May 25 2007
It has been several years in the making but I’m pleased to announce that for all intents and purposes the guitar project is complete. Lots of people asked if I had a name for it and, after pondering for a while, came up with The Sandblaster! This was one of my nick names when I was a kid, and seemed to sound like a guitar (a la Telecaster). I hope to take better pix at some point, but this was the best I could muster right now:
May 02 2007
We all have moments of weakness, when we do things we know we shouldn’t. We make choices based on motivations we really don’t understand and, sometimes, the consequences of those choices can be unpredictible. Such was the case a few months back when I went to an auction to sell some stuff. Here are some photos of what I left with:
Aug 29 2006
I can admit that I’ve always been a fan of ocarinas and, more specifically, sweet potatos. They have a sweet warm mellow tone, feel wonderful in the hand, and are easily portable. I’ve been preparing for a large scale recording that will use, primarily, acoustic instruments and have been aquiring instruments that have unique or interesting tonalities.
A while back I purchased an old Gretsch plastic sweet potato and, although it has a wonderful nostalgia to it, it doesn’t sound or play very well. While poking around on Ebay, I discovered a fellow by the name of Charlie Hind who hand builds wooden ocarinas and sweet potatos. His work, which can be seen on his web site, is really beautiful. He works, mostly, in walnut, a wood that I’m really fond of. In exploring his site, I noticed that he’d created a few instruments in mahogany, and I remembered that I had a rather large piece left over from my guitar project. I emailed him and asked if he’d be willing to work with my wood, and he said yes.
Charlie has been more than kind. He’s been photographing the process of creating the instrument for me, and has allowed me to post his pix here.
I’ll also include some of his comments.
Apr 12 2006
When I performed at the Dung Mummy Anniversary event last month, I met a young man by the name of Adam Reese. He performed with the Hop Frog Drum Jester Devotional, smacking a mini trap set. A few days ago he contacted me about a project of his own that he wanted me to participate in. Evidently, he’s producing a compilation LP with tracks by a multitude of artists. Each track, however, must be no more than 45 seconds. This is a unique challenge. He explained that he wasn’t really looking for ‘noise’ stuff. He said he’d enjoyed my performance, and was hoping for something reflective of that. Well, leave it to me to take a perfectly good suggestion and corrupt it terribly. I took the audio from the middle portion of my performance, the bit with the Indy Rail lap steel, and time shifted it from nearly 12 minutes to exactly 45 seconds. I also applied a wee bit of dynamic processing, reverb, EQ, and dropped the audio down one octave.
Hear the result
Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment.
Mar 23 2006
With the kind assistance of a volunteer, I recorded my performance at Dung Mummy on my video camera. The performance, in its entirety, was about 25 minutes. This excerpt, about 11 minutes in length, comes from the middle, when I had switched from my gretsch to my Industrial Guitar Indy Rail.
Click here to hear audio. Note: the file is about 10 MB.
If you’re interested, you can see pix of the guitar effects I use and read about what they do.
Enjoy!
Mar 23 2006
Although I had no idea at the time, Jason Savvy (aka Monkey Wrench) was snapping pix while I was performing. He was kind enough to post them, and share them with the performers.
Mar 19 2006
I got a custom case made for my new custom guitar, and decided to have a matching one made for my lap steel. The company that made them, Morris & Holmberg Cases in Santa Ana, did a pretty nice job. They used material I provided them, and painted it with a custom color. Sweet!
Mar 19 2006
The signal chain for my performance was:
The Gretsch BST-1500 and/or the Industrial Guitar Indy Rail > Ernie Ball VP Jr Volume Pedal > HBE UFO (fuzz/octave) > Analog Man Sun Face (NKT275 with Sun Dial mod) (fuzz) > HBE Psilocybe (phaser) > Marshall Vibrotrem > DOD DFX94 Digital Delay/Sampler > Line6 Delay Modeler > Fender Blues Jr. Amplifier.
I also used a cheap digital voice recorder, purchased in Little India, that I played by holding it against the pickup of the lapsteel. You can hear this about 5 minutes in. Later, I also use an Ebow to create long sustained notes. You can hear this toward the end, around 9 minutes or so.
The set of guitar effects I use is designed to provide me with a wide sonic pallet. Each one adds to or changes the sound in a distinctive way. I sometimes use them by themselves, or in combination with other pedals. With the 7 pedals, there are countless variations possible.
Feb 17 2006
Here’s another pic of the guitar body. It has received several coats of boiled linseed oil, tung oil, and lacquer. Pretty!
