "backwards roll". And there are generally two schools of thought in the flatpicking community: pick down-down-up, basically reversing the Gilbert/DiMeola order and the straight alternate picking people. In short, there's DDU ...

E --------------------------------------
B -----u-----u-----u-----u-----u-----u--
G ---d-----d-----d-----d-----d-----d----
D -d-----d-----d-----d-----d-----d------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

And there's DUDU ...

E --------------------------------------
B -----d-----u-----d-----u-----d-----u--
G ---u-----d-----u-----d-----u-----d----
D -d-----u-----d-----u-----d-----u------
A --------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------- 

I have tried to pick up DUDU and DU (On Flatpick-L, you're no part of nothin' if you don't do DUDU), but I have never been able to get any power or even much accuracy with those techniques. But I am able to get decent speed, accuracy and power with the Gilbert-DiMeola UDD method. Which is interesting.

Thank You, Henry and Don

I am sure I'm not alone in this. You're sitting, doing email or whatever, and the urge comes over you to tweak and fine-tune your instrument. Well, it hit me this evening. I decided to check my guitar against the Fender Setup Guide. I grabbed a capo and a feeler guage and found that the relief is within tolerances — the .011 feeler guage was tight and catching, but didn't move the string much at all — but the action was still way high, and this with the saddle touching the bridge.

So, I followed what, if I remember correctly, is the Don Erlewine method. I got a business card, cut off an inch, and put that in the neck pocket against the back. Neck angle changed, making "dang near against the bridge" a more reasonable height. I had to go back and do height and intonation for the strings, but it was a good thing. It plays like butter now.

Which reminds me. I of course had to get back in tune once I reattached the neck. My trick for getting close is based on one of the first things I learned. "Peter Gunn". Something that's all on the low E string, and sounds cool. I know enough about tuning that, once I get a note, I can tune the rest of the guitar around that. Let me play "Peter Gunn" and I'll get that first note.

ETA: It is Dan Erlewine, not Don. Sans Direction regrets the error.