The iPhone as Recording Studio

A friend of mine, and occasional commenter here, emailed me an amazing link the other day. It seems that there is an app for the iPhone called Four Track that turns the iPhone into a digital multitrack recorder.

So, The 88 used the iPhone/Four Track combination to record their song, Love is the Thing.



As you can see, they did the editing and mixing in Pro Tools but they used the iPhone and the iPhone's built-in microphone to lay down the basic tracks. That's pretty incredible.

Long time readers know I have a "Jesus Phone"...



... with Jesus as the wallpaper, natch, but mine is the original 8GB EDGE iPhone, and I've never gotten into the whole app thing. Well, my contract is up on my two-year-old iPhone, so I'm going to get a new 32GB 3GS iPhone, which will allow me the memory and functionality necessary to use Four Track and some other apps that I find interesting, like the Tom Tom turn-by-turn GPS navigation system.

There is also a pretty decent music notation/composition sketch pad app called Composer that requires a 3G or 3GS iPhone I'd like to get. When I got the iPhone, I just wanted a phone that would allow me to email, surf, and listen to my iTunes library. Now, it's turning into a music production device. Unbelievable.

Hat Tip to John!

RIP: Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett

Hell of a day, yesterday; the world lost "The King of Pop" and the "Queen of the Seventies."

I must admit that Michael Jackson's music was a guilty pleasure of mine back in the 80's. Considering the genera of pop music, it was just so amazingly well executed, both in terms of the arranging and the production. I'm thinking specifically of Rock With You and Beat It (Links to original videos on YouTube/No embeds available). I especially like Beat It because, 1) The opening synth hits are a Synclavier, and I was a Synclavier programmer back then, 2) The track has Eddie Van Halen on it, and 3) it's just a great song (And not a bad video for the time either).

Some of the studio engineers and programmers who worked with Michael are friends of mine, and everything I ever heard about him indicates that, yes, he was a very strange person - in that way many impossibly talented people are - but that he tried to be a sweetheart, and often failed. Also, his hangers-on didn't help matters, and I won't be surprised if it turns out that they enabled his untimely demise.

All that aside, Michael Jackson was one of the greatest musical showmen of the modern era; he made over-the-top cool.



Damn, I wish I could move like that. His physical grace was preternatural.

As for Farrah, what a pity. Damn cancer. Being fifty-one means I was a freshman in college when "the poster" became such a phenomenon, and though I didn't have one myself, over half of the other guys in the dorms did.



RIP and Godspeed, Michael and Farrah.

Stefano Barone: Genius Solo Guitar Pioneer

Italian solo guitar virtuoso Stefano Barone just sent me a Friend Request off of my MySpace page. Long time readers know I play some tap tech on my electric nylon string guitars, and that the Tocatta from my first guitar sonata is a tap tech piece, so I really love this kind of thing.

Check out this epic mix of acoustic guitar and electronics. I think that's even an eBow sustainer he uses!



Bravissimo!

Seriously, I'd rather pay to see this guy in concert than any traditional classical guitarist I can think of, and I plan to get into that kind of minimalist mood music two-handed tap within the next year or two myself. Very compelling.

Ventures Guitarist Bob Bogle Dies at 75

Bob Bogle, the red haired guitarist for The Ventures - the most popular instrumental group of all time - has died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was 75 years old. Not bad - beating the Biblical "three-score and ten" - for a musician, and he leaves generations of guitarists in his debt.



Walk, Don't Run.



Wipe Out.



More recently, with Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, Tequila (My favorite hard liquor!).



The Ventures induction into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bob was ill, and not there, but he lived to see it.



Needless to say, I had Ventures albums growing up, and was hugely influenced by them. RIP and Godspeed, Bob.

Rebuilding Pieces from Scratch

I have now finished memorizing both Unchained Melody and Dust in the Wind, so I now have the A minor, C major, and A major suites of my set completed. Instead of moving on to finish up the E minor and G major suites, as I had planned, I'm going to have to take a break from memorizing new music to fix up some old pieces that are becoming problematic.

If you have a lot of music memorized, as I do, adding new pieces can send shockwaves through the rest of your set, especially for pieces in the same key, or that have similar moves in them: Your brain just gets confused between the new pieces and the old pieces as you're adding the new pathways for memorization. Since I have memorized three new pieces since the beginning of the year, one in A minor and two in C major, some of my old pieces in A minor, A major, and C are actually verging on falling apart.

Usually, I will break out the metronome and slow the piece down step by step until the moves are back into my conscious memory, but I got a new idea from listening to, of all people, Tiger Woods. He was talking about rebuilding his golf swing from scratch when he got into a slump, and when he was recovering from an injury. That made me think about rebuilding pieces from scratch by breaking the music out, and simply relearning every move from the very beginning.

Since some of the earlier arrangements I've done are not written down - I did them all in my head - this will also give me the oportunity to write those out. I've also wanted to upgrade my Classical Gas arrangement - it's not written out, and I have some new ideas for an "Ultimate Version" of it - so that will be one of the first ones I do. This means I'll have to actually stop performing it for a while - until the new version is ready to rock - and since I have extra pieces in A minor now, I can do this without too much disruption. I'm just going to put Eric Johnson's Desert Song in place of it for a while.

So, this will lead to a new epic series of Ultimate Guitar Arrangement posts.

*****

This isn't the usual style of babe I post, but this pic really took me aback: Everything Old is New Again!



When I was in high school, girls were wearing Led Zepplin ball caps, peace symbol pendants, and hip-hugger jeans with wide belt loops. This pic wasn't taken in 1974, however, it was taken in 2009! Can avacado green appliances be far behind?

Set Organization Progress (Addendum)

I had meant to show the final A major suite in the previous post on this topic, but I simply forgot.

To review, my set for dinner and bar crowds, art openings, parties, and corporate events, is organized around the circle of thirds from A minor to A major: A minor, C, E minor, G, B minor, D, F-sharp minor, and A.

The pattern for the suites is two originals, and then alternating covers and originals, with a crowd pleaser at the end - for a total of nine pieces per suite - and each suite is about 25-30 minutes in duration. So, I play four suites, take a 30 minute dinner break, and then play another four suites to make a four hour gig (D major and F-sharp minor are still short at this point, running about fifteen minutes each).

As I mentioned previously, the first four suites have crystalized, with just a bit of uncertainty in the G major one. Because there is so much great guitar music in A minor and A major, it's just natural that the final suite has come into focus as well.

It looks like this now:

64] Figuration Prelude No. 8 - Hucbald
65] E-Axis Study in A major - Hucbald
66] Guardame Las Vacas - Luis de Narvaez
67] Six Variations in A minor - Hucbald
68] Etude VI - Leo Brouwer
69] Irreducible Fugue No. 3 - Hucbald
70] Yankee Doodle Dixie - Chet Atkins
71] Irreducible Fugue No. 4 - Hucbald
72] Desert Song - Eric Johnson
73] Heavy Nylon - Hucbald
74] Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin

I have eleven pieces here just in case I run short and have some time to fill up. This is a very good idea, because it's a million times more impressive if you never repeat yourself over the course of a four hour engagement: Folks think you could just go on and on. So, if I'm on time, I play Stairway to Heaven, which is my finale/encore piece, last (In place of Desert Song). If the crowd is a good one - drunk, jazzed... and tipping - I'll play the whole set through Heavy Nylon (Which is a PITA to get just right) to Stairway.

You'll notice I put some A minor pieces in here: There are just a gazillion cool pieces for the guitar in A minor - I actually have extras - and a lesser number of compelling A major works, so I did that on purpose, not out of any necessity. I have an awesome - and extremely difficult - arrangement of Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze in A major, which I may learn at some point, but I have all eleven of these memorized, so that's the path of least resistance right now.



I could have updated the previous post, but I wanted to post another pic of this stunningly awesome redhead.

Set Organization Progress

After four years and nine months, I'm starting to finally complete learning all of the pieces for some of the suites in my set (The previous post on the 19th was my four year "blogversary" BTW). Discovering the two crowd pleasers in C - Unchained Melody and Dust in the Wind - really helped to bring things together.

Since my set is divided into suites that progress around the circle of thirds from A minor to A major - A minor, C, E minor, G, B minor, D, F-sharp minor, A - this means there is light at the end of the tunnel for the first four suites as well as the last one in A.

I have completed learning the A minor suite, so it looks like this now:

01] Figuration Prelude No. 1 - Hucbald
02] E-Axis Study in A minor - Hucbald
03] Sarabande, 3rd Lute Suite - J.S. Bach
04] Sonatina in A minor - Hucbald
05] Gavotte II, 3rd Lute Suite - J.S. Bach
06] Irreducible Fugue No. 1 - Hucbald
07] Tears in the Rain - Joe Satriani
08] Irreducible Fugue No. 2 - Hucbald
09] Classical Gas - Mason Williams

This pattern of two originals, a Bach lute piece, a third original, a second Bach lute piece, a fourth original, a minor crowd pleaser, a fifth and final original, and then a major crowd pleaser is fun, interesting, eclectic, and perfect for dinner and bar crowds where I'm background "musical wallpaper." In situations like that, you don't want to draw too much attention to yourself, but before it's time for a sip of tea, or whatever, it's nice to play a rockin' piece to get the crowd's attention and generate some applause (And hopefully tips). This suite runs between 25 and thirty minutes.

I'm currently working on the last piece for the C major suite - Dust in the Wind (I got Unchained Melody, and it's delicious) - so it's shaped up like so:

10] Figuration Prelude No. 2 - Hucbald
11] E-Axis Study in C major - Hucbald
12] Bourree II, 4th Cello Suite - J.S. Bach
13] Allegretto in C major - Hucbald
14] Ode to Joy - L. van Beethoven
15] G-Axis Study in C minor - Hucbald
16] Unchained Melody - Zaret/North
17] G-Axis Study in C major - Hucbald
18] Dust in the Wind - Kansas

Same number of pieces, same pattern, and the same duration; 25-30 minutes.

I have one piece left for the E minor suite - the Sarabande - and it will be thus:

19] Figuration Prelude No. 3 - Hucbald
20] E-Axis Study in E minor - Hucbald
21] Sarabande, 1st Lute Suite - J.S. Bach
22] B-Axis Study in E minor - Hucbald
23] Bourree, 1st Lute Suite - J.S. Bach
24] G-Axis Study in E minor - Hucbald
25] Gymnopedie No. 1 - Eric Satie
26] Fighter Pilots - Hucbald
27] Spanish Fly - Eddie Van Halen

Still nine pieces with the two originals and then alternating with others, so a similar pattern is maintained, as well as a similar total length.

I play four of these suites before my break, but a couple of things are still not set about the G major suite, so that one will take some more time before it gels (The last piece before my break is the Joe Satriani tap tech masterpiece, A Day at the Beach. so I end the first set on a real high note). In any event, I'm psyched to be finishing up these first three at long last, so I'm highly motivated to get the last few pieces memorized.

As it stands now, it looks like the G major suite will end up in this configuration:

28] Figuration Prelude No. 4 - Hucbald
29] B-Axis Study in G major - Hucbald
30] Menuet in G - Attributed to J.S. Bach, but actually by Christian Petzold
31] Scherzo in G major - Hucbald (The jazz piece from Sonata One)
32] Jesu, Mein Freude - J.S. Bach
33] G-Axis Study in G minor - Hucbald
34] Cancion Mixteca - Jose Lopez Alaves
35] G-Axis Study in G major - Hucbald
36] A Day at the Beach - Joe Satriani

The only piece I'm not positive about is Cancion Mixteca. I have a great arrangement of it by Tim Sparks, but I'll have to see if I like the flow of it with the rest of the pieces in the suite. I think it will work, but it's pretty radically different. Then again, the whole set is highly eclectic, so that's why I think it'll be cool.

Since it's taken over four and a half years to rebuild my set to this point, you can see that I put a lot of thought into this. Each suite has a nice pace within it that builds to the concluding crowd pleaser, there's a little bit of something for everybody in terms of styles. I spent just a ton of time searching for those pieces that aren't mine to get the flow just right, plus I make it fun for myself to perform and the listeners to hear (Well, you can't please everybody, but as this has developed, I've been able to test the effectiveness extensively at gigs, and it works great).

As I've said before, one of my biggest gripes about other solo guitarists is that, with most of them, their sets don't display that a lot of thought went into putting them together. The idea for me is to take the listeners on a musical adventure, and not just to show off all the time. For the dinner and bar crowds, receptions, art openings, &c. that I do, constantly showing off is a distraction, and therefore counterproductive. Concerts are another matter, and I'll address that at some point too.