Ok, this seems counterintuitive. I'm playing around with picks of various gauges. It seems like it's easier to play softly (that is, with less volume) with a heavier gauge pick than it is with a lighter gauge pick.

Hmm.

The food poisoning is slowly getting better, but I decided that the better part of valor was to work from home today. So I logged onto the home computer and the work computer, VPNed into the network, and have sent out a couple of e-mails that roughly boiled down to "Did you know we need to fix this?" I'm now waiting for the responses.

Working at home usually involves leaving the office door closed so that Katie can't get at the computers that I'm working on. Since she and Julie were sleeping quite late today, this wasn't a problem until a few minutes ago when Katie started pounding on the office door, realizing that Daddy must be on the other side. I was feeling like lying down for a few minutes anyway, so I headed off to the bedroom where we attempted to keep Katie from bouncing on my stomach while handing her the various stuffed animals that she demanded be taken off the headboard and given to her.

A few minutes later, she hopped off the bed and started slapping my guitar case, shouting "Poo! Poo!" Well, yes, that is Daddy's problem...

Oh. Pooh!

So Mommy pulled out the guitar and Daddy played "The House At Pooh Corner" for Katie. And now they're off to the park and I'm back at work.

One of the dangers of being a guitarist with a recording studio in the basement is that you're always looking for new and interesting ways to make sounds without having to learn an entirely new instrument. This occasionally leads to severe cases of keyboardist envy, given the ways that modern synthesizers can do a pretty good to excellent job of mimicing other instruments in the hands of the well-trained keyboard player.

In pursuit of this, I acquired my Godin Multiac Jazz and Roland guitar synthesizer, having been alerted to this combination by that amazingly talented victim of GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome), min0taur. I haven't yet had a chance to spend a lot of time exploring the beast, because of the birth of Katie and the subsequent death of two of the ligaments in my knee. I did get to spend enough time playing it to determine that the combination was cool and that when I played this guitar -- as opposed to the Les Paul that I'd traded for it -- the notes that came out actually sounded like me, instead of someone who was completely clueless trying to figure out what to do with an electric guitar. ;)

In similar fashion, Barry's experiments with a pieced-together acoustic baritone guitar led me to have Frankenbass, the electric baritone, assembled from a Fender Telecaster body and a fine Warmoth baritone guitar neck. This turned out to be an eminently successful experiment that even made its way onto catalana's recent album.

Yesterday, though, I tripped over a new instrument that I had never seen before. Perhaps Barry has, but -- if not! -- I'm happy to return the favor to him.

Behold! The six-string banjo.

Fitted with a guitar neck, strung like a guitar, tuned like a guitar, played (more or less) like a guitar. Sounds (more or less) like a banjo.

I really didn't need to know this. :)

Katie has, of late, taken to demanding that I open up the guitar case upstairs, pull out the guitar, and play for her before she goes to bed. She then says, "Up!" So I assist her way onto the bed where she strums at the guitar and then starts dancing all over the bed while I play Midnight Girl for her. This is occasionally a hazard for Julie, but daisy_knotwise does a pretty good job of protecting her from her older sister.

This is all the more entertaining, because my expectation is that I will someday give that guitar to Katie. It's my first Taylor that I bought with some of the money that we inherited from Gretchen's mom.

Giving that guitar to Katie leaves open the question of what I intend to do for Julie about getting her a guitar. Of course, neither girl will be getting a guitar at that level for some years. In fact, by the time that I get around to passing along the first Taylor, good guitar wood will be getting quite scarce.

"The best thing for me to do", I remarked idly to Gretchen, "would be for me to go buy another appropriate Taylor for Julie while it's still possible to buy a fine wooden guitar for a reasonable sum."

This got me The Look^TM.

Well, I was only kidding, as I explained to Gretchen.

Mostly.

I'm going to make an analogy here that may get a bit strained by the end, but let's see where it takes us.
( And away we go... )

That's Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, for the uninitiated.

After auditioning guitars over the weekend, I concluded (and daisy_knotwise concurred) that getting a Taylor spruce-top with the Expression system electronics so that I could go in direct as well as via mic and get two different sounds to blend would be the best thing for recording. So I headed back to Guitar Works today and played a number of guitars, one of which has come home with me.

Gretchen no longer has to worry about "not having gotten me enough for Christmas". :)

Ok, that was interesting.

I've been wondering if there was anything that could be done to improve the rhythm guitar which I recorded on my last album, Seven Miles a Second, when I go to record the next album, Falling Toward Orion. I recorded it using my Taylor 710, which is a cedar-topped guitar and which normally sounds pretty good, but the mics didn't like it as much as I'd hoped. So I borrowed some guitars from Terry at The Guitar Works in Evanston and daisy_knotwise and I headed off to the basement to do some recording.
( Results inside )

Over lunch today, I ducked over to the Guitar Works and looked at several expensive guitars, trying to decide if they're good enough -- or I'm good enough -- to notice the difference between them and my Taylor 710 cedar top.

I don't know. But they sure do sound pretty. And Terry's offered to let me take them home and try recording with them to see if they sound better on tape than my current selection of instruments.

There are advantages to having been a customer for 20 years. :)