My musical interests
Posted by dizzyjim on January 19, 2009
For more years than I care to remember I have been interested in music – both in listening and playing instruments.
Musical tastes.
As a teenager in the 50’s and 60’s my chosen music was Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues, Blues and guitar instrumentals. I enjoyed (and still enjoy) bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Searchers, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, The Shadows, The Ventures etc. although I never really liked the Beatles! On reflection I think it was the music not the words which I listened to. I can recall the riffs but the words passed me by. Probably why I am not a fan of country music where the words are all and the music is incidental.
My current tastes have developed to include Jazz, Classical, Spanish (some!), Latin American and many others. I’ll try most types of music but find I can only take some of it in small bursts. Heavy rock and high speed guitar solos fall into this category.
My son has introduced me to some music which I probably would never have heard so I’m grateful for that. An example would be the music of Ry Cooder. My iPod now has almost all my music collection on board and I’ve found that by setting it to random play I get to hear many tunes which I never knew I had. I feel that this alone has helped enormously in widening my musical interests.
The latest musical genre to appeal to me is slide guitar as exemplified by Michael Messer, Toby Walker and others.
Playing music.
I have played musical instruments of one kind or another since I was about ten or eleven. I played (joke) a violin, a mandolin and an accordian. I still have the violin and mandolin although the latter is in need of repair. The accordian disappeared many years ago. We also had a trumpet but I could never get the hang of that.
When I reached teenage years I was given a spanish guitar. Cheap, nasty, hard to play and lousy intonation. Despite that the guitar bug bit and after buying a couple more useless castoff’s I eventually bought a decent guitar – a red Watkins Rapier 33. Being some sort of electronic engineer I built my first guitar amplifier – a 15W valve amplifier. I bought a secondhand Watkins Copicat echo chamber and was made – I could at last emulate my heroes – The Shadows. I played with some friends which was OK until they bought 30W amplifiers. They drowned my sound. Yes – I still have the Watkins Rapier, the Copicat and the homemade amplifier.
I played with a friend who later became my best man. It was our guitar playing which introduced me to my wife. After I got married a didn’t play much until the late 1980’s when a friend at work put up a notice asking if anyone would like to come along and play some music. I jumped at the chance. Our music was awful. I still have tapes of our early sessions. One of the members who’d played real music in a band showed us how to do it properly. After that we improved dramatically culminating in us playing at our daughters wedding. By this time I was the proud owner of a Fender Stratocaster guitar. I still play on a regular basis with two of those founding members.
My musical instruments and equipment.
The trouble with guitars is that as soon as you’ve obtained your dream guitar you find out that the sound you want comes as much from the playing technique as it does from the guitar. Despite that the temptation is great to try different guitars in pursuit of that elusive sound. The following list is the result of my quest for that sound:
Fender Stratocaster guitar. This gives the authentic Shadows sound
Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar. I expected this to be my perfect guitar – it isn’t
Epiphone ES335 guitar. This is a good all round guitar for instrumentals, jazz, rhythm.
Epiphone Joe Pass Emporer guitar. I wanted to play jazz. Jazz didn’t want me to play it!
Epiphone Slide guitar. Not as easy as I expected but good fun.
Ovation electro-acoustic guitar. Good for strumming and finger style. Something else I can’t do very well.
Takamine nylon strung electro-acoustic. Sounds brilliant. Solo playing only.
Watkins Rapier 33 guitar. Also good for Shadows. Slight intonation problem.
Peavey Classic 50 amplifier. Too loud. Too heavy. It will be going soon.
Vox AD30VT amplifier. My main amplifier. Modelling amplifier with built in effects.
Marshall AS50 amplifier. Used with the Ovation guitar and drum machine.
Quadraverb GT effects unit. Echo effects. Not used much now.
Line 6 JM4 looper. Just bought this. Allows you to play along with built-in backing tracks/drums and/or layer your own guitar creations. Good for seeing how good/bad your playing really is.
Boss drum machine. This has a volume control unlike live drummers.
