Turning up the Bass

My latest album purchase was one I hadn't heard of but maybe should have. Thunder is the rather apt name of the album by SMV -- Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten. Three powerful electric bass players bringing their groove together.

I'm actually not yet at a clear opinion about Thunder, which I find a bit odd. I'm generally pretty quick to judge. My first impressions were pretty positive, actually. I didn't really like the way the first track opens, though, which has me a bit off kilter. I think my current position on the album as a whole is "pretty good".

The signature sounds of each of these great players seem to be evident throughout the recordings. I find that the three of them play perhaps too similar styles to fully complement each other. So although there are some really great parts on here, many are just OK.

I think perhaps my favorite track on here is Tutu. The tune is very familiar to me from Miles Davis' Amandla album. The liner notes to Thunder say Marcus Miller wrote it. His playing on the track is definitely reminiscent of Amandla, though the arrangement is different enough on Thunder as to be quite fresh. Great tune!

I got turned on to Stanley Clarke in the late 90's with his East River Drive album. Really solid.

I was a bit skeptical of an album of three bass players. And although it has some really strong parts, I think the album Thunder as a whole rates 3 stars out of 5 on my playlist rating scale. It's pretty good for listening to on the road, because the bass carries well in the car.

Favourite new album: "11:11" by Rodrigo y Gabriela

I expect I'll occasionally post comments about commercial music that interests me.  My tastes are quite eclectic, so you won't necessarily find a lot of consistency from one thing to the next.

So the "find" in the past month or so for me was the guitar duo of Rodrigo y Gabriela.  I hadn't heard of them before reading an article in GuitarPlayer [I think] magazine early this year.  Sampled a bit of their new 11:11 album on iTunes and decided it was a pretty low risk purchase.   I have to admit that the 11:11 album was very certainly worth the money.

The music on this album is primarily somewhat aggressive/percussive playing of a pair of classical guitars.  There are very occasionally other instruments, but that's the essence of it.  I like the sound of a classical guitar [still in the market for one eventually], but I'm not really a "classical guitar fan".  I tend to find the music a bit too, um, classical, for my tastes most of the time.  Rodrigo y Gabriela are apparently not classically trained, and the music here isn't classical.  In fact, there's even the occasional ripping solo run that stretches the boundaries of what I've ever imagined on classical guitar.

The overall feel of this album reminds me a lot of guitar god Al di Meola, where the use of a pick and thumping on the classical guitar body add a groove to the music not found in classical offerings.  I saw di Meola last summer at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, and his show was incredibly enjoyable.

My favourite track of the Rodrigo y Gabriela album is actually the title track.  11:11 employs a chord structure very similar to something I was toying with myself before Christmas, and that's perhaps why it sounded so "right" to me when I heard it.   The other track I thought was most excellent is Santo Domingo.  If you're not up for a new album, I'd suggest that you'd never regret dropping a couple of bucks on these two tracks.

By the way, I find this album doesn't carry particularly well in a noisy environment.  It didn't come across nearly as well driving in the car as it does sitting quietly at home or listening with headphones.  Lots of dynamic range with the classical guitars... well worth it when listening quietly.

While I'm almost talking about Al di Meola, I'll just record that one of my favourite albums of all time is one called Rite of Strings with Stanley Clarke on bass, Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and di Meola on guitar.  The whole album is great, with the songs written by each of these guys reflecting their own focus, but working really well together across the board.

And perhaps finally, since I'm on the topic of classical guitar played for non-classical purposes, I'll say that I also bought Yngwie J. Malmsteen's "classical" album Angels of Love.  This was also inspired by a writeup in one of the guitar magazines.  I have to say that in this case, I think it was pretty much a mistake on my part.  The album's not bad, but I didn't find anything in it that I really love.  And frankly it's not an acoustic album, which I somehow thought it would be... it's still pretty blistering rock, but with the classical guitar instead of a Stratocaster through most of it.

Guitar Review: Ovation CK-047 acoustic-electric

Since I referenced my Koa topped Ovation in the previous review, I thought I should provide an overview of that guitar as well.  There are a couple of Ovation CC-28 guitars in the family, but the one in this review is my CK-047, which is a mid-depth Korean-made Ovation that I bought a few years ago.

This is another extremely beautiful guitar, I have to say.  And it's quite special to me particularly because it played a primary role in reinvigorating my interest in guitar.  I've had guitars around for most of my life, but was not playing too regularly for the past 20+ years, and was certainly not progressing in my abilities.  I'm really not sure what caused me to buy this guitar, frankly.  I had a bit of extra money at the time, and was visiting a Long & McQuade music store, and somehow came home with this lovely creation.

My only acoustic guitar before that was a pretty beat-up steelstring that my parents had bought me as a kid, after having given up on piano lessons.  That guitar kind of sufficed, but it isn't a great quality guitar, and in retrospect I believe I might have played a lot more guitar in my life if I had splurged for a better guitar after reaching adulthood.  At around $650, the Ovation was by far the most expensive guitar I had owned, and the resulting improved tonal experience thrilled me.

The Ovation is a really nice sounding guitar, both acoustically as well as through an amp.  It's a mid-sized guitar, without a huge bass end, but very nicely balanced tones across the full range.  The intonation is very good on this guitar, and it sounds good open as well as playing high on the neck.

The OP20 electronics on the guitar are good, with a tuner that I find quite accurate and easy to use.  However, the tuner makes use of labeled LEDs to indicate what note is being sensed, and I find the labels for these lights hard to read [need reading glasses], and impossible in dim light.   The pickup system has a three-band equalizer that provides flexibility to get the desired tone from the guitar.

The Koa top on this guitar is spectacularly pretty, and nicer than I've seen on any other guitars.  The mid-depth body has a nice rich tone compared to the shallow body Ovations.  However, it's somewhat less comfortable to play this guitar than either a standard body or a thin Ovation.  Standing up and playing with a strap is pretty comfortable, but it's taken me quite awhile to find comfort in playing the guitar on my lap.  The convex back doesn't exactly mould to my somewhat convex belly, and the guitar tends to want to slide off my lap.

The guitar neck is comfortable in mid-sized hands, and the rounded profile is comfortable to play.  The finish of the frets is pretty good, but I find my cleaning cloth leaves lint caught in the ends of a few frets, so there's a bit of a gap that isn't really noticeable when playing.

I think I've had this guitar for about 2 1/2 years now, and I really love it.  It encouraged me to start playing almost daily for that whole period, and although I play some other guitars as well, I regularly come back to this Ovation and revel in the beautiful tones.  And others in the family liked this guitar enough to go out and buy Ovations for themselves.

Guitar Review: Luna Fauna Dolphin acoustic-electric

Shortly before Christmas '09, I finally succumbed to purchase a guitar I'd been eyeing for most of the year.   The problem with it primarily was that although I could find some information on the guitar, I hadn't seen one in the flesh, so to speak.

The guitar in question is the Fauna Dolphin guitar from Luna Guitars.  I can't recall where I first came across it... perhaps in a brochure from Celtic Renaissance Music.  I fell in love with the look of this guitar from the first glance... it's so different visually.  But there didn't seem to be a dealer of Luna guitars in western Canada, from what I could see, and thus I waited.  In the end, I drove to Bellingham, WA, and was lucky enough to find that not only did Mojo Music carry Luna, but they had a Dolphin in stock.  It was pretty much everything I'd hoped it would be, so I had it in the car before we headed home at the end of the day.

At left is a picture of the guitar I brought home.  It has a lovely sea-blue wavy maple top, with three dolphins inlayed around the sound hole.  The fingerboard has moon phase inlays for the dots, which look really nice.

The guitar is relatively small in size, which appeals to me.  It's also relatively thin bodied, and has a somewhat narrow neck.  Overall, very comfortable for smaller players, but perhaps not for those with really large hands.  I find the guitar very comfortable to play.  It is well balanced, and comfortable on the hands.

When played acoustically, the guitar sounds relatively nice, but has a bit of an odd tone to it.  Perhaps the guitar is young, and will mellow a bit with age.  I don't mind the sound, but in some parts of the register, it sounds more like a cheaper guitar than a more expensive one, in my limited experience.  We have a few Ovation guitars in the family, and I find the tone somewhat like the CC-28 Ovations, which are similar in price to the Luna.  My CK-047 Ovation has a richer tone across the board.  However, interestingly, the Luna has a certain sparkly brightness in some areas that's quite endearing and gorgeous.  Other areas are a bit more "honky-tonk", as one friend described it.

Plugged in, I found the guitar sounds really good.  Certainly much nicer than the CC-28 Ovation, and perhaps nicer than the CK-047 as well.  Certainly again there's a bright sparkle that comes through even better with the pickup, and sounds really great.

The guitar has a built-in tuner, which I find very easy to use.  Much nicer to read than the Ovation tuners, particularly in a darker room.  Unfortunately, I don't think the tuner is quite as precise as most of the other tuners in my home, but that's more of a gut feel (ear) than something I've measured.

Overall, the workmanship quality on the guitar is very nice.  The frets and nut are well finished and don't have any sharp areas, nor gaps under the fret ends.  I'd say the finish is better than the Korean Ovation guitars we have.  I was also playing an Ibanez classical (similar price) at Mojo Music the day I bought the Luna, and the Ibanez had quite rough fret ends, which really disappointed me.  The one concern I've had about the finish is that a couple of screws were loose where the jack enters the guitar.  I didn't notice it at the shop, and since I rarely play plugged in, I haven't dealt with it yet.

This is the most beautiful guitar in my stable, and I'm very impressed.  Luna brings a new angle to guitar building, making visual art at a level rarely seen in the industry.  The bonus was that the guitar is also really nice to play.

Life as an infinite set of compromises

An introduction:  I'm Dave.  Maybe that should be enough to express what I'm about, but I doubt it.

I'm in my forties, married, with children and pets.  Responsibilities, in other words, which really should suit me pretty well, since responsible is an adjective that applies pretty well to me.  Having abandoned any hope of being master in my own home [I'm practical, after all], I got this internet domain kell.ca so that I could at least claim to be master of my own domain.

I've actually had the domain for quite a few years, but have always left the web address parked.  Seems about time I made better use of my investment.  So I'm hoping to kill a few birds with one stone and create both a family site to bring the Kell clan closer together, as well as to offer an outlet for my creative juices.  I've been pondering for awhile whether it would be worth becoming a blogger of some sort, thanks to having finally gotten something of an interest in Twitter.  So I'll give it a bit of a go.  My main interest in blogging was to share some of my experiences related to music, be it creation or enjoyment thereof.

In the real world, I'm a software professional.  I'm a sailor in my occasional outdoor free time.  And I'm a musician at heart, I guess, though I made the easy decision in high school that I'd rather be employed as an engineer than be unemployed as a guitarist.  Some decisions are easier than others...

So welcome to my world.  I hope you find something interesting along the way.

Dave