Stumbling Toward God?

I usually  exclude comedy songs from my lists, because I have a hard time taking them seriously, if you know what I mean. But some of them are actually pretty entertaining so today I figured, “Why not?”

Horse Outside - Rubberbandits Warning: Vulgar. Also: Scottish.

Perform This Way - Weird Al Yankovic Not necessarily Weird Al’s best, but interesting for the back story. Apparently, when he asked for Lady Gaga’s permission, her “people” claimed that she needed to hear it first. So he went to the trouble of recording, only to be denied, which raises the counter-intuitive proposition that Lady Gaga actually has no sense of humor. However, after he posted the song and rant online, Lady Gaga gave it her blessing. I had read somewhere that after the Coolio incident, Weird Al always contacts the artist directly precisely to avoid this kind of problem. So, was this a misunderstanding, or coordinated publicity stunt? Warning: creepy weird-ass video.

Show Me Where Your Noms At – Hannah Hart & Songs To Wear Pants To This is a collaboration between some dude of whom I had previously never heard and a girl with a terrible cooking show.  That is to say, the show is about terrible cooking wherein she (allegedly) gets drunk and attempts to do a cooking demonstration with no preparation whatsoever.

God’s Away on Business – Tom Waits/Cookie Monster Tom Waits is an artist of whom I have been vaguely aware for some time now. Earlier this year I wanted to know more about him, but he has such an intimidating body of work that it is hard to know where to start. I did quite like this one though. By some coincidence, about a month later, someone put this gem together. It is actually almost a minute longer than the official video, and unfortunately, I feel it actually suffers for the added repetitiveness, but there you go.

Stores That Tell You Exactly What They Are – Break This is a song that I declined to put on last year’s list, which is a shame, because it might have been the only one actually released in the year 2010. Other than that, I think the appeal is self explanatory.

“Ladies Edition,” because after I realized that music is about attracting women, and women like, shall we say, lame music… I realized that to find anyone who is rockin’ these days, one probably has to turn to one of two groups who supposedly are not musicians merely to attract women. Namely, Christian and female artists. (Or both?) Or something. Or maybe when I am looking for music, I just tend to click on the videos that have a pretty girl in thumbnail? Whatever, I have a lot to get through here this time. Not all of these will be women, but at least a few might actually be from 2011.

Paranoid Android – Weezer A cover of a ’90s song by a band from the ’90s? I thought this would be an instant winner. Then I listened to it. They did nothing interesting with it. Also, there are no ladies in Weezer. Coincidentally, a friend pointed me to another version that someone edited together from clips of three dozen other Youtube artists. It’s amazing.

On the topic of Youtube covers, here are several that I enjoyed this year:

Smooth Criminal - 2Cellos I never realized how bad-ass cellos are.

Chop Suey – Vika Goes Wild (2009) After hearing this, it is hard to imagine that Johann System von Down ever intended it any other way.

Bad Romance – Lissie (2010) The story goes that back in 1970, Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis, unaware that he had a game that day, dropped some acid (like you do). The mistake was realized, and he went on to pitch a no-hitter. I am reminded of that story as Lissie here seems to have rolled out of bed and into the studio, hungover and wearing yesterday’s clothes, and then proceeds to OWN this song.

All I Have to Do is Dream – Lauren O’Connell Here is another entry from last year’s winner. I was sold in the very first second of this video when she sets an EBow on a piano. I was under the assumption that an EBow had to interact with the pick-ups on an electric guitar in order to work and it never would have occurred to me to try that. (I do not really understand that electromagnetic field stuff.)

Cut Here – Psychée (2010) When I found this song several months ago, I intended to mention it as basically the punchline to a post that I never ended up writing, so that is not particularly relevant anymore. Maybe you will enjoy it anyway.

Feel Good Inc. – Josie Charlwood This is easily the best solo live-looped Gorillaz cover by a left-handed redhead that I have ever heard.

On to the real(ish) stuff then, shall we? Honorable mentions first.

Rolling in the Deep – Adele (2010) That’s right, I went there. Even though this was not released in the calender year of 2010, it was still in the top 10 of Youtube’s music section at least as recently as October. I even heard this song in a grocery store in the French Alps (true story). Not exactly my cup of tea, but I feel that this is a step in the right direction for pop music; with that direction being about 40 or 50 years backwards. It is on the album 21. Her previous album was called 19. I am not sure how old Ms. Adele is, but I strongly suspect her of not being very creative with album titles. However, she has a powerful set of pipes, as they say, and I wish the best for her and the future of pop music.

Walking on Air – Kerli (2009) This came up a couple of times while listening to Pandora, and I rather liked it. I had assumed that it was some late ’80s/early ’90s electronic band, which I seem to get a lot of on there. It turns out that she is actually a sort of “Lady Gaga lite” from just a couple of years ago. I usually listen in mix mode, so I am left wondering which of my actual preferences triggered that pick, but hey, it worked I suppose.

Sail – Awolnation I was driving home one day thinking about how rock music tends to use the same handful of chords in a few standard keys and how there really are only so many possible chord progressions available. Though it seems absurd mathematically speaking, perhaps we really have run out of new variations in terms of melody and instrumentation on a practical level. And as I am thinking through this, I suddenly am hit with these pizzicato strings followed by… some stuff… and think, “Well, this is different.” I am not sure that I like it, and even less that I understand it. It seems like something that might be playing in the elevator of a mind that is descending in to madness. It is kind of fun to say though. “SAIL!”

We Don’t Need Money to Have a Good Time – The Subways I saw a reference to this band online somewhere and I had to look them up, because I had never heard of them. So I do not know how well known they are. These kids have a passion and energy that gives me hope for the next generation of musicians, perhaps for the first time. Their music is… let’s go with “not terrible.”

Burgundy – Warpaint This all-girl band was featured on Youtube sometime this year. They seem to have been influenced by the same bands that I like myself. Their songs are all kind of similar though, with haunting, faraway vocals that I find almost impossible to grab on to. I am not sure what the drummer is doing on this one as the tempo and feel change several times in a not particularly fluid manner, but I picked it because burgundy is kind of like purple.

I Will Dance (When I Walk Away) – Katzenjammer This all-girl band… plays instruments. Lots of instruments. They trade them around for different songs and play two or three at once. This song is what I would call “bluegrass”, but they also dabble in rag-time, blues, and, uh, good ol’ fashioned drinking songs? All those old time genres about which I know nothing.

So that is a lot of stuff, none of it really, you know, “great”, but what’s this?

All I Ever Wanted – The Airborne Toxic Event I know that most of my music picks are pretty crappy, and all I can say is that has been because music itself has been pretty crappy, but Oh My God. I heard this song on the radio. The actual radio. This song contains heavy adult themes that quite frankly, I am surprised the teenagers can identify with, but what do I know? Anyway, I do not want to oversell it, but I REALLY like this one. Interestingly, they have other songs on the album named All at Once and All for a Woman, so apparently they are really into totalities. Oh, and they have a female violin player, so there’s that.

Towards the end of the year (or whenever), people often mention how much they enjoy Christmas music. I always wonder what is wrong with them, because, theology aside, that crap is like sandpaper to my eardrums. It was not until this very week that I finally realized that we might not be thinking of the same thing.

It occurred to me that when people say that they like Christmas music, they probably mean Christmas carols. “Silent Night”, “O Come All Ye Faithful”, “Little Drummer Boy”, that kind of thing… sure, who doesn’t like that? (I have honestly heard multiple atheists admit a fondness.) What I was thinking of was Christmas pop music. “Holiday music” really. The drivel that they play on the radio and in stores this time of year. I would list examples of the songs that I can not stand, but it would be a very long list indeed. So let me put it this way: “White Christmas” and “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” are fine. That is pretty much it.

In particular, I realized that songs about Santa Claus are pretty obnoxious across the board. Upon further reflection, I even realized why. Santa Claus is a significant element, yet not really the “true spirit” of Christmas. As such, any song about him is almost inherently irreverent tongue-in-cheek, which is a difficult genre to do well. And of course, since there are relatively few Christmas songs to choose from, pretty much anything gets repeated play every year.

As an aside, several years ago I noticed that while Christmas songs used to be about joy and family and tradition, it seems like those released in the last twenty years or so are all about being alone and miserable on Christmas.

My point is, I know that I am all over the map religiously and politically, but can we at least keep the Christ in Christmas music?

I went to a guitar show last weekend. I had been looking forward to it for some time. I have been wanting to start collecting/investing in guitars for quite awhile now, yet I have been reluctant to pull the trigger on buying anything.

Part of the issue is that collecting and investing are not really the same thing.
Collecting means buying guitars that I personally would want to have, and probably (though not necessarily) would not want to sell. Investing in guitars is just like investing in anything else: buy low, sell high.

It is the “investing” part that is tripping me up. Last year, I bought a big book full of guitar prices. The value of guitars is a lot like cars: a 10 year old one is not worth very much; a 20 year old is worth practically nothing; but somewhere around 30 years old, it changes from “used” to “vintage” and the price starts to go up again; and at 50 years, it is worth quite a lot.

Key then is to buy something that is on the downward part of the curve and then wait ten or twenty years for the price to go up. However, every time I find something that looks good, either online or in person, the seller wants way more than my book says it is worth. Who are they kidding? Is anyone really buying vintage guitars in this economy? I would think it would be a buyer’s market.

I had been to this same guitar show last summer and been slightly disappointed. Sure there were a lot of nice guitars, especially a lot of high end and vintage guitars that you do not generally find in the average guitar shop. Yet, while they did have a number of guitar models that I was familiar with but had never actually seen in person, there was not really anything new and unusual to me like I had been hoping for.

This year, the event was at a venue much closer to where I live and I went fully planning to walk away with something. I do not know if it was the change in venue or the economy or what, but there were not nearly as many booths this year. Still, even on a casual first walk through I noticed several promising guitars. A few more when I really started looking carefully at each vender. Most were again in the way more than I would want to spend range, but not all. I could go into details, but I doubt it would mean much to most readers.

There was one interesting guitar that I kept coming back to in my mind. Great guitar? No. Nice looking guitar? It was actually in pretty bad shape cosmetically. Worth what the asking price? Debatable. But an interesting guitar. A guitar that wants to be played, not kept in a case in the closet. A guitar with character.

However, for a number of reasons (or should I say, “excuses”) that do not seem that important now, I ended up not buying it, and walked out empty handed and more than a little annoyed with myself. I did not even take note of the dealer’s name, which might have left open the possibility of buying it online.

This is not so much about buying a guitar or not buying a guitar. I already have a lot of guitars. I also in general struggle with buyer’s remorse and just plain “clutter” way more often than I have regret over NOT buying something. This is really about having an idea and not following through. It is about not being able to make a decision in the moment. I keep thinking about that guitar that I am never going to have and it reminds me of so many other opportunities that I have missed because of my overall lack of CERTITUDE.

To add extra an extra layer of futility: after spending hours walking around and dreaming of possibilities, did I play any guitar when I got home? I did not.

I usually feel guilty every time that I write a post about music, because I imagine that it is not why folks come here. “Ugh. Another post about guitars? I’m not reading that.” Yet today I am of the mood that they should be happy that I am posting anything at all, jerks! (timoth is good with the people.)

I have been having some internet difficulties again lately, which naturally means picking up the guitar a little more often. These days I have been focusing more on instrumentals, because a while ago I had an idea for a Purple Robe project that would consist of a series of short (one to two minutes) guitar instrumentals in wildly different styles to try to create different moods. Why? I do not know… is there a good reason “why” behind anything the Purple Robe has ever done? Basically just to see if I can, I guess.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I came up with one piece that I think is kind of “piratey”, and another that, though I am not really sure how to describe the style, sort of reminds me of a summer breeze. There is also a “Chinese” flavored one that has been kicking around for a couple of years, and a couple of other snippets as well. None of these are anything close to full songs of course. And just because *I* think that they sound like a particular genre that I know nothing about, does not make it so.

I am not sure why I even bother to mention this, because I think we all know that I am never actually going to finish it. In fact, with my tendency toward total secrecy when working on a project, merely bringing it up pretty much guarantees that I will not finish it. Why all this mucking about in genres of which I know nothing anyway? You know who does that? People far more talented than I, and it still results in the poopiest music of their careers.

Then I somehow got to thinking that one problem with my body of songs is that none of them have a really “killer riff”. I do not like to think of my self as merely a “chord strummer”, in the sense that you often see someone in at a coffee house, open mic or church simply strumming basic open chords as accompaniment for the vocal. (Although some of my songs actually are exactly that.) Still, for whatever reason, I do not really like to move my fretting hand a lot when playing guitar, so my style does boil down to mostly picking or strumming chords, even if it is not the most common or obvious form for a given chord.

Technically speaking, a “riff” is any repeated musical passage, so even a simple chord progression qualifies. But what we are talking about here are KILLER riffs. I am thinking of “Rebel Rebel”, “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, “Iron Man”, “Oh Pretty Woman”, “Boys Don’t Cry”… I could go on and on, but hopefully for at least one of those songs, the mere mention of it created a distinct musical passage in your mind. A killer riff gives a song identity*.

A killer riff should be short, often only one or two bars, although it can be longer as even some of my examples above are. It should contain notes of a scale and not just a chord. (Until very recently I thought that a scale and a key were basically the same thing, and even now knowing that they are not, I am still a little fuzzy on the distinction and the purpose of each, but even so.) A riff is different from a melody, although they can be melodic. It should be a “hook” rather than repeating through most of the song, which I think makes it more of a “rhythm” than a “riff”, though that is a somewhat ambiguous and possibly artificial distinction.

So what to do I have? “Wasting” has a neat little guitar thing, although it is really just two alternating chords with a little flourish in the middle. “Art of Letting Go” has a riff that I feel gives the song identity, but it does not have notes that you could hum or scat sing or whatever like the above examples. “SoPoard” has a nice repeating phrase, although it is quite long and slow. I think my riffiest of riffs is from a song called “The Wait” which no one has ever heard. [I should totally finish that one, you would like it I think. Well, maybe not if you have not liked any of the other ones. Nevermind.] Yet even that one underlies most of the song, which was against one of my conditions.

So, it is as I said: no killer riffs.

*The leader of a band that I used to be in was always talking about giving songs “identity”, by which he usually meant taking a perfectly good groove and changing it around so that it messed with people’s expectations (including the rest of the band) and quite frankly, now sucked. That is not what I mean here.

Anyway, when I do blog, it is rarely about God at all. Usually it is about music. This is no different. Also, I should probably mention in advance, there is not going to be any payoff to this post. You have been warned.

I have been playing guitar again lately, or trying to anyway. (Mostly as a means to avoid something more important that I should be working on, but whatever.) I have also been thinking a lot about my “greatest hits” (in the loosest possible sense of the phrase). Basically, I have written a lot of songs over a lot of years and am now wondering which songs would someone expect to hear if I was doing a show? Not just a simple open mic night where you play three songs that no one has heard before and everyone in the place is either politely waiting for their turn to play or ignoring you entirely (or both), but an actual concert where people are coming to see me specifically. Answer: I do not have any hits. I do not have any fans. There are maybe four people on the planet who I would expect to even be able to name any of my songs off the top of their head. Most people that I know have not heard any of my music, and a good number of my songs have never been heard by anyone at all. In particular, the stuff that I have written in the last seven years, which have been few and far between, a lot of it is unfinished, most of it is crap, and very very little ever heard by anyone but me.

Yet I am reluctant to put any serious effort into new material when so much of my old stuff, “the classics”, remain unrecorded, intangible, unavailable. So then I invert the question: which of my songs do I wish that other people knew? Of course, then I just want to say, “All of them!” But there are a few I can throw out; that one was dumb; that one never really worked; that one was more of sketch than an actual song. Then I get to the pile of unfinished works that were solid ideas that I just never had the tools to execute the way I imagined them.

There is one song in particular that I have been struggling over. It is called “A Secret”, not that I expect that to mean anything to you. At the time I considered it the pinnacle of my guitar playing. Most of my songs are pretty simple. There’s the verse part, the chorus part, either a bridge or a solo but almost never both (sometimes neither), maybe a little instrumental transition between chorus and verse. Three or four pieces is all. But this song had a whole bunch of pieces. I actually wrote it by recording a lot of parts to a phrase sampler and stringing it all together, layers loops and all. It is actually in G Mixolydian mode as well, which is unusual for me, not that I knew anything about modes back then, it just worked out that way. Yet it is not one of my hits. I do not remember the words, although I do have them written down somewhere. It is not one of the songs I play on the those occasions when I do pick up the guitar. You do not need to know it, I will not be playing it live.

Not that I will be playing anything else live for that matter. However, going back to the open mic idea, it occurred to me that Youtube is, in a sense, the world’s largest open mic. Better in some ways. There is no three song limit, and you are only watching because you want to. Of course, the down side is that it is not real… So I set up a channel a while ago as a way to get my music out there… and that is as far as I went. My playing style does not lend itself well to “pick up the guitar, face the camera, and go!” As I may have mentioned in the past, my songs sound like they want the full band treatment. I often lament that now I finally have the resources to at least fake the other parts for demo purposes, but lack the overall passion for music that I once had. Part of it is that songs written as an angsty teenager are harder to take seriously at 32. In retrospect, I was surprised at the high number of my songs that have lyrics where every line or couplet starts with the exact same word or phrase. U2 has several songs like that, and the Cure have a few as well, which is probably why I thought I could get away with it, but now it seems rather uninspired.

As for making videos, I have come up with concepts to go with a number of my songs, but seriously, if in all this time I could not be bothered to even record anything, what chance is there that I am going make them visually interesting as well?

Earlier this year I set out to find a song released within the calender year of 2010 that I actually liked.

I failed.

I realize that I am getting old, and I also know that probably for as long as there has been recorded music, one generation has been saying to the next, “How can you listen to this trash? That’s not music, it’s noise!” I wonder if we have reached the point for the first time in history where we instead look kids in the eye and ask, “How can you listen to this trash? It’s so boring!” Sad times.

At some point I started listening in my truck to a CD by the band Hole that I received for Christmas one year back when they were popular. (Was Hole ever “popular”? Back when they were on the radio anyway.) It was surprisingly good. Certainly better than what is essentially a glorified vanity project by the widow of a music legend has any reasonable expectation of being. (I miss the ’90s.) I particularly recommend Boys on the Radio.

I did, however, manage to keep a list of songs that I found entertaining this year, even if they weren’t actually released this year:

The Funeral – Band of Horses (2006) There was a show called FlashForward this year that took a fairly interesting premise and a generally talented cast and threw it all away with unlikeable characters making mind-boggling poor decisions. It was mercifully canceled, but I watched the whole season, perhaps out of a combination of boredom and morbid curiosity.  Yet somehow, the final scene set to this song made me want MORE. (Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good montage?)

Walk Like a Zombie – The Horrorpops (2005) First let me say that I really do not understand the whole “zombie” phenomenon. A lot of people (a lot of geeks anyway, a category with which I usually identify) seem to think that zombies are inherently awesome, but I simply do not see the appeal. Never-the-less, this song is excellent. I find it to be the absolute perfect blend of macabre and old-timey goodness.

Those songs are several years old though. Since it is my blog and my list, and who honestly cares or even reads this crap at all, I decided to bend the rules and consider songs released in the final months of 2009.

Until the Day You Die – Abney Park (2009) I like to drop the name “Abney Park” now and then with the assumption that no one has any idea who they are. Perhaps I have done it often enough by now that some of you might have bothered to look them up, perhaps not. In any case, speaking of “old-timey goodness”, this song has it in spades.

Since I have previously established that today’s music is boring, I find myself drawn to cover songs and remixes. In that vein we have:

Bohemian Rhapsody -The Muppets (2009) If you happened to be wondering if The Muppets are still relevant in the twenty first century, the answer is “Yes”.  I don’t know what else to say, if for some reason you haven’t seen this yet, you absolutely need to stop what you are doing and correct that right now.

United States of Pop 2009 (Blame it on the Pop) - DJ Earworm If you are at all interested in mash-ups, this guy is a master. This song is so much more than the sum of its parts… which is truly a feat considering that many, if not most, of those parts are downright unlistenable on their own.  (Although if you happen to feel that the end result is likewise unlistenable, I can respect that.)

The Lovecats – Tanya Donnelly & Dylan in the Movies (2009) Listening to Hole got me thinking about another female fronted ’90s band, Belly, and wondering what Tanya Donnelly was up to these days. It turns out that she is collaborating with some unknown band to really sultry up an old song that, despite being a fan of The Cure, I had never liked in the first place. So that’s something.

My pick of the year for “2010″ is:

White Noise – Lauren O’Connell (2009) Remember what I said about girls and acoustic guitars? Nevermind, I don’t either. I discovered this songstress via the much more popular Pomplemoose, who use the same “videosong” production technique*,  but I like this song more. It is a bit “folky” and a  rather slow starter, but what it lacks in face-melting rock, I think it more than makes up for in bowed banjo solo!

*Which clearly influenced my own Christmas song, which I don’t know, maybe you missed?

Day 1:
Sick of the bland, overproduced drivel that I hear everywhere. Does not anyone know how to rock anymore? Listen up kids, I am going to teach you how to rock:

Step 1:
Turn up the drive on your amp. It might also be labeled “Gain”. What, I lost you already? For the love of… Alright, let me back up.

Step 0:
You will need an electric guitar for this. Look, they have been around since before your parents were born; they are really not that hard to come by. I know they are not as portable as acoustic guitars but… what’s that? Will they still help you get laid? Of course. Probably. Maybe. You know what, I am not sure actually. Interesting point. You probably do attract a much higher caliber of groupie with your acoustic ballads as a matter of fact, but you did not become a musician just for the ladies, right? I mean there is also the… uh… you know the… look, just humor me for a minute here, will you?

Step 2:
Play faster. Or harder. Or both. You know what, forget it. I already lost this fight, I can tell.

Day 2:
Looking for a website that will introduce me to the latest and greatest upcoming artists. Lots of websites and blogs that seem to have this goal in mind, but the results are bland, unoriginal, uninspiring.

The website purevolume.com showed some promise, but after listening to a number of the bands in the “rock” category, I gradually came to the unsettling realization that they all sounded rather the same. Not just stylistically, I mean that it almost seemed as if all the bands actually had the same lead singer. Weird. Upon further reflection, I finally realized… they all sound like the guy from Relient K. Have none of these kids hit puberty yet? Where are the MEN?

I speculated, judging purely based on their man-boyish vocal quality, that all of these guys are white, middle class, college boys. Listen up kids, a college education is NOT going to help your music career. You need to drop out of school, live in a van on a steady diet of booze and cigarettes, and then see my guide on how to rock.

Day 3:
Disappointment at the waste of potential.

I never saw the movie Avatar, because, well, I just did not care. Anyway, when the music video came out for Stylo by Gorillaz, I concluded that Avatar could not possibly be any more visually stimulating than this. (Also it was shorter, and free to watch.) The song, unfortunately, was rather forgettable. As it happens, Gorillaz released another video just this week. All I can say is that I wish that Gorillaz would only make some decent music to go with these mind-blowing videos. Do not get me wrong, it is not like Black Eyed Peas bad or anything, it just is not very interesting. And they have had a few good tunes in the past, so I know on some level that they are capable of it. I understand that Gorillaz is the brainchild of two guys, one a musician, the other a graphic artist, and it seems to me that one of these guys is not pulling his weight.

I also came across a guitar player named Orianthi. She was to be the lead guitarist for Michael Jackson’s This Is It shows. I watched a few clips of her on youtube. I must say, I am not normally a fan of the “shredding” style of guitar playing, but I will still tip my hat to an attractive young woman who could absolutely smoke you, me, and any guitar player that either of us could name in a single sitting. She also has a solo album out now, yet for some reason, her hit single According to You sounds just like every other overproduced American Idol alumnus or Disney lab creation style pop song out there today.

I started thinking about my own repertoire, and while none of my songs are particularly great, or even what one might call “good”, it occurred to me that all of my truly bottom-of-the-barrel material was written on an acoustic guitar. Later, it occurred to me that maybe the whole problem is simply that I have never had a really nice acoustic guitar. I do love my $160 Ibanez, but I think that it is largely in the same way that I love my $10 bicycle. It is not a particularly great guitar, merely a great value. If I had payed twice as much, I would probably not be nearly as happy with it. Also, the $160 is rather misleading, as I have replaced the nut, saddle, pickguard, bridge pins, and even some of the frets – pretty much everything that can be replaced other than the tuning machines. And when I say “I replaced”, I literally mean that *I* personally pulled the old part off and (in most cases) hand made a new one myself. So it is probably worth more than YOUR theoretical $160 Ibanez would be, (depending on your estimation of my skills in this regard) and obviously highly sentimental, but still, not a fantastic guitar. I have a couple of other acoustics as well, but they have issues of their own which have prevented either of them from coming out of their cases in some years.

There is a scene in the movie It Might Get Loud where U2′s The Edge is show-and-telling about the first guitar that he ever bought (which in his case was electric). One thing he said was that when he first picked it up, he knew that “there are some songs in this.” I have definitely never felt that way about any acoustic guitar that I have ever played. Although something similar happened when I bought my main electric guitar. I had done a lot of research and pretty much settled on a certain model from a well known manufacturer. I went to the guitar megastore, not even with the intention of buying that day (because that is not how I generally do things), but merely to try a few different ones out to make sure that it was what I really wanted, then go home and think about it. While there, I noticed an unusual looking guitar on clearance, and I thought to myself, “That sure is funny looking… I wonder what it sounds like?” I ended up leaving the store with it.

I was tagging along with a friend to the guitar store again last week and I realized that that was what I was looking for, a guitar that I would pick up an immediately know, “This is the one.” Which did not happen that day, and I have been to a couple of others stores since. I did find an interesting* Martin that I thought would make a nice addition to my collection, but I am not looking for merely another “addition.” I think that by now I have been playing long enough that I owe it to myself to get a quality American-made guitar, preferably from a store that cares enough about its customers to actually make sure their guitars are set up properly rather than just trying to move product. Ultimately, I am not actually in the market for a new guitar at all at this point, as I have several other large purchases further up the “to buy” list that I am also avoiding. But a boy can dream of expensive toys.

If there was a point to all of this, I can not remember what it was.

*I would like to go into more detail about exactly why I thought it was so interesting, but considering that I already cut this post in two due to length, I will refrain.

A week or two ago, I put new strings on my acoustic guitar. For those keeping track, that would be the second time in its nine year life. “Serious” guitar players change their strings once a month or so, but I am, first of all, lazy; plus I really do not like the sound of fresh strings. They are so bright and twangy, go out of tune quickly, and are much more “nuanced.” That last one would be a good thing for a skilled player, but for a sloppy player, it just reveals all the mistakes that much more clearly. So I was playing my freshly strung guitar, suddenly reminded of how much I dislike acoustic guitars.

I really do not understand why anyone prefers acoustic over electric guitars. Aside from the lack of additional necessary equipment of course. Some one probably wants to say “tone” as well, but tone is highly subjective, and even the comments I have on not so subjective facts is a lengthy discussion in itself. As for me, I always feel like playing acoustic guitar is a battle that I usually lose.

First of all, the stings on an acoustic are generally under higher tension than on an electric for reasons I that will not go in to, so it is physically more difficult to play from the start. Also, “fragile” is not quite the word I am looking for, but acoustic guitars are not entirely structurally sound. Certainly less so than electrics, which are essentially a solid slab of wood. The string tension will actually bow the neck and distort the top of an acoustic guitar, making them even harder to play over time. There are adjustments that can be made to compensate for this, up to a point, but eventually it becomes necessary to actually take the neck off the guitar and reset it to reestablish the correct neck-string-body angles. For an expensive guitar, this is worth the cost and effort, for a cheap one, you probably should just get a new one.

I can not help but wonder if this is a secret that girls do not know, because it is rare to find a girl that plays electric guitar, and perhaps more of them would, and for that matter, even more might play guitar at all, if they knew that electric guitars were so much easier.