Kickin’ the Guitar

Hey! Who’s that playing?
Hey! The guitar?

Last weekend we went camping with a bunch of friends and families. Cooking over fires, drinking beers, singing songs around the campfire. Ah good times. We were pretty lucky with the weather. It rained heavily Friday on the drive up, but stopped by the time we got there. Most of the trip was sunny but not too hot. It started raining again the last morning, just after we finished packing down the tent, and by the time we were on the drive home it was pouring again.

We went for a rocky and muddy hike up a mountainside. The kids did really well, Michelle in particular. Even as the more sedentary adults began whining, she was hopping from rock to rock, happy to keep going with great energy and enthusiasm. Lizzy lost a sandal in the lake, playing fetch with Seth’s dog Nula. We burned the giant U.F.O. I folded back in June for the oversize origami competition. My friend Nick has some powder to sprinkle into the fire to make it burn all kinds of crazy colors. We put it on the flying saucer and it was just the thing. Video coming soon.

But the main topic for today is about singing songs a playing guitar. This dude Joe brought his guitar and we had some jams. He also brought a stack of lead sheets he printed out from the Internet, which was a great help. I usually memorize the music I play, but everyone knows different songs. So it made it easy to follow along with a song you basically know but haven’t played before. And there are hundreds and hundreds of songs easy song like that. Next time I’m gonna bring some printouts of my own.

I got motivated to get back into practicing guitar. Actually, last year around this time I went thru a spell of playing guitar and trying to learn some tunes from my big Beatles book and a Neil Young book. I tried to practice two or three times a week for a half hour or so. I picked a couple tunes that were pretty challenging for me, such as “I Will”, and was making progress, but had to put it aside after a few months. I felt like I my progress was slowing, and I wanted to make time for other activities, and besides, my guitar playing would never rise to the level of my saxophone or piano playing.

Another factor is that even thought I have two guitars, neither one is very good. One an acoustic that I traded for a boom box many years ago. It has the dubious virtue of being made almost entirely not of wood. The body is plastic, a great big Ovation-style round back, and the neck is aluminum, wide and flat. It never is quite in tune and takes a lot strength to barre chord on it. At least it’s loud. And it’s great for camping cuz it’s well nigh indestructible and it doesn’t matter if it accidentally gets wet or dirty.

My other guitar is a bit nicer. It’s a Guild electric that I bought many years ago off my friend Mark (Yo Homeslice!). It actually has pretty good sound and action, and a nice two-pickup setup with a three-way switch and tone knobs. The main problem is the intonation. The joint between the neck and the body is not tight enough, so you end up doing Adrian Belew style tremolo effects every time you shift your balance.

Still, you can’t take a piano with you into the woods and you can’t sing while playing a sax, so I got motivated again. This time the focus is on easy rock and folk songs. I’ve just been googling lyrics and chords and finding pretty much every song I think of. It’s actually pretty funny how the same ascii tab charts that were floating around newsgroups in the 80’s are still out there circulating. One not-so-easy song I decided to tackle this time around was “Suitcase Blues”, a great ballad by Rik Emmet of Triumph.

And so, today I bought myself a new guitar. I knew I wanted an acoustic-electric (acoustic with a built-in pickup) so I could practice without and amp but could plug it in if I ever want to use it for recording or gigging out. After looking online, figured I could probably get a decent on in the $300 ballpark. I went to the music store on my lunch hour and it was nice and quiet, so I took some time and auditioned about 6 guitars. In the end I picked a Yamaha APX-500. It has really good sound and action, and a bunch of details that I like. The body has a nice shape and is thinner than other makes, so it’s more comfortable to hold, but still has a nice full sound. The neck is thinner and flatter than a lot of acoustics, but not as much as your typical electric. The jack is in a convenient place. It has a built-in tuner and 3-band equalizer and a slider labeled “AMF” that I’m not sure what it does. Its scale runs from 80 to 10K, so maybe it sweeps the resonant frequency for the middle band of the EQ. Finally, it has a really nice tobacco sunburst finish which is just gorgeous.

So now I’m totally psyched to learn a bunch of new songs. Too bad it’s too nice to take camping.

Here’s a picture of the guitar next to Michelle’s ukulele.