Chord sketches

Only a week and a bit to go till me & the lovely Blee move house can’t wait!

In terms of programming content, I’ve been struggling with .NET’s AutoResetEvents and Semaphores (do a search, I dare ya!) I finally got the program to work though. Unfortunately it’s classified so I can’t upload it but it was a simple program that sent web service requests in batches all at once (to check for concurrency issues with the server) which created a bit of development irony as I was trying to fix threading issues in a tool designed to find threading issues. Oh well, I’m glad it work and hope to never touch the code again!

On a more creative note I’ve started to begin sketching the feel & general music-ness of my first piece of music – Last Week of Flat (LWOF for short) I got the name from my current situation (last week of living in a flat…..) and it’s just going to develop over time really. No goal to make it the best track ever, more to ease me in to the world of music production and songwriting itself (without the lyrics cos I can’t sing)

So to start off that project I figured I’ll set down the general feel of the song which is embodied in the rough rhythm patterns below, the first riff is in D7, second in E7, third in G7 and the final one is in A7. I’ve ordered them based on how much I like them, A7 is quite sloppy because it was nearly midnight and I don’t have much of a creative side…yet…

Anyway here it is, enter at your own risk:

Edit: Oof where are my manners? Here’s the guitar rig setup too to recreate the sound using real or virtual pedals (chaining order is top to bottom, the split mix can be ignored really)

A long music post

Thursday began my long weekend, although it was not a good start – I messed up restringing my electric and so had to buy a new set of strings. On the upside however I inherited a beautiful seagull acoustic guitar and some chord/music books which is also being restrung, so I have been guitarless for a few days now. Gone for slightly thicker strings on both to get a stronger, more bluesy tone which should be good.

On the subject of music still, I went to listen to my good friend Phil play in his band (http://www.myspace.com/bengurionuk – Bengurion) they are very talented but for some reason aren’t getting many gigs. Maybe it is because Phil likes to dress up like austin powers when the rest of the group are actually co-ordinated…. Oh well. Still worth a listen

Hopefully in my next post I will upload some mp3s of me messing around with Guitar Rig 3, I love playing about with guitar effects so it might be worth me putting some online.

And finally, I visited the local guitar shop to select my second guitar so I can set a budget and save up for it, after playing 4 or 5 guitars I decided that the Fender Jazzmaster is too awesome for me yet, and the next step is a Fender Lonestar Stratocaster, here’s a brief summary of what I played:

• Fender Jazzmaster (£1000) very expensive but oh so beautiful and awesome to play.
• Yamaha Pacifica (£180) cheap, light but easy and fun to play. Not as good sounding as the others but very sturdy.
• Cheap les paul copy (£180) cheap, warm and felt quite good for the low cost. Used but had plenty of charm considerably better than the pacifica.
• Fender Lonestar Stratocaster (£480) a happy medium, smooth and great sounding. More expensive but it has a great weight to it and the humbucker pickups near the bridge are fantastic (SD pickups I believe?)

And now for the pictures!

So which one am I going to get? The Lonestar Strat (black one) best in its price range, and feels as though theres lots that can be unleashed from it once I get better.