JamBayan

Guitar talk with Kitchie Nadal

2008-06-24T14:29:00.006+08:00

Kitchie (born Anna Katrina) Nadal doesn’t grab you as your usual alt-rock or pop princess. On the night I and a few other Davao City reporters interviewed her (that would be May 2), she was garbed in a plaid long-sleeved shirt (the blue-collar kind, something Bruce Springsteen would be comfortable in), jeans, wearing minimal bling (save for something shiny in her belt which isn’t readily visible anyway), and with what looked like just a brush of makeup. She looked like she was more ready to jam with the E Street Band (of the aforementioned Bruce Springsteen) than sing the theme song to a Korean telenovela. Kitchie, of course, would do well in both settings, and it is her versatility that sets her apart from other guitar-slinging female singers. This is one Kitchie with no kitsch.

Kitchie was in Davao City to launch the new TV ad of Caltex, the one that features her with a group of hip-looking musicians (they were just models, she would tell us, not musicians) driving to a gig in a van running on Techron. To be honest I was expecting her to act like a princess: I’ve had a few run-ins with celebrities who look down on other people just because they’re regular folk, and it didn’t help that it took Kitchie some time before she could sit down with us for the interview (many celebs arrive late on purpose just to show how important they are – I’ve been known to walk out of such press cons). Also, she was a little quiet when she first joined us at our table, looking behind her shoulder to see if her people were still with her. I guess it was this hint of insecurity that told me she was just a regular person who was just as apprehensive as we were, and I began asking her questions to hopefully put her at ease.

I had already decided before the interview that, being a guitar player myself, I would focus on guitars when I talked to Kitchie, so that’s what I did. First off, I asked her if she was aware that in one scene in the Techron commercial, the guitar she was using (a Gibson hollow-body electric) was shot in reverse, that is, it was a mirror image. She was surprised at that and told her manager, who said she also wasn’t aware of it. “You’re very observant,” Kitchie said. That’s because I play guitar also, I replied, and that worked to warm her up to our group. I guess it helped that a lot of the questions were about guitars and music and little of the showbiz stereotypes, with which I think she was a little uncomfortable.

I found out that Kitchie has relatively few guitars for a singer-songwriter-guitarist: a Parker Fly (which she bought from fellow singer-songwriter-guitarist Barbie Almalbis), a Taylor (or two), and a classical guitar (which she used in the show). “I’m not a guitar freak like a lot of musicians,” she said, and she doesn’t obsess on the instruments like her male colleagues. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t like fussing with guitars, and it certainly also doesn’t mean she’s a lightweight when it comes to playing them. In fact, she began her show with some cool slapping and tapping on her classical guitar, nothing fancy but not beginner stuff either.

She was actually more excited about an effects box she had bought that doubles her voice and gives her on-the-fly harmony in a “live” show. When she sang her first song that night there was a “second voice” singing with her, and at first I was disappointed because I thought she was singing to a “minus one” (even though she had a band with her). It turned out she was using this vocal gadget, and it did a lot to fatten up her sound, especially since her bandmates played instruments and did not sing backup.

What impressed me most about Kitchie was that she was not afraid to say that she was a Christian, and that a lot of her music, while not explicitly Christian, comes out of a deep faith in the Lord. The carrier single of her new album, Love Letters, is “Highway,” and while it is the theme music to the Caltex ad campaign, it also obviously talks about Jesus: “You are the highway/Apart from you are roads downhill/You are the only way, the truth, and the life/There’s no other road for me.” That’s clearly taken from Jesus’ words in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” That night, Kitchie won herself another fan in me.

'S' is for sushi

2007-07-05T17:36:00.002+08:00

“C is for cookie
That’s good enough for me…” – Cookie Monster

I don’t hide my love for Japanese food, particularly sushi and sashimi. In fact I call myself “Sushi Monster,” and my version of Cookie Monster’s song is, “S is for sushi, that’s good enough for me.” In a recent trip to Manila I literally badgered our hosts to take our group to a Japanese restaurant. Finally they brought us to Sakae Sushi at the Mall of Asia, and this is what greeted us:

As you can imagine, I felt I was in heaven right there at MOA as plate after plate of deliciously varied sushi rolled past me. It was, quite simply, one of the best meals I have ever had.

Julia

2007-04-20T08:50:00.000+08:00

I never met her, and the only time I heard about her was when she was declared missing last April 8, but there is a deep and profound sadness inside me at the passing of Julia Campbell, a Peace Corps volunteer who was found dead in Banaue on April 18, apparently the victim of yet another violent crime (read the Peace Corps statement on her death here). Her being a foreigner and a volunteer make her death all the more tragic: she did not have to be in the Philippines, but she chose to live among us to make our lives a little better. Her blog (from where I got the pictures in this entry) has now become a memorial, with more than a hundred people (and counting) leaving messages to her -- even though she will never be able to read them. I left this one, the lyrics of the song "Julia" credited to Lennon/McCartney but actually written by John Lennon for his late mother. There are no words to express our collective sorrow, and half of what we say will be meaningless...

JULIA

Half of what I say is meaningless
But I say it just to reach you, Julia

Julia, Julia, oceanchild, calls me
So I sing a song of love, Julia

Julia, seashell eyes, windy smile, calls me
So I sing a song of love, Julia

Her hair of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering
In the sun

Julia, Julia, morning moon, touch me
So I sing a song of love, Julia

When I cannot sing my heart
I can only speak my mind, Julia

Julia, sleeping sand, silent cloud, touch me
So I sing a song of love, Julia

So I sing a song of love for Julia, Julia, Julia

Arnel's 44th

2007-04-04T10:54:00.000+08:00

My oldest brother Arnel celebrated his 44th birthday last April 3 at his home in LA. Let me share with you something he wrote to us, his brothers and sisters, regarding this milestone and how important it is to not get caught in the trap of failing to enjoy the moment:

Dear all,

I'm 44. I've always looked forward to the time when all the kids are
grown up, and to my retirement which I imagined would be playing all kinds
of sports and what have you. Recent events changed the way I think about
this now. I've injured my left knee in November '06, playing basketball,
and my knee is about 70% recovered. I am not sure if I can recover to
100%, but right now I can walk normally, but not run, jump or dance the
way I used to.

Now, I really live life by the minute. I appreciate every second of
2-year old Leandro's precious hug, because in 5 days he is going to be 3.

I will prepare for the future, but I will enjoy every minute of that
preparation. Time goes by quickly if you always look forward to the
future and forget to appreciate the present.

Let us always remind each other not to fall into this trap.

Arnel

And here's a video taken during his birthday bash:

Apdedey ayu!

2007-03-21T09:54:00.000+08:00

My mother celebrated her 71st birthday on March 20 in my brother's home in LA. Here's a video of the Joaquin brood greeting her as she and her sister, Tiyang Amor, are cooking pansit palabok, kare-kare, and hipon (shrimp).

If you're wondering about the title to this post, it was how our youngest brother Allan used to sing "Happy birthday" when he was small...

Julianne

2007-02-14T00:10:00.001+08:00

The first baby I babied was Julianne, eldest child of my discipler Philip Tarroja who was the campus director of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) in UP Diliman. She was about two or three years old when I first saw her around 1984, and I, along with other CCC movers, were immediately smitten by her cuteness and intelligence. Being an only child then (her brothers Christopher [my inaanak] and Immanuel would be born a few years later) Julianne was a little spoiled, and at first she was a little masungit towards me and didn’t even want me to carry her. I remember the exact moment when that changed: one time I was trying to take her from her mom Ate Rica and she wouldn’t come to me, and so I made with the sad face and said, “You don’t like me.” Realizing I was really feeling bad, Julianne quickly changed her mood, smiled, and said, “I like you naman e.” Then she reached out her arms and let me carry her.

I’d like to think that over the next years we were quite close because I spent a lot of time with her family. Her dad and mom are really second parents to me, and when Kuya Philip decided to leave CCC and develop a student church I went along with him. When I joined the ministry in 1988 it was with this same campus ministry, and in April 1990 we (the Tarrojas and four of us campus missionaries) went to Davao City to help in a summer youth camp here. That was actually the last time I spent any real time with Julianne and her family because I moved to Davao the following July.

I never saw Julianne grow up, and now she is 24 years old (she celebrated her birthday last February 1, a date I never forget because my own birthday is at the end of the same month) and is fast becoming a star in the music world. That would make her the first celebrity I genuinely know personally, and I am mighty proud of that! I can only wish I can see her perform live, but that will have to wait until she either comes to Davao to do a show or I go to Manila to watch her in any one of her gigs.

Check out Julianne’s space on myspace and this interview on speed-mag.com, and also click on the video below for a taste of her music. Julie, I’m so proud of you!

The next American Idol (well, maybe in ten years!)

2007-01-28T22:04:00.000+08:00

Ladies and gents, I present the 2017 American Idol, my wife’s sister’s son, Miguel Lanzanas! (Take it away Migs…)

It's here!

2006-07-14T16:59:00.000+08:00

This afternoon I received a pickup I had ordered from a guitar player in Cebu (central Philippines). It’s a used neck pickup from a Washburn N2, and I am told it sounds great. Francis, the original owner, sold it for only 400 pesos, which is a steal especially if you live in Davao City like I do where used parts like these are hard to find. Even better, my Cebu-based friend Jonji, whom I had asked to get the pickup for me, volunteered to actually pay for the pickup and the cost of sending it all the way to Davao!

I’ll be installing this in my Hofner Verithin, which is now officially missing only one other humbucker pickup for the bridge position. My best friend Bill came home from Canada last week with a set of volume and tone controls he had bought for me. I’m scouting for just one more used humbucker, so if you know of any, give me the heads-up so I can get it.

By the way, the packaging on the picture above says DiMarzio but that’s not the brand of this pickup. Francis tells me it’s the box of his new pickup, the one that replaced this one. This is a stock Washburn N2 pickup.

Magic

2006-07-06T18:19:00.000+08:00

I made a mistake the last time I bought a set of strings two weeks ago. I had intended to get Martins again, but the store I went to, SoundChaser, did not have them. My instinct told me to leave and go to Victoria Plaza where I bought my Martins in February (the set that lasted me more than three months), but then I saw a set of Fender acoustic guitar strings that were labeled “light.” I checked it out and found that its label said the high “E” was .012 and the low “W” was .053. Good enough, I told myself, but when I opened the package I felt the strings were a little too thin. Again my instinct told me to just leave, but when I found out that it was only 175 pesos I decided to buy one. I even got a pleasant surprise when I paid for it because a discount brought it down to 166 pesos.

But when I restrung my guitar with the Fenders I was dismayed because my instinct was correct: the strings were too thin to be the lights I was used to, and my guitar felt a little limp in my hands when I played. The sound was passable enough, but the “feel” was not there: no bounce, no tug, no satisfying resistance from the strings. And I knew that too-thin strings would not last: they would soon grow thinner and thinner, until the strings begin to buzz and they become impossible to tune.

The worst part was that because they were too light, some of the strings buzzed as they hit frets higher up in the neck. To remedy this I placed a shim under the bridge nut and adjusted the neck’s truss rod to give a little “bow.” It eased the guitar’s buzzing somewhat, but the downside was the strings were a little too high.

So today I did what I should have done in the first place: I went to Victoria Plaza and got myself the Martin strings. Before I installed them I remembered to take out the shim under the bridge and adjusted the truss rod back to its original position. But something must have happened as I turned the rod – maybe I didn’t turn enough, or maybe I turned too much, or maybe it was magic – but when the strings were on I had a perfect guitar! The strings were low but there was no buzz, and the intonation all over the neck was near perfect!

I still can’t get over how well my guitar plays and sounds now. At the office all I can think of is going home to play it!

Jammeeting

2006-06-29T16:01:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-27T17:19:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-26T11:48:00.000+08:00

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!

2006-06-17T02:10:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-09T14:49:00.000+08:00

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...

2006-06-08T11:07:00.000+08:00

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

2006-06-01T15:29:00.000+08:00

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.

Hofner progress

2006-05-19T15:41:00.000+08:00

We're putting in the frets in the Hofner Verithin, with Jingo using decidedly third world techniques and tools to do it with. According to this article, frets should be pressed into the fingerboard, not hammered in, but since we don't have the proper instruments this will have to do. To his credit, Jingo is a careful artisan and was able to install the frets without damaging the guitar.

We're going slowly with this because we want to do it right -- although Jingo is also notorious for being a slow worker. As it is we're about three weeks behind schedule, and it looks like it's going to take at least another week before this project is done.

We've decided to use wood strips as binding for the neck because we couldn't find plastic that's both strong and good-looking. Also, I think we'll just use sanding sealer on the entire thing because I want to preserve its aged look -- sort of like how the Stradivari violin nicknamed "Hammer" looks like but still sold for 3.5 million dollars.

Keaggy video

2006-05-18T18:09:00.000+08:00

As you can probably tell, I just recently discovered YouTube. I did a search on my favorite guitarist, Phil Keaggy and I discovered that there are a few videos of him posted there, including this one:

Beach rap

2006-05-18T16:09:00.000+08:00

This has nothing to do with guitars but is all about music. We had lunch at a beach restaurant here in Davao City on Mother's Day and found some boys roaming around and offering to rap for us for a few coins. I normally don't like giving money to mendicants but these boys proved they were no beggars: they launched into a few raps that had some social commentary in them, talking about living in Davao City and how difficult life can be.

It was a good thing my Nokia 6630 can take videos, so I shot this for your enjoyment. I asked them who wrote their raps, and they said they did it themselves. As near as I could tell, they would compose these raps and distribute it among themselves -- not by way of the written word, mind you, but simply by rapping to each other until they got it down pat. They were actually pretty talented, with my only observations being that their timing wasn't perfect and their "beatbox" wasn't too consistent. Still, for boys of about 10 who hardly go to school, they were good.
You'd be interested to know that we gave them a total of about 50 pesos for their performance, pretty good money for a few minutes of beach rap.

Once more, the Gretsch Vegas

2006-05-17T12:18:00.000+08:00

In case you didn't believe me when I said I played a Gretsch Vegas at church once, here's a picture of me playing with it again. I was recently at the office my good friend and role model Jun C, who owns the guitar, and found that he had brought it because he had a gig that night. Since I had missed having a picture taken the first time, I asked him to snap a couple of pictures of me playing it.

Since this was taken with my phone camera, you can't really make out many of the fine details of this guitar. The inlaid fingerboad markers are shaped like dice, which explains why it's called a Vegas. I'm guessing the body and neck are mahogany, but in the absence of any information on the internet that'll remain a guess. It's a heavy guitar, but because of that its tone is incredible. Its sustain lasts for weeks, and you can feel it vibrating against your body even when it's unplugged.

Like I said, it's one of the best guitars I've ever played!

Laid back jam night

2006-05-16T18:53:00.000+08:00

Last Monday night I was privileged to sit alongside five talented guitarists for the first meeting of a guitarists’ group we had been planning to organize here in Davao City. Dante Arevalo, guitarist of the band Punch 9, had graciously allowed us to use his home for the first gig when plans to use a popular night spot failed to materialize, but I think it made for a more laid back atmosphere that allowed us not to perform but simply to jam and enjoy the music.

I arrived a little late for the blues jam and found Dante, George Tujan (guitarist of 9Volt Lemonade and was the one who actually invited me to be part of the group), Louie Avenido, Josh Nerez, and Carlo Jose Garcia already wailing on their respective electric guitars. I hesitated before taking out my acoustic guitar from its case because all the other instruments were electric (an Aria Pro and two Washburns), but since it was a guitarists’ meeting I had no choice.

The jamming was done over some backing tracks provided by Dante through his Palm Tungsten T5 (right) hooked up to a karaoke machine. It was my first time to play with such skilled guitarists in a long time, and I must say it pushed my playing to a new level. Not that I played well, just that I was in a different zone that night.

I tried to set up my Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler to show off its looping and multitracking capabilities, but I was dismayed when it wouldn’t power up. I was afraid I had broken it somehow, having left it inside our car for the better part of the day Sunday when it was very hot outside, but I was assured by my fellow guitarists that that wouldn’t have been a problem. The jamming went on just the same, but at the back of my mind I was already calculating how much it would cost to have my gadget fixed.

Finally, when I was about to place it back in its bag, Dante suggested that I adjust the voltage of my power adapter to a higher number: crossing my fingers, I did that and plugged it in. Lo and behold, my DL4 powered up, and I happily showed it off to the gang.

I did some loops and showed the group how the gadget works and how I use it in live situations. I was hoping I could spread the “looping gospel” through that, and I guess I’ll have to wait a while before I see any results.

The night ended quietly, with the group pledging to meet on the third Monday of June, this time bringing other recruits. The next meeting should be a little more exciting, and if you’re a guitar player here in Davao City, drop me an email so we can place you in the loop.

Variax Acoustic 700

2006-05-12T15:35:00.000+08:00

Got this email from Dante, a Davao City-based guitar player-friend:

"I was at Perfect Pitch at Park Square and there was a guy trying out a Line 6 Variax Acoustic. It was great. It models a lot of sounds. It can’t copy nylon strings but the steel strings are OK. The 12-string is also cool. You can even change the tuning digitally (i.e. the guitar is standard-tuned but you will hear alternate tunings)."

I agree! I was at the same store last month and tried the same guitar and was very impressed by it. I was actually going to write about my experience with the Variax Acoustic but never got around to it, so I guess now’s an opportune time.

The Variax Acoustic on display at Perfect Pitch is the 700 model and sells for about 90,000 pesos (give or take a few). On the net it’s listed at 1,199 US dollars, or only about 62,000 pesos, but Perfect Pitch bases its price on the list price of about 1,679 US dollars – about 87,500 pesos (to which one has to add shipping and taxes).

Here’s how Line 6 describes the guitar:
Variax Acoustic 700 offers you 16 models of the finest acoustic instruments on the planet with the push of a button. You can easily access jumbos, 12-strings, or even a nylon string classical to suit any style of play. Variax Acoustic 700 gives you the freedom to achieve an expertly mic'd acoustic sound without complex setups or feedback, even at concert-level volumes! Recording a great acoustic sound no longer requires a noise-free environment or a big equipment budget; just plug in and go. You also get instant access to alternate tunings for endless possibilities to fuel your inspiration.

As a mainly acoustic guitar player, I was rather disappointed when I picked up the Variax Acoustic 700: it was solid-bodied, which meant it didn’t give any appreciable sound when played in its natural, unplugged state. Its weight also made it feel like an electric guitar in my hands. Oh well, I guess it would have been too much to expect it to be a good guitar both plugged and unplugged.

So off to the amplifier we went, and the Perfect Pitch guy plugged it into an acoustic guitar amp (can’t remember the brand, though). Before strumming I set the dial, located at the upper bout, to “Dread,” which I guessed (correctly) was based on the sound of the dreadnought with which I was familiar. I strummed it and, lo and behold, it gave a full, even, and rich sound, with lots of bass and high end.

Then I tried the other settings, and while I couldn’t tell if I was hearing the exact replica of those guitars (parlor, jumbo, jazz, even banjo and shamisen), there was enough difference between the models to make it seem like I was playing a completely different guitar with each setting. Also, tweaking with the three sliders in the control panel gave different mic positions, volume, and compressor settings. All the models gave a satisfying sound, and the fact that it gave no feedback was a plus.

As a guitar, the Variax Acoustic 700 plays really well, better than the Variax 300 (electric) that I tested last year. The action was spot on with no buzz, and the neck was smooth. The intonation was perfect: I tuned it once and was able to play all over the neck with no problem. The only beef I had was its aforementioned weight: it was just too heavy for an acoustic guitar. Oh, and since this is essentially an electric guitar, I couldn’t tap the soundboard to give a percussive sound. Other than that, the guitar could catch most of the nuances of striking, strumming, plucking, and slapping the strings.

I think one of the best features of the Variax Acoustic 700 is its ability to give alternate tunings on the fly, without having to touch the tuning keys. This is done digitally, and one only has to press the model select knob. Once in this mode (which is indicated by a flashing red-green light), you can choose the tuning you want with the top slider (the one that controls the volume). You can take your pick from open E, open A, open D, low G, high G, DADGAD, drop D, and E & A octave down.

I’ve always wanted to experiment with open tunings but have never really gotten into it for fear of breaking strings from all the detuning that’s required (being a third world guitar player means trying to make strings last for weeks on end). With the Variax Acoustic 700 it was all a matter of pushing a knob and sliding the control. I played in different tunings and it really was much easier to get both melody and harmony mixed together. I could imagine myself doing well as a fingerpicker with this guitar.

The Variax Acoustic 700 certainly lives up to its name, but I think its main drawback is that it is too electronic and too digital for me. Not that the digital sounds aren’t great: they all sound good, and I’ve never really believed in musicians who say electronic modeling is “cold” and “impersonal.” My main concern with this guitar is what happens if the digital circuitry bogs down? Repairs will most certainly be expensive, and cutting corners (by taking it to non-Line 6 technicians) could prove disastrous. I’ve already had my Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler fixed once, and I guess I’m just afraid it could happen to this guitar.

Not that I could buy it, of course. At almost a hundred thousand pesos, I have more important things to spend my money on. Line 6, however, has just introduced the Variax Acoustic 300 (right), and I see that in some websites it sells for about 600 US dollars – half the price! The only difference I can see for now is that the 300 doesn’t seem to have alternate tunings – which is a shame since that was the biggest draw for the 700 for me. Oh well, I guess you can’t have it all.

Ibanez's affordable hollow-bodies

2006-05-11T17:39:00.000+08:00

If you’ve always wanted a hollow-body electric guitar but have never been able to afford one, I have the answer for you. I was at MegaMall in Manila over the past weekend and stumbled upon a store at the fifth floor that sells, among others, great guitars at unbelievably low prices.

It’s really easy to miss AudioStudio if you’re a guitar player because all you can see from the outside are speakers and other audio equipment. I myself only went in because I was interested in a speaker system for MP3 players displayed at the window. Once inside I saw that the store has a stall for guitar gear like pickups, tuning keys, bridges, and other stuff, but what really got my attention was a collection of guitars practically hidden behind a stack of speakers and amplifiers.

As it turned out, AudioStudio is a distributor of Ibanez guitars, and it has in stock China-made ones that offer the same quality as Japan-made Ibanezes without the high price tag.

I picked up an AS73 (pictured above right) because it looked the closest to the Hofner Verithin that I am rebuilding (and, by extension, the Gibson ES-335 it is itself emulating) and started strumming. It felt excellent, very smooth, very playable. And because its body is hollow, I could hear what I was playing.

But perhaps sensing that I wanted to hear more, banch manager Jojo Sanglay offered to plug the guitar into a Peavey amp. With no effects save for the amp’s reverb, the AS73 sounded full, sweet, and bell-like, and while I have little experience playing such guitars, I was willing to bet it sounded the way a good jazz guitar ought to. Each note was distinct when playing leads, and strummed it had an acoustic quality that made me think it could replace my Ibanez AW100CE acoustic guitar.

I switched the amp to “distort” and began to play some leads, and the AS73 did not disappoint. It behaved like a rock instrument, giving a fat, heavy tone that’s both complex and distinct.

When I stopped playing I looked at the price tag and almost fell off the amp I was sitting on. It was only a little over 17,000 pesos, or about 330 US dollars. “It’s more expensive than my acoustic guitar!” I exclaimed. I then went through the other hollow-body electric guitars there (mostly AWDs pictured at right) and saw that they were even cheaper. The solid-bodies were similarly priced, and in fact the only one I saw that went above 20,000 pesos was an acoustic guitar that had a solid top (the model of which I unfortunately didn’t pay attention to).

What gives? Why the low prices?

Jojo explained that the guitars are made in China, adding that while many China-made products are of poor quality, Ibanez has not cut corners and insisted on producing the same quality in its guitars. Based on what I heard and handled that afternoon, I’d say he was telling the truth.

Back home I checked out some reviews of the AS73 (including this one from Harmony Central) and found that on the whole the guitar has been received well by many guitarists. For us third world guitar players, these Ibanezes are great buys, and I’m now actually thinking of ditching my acoustic guitar in favor of an AS73. It offers a good mix of acoustic and electric tones, making it a viable option for our gigs.

Heavyweight

2006-05-09T16:11:00.000+08:00

I wrote before that my preferred picks are thin, but of late I have had a change of heart. I read an article in which a guitarist extolled the virtues of heavy picks, saying, "the heavier the pick, the bigger the sound" (or something to that effect). I didn't believe it initially and went to my guitar to confirm to myself that my choice of picks was correct. I strummed a few chords and heard the familiar percussive sound of soft plastic meeting tense steel, and I went away satisfied.

But then in a recent trip to Manila, as I was doing my usual rounds of guitar stores, I decided to buy some picks. The store (JB Music Mart, if I remember correctly), however, didn't have light picks and offered me some heavies; I hesitated for a while and then told myself, what the heck, I'll try them. In the back of my mind I knew it was a mistake, but for 15 pesos apiece it was not going to be an expensive mistake.

When I got back home to Davao City I tried my new picks, and what I heard blew me away. Instead of sounding harsh as I had feared, the heavy picks gave very bright, very chunky, very percussive, very full, and very heavy sounds. No matter if I picked or strummed, the heavy gauged plastic gave a richer sound. It even made me play a little bit better because I had more control of each note.

So now I'm packing heavy picks, and so should you.

Guitar gang

2006-04-26T13:39:00.000+08:00

Last night I met with two Davaoeño guitar players to plan the formation of a group for guitarists in Davao City. Dante Arevalo is the guitarist of Punch 9, the band that represented Davao City in last year’s Global Battle of the Bands (Philippine finals) while George Tujan is the guitarist of 9Volt Lemonade. The two of them have known each other for some time and recently talked of forming such a group, and they invited me to sit with them to plan it out. George and I know each other only virtually, having exchanged emails through our common interest in Palm handhelds and, we later discovered, guitars. We met face-to-face only last night, although he had seen me play with my band 220.

(The three of us have something in common: while we love guitars, we have day jobs that keep body and soul together. Dante works with Anflocor, George with NCCC, and me with the Mindanao Daily Mirror. I guess that just goes to show that, at least in Davao City, one can’t make a living being a full-time musician.)

We met at BluGré Coffee, and over a few cups o’ joe we made some tentative steps for the creation of the group. If I remember correctly, our personal goals are for guitarists in Davao City to:

get to know each other
learn from each other
appreciate other genres of music
exchange information and knowledge on gear
have a venue to buy and sell gear
popularize the use of guitar
popularize guitar music to the Davao City crowd

One of the concerns is setting the criteria for membership. It was suggested that there be a minimum level of skill, but that is difficult to qualify and quantify. I suggested that members should at least know how to read chords, but I struck it down myself when I remembered that journalist and media critic Vergel Santos, the father “Mr. Acoustic” Paolo Santos, told me last year that he doesn’t know how to read chords but plays a mean guitar just the same, all by ear.

So we’re still trying to figure this one out; meanwhile, we’ve set the first meeting on May 15 at the Elevation Bar along Jacinto Extension Street here in Davao City (in front of the Central Bank Convention Hall). George, Dante, and I visited it after our meeting and found that that second floor would accommodate the 10 initial members we’re planning to have (including ourselves). There are amps and a drum set for the jamming session, so we should be good to go.

This should be exciting and challenging. I’m not an accomplished guitar player by any stretch of the imagination, so meeting with other guitarists will make me want to play better. For all of us, it should be a productive group.

Closer...

2006-04-06T15:09:00.000+08:00

Here's a closer view of the Hofner Verithin that I am restoring. Notice that it has no hardware whatsoever, and that the marker in the fifth fret is missing one strip. The letter "N" is missing in the mother-of-pearl HOFNER at the headstock, and the binding in part of it, as well as in the entire fretboard, are missing. The guitar also needs a refret, and when everything is done it needs a proper finish. It may take anywhere from two weeks to a month to complete, but it'll be worth the wait. Did I mention that it's a 46-year-old guitar, having been built in 1960? That means in four years it'll be 50 years old!

My Hofner

2006-04-06T14:14:00.000+08:00

As I said in a previous entry, I found a Hofner Verithin and am in the process of restoring it. A friend of mine, Sean, brought in a set of tuning keys and an archtop bridge from the US, so I'm a few weeks away from completing this project. A previous photo I posted wasn't really that nice, so this morning when I brought the tuning keys and bridge to the shop I made sure I brought along a proper digital camera and had my son snap this photo. Nice, eh?

A steal I couldn't steal

2006-04-05T14:20:00.000+08:00

I was in Manila for a few days and visited Tiendesitas, a sprawling area filled with small stores, kind of like a high-end tiangge. I walked into the antiques section and there, sitting in a corner inside one of the stores, was this gorgeous Yamaha hollowbody electric guitar. I don't know what model it was, but as you can see in the picture it was cherry red in color, had two f-holes, and had a tremolo bridge. It was also kinda heavy but felt nice in my hands. It was obviously old and so when I asked the vendor how much it was I was bracing myself for a high figure. To my surprise, she said it was only 17,000 pesos, and as I tried to hide my surprise I asked if she would go down to 15,000. She took out a pen and paper and began computing, and again to my surprise she said she would.

It was a steal at that price, but, third world guitar player that I am, I didn't have money to buy it with. So if you're ever at Tiendesitas, go to the antiques section and look for the store "Bangerahan." Tell Rose you saw the guitar in the internet and buy it for P15,000. It is in good condition but needs a little work to polish it up. The tremolo bar is also missing, and part of the plastic covering inside the lower f-hole (which I gather was placed there to reduce feedback) is torn. So you may end up spending a little more to spruce it up, but it will still be a steal.

A Gretsch experience

2006-03-27T15:09:00.000+08:00

Last Sunday was a real treat for me because I played a Gretsch electric guitar for the praise and worship set at church. It was lent to me by a friend who wanted to hear it being played by someone else; he’s in a retro band and plays regularly with his Gretsch, but he had never heard it from a distance. Of course I agreed, and what an experience it was!

I don’t know when he bought the Gretsch and for how much, but when I saw it I could guess that it was worth several thousand dollars (multiply by 51 to get the peso value). It was, he said, a “Vegas” model, although when I later tried to find it in the internet I couldn’t find it, not even in the Gretsch website itself.

It was a red solidbody guitar, with a mahogany body and neck and rosewood fretboard. Its most distinctive feature was the fretboad markers: instead of dots or blocks or strips, it used images of dice in keeping with the Vegas theme (a three on the third fret, a two and a three on the fifth, etc.). It was very heavy, but when I strapped it on it felt very balanced, very comfortable. The strings on it were medium electrics with the third string wound, so it was pretty heavy. But the neck on it was so incredibly silky smooth that the heavy gauge was not a problem.

Unplugged, the Gretsch gave out a refreshing shimmer when strummed or plucked; it was “alive,” and I could tell right off that it was going to sound great plugged. At church I plugged it into a Peavey amp and as I had anticipated it gave a full bodied sound that had an acoustic-guitar ring to it. With the silky-smooth neck and incredibly rich sound, the Gretsch Vegas was quite possibly the best guitar I had ever played.

It’s just too bad that I don’t have a picture to prove that I actually played it. My wife took some great shots, but our digital camera suddenly went bonkers on us and wouldn’t be recognized by our home computer, and I inadvertently reformatted the SD card without realizing that the photos of me playing the Gretsch were in it. And as I said before, a search on the internet for any info or photo of the Gretsch Vegas proved futile, so I’ll have to ask the owner to take some pics of it so you’d know what it looks like.

Suffice it to say that my Gretsch experience was totally awesome (to quote my five-year-old nephew Miggy who lives in Michigan) and that I really did fall in love with it. Too bad I had to give it back, but at least I have the assurance I can borrow it again. Can’t wait!

Blog down!

2006-03-20T19:54:00.000+08:00

Last Friday JamBayan became suddenly and inexplicably inaccessible. When I logged on to it I found this message staring at me: 403 Forbidden: You have no permission to access this site on this server. I rebooted my computer to make sure it wasn’t just a glitch, but the error persisted. I began to panic when even the other computers in the Mirror office couldn’t access my blog, and so I texted my wife to check if she could log on using our home computer. After an agonizing few minutes she confirmed the worst: JamBayan was down.

I was concerned because other blogs on Blogger were up, and I began to be really worried when I read on the Inquirer website that the blog of the anti-Arroyo group Black and White Movement was also down – with the same error message appearing when one tries to access it. This was in the aftermath of the arrest of former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman as she and some colleagues went “strolling” down the baywalk area in Manila wearing anti-GMA black shirts.

Understandably, the inq7.net report implied that the blog’s inaccessibility was linked to Soliman’s arrest, and for a while I began to think that perhaps JamBayan had been brought down for similar reasons. Now as you know, JamBayan is as non-political as it gets: it focuses on guitars and music, and while I may rant and rave every once in a while (especially at how expensive music gear are), the heart of the blog remains the same. With the B&W’s blog down, however, I suspected that perhaps some government agent decided to bring down blogs written by journalists as well – just to make sure.

But just as I was beginning to feel self-important (well, important enough to merit some censorship), JamBayan decided to show up. And about the same time, the B&W blog also became accessible. Now I don’t know if the blogs were indeed pulled out and if government relented when it was reported that some anti-government blogs (and mine, which is not anti-GMA even if its writer is) became inaccessible, but in cases like this I find that it’s prudent to use the simplest explanation: Blogspot (which is owed by Google) suffered a glitch. Which may explain why the inq7.net report on the B&W blog has itself been inexplicably missing from the inq7.net archives.

Dream come true

2006-03-09T21:13:00.000+08:00

Every guitar player’s dream is to walk into an old house and find, hidden somewhere in the attic or basement, an old but valuable guitar. The owner, who would be an old but charming lady, would be completely clueless as to the value of the guitar, it having been left behind by her dear husband who died years ago. “That old thing!” she would say. “My husband used to play it every night instead of talking to me. I always hated it! You can have it if you want.”

That dream just became a reality to me, although it’s not an old house I walked into but the shop of a guitar builder here in Davao City. And it’s not a little old lady who owns it but Jingo Rosales, luthier and musician who does most of the repair work on guitars here. And he’s not giving it to me: it’ll be an exchange deal for something I have that he can use.

I first saw it last year lying in one corner of the shop, covered with dust, ignored by people who probably were unaware that an old piece of wood like that would be worth anything. It had no hardware – no tuning keys, bridge, pickups, tone controls – but its shape caught my eye: it was double horned archtop, with two f-holes, very thin, and very old by the looks of it. I cleaned it with a rag and saw in its headstock that it was a Hofner, but I was dismayed because a portion of the back had already become unglued. Jingo, however, assured me it was easy to repair; besides, the rest of the guitar was solid and could be restored.

When I got back home I logged on to the Hofner website and found that the model it most closely resembled was the Verythin Standard. There were significant differences, however: the Verythin Standard has a tune-o-matic bridge similar to a Les Paul’s, whereas the guitar I found did not have the holes necessary to install such a bridge system (which meant it sported a tailpiece). The fretboard markers were also different: the guitar in Jingo’s shop had pearl inlays laid out in strips, whereas the Verythin Standard had more modern-looking dots.

I thus surmised that the guitar I found was the original model, produced (according to the website) in 1960, so I searched for it in the net. After some misses I finally found a site that showed what the original model looked like. It turns out that the original was called Verithin (with an “i” instead of a “y”), and it has since been updated by Hofner to a more modern look that is more appealing to new players (mainly by losing the archtop style metal tailpiece in favor of the tune-o-matic style). But the original model is lovely in its own right (just take a look at the photo at the beginning of this entry), and for someone like me who has always dreamed of owning a vintage guitar but could never afford one, it was indeed a dream come true to find one that’s within my means.

Jingo and I will work on the Verithin over the next few months. A friend of mine is bringing in some good tuners and a proper archtop bridge from the US, but Jingo will fashion a tailpiece out of rosewood (which I think will look better than metal). We’ll also put in regular humbuckers until I can afford to get better ones. The frets are a little worn so I will probably have it refretted, and I will probably strip off its red paint, sand it, and just stain it for a natural look.

I am excited about this project, and I will keep you posted on our progress until we finally complete the guitar. If we do it right, the Verithin will probably become my main guitar.

More tricks

2006-03-06T08:41:00.000+08:00

A computer worm at the office network and a hardware malfunction at home forced me offline for the better part of a week, which explains why I haven’t updated this blog in quite a while. But things are back to normal now, so here’s my continuation of the previous entry, in which I had said I would share with you a few techniques that are part of my “signature” sound, the sounds that I am known for. Let me say that these are in no way original creations of mine, but since only a few guitarists use them, I’ve made them my sound.

Volume swell. Simply put, a volume swell takes away the initial “attack” or the sound of the finger or pick striking the string/s, leaving a sound that’s akin to a violin or flute. It’s easy to do on a Strat because there is only one volume control and it’s close to the strings: wrap your little finger on the knob, turn it all the way down, strike a string (or more), then turn the knob up. It takes some practice to do this, but it’s really very simple once you get the hang of it. It’s not as easy to do on other models like the Les Paul, and it is impossible on acoustic-electric guitars that have the volume control on the side. For these, a volume pedal (pictured at right) is necessary: simply turn off the volume, strike a string, then pedal up. It’s especially satisfying with the acoustic guitar because it’s such a foreign sound to the instrument and listeners really don’t know what to make of it.
Harmonic slap. I learned this from Phil Keaggy (well, not personally; I saw it in his DVD). Again it’s simple but it takes practice to perfect: just slap the strings with one finger of your right hand (the strongest one, which is not necessarily the forefinger) about 12 frets (that is, one octave) from the chord you are currently fretting. You’ll get harmonics (a chimy, bell-like sound that’s one octave higher) of the whole chord, plus a percussive rap. You can try slapping over other frets (especially the 5th and the 7th) until you get a harmonic, and I find that it actually differs from guitar to guitar. Electric guitars will naturally give out the most harmonics, and they tend to be more complex. Acoustic guitars, however, can still give great harmonics.
Note-for-note harmonics. I already mentioned harmonics in the previous blog entry, but I also said it is such a rich sound that it will take another entry to explain it. In the last entry we just discussed the plain harmonics that can be coaxed out of the 12th (the strongest ones), 5th and 7th frets, but these give only a limited number of notes. In actuality you can get harmonics from any note, and you do this by damping a string exactly 12 frets higher from any note with the forefinger of your strumming hand and then striking the string with another finger in the same hand (I use my pinky; Philip Tarroja, who showed me this technique but would not teach it to me, uses his ring finger; Phil Keaggy uses his thumb). It’s a little tricky to master this since you need to look at where you are placing your right hand, leaving your left hand to itself. A little mastery of the fretboard is thus essential.

Natural effects

2006-02-23T14:53:00.000+08:00

Unlike the electric guitar whose sound lends itself to being modified, distorted, and morphed until it is sometimes unrecognizable as a guitar, there’s only so much you can do with an amplified acoustic guitar in terms of effects before you lose its essence as an acoustic instrument (that is, the sound it creates when it’s unplugged). I find that while modulation effects like chorus and flanger can do wonders to fatten up and give dimension to an acoustic, they can also weaken the sound and turn it to mush if too much is put in the mix. I’m no purist, but I believe there’s still no sound like an acoustic guitar’s, which is why it’s my main instrument to begin with.

Having said that, I do like to find ways to change the sound of my acoustic without having to resort to effects. After years of playing I have found ways to make my guitar sound like other instruments using some simple techniques that even beginners can employ and quickly add to their arsenal:

Pizzicato violin. Mute the strings by placing the edge of your right palm (or left, if you’re left-handed) right on the bridge nut, giving it the classy pizzicato sound a violin makes when it’s plucked instead of bowed (if you don’t know how a pizzicato sounds, give a listen to the third verse of the Glen Frey song “Lovers’ Moon”). This is also good for getting a “power chord” sound when you strum the bass strings.
Snare drum. When you play chords, leave some beats muted by holding and damping the strings with your fretting hand as you continue to strum. This gives the impression of a snare drum, which is especially useful when you are the lone instrumentalist as it adds a percussive sound to the music.
Bells and chimes. When you damp the strings with your fretting fingers over certain areas of the fingerboard, you get harmonics, a sweet sound that evokes delicate bells and chimes. The strongest harmonics are over the 12th fret, followed by the 5th and 7th frets. There are some harmonics on the 17th and 19th frets but they’re harder to coax out, and they’re practically the same as the harmonics on the 5th and 7th frets. To get the harmonics, place a finger lightly over one or more strings in the aforementioned frets, then release it a fraction of a second after plucking. This takes some practice but the sound is so sweet you’ll never get tired of doing it. Bear in mind that harmonics, done this way, give a limited number of notes, so choose which strings you will do it in (not all six at the same time) and what chord they will go along with. In fact, now that I think about it, this will require an entire blog entry to explain, so watch out for it.
Drums. Just tap on the soundboard! Different areas of the wood give different sounds: the bottom end gives a bassy sound while the upper portions are more trebly. Also, different parts of your hand will give different sounds: use the heel of you palm for bass, the length of your fingers and/or your thumb for toms, and the tips of your fingers, especially when used in rapid succession, for snare. I find it best to use this technique as a highlight or as a fill in between passages, not for any lengthy ad libs. Nuno Bettencourt does this in “More Than Words” before the second verse kicks in.
Distorted electric guitar. Plugging an acoustic into a distortion box can yield pretty wild sounds – and not of the pleasing variety. Since a distortion does its work by boosting the guitar’s signal, you will have problems with feedback if you’re not careful (and often even if you are). What I do is simply insert a piece of paper between the strings at the bridge end to evoke that distorted sound. It won’t do much to help you play singing leads since the sound is not really boosted up, but for power chords it’s good enough.
Japanese koto or marimba. Use a pen or stick to strike your strings, bouncing rapidly for that Japanese koto or marimba sound (the rapid bouncing is actually automatic with a pen or stick). It’s easy to do on the high E string, but it takes some practice with the others strings. I don’t use this technique much, though, because it doesn’t really fit in with the kind of music I play.

There are a few other “natural effects” I do with the acoustic guitar that are really part of my “signature” sound, and not to be selfish, I will share these with you in the next blog entry. I reserved them as they are the ones that make people sit up and notice the acoustic guitar player instead of just the singer or (gasp) the “lead guitarist.”

Last picture

2006-02-20T16:40:00.000+08:00

Here’s another picture taken at the Lovapalooza event last February 11. We had just come from our gig at Taboan and were resting at BluGré Coffee (and waiting to get paid) when Mirror photographer Bert Tomas snapped this photo.
Another photographer was also taking pictures, which is why Ellen and I are looking the other way while Kukie is looking straight into Bert’s lens.

Unfortunately this is also the last picture we’ll have together as 220. Kukie (the one at left) has taken leave since she will be concentrating on her studies. She’s a senior nursing student and she needs to focus on graduating at the end of this semester. It’s hard to let her go, but more important things need to be taken care of. Bye, Kukie, it’s been great playing guitar beside you all this while.

Picture-pretty

2006-02-13T10:22:00.000+08:00

Here are the voices of 220: Kukie (left) and Ellen. This was taken right after sound check at Taboan, Matina Town Square, for last Saturday's Lovapalooza. Picture-pretty, these two are, and some of those in the audience moved up close during our gig to take pictures of them. But voice and good looks aren't their only strong points: Kukie and Ellen are committed Christians and want to use music as the avenue to spread God's love. That's what 220 is all about!

Lovapalooza

2006-02-13T09:20:00.000+08:00

As I had been writing here the past two weeks or so, 220 was slated to perform during the Davao City leg of CloseUp Lovapalooza at Matina Town Square last Saturday, February 11 (the same event was happening at the same time in Manila, Cebu, and Angeles). Notice I said “during,” not “at”: while the event was indeed Lovapalooza, we actually played at what I call the “sideshow” to the main event. There were two stages at MTS: the main one, rigged just for the event, in front of BluGré Coffee, and the “minor” one which was the regular stage at the Taboan. The main stage was where the “national celebrities” like Rivermaya, Rachelle Ann Go, Sheryn Regis, and others whose names escape me now performed. Taboan was for the “locals,” which were 220, IVPlay, and u.no.me.

Anyway, in spite of an early evening downpour there was a huge crowd at MTS, and Taboan itself was filled to the rafters. It was our first time to perform there, so the large turnout made me a little nervous. It didn’t help that the sound check that afternoon didn’t really work out too well: the sound tech couldn’t give me the right mix, and my guitar, which had been plugged directly into the mixer, kept booming when I played some low notes. Finally they gave me an acoustic guitar amp, but it sounded worse so I ended up turning it off and resigning myself to relying on what sound the tech could give me. Fortunately, after sound check I decided to twiddle with the amp, and I discovered that the graphic equalizer switch had been turned off. When I flipped it and tweaked the equalizer, I got a decent sound – still not quite satisfying, but better than what I was getting minutes before.

After dinner at BluGré (the Lovapalooza organizer, Gatchi Gatchalian, is the owner of the café) we went straight to Taboan to make it to the 7 p.m. start. We sat and waited… and waited… and waited. At 7:30 we were becoming restless and so we asked the production people what the holdup was, and we were told that the emcee was still hosting the main event and we had to wait for him to start our side of the show. After countless assurances that we were about to start, we finally made it to the stage at 8:30, an hour-and-a-half later than the set time.

I was already a little frazzled at this point from all the waiting, but we still managed to pull off a good first set. The guitar sound was decent, the microphones were clear, and the people were appreciative. We started off strong with “Change The World” with Ellen on vocals, then “Cool With You” with Kukie. After “True” and just before singing “Shakespeare In Love” I read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and dedicated it to my wife Dadai, who unfortunately had left her seat to talk with the sound guy about improving my sound. She heard me, though.

We had been given 45 minutes for each set so we were surprised when a production assistant flashed us a “one more last song (sic)” sign after the fifth number. So after singing only six songs we headed downstage, and I didn’t know if I would be happy or angry about that. On the one hand, doing only six songs meant less effort on our part; on the other hand, we wanted this Taboan debut to be good because we’re looking at playing there regularly.

The next band was IVPlay, a regular at Taboan, but they, too, were cut short after singing only a few songs. That’s what happens when an event starts late, we told each other. We then gave our last set, but this time my guitar sound degenerated into a thin, trebly mush that felt like it was coming out of a sardine can. We sang about eight songs before we were told to stop, and so all in all we performed for about an hour. In a way that was good because we were paid the same amount for working half the time, but again, we felt we were a little shortchanged because we wanted to give a strong show.

Lessons to be learned? Well, again I see that amplifying an acoustic guitar is more difficult than it seems, especially when the sound tech is used to amplifying mainly electric instruments and when the sound system is geared for electric guitars. I’m now seriously thinking of getting myself an acoustic simulator, probably a Behringer AM100 Acoustic Modeler that I saw at Perfect Pitch the other day. I’ll test it first and post my thoughts on it later.

Another lesson is to be prepared for late starts particularly for special events like Lovapalooza. Delays are perhaps part of the package when you have so many “stars” and “wannabe stars,” and maybe there’s nothing we can do about it. Next time we’ll just relax and wait… and wait… and wait…

2006-02-08T22:46:00.000+08:00

When my wife and I went to the Yamaha music store to get my DL4 the repair guy was out to lunch, so while waiting I grabbed a shiny black Fender Stratocoustic and played a few tunes. Like the one I tested at Perfect Pitch the other week, the action on this one was a little high, but it was still playable.

As it turned out, my first impression was correct: the unplugged sound was thin and tinny, but when I plugged it into a proper acoustic guitar amp it sounded like a real acoustic guitar.

This picture, by the way, was taken by Dadai with her Nokia 6230i which has a 1.3 megapixel camera. Not bad, eh?

Back in the loop

2006-02-08T12:41:00.000+08:00

I went to Yamaha over the lunch break (theirs, not mine, since I don’t report for work until 2 p.m.) to get my DL4. I tested it and it works fine now, and I’m excited to use it in our gig on Saturday. Apparently a power surge at the church caused a glitch/loose connection, so I’ve got to be a little more careful where I plug in. I think there’s also a problem with the church building’s wiring: my pastor told me that last Saturday morning the lights went crazy in the offices, and so perhaps some repair work needs to be done there. Me, I’m just hoping it doesn’t happen again.

Over the past weeks since my DL4 went on the blink I’ve been thinking how little I’ve been using it. One of the reasons is the Christmas break which we spent in Manila to be with my family (mother, siblings, and lots of nephews and nieces). But I think the main reason is simply that I haven’t been inspired to play loops lately. I hate to admit it, but I was in a rut and I didn’t really want to get out of it. I was playing guitar, but I wasn’t practicing my loops, and as far as the band is concerned, that’s bad.

I guess it was also good that the DL4 was fried for a while because now I miss it and can’t wait to do loops tonight when I get home.

DL4 update

2006-02-07T17:39:00.000+08:00

I called the Yamaha repair center just now and was told that my Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler has been fixed. It was just “a loose connection,” Danny the repair guy said. And just in time, too: my band 220 is playing at this Saturday’s Lovapalooza event at Matina Town Square here in Davao city, and I had been afraid we’d be playing with a crippled rhythm section (that is, me on DL4’d acoustic guitar). Now we’re complete and raring to go!

Acoustic Strat

2006-02-06T23:39:00.000+08:00

Perfect Pitch ranks way up there in my “I like it!” meter because it’s the only music store here in Davao City (and maybe even in Manila) that lets people play its instruments without setting a time limit. For its staff, every person is a prospective customer, so they let us hold, handle, and play the guitars to our hearts’ content. I’ve always hated stores that put guitars out of reach of the customers and whose staff are hard to talk to; when they do let you play, they’ll give you the eye to make it clear you should be putting the guitar back now, if you please. At Perfect Pitch, the staff will even set up everything for you and encourage you to keep playing.

One night last week I had a meeting at SM City Davao, and when it ended I saw that I still had about 20 minutes before the mall closed. Since it had been a long time since I was at Perfect Pitch, I decided to rush up to the second floor store to check out what was new. When I got there I saw a slew of new axes, most of them China-made Fender Squiers. But I was hearing some live acoustic music, so I went farther in and saw that a man about my age was playing an acoustic guitar (“Time In A Bottle” by Jim Croce, if I remember correctly). It wasn’t him and what he was playing that caught my attention, however: on the wall, along with other acoustic guitars (it was actually strange to see Perfect Pitch carrying so many acoustics, it being more of an electric guitar store), were a Fender Stratocoustic and Telecoustic.

First, a flashback. Back in 1992 when I was getting married I bought a “Stratocoustic” built by RJ Guitars, a local maker that had a spotty record at best. It was similar to the one I saw at Perfect Pitch, but it had no pickup and its headstock was more stylized in a metal sort of way. It wasn’t very well built but I actually used it quite a lot, and it was with it that I discovered that God had given me the gift of worship-leading. With no pickup I had to rig ways to amplify it, including, believe it or not, sticking a cheap small microphone into the soundhole. Sadly, I eventually lost that guitar when it developed a crack in the soundboard starting from the soundhole going up to the neck joint.

The real Fender Stratocoustic and Telecoustic are much better made, of course. The country of origin is China, I think, although when they were originally introduced in 2000 they were apparently US-made (see a Harmony Central news article and a nice picture here). The original also had solid spruce tops, but I doubt that the ones at Perfect Pitch, priced at around 18,000 pesos (about 346 dollars), are similarly outfitted. At that price they’re probably laminated spruce.

Anyway, as their names denote, the Stratocoustic and Telecoustic are shaped like Stratocasters and Telecasters. They are also thin and have fiberglass backs and sides, which make the guitars light but also happen to give them a rather thin sound unplugged. The necks are standard Strats and Teles, but the action on the guitars on display could use a lot of setting up.

I picked up the black Stratocoustic and began playing with the other guy, who at that point was playing a regular blues line. Like I said, the unplugged sound was rather thin, but when the Perfect Pitch sales guy plugged it into an acoustic amp, I was floored. It sounded very acoustic, kinda like my own Ibanez AW100CE, although I had to tweak the equalizer a little more to get a better sound. It wasn’t thin or tinny at all, and while it wasn’t woody, it still sounded airy and bright.

It was too bad that I had only a few minutes to spend at the store, but those minutes were enough to tell me this guitar is good. With a little setting up it could be a great guitar, and its shape would certainly turn heads in gigs. Of course not all acoustic players will like the Strat look, but if you’re an electric player looking to play acoustic, or if you’re an acoustic player who wants to rock out, the Stratocoustic or Telecoustic may be for you. The unplugged sound is not really performance level, but it’s useful for practice since you can hear yourself without having to plug in.

I would suggest stringing it with extra lights, maybe .011s or even .010s, so you’d really get the perfect mix of acoustic sound and electric feel. If I had one I would probably even have a pickup installed at the sound hole, and then bore two holes in the soundboard to install a volume control and switch so I could then flip between acoustic and electric on the fly. Yeah, like a Parker Fly, only cheaper.

Out of the loop

2006-02-02T16:56:00.000+08:00

I was doing some loops with my Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler in preparation for praise and worship at church last Sunday when I noticed that the recorded sound was distorted. I tried it a few more times, and when the problem persisted I decided to reset the unit (pressing on the two outermost buttons while powering up). That seemed to solve the problem, and I jammed with myself for a few minutes. Suddenly I heard a small pop, and my sound died. At first I thought I had unplugged something with my feet, so I checked all electrical connections. When that still didn’t produce a sound, I jiggled the cords – still to no avail. I checked my DL4’s connections and found them all solid, so I began to panic: what if the problem was with my gadget? I frantically tried other power adapters, and my worst fear was confirmed: my DL4 had somehow been damaged, and it wouldn’t power up.

The unit is now at the repair center, and I’m hoping it will get fixed. Meanwhile, my band 220 is preparing for a gig on February 11, and I’m not sure if we can make it. As I have been saying, the loop is essential to our sound, and without it our music may be a little thin. Oh, I’m confident in the voices of Ellen and Kukie, but I’m apprehensive that we may not be able to give a good show without our trademark instrumentals, especially since the gig is Lovapalooza, a Valentine party that will try to break its own world record on having the most number of couples kissing at the same time. I’m thinking the people will be in a party mood, and from an instrumentalist’s point of view, something livelier would be in order. A looper seems to be essential.

But who knows? Maybe our music would be accepted even with just two voices and one guitar. And I may end up enjoying myself more because I would be free from having to worry about think of nailing a loop perfectly. Just playing the guitar with two great singers singing – that might be a slice of heaven right there!

Take your pick

2006-01-26T15:07:00.000+08:00

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

2006-01-18T11:27:00.000+08:00

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 Guita r 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.

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.
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

2006-01-11T11:10:00.000+08:00

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

2006-01-02T07:07:00.000+08:00

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!!!

2006-01-01T00:01:00.000+08:00

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

Reunion

2005-12-30T14:32:00.001+08:00

Sorry for not posting for the last two weeks. I had been in Manila with my wife and son to spend the holidays with my mother and siblings, the first time we’ve been together on Christmas since 1990 (or was it 1991?). With my eldest brother Arnel and his family living in Los Angeles and me and my family living in Davao City, reunions are few and far between, so we were glad when my brother scheduled a homecoming with his wife and all four boys for Christmas. Above is s a picture of the entire family, together for the very first time.

Getting back on the topic of music, Arnel co-wrote a song with his high school classmate Dodjie Simon as a surprise birthday gift to his wife Agnes. Arnel says he thought of the lyrics while driving down Santa Monica Boulevard while Dodjie came up with the tune while driving along Roxas Boulevard. The song is called “Tanging Ikaw (You Alone),” and Dodjie tapped Noel Cabangon to both sing and play guitar in the recording. My wife Dadai did the CD’s artwork, and the result was a great gift to a great woman.

Here are the lyrics, and maybe in the future my brother will allow me to post the recording here as well:

TANGING IKAW

Mula nang tayo ay nagkalayo
Namalas kong ikaw ang tanging nasa puso ko
Sa bawat oras ay ika’y laman ng isip ko
Ikaw nga ang lahat sa buhay ko.

Minsa’y nawalay sa isa’t isa
Na tila hindi na habang buhay magkikita pa
Sadyang iniwan ko’ng lahat sa aking munting mundo
Upang mapalapit lamang sa iyo

REFRAIN

Maipipinta ko ba ang buhay na wala ka
Kung bawa’t guhit ko’y mukha mo ang nakikita?
Bawa’t titik at himig ang tinig mo’ng naririnig
Pagka’t tanging ikaw ang buhay ko, Sinta.

Ako’y dayuhang naglakas-loob
Na iwanan ang ating bayang pinagmulan
Pagka’t tanging ligaya ng aking buong puso
Sadyang sa iyo ko lang matatanto.

Titik ni Arnel Joaquin
Musika at areglo ni Dodjie Simon
Inawit at ginitara ni Noel Cabangon

That Keaggy thing

2005-12-15T14:03:00.000+08:00

After John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the person who influenced me the most as a guitar player and musician is Phil Keaggy (pictured at right, taken by my friend Sean Thomas Bickerton). And I say “after” only as a matter of chronology, because in truth Phil Keaggy has influenced me more than the two Beatles ever have.

I still remember the first time I heard his music: it was 1984, and I was at the Quezon City home of my then-new discipler Philip Tarroja (the director of Campus Crusade for Christ in UP Diliman). He put on an LP of Phil Keaggy’s “What A Day” album and went directly to the title track, and I was immediately captivated by the catchy intro, the Beatle-esque style of the song, and the McCartney-ish voice of Keaggy. Not to mention the incredible guitar playing! The lyrics were also smart and appealing, particularly the line “… and brother Tom, without a doubt” which played on the “Doubting Thomas” theme. After that song Kuya (older brother to you non-Filipinos out there) Philip played the rest of the album, and I was hooked for life.

Later on Kuya Philip lent me a tape of “What A Day” and another one of “The Master And The Musician,” Keaggy’s first instrumental album which is one of my favorites to this day. I was also able to buy a few other Keaggy albums, “Play Thru Me,” “Ph’lip Side,” and “Town To Town,” and over the next six years I played those tapes over and over and tried to copy Keaggy’s riffs and emulate his style. I finally gave up on the former and settled for the latter when I realized I wasn’t talented enough to play blazing leads and complicated fingerstyle and everything in between. All I could do was try to sound a little like him, and as many Keaggy fans say, I aspire just to be able to play his mistakes.

Because I played my five tapes practically daily for six years they literally died on me. They were in such bad shape that I wasn’t able to bring them with me when I moved to Davao City in 1990. The next decade was a drought to me Keaggy-wise, broken only when my sister in Canada sent me a couple of CDs (“Time 1” and “Time 2”). Unfortunately I didn’t have a CD player at the time and so I had to wait a little longer before I could fully enjoy them.

It wasn’t until last year that my Keaggy collection began to grow, courtesy of a friend in the US who has sent me quite a number of CDs over the past months. He also gave me the “Philly Live!” DVD and two other live DVDs, and so all in all I now have 16 albums.

I enjoy playing my Keaggy CDs and DVDs, but the greater enjoyment is in playing my guitar and realizing how much I have improved as a player as a result of listening to him. God has also used him mightily to change my life through his insightful lyrics and just by the fact that he pursues excellence as a good testimony for the Lord.

Fore more information on Phil Keaggy, the official Phil Keaggy website and the PK fans site are good places to start.

Lea!!!

2005-12-10T12:47:00.000+08:00

My sister-in-law Nelly June, aka Shaolin aka Xtremely Sexy Lady, got a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet Lea Salonga at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City past midnight December 10. She had been resting in her hotel room when a co-worker called her to say Lea was at the restaurant having late dinner with her husband, so she rushed down to see if she could meet her. The long and the short of it is that she did, and she managed to blurt out that she and her siblings (my wifey Dadai included – actually she’ s an even bigger fan than any of them) were huge fans of hers since they were children. Shaolin asked if she could have a picture taken of them together, and Lea agreed – and asked her husband to snap it! Too bad it was a camera phone shot, but it’s a good memento of an incredible chance meeting with an idol.

Fronting for Ivy Violan

2005-12-09T22:18:00.000+08:00

I’m back after fronting for the concert of Ivy Violan at NCCC Mall just a few hours ago. It was an honor for 220 to be opening for a giant in the music business, although I must admit to feeling a little intimidated at first. We played only four songs because we were given only 15 minutes: Change The World, Someday We’ll Know, Your Love Broke Through, and Go And Sin No More. It was a good gig, although we had some problems (again!) with the sound system (it felt like the sound tech wasn’t paying attention to our needs, so focused was he on Ivy Violan). But we made the most of a semi-bad situation and managed to pull off a good show.

I was Googling for Ivy Violan’s official website but couldn’t find it, so here’s a little something about her from ClickTheCity.com:

Ivy Violan started singing at age 2 with her brothers in a band called Ivy and the Velboys and hasn't rested since. She has had numerous concerts here and abroad, and her latest concert is this year’s Valentine show with Rico J. Puno at the Manila Peninsula Ballroom. Abroad, she has appeared all over the US, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. Ivy has won 11 music festival awards, a record that still has to be beaten. Among her festival awards are Grand Prize, 1991 at the 4th International Midnight Song Festival, Lahti, Finland; Grand Prize and 1st Runner-up, 1989 at the 1st ABU Golden Kite Song Festival, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Best Singer and Grand Prize, 1988 at the Asia Pacific Singing Contest, HK.

Tonight’s concert was mounted by the Asian Center for Missions (ACM), and in the first part of the show Ivy gave a testimony of how God changed her life. Powerful stuff, and she said it was the first time her family was hearing her tell the story of her life. I’ll try to secure a copy of her testimony and post it here so that you’ll hear the story straight from her.

I read the news today, oh boy...

2005-12-08T19:20:00.000+08:00

I cried when I heard the news that John Lennon had been killed in front of his apartment building in New York. It was December 8, 1980 and I was only 14, but I was already a big Beatles fan.

I was just starting to learn to play the guitar while my older brother Arnel and my best friend Tito, two years younger than me and living right next door to us, had been playing for some time already, and we had been spending many afternoons and weekends singing Beatles songs out of the red Jingle Beatles Songbook that we had bought.

Lennon and his bandmates Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were our heroes, and in our young minds no group could hold a candle to them. We memorized their songs and Arnel and Tito could play many of them on guitar; I struggled through most of them and would not be able to play them with any proficiency until a year later when I became more serious about guitar.

I was also beginning to learn how and why the Beatles broke up, and in my mind I identified with Lennon because he seemed the most misunderstood. At 14 I was beginning to feel the confusion and alienation that many teenagers go through, and in a strange way it felt better that I could sing songs like “Imagine” – with its atheistic but ultimately optimistic lyrics – to chase my blues away. Here, I thought, was a man who understood my angst. And he was wearing glasses like me!

Ironically, Lennon died at a time when he was just getting over his “misunderstood” period and was beginning to revive his career. He had just gotten back with his wife Yoko Ono, he had just released his album “Double Fantasy,” and he was doing some more recordings. In fact, he was coming home from a recording session when Mark David Chapman came up to him and shot him…

Cheap strings for cheapskates

2005-12-07T16:23:00.000+08:00

As I said in an earlier entry, you could buy really cheap strings here in Davao City, and here's the brand: Paramount. It's made in Korea and even comes with a free pick! And all that for only 129 pesos!

I actually made the mistake of buying the extra light gauge when I meant to buy light gauge, but I think I'll leave them on my guitar for a while. That's how cheap I am!

The non-gig

2005-12-02T23:40:00.000+08:00

At 10 in the morning today my phone rang and I rushed to take it. Like most people I checked the screen first to see who it was, and since my phone only showed a number (meaning it wasn’t stored in my phone under a name) I hesitated to answer it (thank goodness for caller ID)…

We now pause for a little explanation: I normally don’t answer calls from strange numbers because I figure that people should send their contact number to me first before calling me so I’d at least know who’s calling. That’s what I do; I think it’s part of good cell phone etiquette.

Anyway…

I hesitated to answer the call, but then on impulse I decided to take it. The man on the other side seemed a little hesitant, then said, “Ito ba yung sa acoustic band (Is this the person with the acoustic band)?” I said yes and asked who it was, and he said he was with a certain company (which I couldn’t hear because of a bad connection) that was having a product launch at 6 tonight and needed an acoustic performer. “At the most a duet,” he said. He also said “Dave” recommended us, and I racked my brain (still racking, actually) for the identity of this Dave since I know only two people with that name, and they’re not ones who would be in a position to recommend 220 to a business group for a product launch.

I said I had to check with Ellen and Kukie, but offhand I couldn’t commit yet because I had work up to 8 p.m. We agreed to talk an hour later while I checked our schedules, so when we hung up I rushed to text Ellen and Kukie if they were available. They said they were, which left only me as the question mark. I figured I could leave the office a little earlier, but 6 p.m. just wasn’t possible, so I decided I would ask the guy if they could move our portion to about 7:30. I felt a little snug with that compromise; after all, it was a cinch the event wouldn’t start on time, giving us enough leeway to arrive a little later.

11 a.m. came but there was no call. Then 12 noon, then 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Still no call. By 2:30 Kukie and Ellen were texting me to ask if the gig was on, and all I could text back was that the guy hadn’t contacted us yet. “Maybe they found another group when they learned we weren’t sure,” Kukie said, and I think she was right.

So here I am, gig-less. It was, in a sense, a non-gig; we were invited but we weren’t. It may be just as well since the caller mentioned they had budget for only two people at the most, meaning we would have had to split the small, unspecified amount three ways.

Oh well…

String section

2005-12-01T12:03:00.000+08:00

If the guitar is a body then the strings are its soul. And just as the soul is what communicates with God, the strings are what the guitarist connects with; there is an intimacy in this soul-God/string-guitarist relationship that is not easy to explain, so I’m not going to try.

Strings are what a guitar player gets personal with, and they’re what actually vibrate and make the guitar resonate with music. That is why it’s important to maintain your strings and make sure they’re fresh and always in tune.

But for us guitarists on a budget, this is not so easy to do. Good/branded strings are expensive, costing an average of P500 a pop, and changing them every so often can be a pain in the pocket. Third World guitarists need to extend the life of their strings, and here are some of the things you can do to achieve that:

Wash your hands before playing. Most of the dirt and grime that collect on your strings come from your hands, so before you even pick up your guitar make sure your hands are clean. Some players advise against handwashing because it softens the calluses on the fretting hand and the nails on the plucking hand; for them hand sanitizer works better. I myself don’t see any problem with washing hands and have never suffered softer calluses or nails because of it. Just the same, it’s a good idea to keep a bottle of hand sanitizer inside your guitar case for those times when you don’t have the luxury of going to the sink to wash your hands.
Clean the strings often. It doesn’t matter how long or how short you play: clean your strings before you set your guitar down. A clean cotton cloth will do: first rub it throughout the length of the strings several times, using a different part of the cloth with each pass. Then using the cloth, pinch each individual string and run up and down its length several times to clean it thoroughly. This takes care of both the surface and the underside of the strings. (Note: I use a product called Googalies (pictured above), a cloth made of microfibers that works really well in cleaning not just strings but the entire guitar. My sister-in-law sent it to me from Michigan so it doesn’t come cheap peso-wise, so if you can’t afford it a clean cotton cloth will work just as well).
Don’t expose your guitar to the elements. An extended period on a guitar stand even inside the house can add dirt on your strings, so it’s a wise idea to keep your guitar in a cabinet or in its case if you’re not going to use it for an extended period.
Play your guitar often. This sounds counter-intuitive and even downright silly but it does work. I have found that leaving a guitar inside its case for a week or so makes the strings a little brittle and rough; I think it has something to do with the oils in the guitarists’ hands that make the strings slick. The more you use your guitar – provided you follow the previous tips, of course – the longer the strings will last.

Lastly, and I don’t know if this applies to those of you in places outside Davao City, you can use non-branded strings that work and sound just as well as the more expensive branded ones. Here in Davao City there are Korean-made strings that sell for about P120 per set, and they can be found at the musical instruments section of Victoria Plaza (I can’t remember the brand but I’ll take a look later and post it here). As I said, they sound the same, and the only drawback is that they’re not as slick as branded ones. But after a few days, when the strings bed in and your natural oils work their way into them, they feel the same as D’Addario or Martin strings. I used to be able to buy unmarked strings in Manila, and when I go there about two weeks from now for a short break I will see if they’re still available.

Meanwhile, keep strumming…

Good gig pic

2005-11-30T14:57:00.000+08:00

Got this just now from Jojie Alcantara who got it from Tommy Iñigo who took pictures during the 18th birthday party of his niece Issa Gempesaw where my band 220 played Saturday night, November 26 (don’t you just hate long sentences?). Ellen at left is belting out her part in “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Croft (I can tell that’s the song from the position of the capo; the only other song we sing in that capo position is “Cool With You” by Jennifer Love Hewitt, but Ellen has no solo part there) while Kukie in the middle waits her turn.

Good gig!

2005-11-26T23:52:00.000+08:00

I’m always a little giddy after a good show, with all that energy left over from performing still flowing through my veins. Tonight is no exception: I still want to play guitar!!!

I just came from a good gig, and I’m holding out on calling it a great gig only because the sound system left much to be desired (more on that later). It was Carissa Gempesaw’s 18th birthday, and we performed at the party because about four months ago when she heard 220 play at Basti’s Brew during our first show there she liked us and subsequently asked her mom Maite (who happens to be the manager of Basti’s Brew) to hire us. Issa is a great gal, a singer, songwriter, and guitar player all rolled into one beautiful person, and it was a real pleasure performing for her (and her family) because she loves music so much.

The sound system was provided by SoundChaser again, but we were alarmed when we saw that it wasn’t the regular sound guy who was there. Our fears were confirmed when we had a hard time doing sound check because the guy apparently didn’t really know what he was doing: he couldn’t get the mix right for the instruments and vocals, and he couldn’t get the reverb to work at all. Finally in frustration I texted the owner of SoundChaser, who promised he would come with a proper technician to work the sound.

Fortunately they did come and were able to fix the sound before Issa and her group and then Carlos Castaño (more on this great guy in a later entry) and his group played; unfortunately the proper technician left as the bands were playing, leaving the first guy to fiddle around with the sound in his own uniquely inexperienced way. Still, it was better than during the sound checks, so the groups were still able to give good performances.

When 220 played I was afraid the same thing that happened in the Jollibee gig last night would happen again, that is, that the audience wouldn’t dig us and get bored with our music. Fortunately this was a more appreciative crowd and soon we were all having a good time. We also managed to pick the songs that many in the audience knew, so a lot of people were singing along with us as we performed. When you get into the zone like that time just whizzes by, and pretty soon it was time to call it a night and pack up.

That’s why I still have all this music energy flowing in me, and the only thing that will shake this off is playing more guitar. So excuse me for a while as I take my guitar off the case and strum a few…

Bad gig!

2005-11-25T23:07:00.000+08:00

We finished a gig at the local Jollibee store just a few minutes ago and I have to say it was a struggle the whole time. (For those who don’t know, Jollibee is the Filipino version of McDonald’s). Here’s a list of the things that went wrong:

1) The amplifier that SoundChaser provided was not for acoustic guitars but for electric, giving my acoustic a rather harsh and tinny tone. I think it also had some digital effects because it made my guitar sound a bit out of tune, but by the time I figured that out we were already playing.

2) My DL4 wouldn’t loop! I was doing my intro to Clapton’s “Change The World” but no sound came when I lay down my first track. Since we were already starting the song I couldn’t stop and fiddle with the thing, so I had to make do with a rather boring rendition. No leads, no solos, just plain rhythm. Good thing my singer Ellen has such a great voice it really didn’t matter.

3) Which brings us to actually the first thing that went wrong: we sang minus our other singer Kukie. Jollibee had limited budget so we felt it wasn’t worth singing as a trio because we had to split the money three-way, but on hindsight we really should have performed as a complete group even if it meant settling for a small talent fee each. We shouldn’t have sacrificed our sound just because the pay was small.

4) The people were not into our music! The crowd was mainly composed of Jollibee crew from various stores in Davao City, and they were mostly young people who liked R&B and rap and that kind of thing. Since 220 is basically pop-rock-blues they couldn’t dig it.

The last item was probably the most crucial, and I am now thinking if we have to change our lineup or stick to what we like and just hope enough people like us to keep us in the running. I’m inclined not to because a large part of why we do what we do is because we love the type of music we play. I’ve never liked R&B and rap and I think we’ll be doing ourselves and our audiences a disservice if we include songs in those styles just because some people like them.

Oh well, at least there’s still the gig tomorrow night. That’ll be the debut of Carissa Gempesaw, daughter of the manager of Basti’s Brew where we’ve played several times. Here’s hoping that’ll turn out better…

Vibes

2005-11-23T00:14:00.001+08:00

Anonymous posts this question: Is it true that the more you play an acoustic and the more stress you put on it, the better it will sound after some time? Does that mean the more stress we get and overcome, the better we’ll be?

The question touches on a truism I heard as a new guitarist many years ago and which I repeated to others for a long while before I understood what it meant: that as an acoustic guitar ages its sound becomes better and better. That is actually only part of the story, since it is not merely age that improves an acoustic: it has to be played, and played constantly, because it is not time that enhances the sound but the vibration of the guitar as it is played.

Why is this so? Luthier Rick Turner explains it this way:

The reasons for the improvement have to do with subtle changes in the stiffness and flexibility within the cellular structure of the wood, as well as the hardening of resins within the cells themselves. Also, the finish ages, changing the flexibility of the surface of the top. With lacquer, the most common finish on guitars, the finish film loses plasticizers, making the finish more brittle over time. These changes usually take many years. In the final analysis, it seems that the major change is to the wood itself, with the top leading the way as the major tone-producing element.

We know that guitar tops vibrate in distinct patterns at different frequencies; some areas (nodes) hardly move, while other areas move in and out dramatically. These Chladni patterns, named for the first researcher to do a scientific study of plate movements, are predictable and have been the subject of intense study for disciplines ranging from lutherie to rocket science (really!). It is not a stretch to see that as a guitar is played, certain nodal patterns are continually flexed and thus loosen up while other areas move little and get stiffer. Those patterns are "set" as the wood ages and the cellular structure takes on a certain memory of the vibrational frequencies most often encountered.

Some guitarists actually place their guitars against speakers that play music all day long so that the wood would vibrate constantly, thus speeding up the process. There is also a machine (pictured at right) that shakes the guitar and gives it the equivalent of years of use – in just 45 minutes! Since this machine is not available here in the Philippines, all we can do is do it the old fashioned way, that is, to just keep playing. After all, that's what guitars are for!

By the way, this improving-with-age thing only works for acoustic guitars with solid tops. If you have a guitar with a laminate or plywood top, expect its sound to worsen as the years go by, which is the main reason I always advise those who are in the market for acoustic guitars to go for quality (i.e. solid tops) even if they’re more expensive.

And yes, Anonymous, the spiritual parallel here is that the more we allow the Lord to “play” us, the better we will become.

A life lesson from guitars

2005-11-22T00:35:00.001+08:00

The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia has a great article on how guitars work. If you’re like me – and I sincerely hope you’re not – then you’d be curious as to just how that hunk of wood, steel, and plastic you cradle in your arms can produce such a sweet sweet sound.

One of the things I find amazing in a guitar – particularly a steel-string acoustic – is that its strings actually apply about 180 pounds of pressure on the structure. That means I who weigh 160 pounds can actually sit on the headstock of an unstrung guitar and the instrument would hold me up! In fact, for a guitar to produce a sound it has to have that kind of pressure on it; if not for the pressure a guitar would just be a hunk of wood, steel, and plastic.

And that’s kind of what life is all about, right? We all dream of living without pressure, without stress, without problems, but in reality these are the very things that allow us to be who we are. We are daily tested, and it is in how we respond to these tests that we see what stuff we’re made of. It is also in problems that we see how great God is. Jesus said: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (Acts 14:22).

So if you feel like you can’t stand the pressure, look at your guitar. It’s constantly under pressure, and it may even show in how it looks, but because of that pressure it’s able to make beautiful music.

Tune town

2005-11-18T00:49:00.002+08:00

I found this product while surfing the net:

The String Master Robotic Guitar Tuner is unlike any guitar tuner you’ve ever used. Our robotic technology makes String Master the easiest, most fun to use guitar tuner available. The String Master Robotic guitar tuner is the cutting edge in guitar tuner technology.

All you do is hold the String Master robotic guitar tuner on each tuning peg and pluck the string. String Master listens to the sound and its powerful gear motor actually turns the peg for you until that string is tuned to perfect pitch. (Keep reading at www.actiontuners.com)

KEEP IT IN TUNE

One of my pet peeves when I listen to bands is hearing out-of-tune guitars. Most people don't hear which individual string – or even which guitar – is out of tune, but I suspect everyone knows there's something amiss in the band. Any string that's out of tune is bound to mess up the entire band's music, and people will simply chalk that up to the group's ineptness. It is our duty as guitarists to keep our instruments in tune and to maintain it through the gig even if it means stopping between songs to fiddle with the tuning keys (more advanced players can do it in the middle of a song).

Tuning up is easier said than done, of course. Gig time means we are either caught up in the moment or are distracted by a number of big and small details (feedback, volume, cables on the ground, beer bottles flying around) – and out-of-tune strings can be the last thing on our mind. I have found that the answer is to simply listen, because when we pay attention to the music we will know what's wrong, whether it be feedback or volume or guitar strings going astray.

For years I used my ears exclusively for tuning, believing there to be no better tool than my own auditory organs to tell me when my guitar was in or out of tune. I swiped a pitch pipe from someone (I forget who it was who owned it, but he wasn't using it anymore so I simply appropriated it for myself) and used it even though its G note was broken and sounded like a goose being strangled. I also developed a system of using harmonics in the fifth, seventh, and 12^th frets because the higher pitches were easier for me.

It wasn't until last year when I decided to try out a digital tuner. I had always derided the gadget, feeling it was for those whose ears aren't good enough to know they're out of tune already. Fortunately I found a very inexpensive tuner at a music store and decided to buy it simply to see if it was any good.

To my surprise it worked like a charm: within a minute my guitar was in tune, unlike the three-minute minimum I used to spend with my pitch pipe. I found it easy to use: when the needle pointed straight up, the string was in tune. And since it was a digital tuner it automatically displayed which note I was looking for. No sweat!

Does the digital tuner make my ears obsolete tuning-wise? Of course not. Playing live often means adjusting tuning on the fly without the benefit of the tuner, and that's where one's ears are still important. But as a tool nothing beats a tuner, and I only wonder why I didn't get one sooner.

If you play guitar, I advise you to buy a good tuner; your friendly neighborhood music store should have one. It's one of the best investments you'll ever make. Believe me.

Guitarists' gallery

2005-11-16T22:31:00.000+08:00

Folks, I have an idea. Send me a photo of yourself playing guitar (kinda like the one on the right), plus a little something about yourself and what kind of music you play, and I'll post them here. It'll be our small guitarists' gallery, so that even if we never land in the pages of Guitar Player Magazine, we'll at least have something to show our kids and grandkids. So have your spouse/significant other/best friend/friendly neighborhood kodaker snap a shot of you and email it to me at jonjoaquin@gmail.com. Hey, maybe we'll get famous! Or not.

Gone loopy

2005-11-15T19:09:00.003+08:00

A lot of people get confused when they watch my band's performances. There are only three of us in 220, Ellen, Kukie, and myself (on guitar), but our sound is closer to a full band than to the regular one-guitar band/soloista. There are two reasons for this: first, Ellen and Kukie are wonderful singers who can take audiences through a whole range of emotions in one gig, and second, I have a “secret weapon” that lets me sound like I'm playing several guitars at the same time.

The secret? My Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler. Its main use, as its name denotes, is as a delay gadget, and in this function it shines and gives the guitarist a whole bag of tricks that adds dimension to the sound. It has vintage delays as well as modern ones, and by these alone the DL4 stands out and is worth the money.

But for me and many of those who use it, the DL4's claim to fame is its loop sampler. I can record a bass part, loop that, lay down a rhythm track, loop the two, lay down a few more tracks, loop them all, and then play a lead over the whole thing. This can go on indefinitely (until I get tired), and the net effect is a guitar player jamming with himself. It's great to watch, but even greater to be the one playing the entire solo ensemble.

SOLO JAM
My loopiness began a few years ago when I first saw my idol Phil Keaggy performing at a TV show (I was already a fan by then but hadn't seen any of his performances). I was floored because he appeared to be recording some parts on the fly and layering them to form a background for his solos. He sounded like a full band, complete with drums (by slapping on his Olson's soundboard), bass, rhythm and lead guitars, and vocals. And with volume swells courtesy of a volume pedal, he even spliced in some violin- and flute-sounding parts. The most jaw-dropping part was him singing into his guitar sound hole (his guitar had a built-in microphone) and looping his own voice!

Intrigued, I researched Phil Keaggy's performances and discovered he was using the Lexicon Jamman. Unfortunately by that time the Jamman had been discontinued, and when I looked at other loopers their prices immediately turned me off.

It wasn't until late last year that I began to search for a looper in earnest. That was spurred again by Phil Keaggy, whose live DVD I had just received as a gift from my sister in Canada. I searched the net for products that could let me do loops, and I found a few that weren't so expensive. Unfortunately they were not available in the Philippines, and I was forced to postpone my search once again.

Some time later an American friend, Sean, said he was going to see Phil Keaggy in concert, and I asked him to ask Phil what looper would recommend for me. Phil's answer was quick: the Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler. Hearing it from the master guitarist himself, I prayed to the Master Of All for a DL4, although I was quite sure it was a long shot. Meanwhile I researched the product and imagined myself using it.

In April I made a work-related trip to Manila, and on one of the breaks I went to the mall to check out Perfect Pitch for any new offerings. Lo and behold, on display was a DL4, and I immediately tested it. I think all the practicing I did in my mind made me something of a looper already because using the DL4 came naturally to me; pretty soon a small crowd was gathered around me, listening to me playing “I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever.”

Unfortunately I didn't have the money that time, and I had to wait until another trip to Manila the next June. It was just as well since by that time there was a sale at Perfect Pitch and my youngest brother had a P1,000 discount card, so I ended up paying P5,000 less for my DL4.

I've been using the DL4 for about six months now and it has served me well all this time. I should also say that it is what makes my band 220 even possible: as a one guitar-band we need the extra sound the DL4 makes possible. Our shows/gigs are a mix of vocals and instrumentals, and I am able to do the latter through my looper. Why don't I just tap another guitar player? Well that's really stuff for another blog entry, but the long and the short of it is that I have yet to find an acoustic guitarist who thinks and plays like I do. As long as I haven't found him or her, I'll just keep on jamming with myself.

Learning guitar

2005-11-15T14:03:00.000+08:00

Another question frequently asked of me is, “What's the best way to learn guitar?” Now that's a tough question, and I guess there are as many answers as there are guitarists in the world, living and otherwise. I don't actually presume to know the answer because the “best way” for one will be the worst for another; it depends on one's talent and inclination as well as on the amount of time one is willing to invest in learning.

There are some people for whom playing guitar is natural, while the vast majority, yours truly included, have to work hard to achieve a even a low level of proficiency. The common denominator would be practice: even the best guitar players have to practice, and it's a discipline one must practice if one is to sound good. Not being a guitar teacher, I often end up telling advise seekers to just do that: practice.

To those who really press me for an answer I give my own struggle to become a guitar player as an example. As I've said before in this blog, I started playing guitar when I was 12 but didn't get serious until I was about 15. At 12 my brother Arnel and best friend Tito taught me some chords and showed me how to strum, but I always got laughed out of our jamming sessions because I, well, sucked.

At 15 something happened that made me turn to the guitar as an emotional outlet: my father died. I wanted to rebel but I also didn't want to be destructive, and God, although I didn't know it then, turned my attention to the guitar. I began to practice furiously, and as near as I can remember these are the steps I took:

learn chords – through the chord charts inserted in Jingle Magazine
listen to records – mostly Beatles and Apo Hiking Society
play along with the records – again, mostly Beatles and Apo
play songs published in the old Jingle Magazine, particularly the Beatles edition

Soon enough I was playing better than my brother and best friend (hah!). Two years of this prepared me for the next step, but that will be stuff for another blog entry. For now, let me finish this off by saying I don't recommend to others the path I took in learning guitar because it is too long and unfocused, and it's all too easy to learn the wrong things. I have a hard time shaking off bad guitar playing habits like wrapping my left thumb over the edge of the neck and positioning my right hand diagonally over the strings instead of vertically. What my friends at Windsong say is right: PRACTICE MAKES PERMANENT, and in my case what I have been practicing has been the wrong way of playing guitar, and that's what I've kept.

If I could live my guitar-playing life again I would want to take classical guitar lessons and use that as a starting point to learn other forms of music (kinda like what Ralph Macchio's character Eugene Martone did in the 1986 movie Crossroads). So in the end, that's what I tell those who ask me what the best way is to learn guitar: TAKE CLASSICAL GUITAR LESSONS.

Comment!

2005-11-15T08:33:00.003+08:00

My friend, former classmate, fellow Beatles and Paul Simon-Ladysmith Black Mambazo fan, one-time neighbor in Davao City (though we didn’t know it and ended up not seeing each other!) and now-California resident Batjay has the distinction of being the first person to leave a comment in Jambayan. He writes:

so if i were to buy a new steel acoustic guitar, would a taylor be a good choice?

i've been looking at their website and there is a dealer near where we live. thanks for the referral - i might visit them one of these days.

kamusta na pare diyan sa davao? miss ko na ang aking favorite city.

To the first question I reply: Yes, a Taylor is a good choice for a new steel acoustic guitar if you're living in the US. My friend and pastor Jan Drayer has one and I’ve played it often enough to say it is one of the best I’ve strummed and plucked, and I’ve strummed and plucked quite a few guitars in my lifetime. And as acoustic guitars go, Taylors are relatively affordable, priced lower than some Gibsons and Martins. One of the reasons is that Taylor uses automation in some of its steps, whereas Gibson and Martin, at least on their high-end guitars, still claim to do everything by hand. Taylor also breaks tradition by installing a bolt-on neck, and later on we’ll discuss the merits and demerits of such a system. I can only wish I can afford a Taylor one of these days...

To the second question, things are fine here in Davao City. Like I said, Batjay lived here for some time in the late 1990s, having been one of the engineers who built the San Miguel Brewery in nearby Darong, Davao del Sur and the PNOC geothermal plant in Mt. Apo. Unfortunately we didn’t know we were living in the same city and were oblivious to each other’s presence. We were even in the same compound (SMB Darong) during its inauguration (by no less than President Fidel V. Ramos) in – I guess it was 1997, right, Jay? – but didn’t know it. Oh well…

Anyway, things are good here. Davao City is hosting the 2006 Asean Tourism Forum in January and things are picking up. It’s peaceful here, and anyone who gets to spend some time here falls in love with the city (if not with someone special here like I did when I met and later married my wife Dadai). Come visit…

Starter guitars

2005-11-12T16:44:00.000+08:00

Every once in a while well-meaning parents would come up to me to ask where they can buy a guitar for their kids. The first thing I ask is how much they are willing to spend, and in a way this is a rhetorical question since I have a pretty good idea what the response would be. “Oh, not much,” they would say, and when I mention figures like 5,000 or 6,000 pesos they would balk and exclaim, “Not that much!!!” So by “not much” they often mean less than 1,000 pesos, and I tell them that’s not nearly enough to get a good guitar that their kid will enjoy playing and learning in.

The thing about starter guitars is that they have to have a balance of playability and low price, but this is not easy to find – at least not here in the Philippines. Cheap guitars are, well, cheap, and this shows in how hard they are to play. Cheap guitars are made of cheap materials, cheap wood, and cheap strings, and they are made cheaply by non-craftsmen (usually carpenters in between construction jobs) who have no idea what they’re doing.

So if your child is serious about guitar, and if you really want to encourage him or her to play well, then invest some money and buy him or her a good guitar. Remember that nothing douses a child’s enthusiasm more than a bad guitar that’s difficult to play. Again in the Philippines it’s difficult to find good guitars at low prices, and in fact I even recommend that you avoid the “Buy Pinoy” syndrome for guitars because I have yet to see a Filipino-made guitar on the market that’s worth the money. What you should look for are the Korean-made ones that are being sold for between 3,000 to 6,000 pesos (hence the figure I cited earlier) in many guitar shops (including SoundChaser and Better Components in Davao City). They’re not great, but once in a while you can pick up a good one if you know how to look.

Here are some things to look for:

Good construction. Make sure it’s solidly built.
Low action. “Action” refers to the height of the strings clear off the fingerboard. Make sure the strings are low enough to be pressed without much effort.
Straight neck. To check for straightness, grasp the guitar with both hands and bring the neck up to your line of sight (looking from the bridge toward the tuning ke ys -- see photo at right). From that v iew any bow or warp would be evident. You can also do this from the other end of the guitar (i.e. from the headstock looking down into the body)

Other details like a solid top are present only in mid- to high-end guitars, so there’s no use discussing them here. We’ll devote a whole other article to them.

If you have questions about starter guitars feel free to ask. If you’re in Davao City I can even go with you to the shop to help you find that guitar.

220

2005-11-12T13:49:00.000+08:00

Here's my band 220 performing in our first self-produced show, dubbed "Jambayan," at Basti's Brew, Victoria Plaza Mall here in Davao City on July 29, 2005. From left, Ellen, Kukie, and myself.

Jambayan!!!

2005-11-12T13:48:00.000+08:00

Hello all. This is hopefully a good start to a blog devoted to one of my favorite things: guitars! I have been playing guitar since I was 12, but I did not really get serious until I was 17. I consider myself an average guitar player, but I would like to believe I play well enough to get some appreciative smiles and an occassional applause.

My current guitar is an Ibanez Artwood, AW100CE. It's a good guitar, expensive for Filipinos but a good investment since it has a solid spruce top -- which means it will sound better and better as it ages. I'd like to have a Taylor someday, and perhaps a Parker Fly on the side, but for now my beloved Irene is perfect for me.

Irene? Yes, Irene. My guitar has a name, and it took me some time to come up with one. Irene is Greek for peace, and at the time I bought my guitar I was troubled and it brought me peace. Also, Ybañez is the last name of a Cebuana friend of mine whose name is Irene, so I just made the connection.

Anyway, I hope to keep this blog as current as possible with my thoughts on guitars, guitar music, and music in general. There should be lots of pictures, too, so do drop by frequently.

Jambayan na!!!

220

2005-09-10T01:21:00.000+08:00

The band 220 is composed of Ellen Domag and Kukie Moreno on vocals and Jon Joaquin on acoustic guitar. Formed in mid-2005 in Davao City, the band plays a variety of music ranging from pop to rock, blues to folk, and everything in between. 220’s edge lies in the powerful yet sensitive vocals of Ellen and Kukie and the one-man-jams of Jon via his acoustic guitar plugged into a Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler, a multitrack looping machine.

220 has mounted two self-produced shows dubbed “JamBayan” (where the name of this blog was taken) at Basti’s Brew in July and September and plays regularly at Chico’s Music Bistro along Rizal Street in Davao City. The group also plays upon invitation.

About the members:
Ellen is a computer-aided design specialist.
Kukie is a nursing student.
Jon is managing editor of the Mindanao Daily Mirror.
All are members of All Nations Christian Fellowship.

About that name…
The most frequently asked question regarding the band is what 220 stands for. There are three answers, the first one not serious at all:

1) It’s the collective IQ of the members (100 each for Ellen and Kukie, 20 for Jon);

2) It’s the voltage output of electric outlets in the Philippines; and

3) It’s taken from Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”