John Hendow

As a follow-up to my recent article about rewiring my rack, I’ve finished assembling a new snake to connect between my rack and floor pedal. It contains three 1/4″ unbalanced guitar cables and a 2 conductor power cable that will eventually provide remote DC for my floor pedal. I need to do some testing to determine the correct DC power supply that will provide the necessary voltage / amperage via the 30 foot cable run. It took me a few hours to put it together, using loops of heat-shrink tubing. As much as I love duct tape, it’s the wrong tool for building cable snakes. Ditto for cable ties, which always catch on each other and often have sharp edges. Heat-shrink tubing doesn’t leave adhesive residue, is very low-profile and if you ever need to repair any of the cables, you just snip the loops to separate the cables. The resultant snake is easy to handle and coils neatly.

My guitar setup is fairly straight forward. Click the image below for a larger view.

I have 2 transmitters for my Audio Technica wireless system, so both my main guitar and my backup guitar are ready for action. The good news is that I can select from hundreds of channels, so I can always find a clear frequency at any venue. The bad news is that my UHF wireless setup transmits within the soon-to-be-auctioned 700MHz frequency band, and I’m not certain what will happen once that part of the spectrum is sold. Quite a lot of professional wireless equipment runs in this part of the spectrum. Chances are the music industry will need to find a new place to broadcast our signals.

The big excitement of yesterday was the purchase of a new Rock N Roller R8 equipment cart, which neatly transports my entire rig in a single trip. This will make my load-in much easier, and will be especially important when I’m moving my own gear. I’ve noticed that it sits pretty level in “cart” mode, so I may even set up my guitar rig right on top of it when I need to move it onto the stage for quick change-over between bands.

I put a little time into rewiring my gear rack for the upcoming 80s Invasion gig. I’m using a shorter signal path these days, and I wanted to rebuild my patch panel to make setup easier at gigs. The most important change to the interior of my rack was going through all the wiring and replacing the patch cables. In the previous configuration I had a rack-mounted POD Pro, but I’ve replaced it with the floorboard version (POD XT Live). I built two sets of StarQuad wired cables with Neutrik plugs for the internal routing. I also assembled a new rear panel, which I punched with three 1/4″ interconnects, a MIDI connector, and an XLR. In order to streamline my setup / teardown time, I’ve built a new snake to connect between the rack and pedalboard. Next up: find a new handtruck / cart to move my gear around.

As I wrote in my post “The Bass Gods Smileth“, I recently acquired an Ashdown MAG 300 bass head. It’s a great bass amp and I’m really happy with it. The only minor concern was that it was missing a knob. No big deal really, since I figured I could just order one from the manufacturer. I contacted Ashdown via email and received a very quick reply. Impressive, since they’re located in Essex, UK. I explained my situation and the service manager said he would just mail me the knob. From the UK. For free. And he did! That is amazing customer support. I’m impressed with this kind of policy. It seems most companies have lost the ability to recognize the long-term value of solid customer service. It makes the difference between being a loyal customer and being a shopper.

I’ve done a lot of shopping this holiday season, and most of the customer service I’ve experienced has been deplorable. Cashiers carrying on cell phone conversations while working at the register. Disinterested / aloof salespeople, ignoring obvious customer support opportunities in the store and clearly telegraphing their annoyance at being on the job. And no authority… there is a near-total lack of empowerment to make good customer support decisions. It doesn’t matter how much the managers care or how hard they work if the line employees don’t internalize these values as well, and that won’t happen if those employees don’t feel like they’re invested in the outcome. Simply put, there are businesses on the “naughty” list and I won’t be in much of a hurry to return to them. And there are some businesses like Ashdown, who make the “nice” list. I’m officially a loyal customer.

Last Saturday’s show was a lot of fun, and I think we played really well. The staff at the Capital Hill Arts Center was very helpful and friendly. We definitely benefit when the house crew is so easy to work with. The overall enthusiasm we experience at these gigs is amazing, both from the audience and the support staff.

Parking on Capital Hill is always difficult, and I was lucky enough to find a spot just down the street from the club. It didn’t help that it was raining, or that I still needed to make four trips with the hand truck to / from my car. I definitely need to get a hand truck that converts to a cart. This will allow me to move my gear in a single trip. It’s on my “to do” list before the New Year’s Eve gig.

One of the additional challenges of this gig was the limited monitor system. We didn’t get much of a soundcheck (ok… none) and there were only two monitors for the whole band. One didn’t work. Guess which one I was using… I think we need to invest in an in-ear system for the band. Then it wouldn’t matter.

The next week of practice is going to interesting; I need to do some tweaks on my patches and prepare the blocks of presets to match the set order. New Year’s Eve is going to be a lot of fun.

During the past month I’ve been putting in about 2 hours per day of practice. A lot of it has been guitar practice in preparation for tomorrow night’s 80s Invasion gig in Seattle, but I’ve also been working on my bass parts for The Preons. It’s interesting because these are three different instruments:

• Six string electric guitar (Fender Stratocaster) with a scale length of 25.5″
• Four string fretless bass (Warwick Corvette) with a scale length of 34″
• Five string fretted bass (Tony Levin model) with a scale length of 34″

These instruments are all pretty different and require different techniques. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that my practice time on any of them seems to improve my playing on all of them. I’ve also noticed that my pitch detection and concept time-to-execution is much improved. There might be something to that old thing about practice…

One of my new approaches to practicing is to work on parts much more slowly than before. I am attempting to keep my tempo very controlled until I can execute the parts flawlessly, then I’ll develop speed. My guitar teacher in college told me “practice doesn’t make perfect. practice makes permanent.” It makes sense. Once errors are practiced repeatedly, they are much more difficult to address. So I’m putting in some miles with my instruments, getting ready for upcoming gigs and hoping to break through to the next level of my playing. Meedly meedly.

For the last two days I’ve been attending another installment of my PMP class, which is going very well. I’m enjoying the training and looking forward to next month’s classes. The classes are being held in downtown Seattle at a hotel conference room. As a regrettable consequence, I’ve been subjected to a huge amount of Christmas music, piped in via overhead speakers. I despise Christmas music. I especially loathe reinterpretations of Christmas music turned funky, bluesy, an into R&B workout. It doesn’t improve the music. If it were possible, I’d chew my own ears off. Can we just please hear Bach’s Christmas Oratorio?

Yesterday 80s Invasion rehearsed our new material in preparation for the upcoming shows. But just getting out of the house with my gear turned out to be a comedy of mishaps. First, while loading my Mesa/Boogie guitar cabinets into the trunk, I managed to smash a finger… I was moving one of my speaker cabinets to make room for my rack, and got the middle finger of my right hand caught between them. The knuckle got squished pretty hard, immediately swelled up and turned purple. A short improvised dance was performed. Oh well… the show must go on… so I finished loading up and got ready to leave. That was when I noticed that I had a flat tire. Fortunately there is a tire place near my house, so I limped my car there and got it fixed.

As the saying goes “That which does not kill us, only makes us late”. Or something like that.

Remarkably, despite the challenges I still arrived at rehearsal on time. We did a pretty good job of getting through the songs. The gods of rock must be testing me.

In preparation for the upcoming 80s Invasion gigs I’ve been spending about 2 hours each day practicing my guitar parts. Yesterday I watched the Seahawks game on television with a guitar on my lap, playing scales and arpeggios during the entire game. It’s amazing to me that after all these years of playing the guitar, I never get tired of just holding the instrument and noodling around on it. Apparently I was wired for this… guitar is my drug.

I play guitar reasonably well. I know my music theory, can transcribe and play from recordings, and improvise convincingly in a number of styles. It’s not enough to be good. I want to claw my way up the mountain into that marble temple where the gods dwell.

Back when I first began to play guitar, I took it seriously and had a strong drive to be good at it. I had a good guitar teacher who helped me learn the fundamentals of music theory. By the time I graduated from high school, I had developed a decent command of the instrument and started to play professionally.

Since then I’ve progressed to the point where I’m comfortable enough on the instrument to play almost anything. So, how does one get from “good” to “insanely good”? It’s a challenge I’ve been facing for a number of years. I’ve had glimpses of guitar valhalla; many time on stage  the clouds have parted and I’ve been in the zone. But the players who dwell there at all times… those guys are guitar deities. Frisell. McLaughlin. Belew. Fripp. Vaughan. Page. Hendrix. Kimock. Jorgensen. Torn. Buckethead. Gatton. Williams.

It’s analagous to being an amateur athlete; there is “good” and there is “olympics good”.

Seems like a big chasm to cross. It will take a massive investment of time to get there. Maybe more time than I have. Either way, the climb is worthwhile for its own sake.

Last night was an especially solid rehearsal with the Preons. I think we’re hitting our stride as a band, and everyone is playing very solidly. We spent some time rehearsing with a metronome, which is always a challenge. I always recommend metronome studies to my students to help them play with metric precision. Great musicians have made the claim that it’s more important to play in time than to select the right note.

I feel like my bass lines are sounding more idiomatic; I’m getting better at thinking like a bassist, so my lines are better formed. We spent several minutes last night working over one particularly challenging passage in a new song, and with each repetition it became more tightly locked. My bass line in this song is somewhat complex, and it benefitted from repeatedly working it against a steady metronome pulse. And yes… I am looking forward to our next gig so I can use my new amp.

This week I’ll be prepping another round of new songs for 80s Invasion. I need to finish programming tones and “put the eyebrows on*” some of the guitar parts. These songs will be performed on New Year’s Eve in Portland, but we’ve also added two Seattle shows (12/15 at the CHAC and 1/9 at the Triple Door), so I’ve got a bit of practicing ahead of me this week.

Among the new tracks is one of my favorites from the 80s: “Big Country”. I never saw this band perform live, but I have seen a few of their concerts on DVD. They somehow got their electric guitars to sound remarkably like bagpipes. My tone programming will be a challenge.

The other pressing challenge this week will be learning some new backup vocal parts. Until I started to really dig into some of these songs, I hadn’t realized how complex some of the vocal arrangements were. Those Duran Duran songs in particular… zoinks! I haven’t decided what to wear for our gigs. I don’t remember what I used to wear back in the 80s. I am pretty sure it was black. I could go sort of generic new wave, but it would be fun to balance the rest of the band’s look with something a little more rocking. I wonder if I could get my hair into a crazy mowhawk like I did in high school… 

For these gigs, I will probably use my standard guitar rig:

• Audio Technica wireless 
• Line6 Pod XT Live
• TC Electronic G Force processor
• Stewart 60W power amp
• 2 Mesa / Boogie guitar cabinets
• Fender Stratocaster (main guitar)
• Fender Stratocaster (backup)
• Jackson Soloist (alternate – for rock tones)

* I borrow this term from Frank Zappa, who used it in reference to putting the finishing details on a piece of music.