John Hendow

I’m generally skeptical of New Year’s resolutions. But among the things I’m trying to make happen this year is to get each of my instruments into the hands of a qualified luthier. I have a few [guitars, basses, banjos] that all need minor service and at this point there’s no way I can make time to do it at home. Fortunately, they’re all in good shape and there really aren’t any major repairs necessary. A little solder work here, a little adjustment there. One of my basses needs to have the frets dressed. One of the strats needs a bunch of minor tweaks. I’d like to replace the pickups on one of the fretless basses. My banjo needs to have its Keith/Scruggs tuners replaced. The tele needs a new output jack. And the list goes on.

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My first impressions of this gig are colored by receiving a phone call while en route to the show. At our last band discussion on Tuesday we understood we would be the last band of the night to play, putting us on stage at around 11:00 PM. I told my bandmates I’d probably be on site by around 9:00 in order to get my gear loaded in and stored out of the way before the first band went on. At 8:40 I had finished a leisurely dinner and was having a leisurely drive to the gig when I received a message from my bandmates informing me (1) there had been a last-minute schedule change and (2) we were now playing at 9:00. Leisure be damned! I hit the warp drive, procured parking (always a challenge on Capitol Hill), sprinted my bass rig up the sidewalk and arrived at the bar at 8:55. Three minutes later I was onstage, set up and in tune.

At that point it got pretty easy.

As a bassist my main function is bridging our music’s harmonic and rhythmic structures. I’ve gotten attuned to Josh and Janie’s playing styles, and can anticipate their direction. My parts tend to develop onstage with theme / variation evolution based on lines I create during the improv and composition sessions. I set up most of my parts with “signposts” that announce certain points in the song or act as a counter melody. But within that framework I feel pretty free to move around. Onstage I listen to everyone for ideas. Brad tends to explore his parts as well, so there is always good opportunity for dialog. Sometimes I deliberately attempt to steer the band. Last night was a great gig in the sense that we were all pretty relaxed (excluding my non-leisurely commute) and onstage there was very little nervous energy.

Overall, another fine Preons show. I’m actually really pleased that we played first, since I got home at a decent hour. Usually I usually hedge my bets a little and show up 30 minutes before the first band is even theoretically supposed to begin playing. Last night I broke that rule for the first time in years, figuring there was no big reason to hurry since opening bands never start on time. Now I remember why I made up that rule… just in case the first band winds up being US! Oh.. and yes, we did start and finish on time.

The more I play guitar and bass in various music ensembles, the more I come to view these instruments as a continuum. The only major difference between them is that I play bass with my fingers and play guitar with a pick. I certainly make exceptions to this rule; one of the Preons tunes requires the use of a pick and on some occasions I play electric guitar without a pick.

Adapting this approach to a single instrument is going to be interesting for me. I’m already planning to combine my playing styles within the context of an extended scale. In the Preons, where I’m the bassist, I often tap with my right hand to play counterpart or to extend the reach of notes and chords. Over the next few weeks I’ll be providing information on how I’m progressing with this challenge.

It’s been well over a year and I still haven’t landed a good tapping instrument. My top choices would either be a newish Chapman Stick (with the adjustable tailpiece) or a Warr Guitar. I’ve played a Warr Guitar on and off lately, and it’s fabulous. I can’t seem to get the owner to part with it and I’m continuing to explore some alternatives. The design of those two instruments is particularly attractive to me. The Stick has a classic streamlined appearance and I love its minimal design. And the Warr Guitar is simply stunning with its exotic woods. Since I’m planning to approach the instrument as an ultrawide bass+guitar, I want to string it from low to high – unlike the common Stick approach with the bass strings inverted. As a bassist I want the lower register arranged in perfect fourths, and as a guitarist I want the upper register tuned as the top five strings of a guitar. The part of the equation I haven’t settled on is the interval between the two groups. I’d be willing to try a continuous tuning from low to high, and also willing to try two groups separated by a wider interval to minimize the likelihood of hands colliding.

My playing involves tapping and cross-fingering on both bass and guitar, although I also play both instruments in a more conventional approach as well. So the tapping instrument would provide a good wide-range platform for those instances when I really want to cover more ground or generate those percussive tones. If anyone has a spare Stick or Warr Guitar they’d like to part with…

I’ve been practicing a lot lately, which is always enjoyable. If I didn’t have to work I’d practice four hours a day. The current focus of my effort is to economize the motion of both hands and fingers. I’m also putting in a lot of time on two-handed tapping. It’s not as much fun on a guitar or bass. I would love to get a Warr Guitar or a Chapman Stick, but they’re both out of my price range. So I’m doing my tapping on the instruments at hand. It’s a good exercise for counterpoint and definitely is a mental puzzle.

I spent a good few hours on fretless bass yesterday, working out some phrasing technique and continuing my analysis of Mick Karn’s bass lines.  The man is a most complete stylist on the instrument and his distinctive playing is one of the reasons I was drawn to fretless.

And at some point I need to get back to practicing keyboards too. 

Ten fingers. Too few hours.  

Unemployment brings opportunity. While I’m waiting for the phone to ring, I am enjoying some practice time on guitar and bass. Meedly meedly. I dusted off some jazz books and started working on standards. One of my upcoming goals is to learn a few Chet Atkins tunes for the 1 Uppers. I’m starting to put some material together for recording purposes and hopefully will be able to complete some tracks next month.

As guitarists and bassists develop better technique, we often discover there seem to be tuning inconsistencies with our instruments that can’t be addressed by plugging into a tuner. Over the years that I’ve played, I have discovered that there is an inherent problem with all of my instruments in a certain portion of the fretboard range. In the process of trying to understand the problem space, I had to do a little math and physics. See? Beneath its firebreathing veneer of rebellion and self-expressive freedom, rock and roll is actually science! And all this time we thought we were being so anti-establishment. Well, at least we can say we’re putting our science to work.

Let’s start at the beginning of the problem with “this thing isn’t in tune”… these issues need to be fully addressed before we can derive any benefit from discussion on microtuning.

Tuning Issues
If you find your guitar or bass won’t play in tune, there are several things worth examining.

1. First of all, make sure your strings are relatively new (less than one month old). Old strings, especially if they’re really dull looking and cruddy, will not properly stay in tune. If in doubt replace them and allow the new ones to stretch a bit before proceeding.
2. How is the neck relief? Sight down the guitar fretboard, looking from the bridge to the nut. If you see an obvious bow / curve / twist in the fretboard, you need to adjust the neck relief. You should also be able detect any serious fret problems this way (see #4 below). Adjusting the neck relief isn’t terribly difficult, but if you aren’t experienced in making this adjustment I’d suggest you have a luthier show you how it’s done. The key here is to make SMALL adjustments; no more than 1/4 turn of the adjustment nut at a time. Warning: overtightening can break the truss rod, and this is the very definition of the word “bummer”.
3. Your tuning issues might be due to improper string action. Check the height of the string above the fretboard. If there is too much distance from the string to the top of the fret, there will be too much deflection when you fret (you’ll always be pulling the string sharp when fretting). This needs to be adjusted at both the bridge and at the nut. Adjusting the bridge is simple. Adjusting the nut slots is not. I recommend you have a luthier handle any nut adjustments.
4. It could also be your frets. If the frets are improperly crowned you’ll find tuning isn’t consistent on fretted notes. Sight down the fretboard and take notice of any unusual frets. If you see deep ruts in the frets or they seem really tall, flat, or radically different from each other, it might be time to ask a good luthier for an assessment.

So if you’ve checked all these things and carefully tuned the open strings with a good tuner, only to find your guitar or bass still doesn’t seem in tune when you’re playing, it might be time to check your intonation.

Read the rest of this post for more information… read more…

I spent some time this weekend working on my guitar synth setup, which I’m planning to bring into play with The Preons. It will allow me to drive some additional tones from the guitar platform, and since I’ll be using my Strat with the synth pickup, I will also have a great electric guitar to add to our existing mayhem. We are working on a few songs that I really want to take solos on, and this will let me pull up some bass sounds underneath the guitar patches. Plus I’ll have the ability to play some skronky synth parts.

Of course, this nearly doubles the amount of stuff I need to haul to gigs… fretted bass, fretless bass, guitar synth controller, guitar synth module, effect processor pedal, amp + cabinet…. sheesh… between Brad and I we’re a mobile pawn shop.

The Rendezvous is one of Seattle’s classic downtown bars. It’s gone through phases of being something of a dive, but lately it’s been returned to its rightful place as a cool live music venue. I always enjoy playing there, and the staff is great. Last night’s gig was a late one, with three bands on the bill. We started playing at around midnight, which meant the audience was suitably “prepared” for our show 🙂

Josh showed up all dressed in white, perhaps a yin to my yang. I was wearing all black, but just as I left the house I decided to grab a green shirt. I should have gone all-black in keeping with tradition. Josh also arrived with a newly-purchased fog machine and some stage lights. Through providence or poor planning, the fog machine’s controls were placed on top of my bass amp, thus providing me with some degree of weather control. Last night’s forecast was: fog.

This was the first gig where I used the PodLiveXT to dramatically process my bass tone. The addition of more aggressive compression helped the low B string punch through a little more, and I think a short reverb also helps smooth out the overall sound – especially on songs like Ghosts of the Dalles which calls for a slightly more somber tone.

My friend David arrived early to help run sound, but alas… he didn’t do at this gig. I’m really looking forward to having him run our sound at the next opportunity. He’s got great ears and really understands how music production works. It’ll be a huge step forward for us to have his help. Also in attendance was Paul, who is a fine local musician. At some point we’ll be inviting him to join us on a double bill.

Overall, a fun evening. I’m looking forward to the next gig.

Cachao left us today, and while I’m sad at his passing, I am very happy that he was among us for eight decades of seriously heavy groove. He was the master (some say the inventor) of the mambo, the recipient of numerous Grammy awards, and was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. More recently, he was featured on the cover of Bass Player magazine, which was a touching recognition of his towering importance in music. Many current bass players are rediscovering the classical rhythmic function of our instrument, and his playing style represents a tremendous compendium of style.

I sometimes think of all the great Cuban jazz that we never get to hear. Cuba is off limits to US citizens. No travel. No trade. We’re lucky that some of this wonderful music makes it way to us, but I do hope that someday soon we’ll be able to legally travel to Cuba to hear the next Cachao in action.

I was a late discoverer of Cachao, and can thank my bass teacher for turning me on to his music as part of transcription assignment. Get out there and dig that groovy, baby.