Take your pick

What’s in a pick? A pick by any other material will sound as percussive, right? In some ways that’s right. A pick (also called a plectrum), by definition, is “a small thin piece of metal, plastic, bone, or similar material, used to pluck the strings of certain instruments, such as the guitar or lute” (from dictionary.com). Whatever the material is, the object is the same: to make the strings sound louder or take on different tonal qualities.

Picks come in all shapes and sizes, and it is in this variety that all sorts of different sounds can be coaxed out of the guitar. Some are angled, some are rounded, others have ridges. In a sense, a guitar pick is your first and most important equalizer. Here are a just a few examples:

Most guitar picks have an isosceles triangle shape (pictured at right), that is, having two sides of the same length and one short one. Most guitarists seem to prefer this, and for good reason: its sharper angle gives a sharper tone and louder sound. This is good for lead playing or when an aggressive sound is needed.

Personally, however, I don’t use the isosceles pick. First of all, I don’t really like the sharp tone it produces. Secondly, I don’t like the way it feels when it attacks the strings; the angle is too sharp and aggressive for me. Thirdly, it seems such a waste to be able to use only one end of the pick. Fourthly, I don’t like having to fumble with a pick just to get the right end for picking.

So I guess it’s a dead giveaway that the pick I prefer is the equilateral one, with all sides being of equal length. The points are less angled, so that when they strike the strings they give out a softer, more mellow sound. It’s also easier to use because all points are the same; no need to fumble to get to the one point that is useful. Just grab it and you’re good to go.

As for the material, I use the plain plastic ones mainly because others are either not available here in Davao City or are too expensive for my third world budget. Besides, I’m not sure other materials and brands make that much of a difference; at any rate, I’m happy with my 10-15-peso picks, and they’re so cheap I can stock up on them so I’m never without a pick.

USING A PICK

How do you hold a pick? I don’t think there’s a right way to do it, but for me the most comfortable and the one that gives the best sound is this:

This also makes it possible to strum and pick and play leads without having to change the position of the pick.

Again that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. Glen Frey, for example holds his pick like they were a pair of chopsticks, and no one’s complaining about how he plays guitar.

Here are other tips on using a pick:

• Hold it lightly when strumming. Don’t grip it like there’s no tomorrow; just let it sit on your fingers loosely. This gives your sound a bouncy and more percussive feel to it. Of course it goes without saying (but I’m saying it anyway) that you shouldn’t hold it too loosely that you drop it.
• Tighten your grip a little when doing leads. This gives your sound an edge.
• When doing leads, move only your thumb and index finger, not your wrist.
• To do those lightning fast leads, do little circles with your pick instead of moving up or down.

Also, to keep from losing your picks (a problem that afflicts many guitarists I know), buy one of those cheap plastic pick holders that you can tape onto your guitar. They can hold up to 10 picks, and they make sure you always have a pick on hand when you play your guitar. I taped mine onto the side of my guitar next to the battery compartment so that it’s not visible to people but still easily accessible.

Capo di tutti capi

ca·po NOUN:Inflected forms: pl. ca·pos
A small movable bar placed across the fingerboard of a guitar or similar instrument so as to raise the pitch of all the strings uniformly.

ETYMOLOGY:Italian capo (di tastiera), head (of the fingerboard), from Latin caput.

If you’ve read Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” you’d be familiar with the word “capo,” or “boss/head.” Capo di tutti capi means boss of all bosses, which was the position the Mafia bosses, including Don Vito Corleone, were aspiring for. This edition of JamBayan, however, isn’t about that kind of capo, although the etymology is the same: capo di tastiera or head of the fingerboard, that’s what we’re talking about here. And since the word “capo” has Italian roots, I’ll insist on pronouncing it the way Filipinos do, with a short “a” as in “cap,” instead of “a” as in “cape” as my American and Canadian friends call it.

My guitar case contains relatively few accessories, and these few are what I feel are essential: a guitar tuner, a Googalies cleaning cloth, spare bridge pins, picks, and a capo (I’d like to throw in a couple of sets of strings in there but me being on a third world guitarist’s budget I can’t always do that). And of these, I think the most important to my actual playing is the capo.

A capo is really just a clamp you put over your strings (on the neck side, naturally) to adjust the pitch of the guitar. If the standard tuning is E-A-D-G-B-E, then putting a capo on the first fret changes it to F-Bb-Eb-G#-C-E; clamp it on the second fret and you get F#-B-E-A-C#-F#, and so on and so forth. What this does is it allows you to play a song in a different key but still using the same chord shapes you may have first learned it in.

For example, you may have studied the song “You’ve Got A Friend” as sung by James Taylor in the key of A but you can’t actually sing it because it’s too low; all you’d have to do is put a capo on until you reach the pitch that’s right for you. No need to relearn the entire song. (In fact, that song was played and recorded by James Taylor using a capo on the second fret; he then played it in G).

Some guitarists actually shun the capo because it’s a shortcut. For them, nothing beats transposing the chords to another key because it makes one think. I agree with that to some extent. Transposition is an important skill to master and gives you more freedom on the fingerboard especially when playing with other musicians who’d like to raise or lower the key in which a song is being played. There are also times when you don’t have a capo on hand, or when the transposition is from a higher chord to a lower one, in which case the capo would be of limited use.

But using a capo has its advantages. Many songs sound better in certain chord shapes, and it’s not always easy to get that sound when transposing to another key. Say you’re playing a song in D2 (a D with an open high E string) but want to raise it to Eb2: you could move your fingers one fret up and do a barre on the first fret, but that would rob the chord of the nice ringing sustain that the open high E gives. A capo would let you play the same chord shape, ringing sustain and all, and still be in the key you want.

The best capo?
The capo I’ve been using was given to me by my best friend Bill many years ago. He and his family went on home assignment in Canada and when they came back he brought two capos for me to choose from: a Kyser Quick-Change Capo and a Shubb Acoustic Guitar Capo. I tried them for about a week and in the end I came up with the winner: the Kyser.

Why did I choose it? Well, to put it simply, it works. You can use one hand to clamp it on and move it from fret to fret. It clamps on tightly enough to give the strings a nice ring when played, but it’s not too tight as to make it difficult to put on, move, and remove. The best part is that when I’m done I can simply clamp it on my guitar’s headstock and leave it there until I need it again. It stays with me all throughout a gig or worship time.

The Kyser also allows for some neat tricks.

1. You can place it on only some of the strings to leave other strings open to get some open-tuning effects. For example, you can clamp on the second fret but only on strings 2 to 6, leaving the first string as the high E. When you play an E chord, you actually get an F#7; play an A and you actually get an Asus.
2. You can get a drop-D effect by clamping upside down on the second fret, leaving the low E (6th string) open. When you play a D shape (giving you an E), you also get the E bass.

You get the idea. Try playing around with the Kyser and find your own tricks.

The only problem with the Kyser is that it’s a little difficult – but not impossible – to clamp on to the higher frets, starting from the seventh fret onwards. This is because the fingerboard widens as it reaches the body, so at about the seventh fret you have to really push it in to cover all the six strings. But again it’s not impossible to do, just a little more difficult.

The Shubb capo was also good, especially since it was much smaller, but the Kyser’s one-hand operation really just blew it off the water for me. There are other capos in the market, but in my opinion they’re not worth the money. They are cheaper, but that’s also the sound and performance you’ll get out of them.

A Kyser Quick-Change costs $19.95 or about a thousand Philippine pesos. There are a number of knock-offs in the market nowadays, and I found some at Victoria Plaza (here in Davao City) for about a third of that price. I haven’t tried them yet, however, and I’m not sure if they’re of the same quality as my Kyser. For me, my Kyser is the capo di tutti capi.

Guitar chaos

I’ve been doing it for two decades now, but playing guitar on a church worship team can still be challenging. At All Nations Christian Fellowship, of which my family and I have been part since 2000, I like to think that the team has gotten the entire thing down to a system, but sometimes the setup can still go haywire especially when we try to change things a little and when the equipment refuses to cooperate.

This happened last Sunday when our scheduled worship leader Dominic decided to use just guitars (two acoustics, one electric, and one bass) and drums. Normally we’d have keyboards in the mix to fatten the sound, but Dominic wanted something simpler. I was all for going back to the basics, of course, so I enthusiastically supported his idea. As it turned out, however, this was one case in which simpler was not better.

Normally Dominic and I play well together since we’ve been doing it for many years, but the other guitarist, a young musician by the name of Carlos who heads an alternative band, had a style that clashed with ours. Since he was using the electric guitar I tried to instruct him to do singing leads in order to give a violin/string sound – and some depth, since we didn’t have a keyboard – to the mix, but he couldn’t do it. His playing style consisted mainly of arpeggios, and in the context of our music last Sunday it was not “happening.”

Don’t get me wrong. Carlos is an extremely talented young man, a gifted songwriter and great singer who has been part of the worship team for many years now. But his style, as far as the worship team is concerned, is best suited to a full band with keyboard, not with two acoustic guitars, a bass, and drums.

The result was a bad mix of strums and arpeggios. The sound was much too percussive, lacking the sweetness and harmony that I had presumed we’d be coaxing out of our pared-down instruments.

On hindsight, it may have been better if I had taken on the electric guitar duties and let Dominic and Carlos play acoustic. Indeed, I had had the gut feeling that I should be playing electric, but since Carlos volunteered to do it I let him play our pastor’s G&L.

In fairness to all of us, other things went against us last Sunday. For one thing, the amps were a mess – the acoustic guitar amps had some speakers blown out so that instead of sounding acoustic, our guitars were giving out electric sounds. Dominic and I also had to share the one amp that still sounded decent (but still awful), and as any musician will tell you, that’s a bad idea as the sound becomes muddy and confusing.

Lessons to be learned? Well, for one thing, we need to give ourselves more time to practice whenever we choose to change our setup, even if it is to take away one or more instruments. Simpler is not necessarily easier.

Secondly, I need to trust my gut feelings. As I said, I had felt at the onset that I should be playing electric but decided to give Carlos the chance. If I had gone with my instinct, we would have sounded a little more acceptable.

Finally, we need to believe that God can work in the hearts of worshippers in spite of how badly we play. There is a tendency even among Christian musicians to think that the worship experience somehow depends on how great the music is, but it doesn’t. Worship is God’s responsibility, and many times He proves this to me by allowing me to fumble through the music – and then have the most number of people approach me afterward to thank me for a wonderful worship time.

Variax

Our Manila trip was altogether too busy, with the family going out almost daily to various places for some R&R. I managed to visit a music store – Perfect Pitch at MegaMall – only once, and I used the time to test Line 6’s Variax guitar. I already own one of Line 6’s products, the DL4 Delay Modeler, and I was interested to know if the Variax would live up to my expectations, which had been raised by the DL4’s great performance.

I had read about the Variax prior to my testing but was not aware that it came in various models, so when I played the guitar I did not know that it was actually a Variax 300. I know that now because I checked the product on the internet and saw that the 300 does not have a tremolo bar and has its tuning keys in a single line (the similarly whammy bar-less Variax 500 has three per side).

My first impression of the Variax 300 is that it is an adequate guitar. For a modern guitar it’s not as eye-catching as the Parker Fly, and I still prefer the classic look of the Fender Strat to its rather plain-looking exterior. I was also a little disappointed because in the same store earlier this year I had seen a much better looking – and much higher priced – Variax, which I now think was a 700. Still, the 300 didn’t look bad, and given time I might get to like its Strat-meets-Les Paul shape.

Interestingly, the most striking feature of the Variax series of electric guitars is what it does not have: pickups. Line 6 eschewed tradition and instead used LR Baggs piezo bridge pickups, which I guess makes the guitar’s acoustic setting more realistic. Which brings us to what the Variax is: a modeling guitar that digitally nails the sound of 25 guitars, including the Strat, Tele, Les Paul, and the abovementioned acoustic guitar.

As an acoustic guitar player my interest in the Variax was mainly in its acoustic setting, so that’s the first thing I tried. Getting there was easy: the knob farthest from the player indicates the settings, and I simply turned it until I saw “acoustic.” I was expecting to hear something thin, so I was impressed when I heard a lush sound that did approximate an acoustic guitar. Not airy like a mic’d acoustic, but the same piezo sound given by my Ibanez AW100CE plugged into a good acoustic guitar amp or straight to the mixer.

The five-way switch is supposed to emulate five positions of a mic on an acoustic guitar, but not being trained in this area I didn’t really hear that; what I heard was the standard trebly sound in the bridge position, more middy sound in the middle position, and a bassier sound in the neck position. Positions 4 and 5 gave a modulated sound, kind of like a chorus, which was really pleasant. I ran through several songs my band 220 plays and it sounded really well. The action was a little too low on the display guitar, however, so the high E string gave a little unwanted “twang” as I played. But that’s not something that can’t be fixed by a little setting up.

Aside from the Strat, Tele, and Les Paul settings, the Variax also has settings for jazz guitar and even a resonator. In all these the Variax does a good job, and while snobs will jeer at this, the average player will find all the sounds useful. I personally feel the acoustic sound alone justifies the price of a little over 38,000 pesos (sale price at Perfect Pitch; regular price is over 42,000 pesos). I can imagine owning one of these babies and being able to get all these sounds during gigs – without having to change guitars. It would also solve my perennial problem of going to a gig and finding the sound tech has provided only an electric guitar amp. The price is actually reasonable, and it beats having to own 25 guitars to get all the sounds a single Variax can give.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Here’s to a great year ahead for all of us!!!