Category: Guitar Lessons

Here are some posts about learning the art and craft of guitar playing, with some tips and tutorials from myself and others.

What IF?…

Creativity is the act of not stopping yourself from creating

..was my thought as I woke up this morning. I haven’t been stopping myself lately, no siree. Random funbits –

I just added the lyrics to Bennie Got A Boat on the Bandcamp page. I had to type them out, because my original copy is long gone – perhaps eaten by seals or dolphins. In any case, there they are! Where lies the land to which the ship will go? We don’t know, Petunia.

Dears!  I am locked out of Facebook. It’s amusing because I have tried to quit FB a number of times, and always returned to the well before very long because, well, a bunch of my friends and fam and fans and colleagues and cats and doggies are there, so.. Well I am glad I posted about my latest album there before being summarily banished by the F-Brainz. Oddly they didn’t say I did anything wrong, just that they can’t confirm my identity. So I’m going through their hoops to retrieve my profile there, and yet, at the same time, I don’t miss the “place” and life seems less hectic without it. Paradoxes pile on, these days, don’t they?

Hopefully more of my pals will subscribe to the Berkeley Cat Records mewsletter and podcats (sic and sic) and engage with me that way, oh, and Bluesky, I’m there too – seems there are some “signs of life” there, as my dad would say.

Trivia question!  For my single It Is Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer, I made a loop from part of the drum tracks on one of my ska songs! Which song was it? A hint: I sped the track up a bit. Another hint: The original tracks were recorded by Thomas White, founding drummer in The UpTones. One more hint: The original source track is on Poppin’ the Ska.  “Now Safe To..” was a fun experiment, and I wasn’t at all sure how it would go, but I am pleased with the result. Unusual for me, it’s just drums and vocals – nothing else on the track. Spoken/rapped as such, yet when I sing a melody near the end, on these lines –

The lunatics have taken over Main Street
And we’re hiding in the asylum
Listen to the bells fall down from the tower
Corruption is just Tuesday now
As it ever was

– the implied chord changes seem very apparent to me, just from the single vocal and drum tones. It was tempting for a minute to add those chords on guitar or keyboard, but I rejected the notion. I really like the sound just raw like that. It matches the feeling of the text. So I mixed it as-is, it was a quickie! Gosh, one of the things I’ve learned in this journey of producing my own records is that knowing when to stop working on a thing, is crucial. Perfectionism can be a creativity-killer, and yet, one strives for excellence by one’s own standards, right? So one breathes in and out and tries to follow as a thing unfolds, and be aware of the moment. I’ve gotten better, at this, I’m happy to say. Taking chances, going for it, trying things I’m not sure of, to find out.. What if..? ..is part of the joy of life for me. Always was, but, safe to say I sometimes let things stop me more easily, in the past. My own doubts, or others’ opinions, or my perceptions or worries about what people might think.. These all can derail the creativity train. Mine’s been roaring along, lately, and it’s fun.

Wow, it’s December the 31st.  I recorded Rabbitus Maximus on January the first of this year, and that was a packed 364 days and bears oh my, was it not? The amazing human story plays out, we’re in it, and we get to choose, to a large extent, our attitudes and behaviors. I say these obvious points out loud, to remind myself.

Chuckle. I’m going to quote a song from RUSH now, chilluns, take cover.

You won’t get wise
With the sleep still in your eyes

Neil Peart at his finest, IMO. Full context here.

That song had a big impact on me when I was 13 or 14, discovering prog rock and metal. I dove headlong into RUSH, YES, and pretty much anything with dragons and odd time signatures that I could find. Those roads led to the Dixie Dregs, for me, and my all-time greatest guitar hero, Steve Morse. I gained a lot of creative courage from them. They just did whatever they wanted to, for most of their run. They experimented. And what is Experimental Music?  One experiments! And what happens when one experiments? Well, we don’t know. Until an experiment is run, you may predict the outcome, but you can’t be sure of it. And indeed, the Dregs had an album, called What if

Looking back as we enter the last year of the first quarter of the first century of the millenium, I’m glad I tried some things. Went on creative limbs to see which would carry my weight or bend or break, to find out, what if. I’m humbly grateful that my muse, for lack of a better term, perked up and responded with marvelous surprises, over and over, each time so differently. I expect I will ask her some more questions as the days proceed.

Wishing a huge HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL! And a great big huge THANK YOU for your pre-orders for Poppin’ the Ska! It really makes my day and I appreciate it.

Try some things. Enjoy the discoveries. Ignore the voice that says you can’t.

 

Nerd-posting about my Rebottle of Baby (x23) I Love You

I make records that I want to hear. Or at least, that’s the ambition. As things go, sometimes I do revisit a track and remix (rebottle!) it. This one came up recently a few different ways, and I decided to spend a little time fine-tuning the mix and remastering it.

Nerdly notes!

The basic track was done “live” in Mike Stevens’ Lost Monkey Studio, during the October 2017 firestorms.  Many of my friends and fam had to evacuate, and some of them lost their homes.  In the midst of that, I composed and recorded this song. There was a third verse, but it seemed unnecessary on reflection, so I cut it before including the song on my CONTENT album.  Just last week I remixed it, and bounced an instrumental mix.

We didn’t use a click-track (metronome) when we tracked the basics.  Just me and Mikey, him on a drum kit, me on acoustic guitar.  I don’t sniff snobbishly at click-tracks, in fact I use them often. But when it’s possible to make a recording without one, I opt for that. Because it’s cool to let the tempo breathe, for some songs.  This one’s pretty steady (Mike is a GREAT drummer), and the tempo does shift subtly in places.  As intended. It’s rock n’ roll, baby.

The first overdub, Mikey did right after we cut the basic. He played tambourine, and he nailed it, so beautifully.  Thing is, a tambourine part is hard to do. Then it’s hard to place the tambo in the mix. Tambourines notoriously sound either too loud or too quiet, in a mix. Now I got it right where I want it.

Next, I played a guitar solo.  8 bars.  I have nerded often about my FAVORITE 8-bar rock guitar solo, Mick Ronson in the original Ian Hunter recording of Once Bitten, Twice Shy.  I don’t pretend to have reached such heights.   But my solo in this track is one of my favorite 8-bar pentatonic scale outbursts.   I played my trusty “Oates” Tele-beast, which I use on pretty much all of my recordings. We tossed it through Mike’s vintage Fender Champ, dimed out. “Dimed” means everything’s on 10.  Not that there are a lot of knobs, on an old Champ.  Volume and tone controls on 10.  Everything the amp can put out.  It sounds, to use the appropriate term, Gnarly. We wanted gnarls. Oh did we get them.  I added some tape-echo and light compression to finish.

Thankfully, MOST of my releases don’t call me to remix/rebottle. I’ll probably never touch I Can See It Now again, or Am I Not Alien?, or most of the others I’ve made since I started this solo adventure. But I’ll do it when I feel inspired to.

Last nerd-note – I’m confident in mastering my own tracks, now. This is new. For many of my songs, I have turned to some great mastering engineers.  They did great work.  You can find their names in the credits for my releases in Bandcamp, if you are curious. I learned much from each of them, and finally figured out a way to do this step myself.

Mastering is funny.  Anyone who has made records probably knows, it can take your track and finalize it gorgeously, so you go “Wow! It sounds like a record now!” Or, alternately, it can wreck the whole thing, leaving you sad and howling, “Whaaaat happened to our record?!”  So you learn by doing.

I wanted to learn this final step, and I did. THANKS to all the aforementioned mastering engineers and producers whom I have had the privilege to work with. I’m NOT going to master other folks’ records. I don’t want that responsibility, and I have no ambition to be in that field, which is populated with geniuses.  But I DO know what I want my records to sound like. Each one different; Each song follows its own rules. And I’m glad to have finally demystified this step, for myself.  Baby 🙂

Live in Bandcamp now, goes live in all the streaming services July 31. Pre-save in Spotify or Apple Music if you do that sort of thing.

All love,

Eric

Artwork by Shannon Wheeler

Blasting With The Blasters

Saw The Blasters last night at Hopmonk in Novato and they blew the roof off. They’ve been playing for about 40 years now and still have most of their original lineup. The rhythm section is preposterous. One of the best rock and roll drum (Bill Bateman) and bass (John Bazz) teams you’ll ever find. There’s so much subtlety and dynamics and power in their playing – the kind of tightness you get from spending most of your life on the road. The only other time I saw them was in the 1980’s, and I had fond memories of that gig, so naturally I went last night with high expectations. The band exceeded them tenfold. Phil Alvin is in great voice, and lead guitarist Keith Wyatt is an absolute maniac. He played an old gold-top Les Paul through a small combo amp and just went berserk. A completely committed player, he took some long solos that only built in energy and fire and kept building when I thought there was no higher to go. The band scorched along for an hour and ten minutes or so and by the end I had a smile I couldn’t erase if I tried. I went with my old friend and musical partner in crime, Michael Valladares, and after the show we ran into Bateman and Wyatt out back on our way to our ride. We went full fan-boy on ’em and gushed because what else was there to do? We thanked them for a soul-lifting no-bullshit rock n’ roll experience and floated home. Absent was Dave Alvin, who wrote many of their songs, but he was present nonetheless in his songs. A deep catalog of heartfelt rockabilly and rock n’ roll anthems, many of them penned in his youth in Downey, California. There’s something uniquely special about a group of older musicians doing something they’ve spent their lives doing, with joy and abandon, live in concert, in a smallish venue with great sound. One of the best shows I’ve seen in a while. Catch ’em if you can! That is all.

Drinking A Case Of Joni Mitchell With Pollyana Bush

As a guitar player, I’ve rarely used anything but standard tuning. I don’t even like capos. So it was a new challenge to learn three custom tunings to accompany the amazing and beautiful Pollyana Bush, on three Joni Mitchell songs. This is part of her concert series, “Full Circle, musings on Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King.” We’ve done the gig once in the East Bay, and tomorrow we’re doing it in San Rafael.

One of the songs, “Case Of You” was challenging for another reason – I couldn’t not cry when we were doing it. Ridiculous, no? But seriously, once I got the song down, every time we’d play it and Pollyana started singing, my eyes would be raining. This leveled out after a while and I was composed during the performance. I can’t recall another song/singer ever affecting me in that particular way. Why am I sharing this? Oh, I don’t know, why not.

We’re doing “Case Of You” in an open-G# tuning, and I needed to figure out how to make it sound something like a dulcimer doubling a guitar. Luckily, Pollyana has a Taylor acoustic with a cutaway, which is perfect for this. Another song I’m playing on is “Help Me,” which is open-tuned to C Major 7th. Who does that!? It’s been a great experience learning these songs, and to sort of get a glimpse into Joni Mitchell’s creative process. You couldn’t play these songs in standard tuning, it’s physically impossible. I found myself wondering – does Joni play with the tuning and THEN write a song, or hear a song in her head, and then tune the instrument to fit? Both approaches maybe? She uses so many tunings, and they are wildly different. Now I’m fascinated enough to find some interviews with her, and see if she talks about this. Tackling this was made much easier by the wealth of info provided by Joni Mitchell herself, on her own website.

I’m thrilled to be on this gig, with some amazing cats, including the great Raz Kennedy. Raz called me asking if I knew anyone who could do this kind of guitar playing, a few weeks before the earlier concert. I recommended a few players but none were available, so I started learning the odd tunings to see if I could even get there. It turned out to be a really fun and rewarding guitar lesson, and now, as a consequence of this, I wrote a song in open-G! A good friend told me years ago the day you stop learning is the day you die. I guess I’m still alive.

Here’s the concert info, I think some tickets are still available if you are interested.

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Oh, and Pollyana, this happened to your guitar case. But don’t worry, Lucy is very neat and does not have fleas.

Case Of Lucy
Case Of Lucy

The Holy Grail Of 8 Bar Rock n’ Roll Guitar Solos

In rock or power-pop music, a guitar solo usually has to explode from the start, take the song’s energy up a notch or eleven, and launch it into the next section. Often this is done in 16 bars or more, but there are some notable examples of short and sweet 8 bar solos which do this beautifully. My favorite 8 bar solo of this type is Mick Ronson’s work on Ian Hunter’s single “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”

The guitar playing on the entire track is brilliant, starting with an almost comical little drum beat and Chuck Berry style rhythm, building steadily to an ecstatic solo, which sets up the last verse, chorus and outro. I encourage guitarists to try and learn this one. I recently went at it with one of my more advanced young students, and it surprised both of us. This thing is hard to cop! I have spent more time on it than I have spent dissecting much longer solos by virtuoso players like Jeff Beck and Steve Morse. With expert use of amp feedback, note bending, vibrato, and just, insane over-the-top rock passion, Ronson stuffs more energy into this short little outburst than any other short solo I can think of.

100 Greatest Guitarists Ever Voted On By Other Famous Guitarists

While on hold listening to endless hold music this morning, I stumbled upon Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time” list from a few years back. To see if it has any relevance, I checked, and Roy Buchanan isn’t even on it, so it’s puffery. Also they should specify “Rock Guitarists Of The Type Rolling Stone Likes.” I mean, to leave it open as “Guitarists” and not include Andrés Segovia and Charlie Christian is just preposterous. Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery aren’t on it, I mean, shut up. Of course it’s silly and just entertaining content, but, glad I’m not the only one who found it even further off the mark than it should have been. Steve Newton’s take on straight.com is fun. Bruce Springsteen? A guitarist? He’s a great songwriter and performer and bandleader and all those things but please. This is a guitar player:

Leo Nocentelli Breaks Down The Guitar Part On "Cissy Strut"

Thrilled to find this instructional vid from Leo Nocentelli himself, giving a demonstration of his guitar part on The Meters’ classic instrumental, Cissy Strut. This is from “The Secrets Of Funk: Using It And Fusing It!” DVD, available here. I’ve played this tune many times – we used to open with it as a sort of “sound check” number, especially on nights when we walked in without a sound check! You can’t really go wrong with it once you’ve got the swing. But there are some fine details you can hear in this solo rendition that I never quite caught before. Mr. Nocentelli starts it off slow before bringing it up to tempo, and then he mixes in some other Meters funk magic! Definitely today’s guitar lesson post. Check it out:

Beserkley Records Story on Joel Selvin's Podcast a Great Listen

My good friend Matthew King Kaufman, and bay area rock greats Earth Quake, started Beserkley Records in 1973 in where else, Berkeley! Matthew and his partners nicknamed their label “Home of the Hits” before they ever had a hit. They dubbed their very first album a “Compilation” of “Greatest Hits” called “Chartbusters, Volume 1,” before they ever released anything, much less dented the charts. Matt once released a single called “Silent Knight” which contain 3 minutes of complete silence. It was a success in jukeboxes, because bartenders or waitresses would play it occasionally just to make the music stop for a few minutes. All this may help to explain why Matthew’s record company title has always been “Reigning Looney” instead of “President” or anything else. He is one of a kind, and so was Beserkley Records. Fulfilling their own prophecy, Beserkley had major chartbusting hits in the 70’s and 80’s. As a Berkeley kid himself, Joel Selvin witnessed the story up close from the beginning. Matthew recently visited Joel’s Basement Record Library to play some records and talk.

This is a great listen. I love these records, and all the guys who made them. Brothers Robbie and Tommy Dunbar’s guitar playing still amaze and inspire me to this day. This is power pop at its best. Have a listen at: OpenSourceMusic.com