A new item in my guitar collection

Bought a Bass Guitar today. A Stagg “B300-BK“.

Standard “J” electric bass guitar - Pickups: 2 x JB - Controls: 2 x Volume + 1 x Tone - Body: solid Alder - Pickguard: White (BK/BL/SB) or Tortoiseshell (N/NS) - Neck: Hard Maple, bolt-on, 867 mm, (34.2 in.) - Fingerboard: Rosewood, 20 frets - Bridge: “JB” Classic - Machine heads: Standard “P”, nickel - Colour: Black.

Bought it from Zen Guitarwerks (they’re located at the basement of Peninsula Shopping Complex, at Coleman Street) for $310, including a $20 guitar bag.

Discussed with my wife if I should buy the bass guitar. Did a mental check so that I was sure I’d be using it and not buying it on a whim.

Didn’t really shop around to see if there were better deals. My budget was $500 or less. If the instrument was within my budget AND gave me the right feel, I was prepared to buy it there and then.

So I dropped by Peninsular Shopping Complex (which, in the last decade, has quietly become the guitar player shopping mecca in Singapore).

Zen Guitarwerks was the second shop I went into (the price range of the bass guitars at the first shop were beyond my budget). It’s a relatively tiny shop, and I’d almost missed it had my wife not pointed it out.

Within minutes of my scanning the price tags at the bass guitar section, the young girl manning the shop asked if I needed help. Her demeanor was friendly, and she seemed knowledgeable about the stuff in the shop.

Tried about four bass guitars from different price ranges. The one I bought was the lowest priced in the store, but somehow the feel and tone was nicer than the higher priced ones that I tested.

Final test was to tune the bass guitar, check the action for buzzing (none that I could tell), last intuitive feel of the weight and fret play.

I’ve reached a point where the sound generated from MIDI just isn’t good enough. Plus, I’m interested in learning more instruments. Admittedly, I was also encouraged after watching videos like these (now how’s that as an example of YouTube indirectly influencing a purchase decision?).

Technical skills-wise, I’m still going to focus on the guitar. But I decided to buy a bass guitar to try out some musical ideas I have in mind. I don’t expect it to drastically change my compositions but will see how it goes.

Will check out some online resources and books from the public libraries.

Nice to be trying out something new.

Changing to higher gauged strings & adjusting a floating guitar bridge

I’ve always used a set of 0.09mm electric guitar strings. Found them easier to play and bend. But lately, I found the lighter strings sounding too thin. Plus, I’ve stop harbouring any pretenses that lighter gauge strings would make me the guitar-shredder virtuoso, LOL.

I have a floating bridge, and changing to a set of higher gauge strings isn’t as straight-forward. You need to perform additional adjustments to the springs that connect to the floating bridge.

Apparently it’ll cost about $180 to $200 to have a professional change it (and a friend told me horror stories of how some “professionals” turned out to be amateurs).

I figured I might as well try learning how to do it. I had some idea how to do it. Besides, I wasn’t aiming for that good a sound and I might learn something in the process.

First, I removed the old strings and gave the guitar a wipe down and polish.

Next was to remove the access cover, to get to the springs that controlled the tension of the floating bridge.

Then I put on the new set of strings (this was a higher gauge; 0.10mm for the first string). The floating bridge no longer “floats”, since the strings have no tension.

After I tightened the strings (standard E tuning), it was clear that the tension is way too high. The bridge is raised to a level that far too high to play the guitar properly.

After this point, it was just pure “learn as I go”; a process of adjustments and experimenting. After twiddling for a bit, I realised I had to increase the tension of the floating bridge springs, so that it will bring down the bridge.

True enough, the bridge was lowered.

I continued to make adjustments to the bridge springs, and the string tension. The tricky bit about tuning a floating bridge is that any adjustment to a string tension affects the rest of the strings. So it was a process of repeatedly adjusting the tension, checking the tuning, re-adjusting and re-checking the tuning… eventually, you’ll get there.

Right now, there’s a slight buzz when I play the sixth string at the 12th fret. I was told I’d have to adjust the truss rod (a metal bar that reinforces the guitar neck) but I wasn’t brave enough to try that yet. I’ll let it go, until the buzz irritates me to further action!

OK, my guitar is still in one piece. And it’s playable. And the bridge works fine.

Total time taken to change the strings and adjust the bridge: Two hours.

Saved myself $100 plus dollars.

Not bad for a first attempt.

And the higher gauge strings sound real sweet.

My contributions to the Ten/TwentyFour project - 2007

Last year, Wrkshy invited me to contribute to the 10/24 project. I’m not a photography buff. But the idea was quite intriguing — to capture the happenings in your life over 24 hours (no more than 10 images to be submitted) starting on 24 October at 10pm, till 24 hours after.

I wasn’t sure if they’d be picked (that’s not the point for me). So I was delighted when I visited the site and found one of my submission featured in the Gallery.

I submitted only 10 images (as specified by the organisers). Here are the 12 images taken (excepted for being resized, they have not been cropped or edited in anyway):

Snapped a shot of my Mac, at around 10pm on 24 Oct 2007.

Then wondered what it would look like to take a shot of myself, taking a shot (image was captured with my Macbook Pro’s PhotoBooth).

This image reminded me that I was recovering from a cold that week, heh.

One of my wife’s teapot. I think I used it that day.

Next day, I saw this scene on my way to a meeting at the National Library.

Took a slight detour and took this shot.

Checking my schedule (something I do everyday, I realised!)

After my meeting at the National Library, I took a taxi back to my office.

Another typical scene at work. As I took this shot, I realised how I practically faced the computer daily. It was almost like facing a religious altar, so I titled this “Digital Work Alter”:

Was feeling hungry that day…

It didn’t spoil my appetite for dinner.

Finally, I took a shot from my dog’s perspective.

I’d forgotten about the pictures I took, until WrkShy sent an update that the project website is at 1024.perceptionthree.net. They received over 570 images from some 50 photographers in 17 countries.

Wow. They must know a lot of people!

How to weave Ketupat

A Ketupat is a boiled rice dumpling wrapped in a woven palm leaf pouch. Check out the video by Singaporean blogger, Jussaemon, showing how the palm leaf pouch is woven.

Image source: jussaemon.blogspot.com

(Via Tomorrow.sg)

My home “recording studio” and equipment

At the April 2007 Songcraft Songwriting Circle meetup, Betty shared that she wrote a song for a friend as a farewell gift, which was recorded with help from a friend (who had professional recording equipment). That led me to described how I recorded and edited my music. Some of the participants seemed to want to know more — about the equipment used etc. I had a feeling they were thinking “It couldn’t be that simple”. But it is!

Basically, you need this sort of setup:

• (A) Computer & software (i.e. your “recording device” and sound engineering studio)
• (B) Input device (could be the instrument itself, like the electric guitar. Or a microphone, in the case of vocals or instruments without built-in pickups)
• (C) Instrument (guitars, piano, your voice etc.)

(A) Computer & Software

The computer is the heart of my “recording studio”. But it’s nothing without the software. The Mac comes bundled with GarageBand. You can use a free one like Audacity for Windows and Mac (though it’s way less sophisticated as compared to GarageBand).

You may or may not need a peripheral device like a Griffen iMic (a USB audio interface/ adaptor). It’s useful if you want to record more than one input device at the same time (e.g. vocals and guitar) and your computer only has one input mic jack.

(B) Input device (for vocals)

I’ve got nothing fancy. Just a standard microphone that came as part of a headphone set. The recording quality is quite acceptable. You can always enhance it with the software. Examples: “Lady of Shalott” and “Take Me Away“.

(C) Instruments
I tend to feature more guitars in my works. I’m a Joe Satriani wannabe, heh.

The one on the left is a Yamaha “Vester” with a Floyd-Rose floating bridge. Bought it around 1990. Some years later, I replaced the original pickups with EMG active pickups.

The one on the right is straight-from-factory Epiphone Les Paul Standard, bought last year in 2006. I’ve always wanted to own a Les Paul but I still find Gibsons beyond my price range. An Epiphone is more than good enough. Chapter 7 of this book says the same thing — that between a Gibson and Epiphone, the difference is quite subtle. Besides, I feel it’s the sound engineering aspect (which depends on the computer & software) that makes the real difference to the sound.

Another example of a home studio setup (from an earlier post)

[Click on image to see notes]

BTW, if you’re keen to find audio file hosting/ podcast services, check out Dave’s Imaginary Sound Space. It’s pretty comprehensive.

And if you have pics of how your home studio looks like, feel free to leave a link.

BioTech illustration

This is an illustration I did for the NLB Science Fiction “Biotechnology” Genre Guide (2006).

The picture shows a human hand juxtaposed with a cybernetic one. There’s a DNA double helix strand on the side of the human-hand, while the series of computer zeros and ones are on the side of the machine-hand.

How it was done
We needed illustrations for the genre guides. No time to commission an illustrator, so I volunteered. My Colleague suggested that the illustration could be based on the following:

“BioTech Science Fiction - cloning, genetic engineering, Aeon-Flux stuff etc…Usu. with enmasse specimen laboratories, or really complex-looking machinery…Or eye candies with some form of marked defect.”

That gave me some rough idea to work with. I remembered I had these pieces done years ago — a sketch of my left hand and a cybernetic hand:

In brief: After cropping the separate images, I adjusted their placement on a new canvas (I used Photoshop Elements). Then added the background colour, played with the eraser tool with different opacity settings to give the background a washed look (there are 2 background layers). Then added the Zeros and Ones, and the DNA strand.

Photoshop Layers
Layer #1 — a series of Zeros and Ones. It’s done as a text (’System’ font, size 22). Got the idea partly from “The Matrix” where the zeros and ones pixelised to become images.

Layer #2 — the sketched hand, cropped from the “1990 Sketch - Hand and Figures” (see this post). Used the lasso tool to crop over the image and then used Eraser tool (with different brush & Opacity settings) to wash out the unwanted spaces. Colour/ Lighting adjustment was done to give the pencil lines a more rusty look, like something out of Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings — to show something really old, as opposed to the futuristic cyberhand.

Layer #3 — a cropped image of a DNA strand (from 3DScience.com). It’s a composite of two copies of the same image and merged-down (bec. one single image wasn’t long enough, or got distorted when stretched). Colour adjustments done to give it a bluer tone. Layer was set at 50% Opacity to blend into the background.

Layer #4 — cropped image from the “1990 (Sept) Cybernetic Hand“.

Layer #5 — a layer to paint the cybernetic hand. Highlights and shadows are painted onto the same layer.

Layer #6 — background layer for that chalky/ washed look for the side of the hand. It was one of the first layer I started off as a doodle. I liked how it blended nicely with the look of the sketched hand, I left it there.

Layer #7 — added as a background layer to paint the shadows and give more depth to the cybernetic hand and the zeros and ones.

Layer #8 — Plain white background. Kept it so that I can duplicate blank white-filled backgrounds as required.

Creating a “paper-garden”

This was made for the NLB library outreach event at the 2006 Singapore Garden Festival (background to why this was done, at this post and this one).

How it was done
1) Started off with blank sheets of paper (square sized). I decided to fold the sheets in half and combine two folded sheets to make a long banner of sorts:

2) Next I penciled a very faint outline of the flower petals. Then I used black Electrician’s tape (yes, you read me right — Electrician’s tape! I had to use whatever was available) to create the top and bottom border, kinda like a panoramic look to it. Step 2 took the longest as I had to grapple with the wrapped paper (it was pasted hastily on an uneven table, with no time to dry the glue properly):

3) The rest of the steps were relatively easy. I traced out the petal shapes with a black marker, like so:

4) Then I added more petal shapes, drawn free-hand style:

5) The completed product looked like this:

At first I wasn’t too pleased with it, but my colleague was kind enough to assure me that it looked OK. I have to admit that it sort of grew on me, and looked better with some paper mosaic pieces pasted. Let’s see if the kids visiting the booth like this. Would be interesting to see how it turns out after the kids are done with it.

New Year Postcard (2007 series B)

This post provides the background as to why I created this postcard:

The design was sketched in free-hand, using ink on watercolour paper. Had a rough idea to use circles and intersected obliqued lines, and simply applied ink to paper and let the design flow. For the colours, I tried to limit to Cool colours (blues/ greens) though in the end I had to sneak in some hot pink to spice things up.

Sequence of inking/ colouring:

New Year Postcard (2007 series A)

My brother had a set of markers left over from his art-school days. I had a stack of watercolour-paper postcards which I bought more than a year ago (they were marked like a postcard on one side, and blank on the other for you to paint on). Last Sunday I decided to try my brother’s markers on the watercolour-paper postcards to create — what else — postcards for 2007.

This is how the finished side looks like (the reverse is where you write and fix the stamp):

First, I outlined the “2007″ at the center with a pencil. Then I moved to ink and directly sketched the other lines. There was no prior design; I simply applied the pen to paper with a hazy idea that the design would look like something from a Chinese Vase. Other than that, I drew whatever came to mind as the sketch developed.

For the colouring, I tried to keep to similar tones and was conscious not mix Warm colours with Cool ones. But there were only limited colours so in the end, I used almost all the available colours in the box.

Sequence of inking and colouring:

White Nights (musical mash-up)

[Update: This song was used for a Kankakee Public Library podcast, 28 Feb 2007]

(Playing time: 3min 41secs):

or LISTEN >>> WHITE NIGHTS
[Archive.org details]

Technically this may not be a mashup but I don’t think Vanessa would care. I certainly don’t. It all started as a discussion over email. I asked Vanessa if she was interested in collaborating on a musical project. “Sure,” she said.

So I recorded these tracks and emailed her the MP3 files (and informed her about the all-important Beat-per-second setting, which was at 97). You can listen to the guitar tracks here; view the CCmixter record.

In addition, I also recorded the melody with the piano and synths, as well as a “live” guitar track. I added a generic rock drum track, converted the entire song to MP3 and emailed to Vanessa.

She listened to them and decided they needed a pop-sounding bass and percussion. She made her recording and emailed me, as n MP4 file, her version of the Introduction (I’ve uploaded a MP3 version here).

I imported her MP4 file (shown as the tracks in orange in the GarageBand screenshot below), deleted the generic rock drum tracks, and then adjusted the guitar/ piano/ synths tracks to fit her intro. For the “chorus”, I used a mix of bass loops from GarageBand, as her intro wouldn’t have sounded right. I would’ve requested Vanessa to compose her version but she was tied up with some stuff so I went ahead and used the generic loops instead. Not too bad, but Vanessa’s bass and percussion tracks is much stronger and catchy than the generic loops.

[Click on image for larger sizes]

So… from this, combined with this, to end up with this. Not too bad for a mashup of sorts

RamblingLibrarian’s Podcasts:

Technorati Tags: garageband, mac, apple, collaborative music