Tips, Techniques, Examples about my favorite musical instrument, the Twelve-String Guitar.

If you play guitar check out Playing Technique, or Strings / Setup. There are also some interesting posts about guitars at, you guessed it, Guitars.

If you want to spread your musical talents around, you will find some good info at Recording.

Marketing - meh - I'm probably the world's best bad example. Although you could find funny stuff there.

I've made some music videos through the years, and you can find them and other interesting music at Music I Like, Music I Play.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Hiding From the Whomp

The whomp never really left despite all my efforts. I managed to reduce it some by spreading the microphones far away from the sound hole, but it was still pretty obvious, particularly in the Lute prelude, BWV999 that I was working on. It dawned on me that maybe raising or lowering the tuning of the guitar would avoid the whomp, a sound that seemed to be pitched at 91 hertz. With the Taylor LKSM tuned down a minor third the open 5th course was right at this frequency. First I raised the pitch a semitone by capo-ing the first fret. This didn't help a lot. It was now emphasized on the fourth fret of the 6th course, but it was still in evidence on the open 5th. Next I tried lowering one semitone, so it is down a full third. This seemed to change it for the better. It made the notes on the open 5th course sound sharper and more defined...not so much a whomp.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Linux for 12-string


I admit it, I haven't used a microsoft operating system for anything serious for 20 years. The past six years Linux has been my main operating system; before that it was OS/2. Sure, it's been hard getting decent audio programs. Under OS/2 I was forced to use the DOS emulator to run Studio, a nifty WSIWYG application for creating midi. And I've had my sound card battles with Linux. But for the past 3 or 4 years things seem to be looking up for doing music stuff under Linux. The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) is the default for audio, after a couple of years of competing architectures, and it supports most of the high-end audio chip sets. You can look up your card on this list. I'm using an M-Audio Stereophile 2496 because M-Audio was one of the first vendors to open the specs for their high-end cards, and the ALSA people quickly wrote good drivers. They even have a clone of the Windows Mixer application.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

ogg vorbis encoding

I find it difficult to record the sound of any of my 12-string guitars...more difficult than getting an accurate reproduction of a nylon string classical or a 6 string steel guitar. It seems to be a more complex sound and the complexity that sounds so nice when you are playing is not reproduced. And when I want to share a recorded sound that I think comes close, compressing it into mp3 is like the final nail in the coffin.

Friday, February 23, 2007

A new guitar for your collection

My sister sent me this - she knows how much I love guitars.

Most of us have at least one guitar, many have more than one. You should have at least one air-guitar, and I suggest that this would make a nice addition to anyone's collection:
How to Make a Rubber Band Guitar - WikiHow

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Golden Ears and MP3


I was cruising around one of the audio forums and came across a discussion about pre-amps and how the RNP from FMR audio stacked up against several other brands. I use the RNP. I used to use an Audio-Buddy from M-Audio. The RNP seems nice, but I don't remember enough about the sound of the Audio Buddy to say for sure that I could tell the difference between my old pre and this new one. There are so many other things that have a bigger effect - strings, guitar, microphone, microphone position; don't forget ability - which I hope is changing for the better. Our auditory memory is pretty short also - maybe a few minutes, if that. So I was kind of interested to hear comparisons and opinions of experts.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

12-string saddle for finger pickers


Taylor has a new 12-string out, a T5, which is mostly electric. What caught my eye in the blurb is that they have aligned the strings so that the tops of the courses are at the same height. In the normal method for all acoustic guitars the strings go over the top of the saddle which is flat, so the octave pairs in a twelve-string acoustic guitar have uneven tops. I think Taylor modified the top of the saddle so it is no longer a flat line, but instead has grooves for the fundamental member of the octave, something like the drawing above, which is a blue saddle with orange strings, seen from the tail of the guitar.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Mastering a CD

I was shocked when I played my very first CD, no longer available, in my car. It sounded, frankly, embarrassing...boomy and not very clear. I spent some time checking the next CD in several systems and it sounds nice and clear wherever it's been played, and even sold a few copies on CDBaby. But I decided to have my last CD professionally mastered.

Monday, February 12, 2007

String Theory

While I'm finding out interesting things about tremolo on the 12 string, and it is taking a longer time than I expected, let's talk about strings for the twelve string acoustic guitar. The material that your strings are made from, and how much tension they are under, probably has affects the sound of your guitar more than anything else. But the wrong choice can permanently damage a 12-string guitar.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

The Four Amigos

We've covered the room and the microphones, so let's listen to some guitars.

First up is a Taylor 355, with Light Elixir strings, tuned to concert pitch. It is very bright. This is a one minute sample from "Spanish Escapee", from my first CD. (1.2 megs)

Next is a Gibson B45-12, with Heavy Elixir strings, tuned down a fourth. This is "Freight Train" (1.3 megs).

This is the LKSM-12, with Medium Elixir strings, tuned down a minor third. This is the first Bach prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier (4 megs).

The rest of the samples are encoded using Ogg. I haven't used Windows in years, and I don't know what the state of support is. Drop me a note in the comments if this is a big problem with Windows users and I will redo them as MP3s. I try to support open source, patent free, software when possible.

Climbing Paris Mountain


Every Thursday night throughout most of the year a group of cyclists gathers at Mike's Sunshine Shop for the ride up Paris Mountain. It isn't really a mountain. The real mountains are North and West of here, about forty miles away. Although all of Greenville is about 1,000 feet above sea level it used to be part of the Blue Ridge mountains which are much higher; erosion wore most of the area down some, but Paris Mountain seems to be made of sterner stuff and now stands about 1,000 feet higher than anything around it.

So we meet, sometimes just the people who work at the shop, but on some long and hot summer days there are 30 or more cyclists in the pack.

Monday, February 5, 2007

Tremolo

The way I originally fingered the tremolo in Tremblin' Whomp doesn't really sound like a tremolo for two reasons: the thumb striking one of the tremolo notes on an octave string interrupts the smoothness, and two, there should be a melody in the tremolo, but here it is all in the bass notes.

Friday, February 2, 2007

Creating Tunes


How do we come up with new tunes? While chasing down the wily whomp, I spent too much time hammering the open 5th course. I didn't spend all my day playing one note, of course. I checked in on the rec.music.classical.guitar group discussion on different types of tremolo, which seems to be an art all its own. Tremolo is the only way on a nylon string guitar to produce melodies with notes that sing over many beats. The melody is in the high notes, formed by repeating the same note rapidly. Two, three, or sometimes even all four fingers alternate while the thumb articulates a bass accompaniment. The different finger picking styles are indicated by using letters for each of the right hand fingers: p (or t) for thumb, i for index, m for middle, and a for annular (ring). 'x' is often used on those rare pinkie occasions. The most common pattern seems to be pami, although some people swear by (or at) piami.

Steel strings sustain a lot more than a classical guitar's strings.