TrevorR

I’m home cooking lunch. Rest of the fam is out collecting Grandma so for now it’s noisy music! Threshold’s Dividing Lines album. My fave new album of the year! [Edit] they’re back home… back to Xmas tunes…

Another happy OnSong user here… I think set list software” is misleading. The beauty is being able to organise a library of chord sheets into a set list. Have used this at church (where who knows what random blast from the past could suddenly show up…) for many years..

Got a little MarkBass MicroMark practice amp for home use. So nice and light for carrying round the house and sounds fantastic given its 1 tone knob and teeny weeny itsy bitsy speaker. That said, I’ve only made two gear purchases this year - and the other one was a TC UniTune clip on tuner (also great).

Wrapping the kid’s Christmas pressies and listening to The Best of T-Bone Walker…

A few bands have waned over the years. As a teen I loved ELP, Zep and Deep Purple. Now Tarkus and Fanfare for the Common Man are more than enough ELP for me, I find Led Zep quite dull and uninteresting now and apart from a classic tracks never listen to Purple. However, I’ve picked up a good few artists and genres along way… university brought The Alan Parsons Project, folk rock and Steely Dan. The 90s brought Capercaillie, Nanci Griffith, Aimee Mann, Counting Crows and Sheryl Crow. The 2000s saw me getting into acid jazz and other funky sub-genres, Nerina Pallot and the Laurel Canyon variety of singer songwriter in greater depth. And the last 10 years have seen me revisiting Kraftwerk and Jean-Michel Jarre in greater depth. Through that time the constants have been Thin Lizzy, Yes, ELO, Horslips, Saga, Gary Moore and a number of others…

The key to finding this on the BSF is the treble control. To my ears it’s less of just an EQ roll off control but seems to have an effect on how the break up works, changing its richness/bite - though no idea how it’s operating as part of the circuit electronically.

I went for the BSF because it’s a lower gain OD and a reasonably priced mainstream pedal. I have a suspicion that one (well three) reason(s) TB is sniffy about it is 1) it’s not all exclusive boutique and super expensive, 2) it’s not super super cheap so has inverted snob value and 3) it’s not what you’d choose for uber distorted Cliff Burton bass solo type stuff. These are, rather, all the reasons I DO like it! I have my VTBassDI set so it’s warm and clean but has a touch of hair when you really dig in. That’s my “always on” pedal. The BSF is used when a song needs a little more grit (rather than dirt) or to feed my envelope filter for a pseudo synth bass sound… But it seems like OD are a pedal where everyone has their personal preferences… and they’re all different.

Reminds me of something that happened a few years ago in the worship team. The (very young) WL came back from a conference enthusing about this powerful new song they’d sung there and how she’d love to introduce it to the team. Sounded great! Love a good new song! She said that she’d recorded it on her phone and she and her drummer/keyboard player boyfriend had worked it out. They would sing and play it so we could get an idea. Great idea! Love a new song! She started… “Because He lives, I can face to morrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone…” The more superannuated members of the team (like me) kinda looked at each other, shrugged and just joined in, singing and playing - much to her confusion! She was stunned at how we could know this new tune just introduced at the conference. Had to break it to her that I’d been singing that tune since I first joined a youth gospel choir back in 1979! I guess that there really is nothing new under the sun and what goes around comes around eventually. She did look so stunned when we joined in, though! Lol Here’s a nice modern Celtic version of it. We did it more straight rock/hymn fusion…

Oh wow! That’s a blast from the past. Not sung or played that tune in years!

This guide to how a whole range of effects work from the now, sad.y defunct “Monkey FX” is brilliant and hilarious - well worth a read… http://www.monkeyfx.co.uk/fxguide.html How a compressor works explained through the medium of tiny monkeys.. Compression Picture the scene. Sicily, 1947. A monkey. With a volume pedal. He has tinnitus, so he doesn't like loud noises, but needs things to be a certain volume level in order to hear them, poor little mite. He is wearing headphones. When you play, if it's too loud, he turns the volume down a little. If it's too quiet, he turns it up. He can do this quite quickly if he wants, but there's a big dial in front of him, telling him how fast he's allowed to turn the volume control. There's another control that determines how loud his headphones are compared to your guitar. Pop the little chap in a box and paint it (traditionally) blue and off you go. Oh, it might be a good idea to replace him with some sort of electronics gubbins, to save his poor hearing. Some compressors allow you to have a little effect loop in between your guitar and his headphones, so that you could (for instance) have him only listen to the bass part of your guitar sound, but work the volume control according to that.

Some of the vids are up online of the tunes they played. Mmmmmm… Niiice! Great!

She came in through the bathroom window - The Beatles

Heart Attack - Nerina Pallot

And then however many weeks later… on Thursday, 3/4 of my thumbnail dropped off. On the bright side it looks like it’s growing a new one underneath… seems like a three or so other nails are on the way… 🙄

They are down near Exeter - so a long way - but Jack at Brook Guitars is a wizard at inlays. They take on repairs as a standard sideline so should be open to it. And ask them for a certificate of works to certify they’ve removed and replaced it. https://www.brookguitars.com

New album by UK prog metal band, Threshold -“Dividing Lines”. Really rather good! Actually has tunes and the solos aren’t just an excuse to get some modal arpeggio practice in…

From my chums Rich and Karl’s new album…

Sad to hear and I hope you’ll find a congregation/community where you do fit one day. We’re in transition too. All over Covid and the aftermath reopening we were isolating as much as possible because we were helping look after my father in law and his fight with prostate cancer. Going into a room full of 200 or so people even with a mask and risking giving Covid to him just on wasn’t on the cards. And I worked from home as much as I possibly could to help the isolating. He continued to deteriorate and finally passed away last February. Haven’t been been back to church since and not sure we want to go back to the old church as there’s a lot of history for my wife which is painful. Shame as I loved playing on the team but it would be too stressful for my wife - too many hurts to be dredged up. Then, over the summer my best friend in the worship team passed away from complications allied to Covid. So my main personal friendship tie with the church is gone too. We need to start looking for other local churches but haven’t felt the impetus to actually do so. I’m sure we will be back sometime soonish but right now I’m not sure when or where.

Sadly now defunct… had been declining for a few years and Covid finally sealed the Sunday jazz’s fate!

Have you got your tickets for this clinic yet? If you’re within striking distance of Woking, Surrey you owe it to yourself to get there! Going to be an epic night including the Welsh Wal Wizard, Laurence Cottle. Adam has just released a discount code so type “RONNIE” in at the checkout any you’ll get 20% off! Talking to Carl Orr last night he was saying this isn’t one of those clinics where the drummer sits there nattering about how they did this paradiddle on this tune and that film on that gig and look, I’ve got a double kick pedal and here’s how it works… they’ve prepped about 10 or so songs to roar through… definitely going to be an epic night! Tickets are here: https://www.theschoolofdrumming.com/clinics

As does Amazing Grace! The Blind Boys of Alabama do a cracking version of that… https://youtu.be/B0EN_Hmq534

We regularly do this in our Christmas service. Don’t let the singer put you off listening. This is Mariah goes gospel and it’s great fun to play and song to - especially in the coda bit where it goes full on Sister Act! We’ve also gone a gospel/bluegrass version of Go Tell It On The Mountain - also great fun in that genre. Otherwise folks want carols so do some rock band arranged versions (ie simplified with a load of hymnal chords stripped out).

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…and the best maker of Matsumoku era Aria SB bass pickup replacements too… 😥