From Beyond the Blogosphere

OK, well finally I return from wherever I really was for the past 6 months or more.  Pretty sad, really, that I couldn't get my act together for a blog post.  I have remained relatively active (for me) on Twitter, but this seemed more than I could manage for some reason.

Nevertheless, here I am again.  I'll keep this post to a quick update on everything, and hopefully follow up with more detailed discussion of a few specific subjects soon.

My Music

In brief, I've recorded virtually nothing in the past year.  The major renovation of our house was completed at the end of the summer 2011, and I should have been able to take over the new music room with gusto.  I kind of did that, but without getting around to recording in it.  That said, there's lots of music going on, whether it be noodling around on whatever guitar is handy, or getting together with friends for informal musical exchanges on a near-weekly basis.

I think I now have the setup I need to record all the instruments in the arsenal, and it's time to sit down and do just that.  There's always something new flowing from my fingers, though taming it to the point of a decent recording is more challenging.  I've actually been writing some lyrics in the past 6 months, which is almost a first for me.

I am significantly influenced (encouraged) by the musical interactions with my friends who come by weekly to share musical ideas.  Whether it's an attempt on a cover tune of some sort, or exploring originals from the guys, it's always interesting and pushes and pulls me to move forward.  I was sad to see a key member of our posse say goodbye at the end of 2011 and return home to England... his influence is still felt in the room, but sadly his great fingerstyle guitar playing is missed.  We've added a new face as a result, though, which pushes some new influences into play.  Always for me it's a good time when sharing music with others.

My Instruments

As is my nature, and my luck, I tend to find myself with new instruments every now and then.  Although I think of myself primarily as a guitarist, I'm by no means particular about it.  I welcome any instrument into my home.  And we have a couple of weird ones, which I suppose I should discuss at some point in the future.

Since last summer, there are a few new items of note.  For the most part, I tend towards quite affordable instruments (quantity over quality, perhaps):

• 1/2-scale Applause AA12 (by Ovation) steel string guitar
• Korg O1/Wfd Synthesizer (early 90's synth... quite used)
• Behringer Ultratone K1800FX Keyboard Amplifier
• Johnson JB110 5-string Banjo
• 10-string Electric Guitar (shown at right)

My Consumption of Music

The best concert I've seen in a long while was Joe Bonamassa, who I managed to see twice last December.  I drove to Seattle for the first show with two buddies, and had a really great guys evening out road trip.  Seats were way up high and off to one side of the auditorium, but the sound was great after the first few songs.  Two nights later, I saw Joe again with my wife, sitting in row 6 at the Orpheum theater in Vancouver.  The show was definitely better from close up, but the sound was pretty similar in both settings, and the sets were virtually identical.  I was sad not to see my favourite of his songs, though: Stop!  Ah, well, we can't have everything.

I have purchased a few albums over the past months (as usual), and this latest batch includes:

• Dream Theater -- A Dramatic Turn of Events **** [out of 5*... I think only Kinda Blue gets that score]
• Van Halen -- A Different Kind of Truth ***1/2
• Steve Lukather -- All's Well that Ends Well ***1/2
• Garrett -- Seventh Star ***1/2
• Five Alarm Funk -- Anything is Possible **1/2
• Corea, Clarke & White -- Return to Forever IV ****
• Chickenfoot -- Chickenfoot III ***
• Barry Greenfield -- The Early Years (1973 & 1975) [too dated to fairly rate: has some good material]
• Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa -- Don't Explain ****
• Marcus Miller -- Marcus ***1/2

You can see that most of these have been pretty solid.  The one I have liked the most, and played a LOT is the Dream Theater album.  I wasn't previously a fan, but have found this to be enduringly enjoyable.

My Reading

In the area of music, I have enjoyed the following over the past months:

• When Giants Walked the Earth (Led Zeppelin) -- Mick Wall ****
• Guitar Boy -- M. J. Auch ***
• Guitar -- Tim Brookes *****

I also have enjoyed a number of other books, though I often find business inspiration from the music industry stories as well.  On the business side:

• What EveryBODY is Saying -- Joe Navarro, Marvin Karlins [Recently started as Audio book. Narrator is quite poor]
• Taking People With You -- David Novak ****
• The Steve Jobs Way (iLeadership) -- Jay Elliot, William L. Simon
• In the Plex (the Google Story) -- Steven Levy ****
• iWoz -- Steve Wozniak, Gina Smith ****

Novels:

• Freedom (TM) -- Daniel Suarez *****
• Locked On -- Tom Clancy, Mark Greaney ***1/2
• Against All Enemies -- Tom Clancy, Peter Telep ****

Well, as usual it's past bedtime, so off I go.  Thanks for reading.  Let me know what you're reading or listening to that i should have a look at.

Cheers

Dave

No News is Good News?

Wow, it's been many months since I posted anthing on here.  I have a draft about driving in Europe, written in September, which was never published.  And nothing after that.

I guess I've been busy with life.  Work keeps me pretty busy, and 2011 included more business travel than any time in the past 20 years.  Then I had a hernia repair surgery in November, which kept me in town for awhile, but oddly I didn't get too much done in my personal life even when I was off work for a week.

At the start of 2012, I want to look back on the past year and see the major successes, and try to ignore some of the less fulfilling aspects.  And I need to look forward, to the incredible new things that keep happening in my life, as my children grow, and as I slowly improve my musical abilities.

Exhausted as I often am, I just want to go to bed now.  Have a great 2012!

Guitar Review: Gibson Nighthawk

Believe it or not, here's another blog post written while flying across the Atlantic. This is sort of a follow-up to an entry from a year ago, where I said I don't have any Gibson guitars, yet think of myself as a "Gibson guy".

So, I finally did get myself a Gibson guitar. And yet the Nighthawk is very much like a Fender in a lot of respects. Nevertheless, perhaps this one guitar sums up why I was previously so torn.

I had seen this specific guitar at the home of an acquaintance, and it haunted me for months, though I hadn't even played or heard it. Early this year I had seen advertising for the new Epiphone Nighthawk, which further stirred my interest.

The first thing that caught my eye about these guitars was the diagonally placed humbucker pickup, and the total of three different types of pickups in the guitar. The second was the body shape... to my eye having pretty lines like a Les Paul, but somehow not quite right.

Anyway, a couple of months back I finally got my hands on one of the new Epiphone Nighthawk guitars at Long & McQuade music in Vancouver, and I just about bought it on the spot. I also handled one of the new 2011 Gibson Nighthawks as well, though it didn't have the 3-pickup configuration. The initial impression of these guitars was that they're significantly lighter than a Les Paul but otherwise feel rather similar. I really liked the feel of the neck, with a smooth low action and comfortable medium-profile neck cross-section.

In the end I was given the opportunity to buy the genuine mid-90s Gibson model for a good price, and I jumped on it after trying the guitar for a few days. The 2011 Gibson model was very nice, but more money than I was willing to spend, and the model I tried didn't have the pickup configuration I wanted. The 2011 Epiphone model was very nice, and a great price. Made in Indonesia, I didn't see any quality issues on the model I tried out, and would have been happy to purchase that guitar. But we have an Epiphone (Dot Studio) and I really wanted to own one Gibson.

The original Nighthawks were made by Gibson from 1993-1996, and were not considered a commercial success. I'll point out here that the same fate befell the now-iconic Les Paul and Flying V guitars at the beginning of the 1960s, only to be resurrected when Gibson realized how popular the used guitars had become. So also the Nighthawk, which was reborn (apparently significantly redesigned) as a Gibson model in 2009 and as an Epiphone this year.

Although the esthetic of this guitar is very Gibson, the guitar has a number of characteristics more commonly found on Fender guitars:

- the neck scale is 25 1/4" rather than the shorter scale common on Gibsons, which gives the strings more tension and a different feel

- the single-coil pickup, and coil-splitting tone pot (pull up on the tone knob to split the humbuckers into single-coil mode) offer up lots of chimy tones heard typically from Fender guitars (Stratocaster tones to my ears)

The 3-pickup model offers 9 different pickup combinations using the 5-position selector and the coil-splitting pot. The pickups are a mini-humbucker in the neck position, single coil in the middle, and a humbucker in the bridge position. I've been playing the guitar through a Fender Blues Jr III amp, and am amazed at the range of tones I get out of the guitar. The single coil and split coil modes give great glassy and chimy tones that I've never heard from this amp with my humbucker guitars. I really like the tone of the neck mini-humbucker as well, as it seems somehow different (in a nice way) as well.

Overall, the tone spectrum is so varied that I can see how this would become the go-to guitar for any occasion. And it's light enough to remain comfortable. So maybe now I can really claim I'm a Gibson guy.

Twitter Philosophy

Another mid-flight iPhone blog post. Can't work because the reclined seat in front of me prevents opening my laptop.

Today, I'll present my thoughts on how I use Twitter. I think there are a lot of people who briefly pass through the Twitterverse and then keep on going. They don't see value for themselves in that world. And I can't say I blame them. The value of Twitter wasn't immediately obvious to me either.

I was originally turned on to Twitter by @shiva, a co-worker who had been twittering for awhile, and I figured the lack of immediately obvious uses for it shouldn't deter me too quickly. In the end, I have found it to be a great source of information, entertainment and sometimes even inspiration.

Now first off, I'm not a prolific tweeter. In fact, for a long time I was almost entirely a listener, and frankly I suspect that's where most of the value comes for me. The following list summarizes my philosophy of Twitter use:

• I follow only those I think will be interesting for some reason. I won't automatically follow you back if you follow me, but I will check you out and follow back if you seem even vaguely of interest to me. I might then unfollow you in a week or two if I conclude that I'm not enjoying your feed. 
• I don't expect or want a follow-back when I follow you. If you think I'd be interesting to follow, that's great and I welcome you. 
  
  
• I mostly follow news sources and those with some strong relationship to music.
  
  
• I have a high level bio summary on my Twitter profile, and I think that helps others find me with directed follows that might actually interest me, so I think it's probably a good thing. 

I should point out that as Twitter users, we have to expect not to read everything, but just a subset of the info flowing past. This was a bit weird for me at first -- that is, it's not like reading email, but more like picking up the paper and glancing through it, and maybe not reading the paper every day.

I personally find it hard to check my Twitter feed during the day. I'm very busy, but truly enjoy checking it during down time. As such, I enjoy following people from around the globe to get a current perspective regardless of the time of day.

Most people start on Twitter following celebrities. A few are actually interesting, though many aren't. I'd suggest using the search to see if you can find people with similar interests to yours, located in your town, etc.

Cheers
Dave

Mid-Atlantic Blues

I posted some reviews last time I was flying across the Atlantic. I figure I have nothing better to do, so here are a few thoughts about travel.

Now don't get me wrong here. I really enjoy traveling in general. Seeing new places, and even [eek] meeting new people is really great.

I have done some great personal trips in my life. Driving around Nova Scotia with my now-wife. Motorcycling from Vancouver to Ottawa and back in two weeks. Visiting parts of Australia including a week-long motorcycle tour. Bancock, Thailand. Even Hong Kong, though I could barely stand the noise level. And my greatest trip, which was a year-long voyage, mostly by sailboat, from Vancouver down the coast to Mexico and eventually through French Polynesia to Tahiti.

And I've seen a lot of cool things and driven more rental car models than I can count on the numerous business trips I have made over the years. I've stayed in a few very nice hotels, and have definitely eaten a lot of great food.

But my pet peeve of the day is the huge number of comments I get from people about how great it must be to be traveling on business trips. Let me set the record straight.

For many of us who travel for work, it means:

- Being away from our families. My little one cries when I tell her I'm going away on yet another trip. My wife lives the life of a single parent while I'm gone, and is exhausted when I get home. And sometimes we miss important events because of travel. I doubt I'll get to see the Stanley Cup final this week, even though the home town team is playing [go Camucks!].

- Getting up at ungodly times to rush to some airport where we get treated like cattle on the way to slaughter. Oh and perhaps being exposed to unsafe amounts of radiation in the body scanners and in the air.

- Spending the vast majority of our time locked away inside a building or vehicle. For me it's normally many hours of meetings followed typically by a decent dinner and then hours of work to catch up with whatever happened in the office during the day and to prepare for whatever meeting is happening the next day.

And it's still surprisingly hard to find Internet access on the go without paying enormous sums for the privilege. So lots of waiting around. And it's often a stretch to get decent exercise on the go.

Sure, it really is awesome to travel to Northern California or Italy. I love the palm trees. The blue sky in CA. The mega-yachts on the Riviera. But I tend to see them only from a passing car, or after dark. On the other hand, it would be great to spend the weekend sailing with my family instead of touring airports and wearing out my butt in airplane seats.

So next time you think it sounds cool for someone to travel so much, perhaps you could inquire how they like it, rather than assuming it's great. Oh, and i dont travel nearly as much as many people I know. I'm not sure how they do it, frankly.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant. It's not. I'm inspired by constantly optimistic and grateful people in my life to look at the great things I have to be thankful for. An there are many.

And you're among them, so: thank you!