Jammeeting

Last Monday night wasn’t exactly the most auspicious of nights in which to hold our second meeting, but the members of Guitar Guild Davao went ahead and jammed at the Elevation bar along Jacinto Extension here in Davao City. It was raining a little heavily that night, and outside the Mindanao Daily Mirror office the water was beginning to rise for the usual flooding that hits the area whenever a downpour comes. To make matters worse for me, I had just come from a half-crisis in which a warehouse at the same compound on which our apartment building stands burned down that afternoon, and I had spent a few anxious hours worrying that our earthly belongings, few as they were, would go up in smoke.

I was therefore a little frazzled when I arrived at Elevation: wet from the rain, tired from work, and still worried about the fire. But seeing the GGD guys lifted my spirits, and the thought that some of them may have had worse days kept me in check.

There were only a few of us but the enthusiasm was still high. We started with me showing off my Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler, quickly followed by Dante Arevalo’s enlightening presentation/instruction on the blues. The rest of the night was devoted to jamming: it was a great ending to an otherwise bad day!

Playing with Hof

Here’s a shot my wife took of me playing with the Hofner Verithin at our living room. Notice I that I said “playing with” it, not actually playing it, because it’s not complete yet. About the only thing going for it now is that I’ve intonated it, so I can play any chord and any note anywhere on the neck and be in tune. Can’t wait to finish it!!!

We’ve more or less decided that the guitar will be named simply “Hof,” and he’ll be a nice partner for Irene, my Ibanez AW100CE NT. I do name my guitars to give them personality, but don’t worry: I don’t talk to them!

Very thin Verithin progress

I should have posted this about two weeks ago because it’s been with me for that long, but I put off writing about the Hofner Verithin I’m restoring because it’s not complete yet. As you can see, I still don’t have pickups and volume/tone controls for it, and the tailpiece leaves something to be desired because it’s a little too big, has the wrong color, and the design is wrong – I’ll tell you more about that in a bit. But I thought I’d give you an update to give you an idea of how the project is going along.

About that tailpiece: the first one Jingo made was a little too narrow, so I had him make another one. Unfortunately he was fresh out of black rosewood, and all that was left was the light-brown part of a batch he had. Since it’s the same wood, I felt it was OK; besides, I could always stain it black and no one would be the wiser. Unfortunately Jingo didn’t think through every aspect of the design, so I ended up with a tailpiece that needs to be dismantled from the guitar before I can change strings! It’s bottom-loading, but there’s no space at the bottom for the ball end of the string to move. I discovered this when the high E string broke and to my dismay found that I couldn’t get it off the guitar.

What I’ll do is redesign the tailpiece by making it top-loading. Fortunately this tailpiece is a little too long, so I have leeway to make some adjustments.

Another problem is the zero fret, which is a little too high. But that’s easy to fix. All these adjustments, however, will have to wait until I get my volume/tone controls from my best friend Bill who bought me a set in Canada. He’s coming home to Davao City in July so that means the work will start by then. I will go ahead and buy a set of China-made humbuckers just to finish this; they’re dirt-cheap and easy to replace in case I later find Les Paul-type pickups (none are available here yet).

My dilemma is the finish: as you can see, the Verithin is still in its raw state, and I’ve been thinking of taking it to a furniture shop to give it a nice glossy polish. But many guitarists I know have advised me to leave it as it is: it’s an antique guitar and it should look that way. I’ve been leaning in that direction now, especially since the guitar plays well enough even without a glossy exterior.

So that’s about it for the Verithin for now. The progress has been, er, very thin, but I hope to finish it by July. Stay tuned!

John Elliott of York, UK is a member of an email list of Phil Keaggy fans (or phans as we call ourselves) to which I also belong, and he being an excellent guitarist made a video of himself playing a piece he wrote for PK himself. In his youtube space he writes: “A tribute to my long-time guitar ‘hero’ Phil Keaggy who is an inspiration through his life and music. I wrote this piece simply as a way of saying ‘thanks Phil’.” It’s a sweet melody, accented by some artful harmonic slapping which PK does a lot of. John is so lost in his music here that he nearly falls off his chair at the end!

While my ukulele gently weeps

funky-monkz, one of the founders of Guitar Guild Davao, alerted the group to this video of Jake Shimabukuro playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on the ukulele. The late great George Harrison, who wrote the song, was also a mean uke player, so this tribute to him makes a whole lot of sense. This just goes to show that you don't need fancy guitars and equipment -- or even six whole strings -- to make great music.

Be still...

I woke up with a start. I had been trying to sleep for a few hours after arriving home from a family trip to Epol in Marilog (in the mountain area of Davao City), sick to the bone with a rather nasty strain of flu, but rest would not come easy because I was having chills and I was coughing and sneezing constantly. When I finally I did doze off it was to a fitful state, and after only a few minutes I woke up with a start: I was having difficulty breathing, and I felt like I was drowning.

I got up out of bed to tell my wife – who was in the shower at the time – what I was feeling, and she immediately knew what it was: “You’re hyperventilating, Jon. Just relax. Breathe slowly.” She knew what she was talking about: when she was younger she had frequent bouts with hyperventilation, and early in our marriage we had to rush to the emergency room once because of it. It took a while before we realized what was happening to her: according to Webster, hyperventilation is “rapid shallow breathing that provides the body with an excess of oxygen and a deficit of carbon dioxide. It most commonly occurs as a manifestation of anxiety or hysteria.”

Well anxiety and hysteria are just words until you go through them, and I went through both and ended up in a panic as I battled with my first bout with hyperventilation. It felt like the more I breathed, the less oxygen I could get, and that made for a vicious cycle that drove me further into what I can now only describe as insanity. My wife – not quite done with her shower and hair still dripping over hastily worn shirt and shorts – had to rush me to the emergency room to calm me down. On the way I was screaming at the top of my lungs, and I became so irrational that I wanted to either sleep or die on the spot just to get rid of the awful feeling.

It’s a funny thing about hyperventilation: you think you’re not getting any air when you’re actually getting too much of it. It can be triggered by any number of things (stress, sickness, excitement), and at its worst it can lead to panic as the mind begins to think it’s not getting any air. Like I said, it’s a vicious cycle: the more you gasp, the more oxygen you get, and the worse off you are. Oxygen is absolutely necessary to keep us alive, but too much of it trips the brain into overdrive and can literally drive you crazy.

But for all its complexities and seeming contradictions, hyperventilation, as I found out at the emergency room, is easy to treat: just put a brown paper bag over your nose and mouth, breathe, and relax. The paper bag makes you breathe in your own carbon dioxide and rids your body of excess oxygen, but it’s the “relax” part that’s crucial: unless you decide to believe that this overly simple cure will make you feel better, the panic will not go away. It is rather counter-intuitive because the body wants to gasp for air, but relaxing is the only way to get rid of hyperventilation. “Relax, be still,” my wife repeated to me over and over as I struggled to breathe into a paper bag.

Relax. Be still. There’s got to be a life lesson there…

Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

When troubles afflict us, our instinct is to fight, move, do what we can to solve the problem. In our own power, however, such movements add up to no more than the flailing of the arms that only dig us deeper into the mess. It’s like hyperventilation: the more we fight, the worse off we are.

Be still, God says, and know that I am God.

It’s not being fatalistic, or hanging up one’s gloves and giving up: it’s understanding that God is in control and that only when we let Him guide our paths will we ever win over our troubles. I’ve been through my own share of trials and tribulations, and I’ve learned that it never profits me to try and fight them on my own: God has to be there from the beginning, and I have to learn to be still and know that He is who He says He is.

“He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear. He burns the chariots in the fire.

‘Be still, and know that I am God.’“

Stickin' to Martins

I realized as I was playing guitar last Sunday at church that my strings were exactly three months old that day. I bought that set on February 28, my 40th birthday, and the strings are still useable up to today. Not as bright and crisp as when I first used them, but still OK – and this is with daily use! Not bad. Unfortunately I can’t remember the brand, but I think they were Martin lights (.012s) which I bought for a little over 500 pesos. That means it was only a little more expensive than buying the cheap 129-peso ones and changing every month – and the guitar sounded consistently better throughout the strings’ life span. I think I’m going to stick to Martin strings from now on.