adikos.net

Instrument Calibration

My friend was posting about guitars recently, and I remembered that I inherited a guitar from my spouse's late cousin. It was part of the stuff we went through, and I ended up taking it, and we brought it to Colorado with us when we moved from Florida. I hadn't done anything with it, but about two years ago I decided to restring it (the strings were completely shot) and try to get it working. It's an electric guitar, so I couldn't do anything without an amp. I didn't want to buy a huge amp, so I just kinda let it sit for years longer. Until recently. My friend recommended a mini-amp to me (maybe 5" high) that seemed affordable. So I ordered it, along with a power adaptor for it (anything 9V would work). And I was excited to check it out!

The amp got here on Thursday. Very cool. Adaptor works fine with it. I realized that I needed an instrument cable for it, though, to connect the guitar to the amp (1/4" male-to-male). Should've ordered it with the amp &c. Oh well. We went to Guitar Center today and I bought a 5' cable that was pretty affordable. Awesome! Tried it, though, and there's an "open" in the guitar somewhere. It's not registering any sound from the strings through the amp. Who knows what the issue is. The guitar is incredibly old and I have no idea how to fix it. My spouse said, "hey, if you're interested in getting back into this, you should get a new entry-level guitar. You never do anything nice for yourself, go for it!" I'm going to sleep on it, but I think I probably will. Looks like entry-level guitars are anywhere from $250-300 USD, and that's reasonable. My friend even recommended me a guitar sold by Sweetwater, where I got the amp. My mom also swears by Sweetwater; she buys a lot of music equipment from them and has for like 30 years. So that's cool (she was excited when I told her about the guitar stuff last night). So we'll see!

A little history about me and musical instruments. When I was very young -- like under 10, maybe a little over -- my parents suggested I learn a musical instrument. Somehow I landed on the violin. I remember playing it for probably 3 years or so and I think I was pretty good. I can't remember anything of what I played. Violin is incredibly hard, too. Think of a guitar with no "frets" on the neck which tell you which note you're hitting. It's all from memory and knowledge of the sound. I don't know how I ever became proficient at it, but I think I got pretty good. Eventually, though, I lost interest and stopped practicing enough, and my parents pulled me out of lessons. But it was nice while it lasted.

After violin I ended up taking up piano. My mom has played piano, guitar, all sorts of instruments, and thought it would be cool for me to learn piano. And it was very cool, for a number of years. I had one teacher for a few years, but I didn't really like him that well, and eventually switched teachers sometime in high school. Piano was fun. I remember learning Gounod's "March of the Marionettes" (famously the theme to "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"), and I even had some Star Wars, James Bond, and even Radiohead sheet music. That was pretty cool to learn. I did recitals over the years, which were nerve-wracking but mostly went well. And my mom always had pianos and keyboards around, so I got to use her equipment. The synthesizers she had were very cool (I remember one instrument was called "Meow" or something and sounded like the "Meow Mix" commercials, hahah). And my grandparents had a piano, although it was old and out of tune. My great-grandma had a very old piano that I played once in awhile, but it was again, very old, and mostly out of tune, with a lot of "dead" keys. But we had a decent piano at home and my parents kept it tuned and in working condition. I took piano lessons for about 6 years, and was very good at it, but eventually again lost interest in it, stopped practicing enough, and quit taking lessons.

When I was almost finishing high school, I decided to take guitar lessons. My parents bought me an emerald-green (almost "Oz" green) Squier Stratocaster, a very nice entry-level electric guitar, some picks, a case, and I think even a tuner. Basically all the stuff I needed to do it properly. Very cool of them. I started taking lessons from a guy downtown. I have no idea how we heard of him, but he was a nice guy. He was great at transcribing music, too, and was able to write down chords and such. I would bring him tapes of music I wanted to be able to play, like a number of Live and Radiohead songs, and he would tell me the chords to play them. I learned how to play Live's "Lightning Crashes" (actually very easy with its chords), "Turn My Head," and a few Radiohead songs ("Street Spirit" was probably the one I was proudest of, since it had a lot of fingerpicking). I think I learned "Karma Police" and "No Surprises" as well but I honestly can't remember. It was very cool and I was getting kinda good at things. My mom had an amp (it was really like a monitor) I could use, so that was great. She had all the music equipment (that's another story I may or may not tell someday) for sure.

But eventually I lost interest in guitar, too. I think I only took lessons for a few months. Life just got in the way. School, and videogames, and whatever else. Too much else going on in the world. I eventually got into DJing. My parents got me turntables and a mixer and I got tons of vinyl over the years. That was also a short-lived hobby, but I had a lot of fun with it while it lasted. Recorded a bunch of DJ mixes when I was really into it, and that was fun. Somewhere I have a collection of photos my mom took of me while on the turntables. They are ridiculous. Sometimes I miss that. My mixer went kaput; the crossfader stopped working correctly. The turntables were fine, but the crossfader wouldn't work properly, and it became very frustrating. When I moved out of the house in 2005 to go to grad school in San Francisco, I didn't take the turntable setup or my vinyl with me. So that fell by the wayside as well. We recently got a turntable for the house, and I asked my mom if she still had my vinyl, but hey, it's been over 20 years at this point. I don't know if they have it. I should keep asking, because I'm sure there's some stuff in there I'd love to check out, and haven't ripped.

Over the course of my life, instruments have been picked up and sometimes quickly abandoned. Most of that can be chalked up to childhood inconstancy. But I think I'd like to get back into guitar. I have the amp now. I had the guitar, but it's not working. It is fortunately not too prohibitively expensive to get back into it with a new guitar, though. And my spouse has been very encouraging. So that's exciting. I think I probably will get a new one, but like I said, I'd like to sleep on it and maybe order a new one soon. I was thinking of doing Guitar Center and grabbing it locally, but maybe I will order the Sweetwater one. It would be fun to play around with again. I was thinking of a really great guitar version of FFVII's "Interrupted by Fireworks" and I bet that would be very fun to play. There are guitar tabs literally everywhere on the internet. As long as I have the instrument, I can access all of that. I love that. And of course there is sheet music I can buy wherever. So I think it would be fun. I love music so much and I think it would be fun to be able to make my own again.

Thanks for reading my little trip back into the depths of memories. It's been, and continues to be, an interesting life.