Representing Rhythmic Irrationalities in Standard Notation

Anyone who performs contemporary guitar music created by pop, rock, and jazz guys has to deal with this, as a lot of it is quasi-improvisatory and was never written out by the performer, but instead the sheet music and tablature is created by a transcriber. In these pieces, meters can change often as beats are added or dropped by the performer, and tuplet groupings can get quite plastic in single line sections or guitar solos. Just as mathematics has irrational numbers, then, music has irrational rhythms. In fact, standard notation never really represents the music perfectly, because performers always take rhythmic and tempo liberties to express the music as they perform. Improvisatory soloists are notorious for floating in and out of lock with the beat, and while that is a large part of the compelling nature of their creativity, representing that in standard notation can be a real, actual nightmare. Seriously, I've had dreams about the piece I'm going to use as an example today.

The problem is, you can take accuracy in transcription too far, and if you do, the rhythmic complexity of the resulting transcription looks so daunting that many players will be scared off by the sheer difficulty of reading the rhythms. If you take this into account, then some simplifications are a good thing, as it makes learning the pieces easier: The irrational details of the "feel" can be added later. The devil is in striking a proper balance, and that's what has driven me nearly batty about this piece, Desert Song by Eric johnson from his first album, Tones.

Since a large part of the point in transcribing my entire repertoire into Encore is so that I'll be able to practice along with the MIDI files instead of just a metronome, I had to get close without making it impossible for me to follow. The resulting MIDI file is pretty darned amazing, if I do say so myself, and I converted it to an m4a AAC file in iTunes for you. If you open two windows or tabs in your browser, you can listen and follow the music.

Desert Song - Eric johnson

NOTE: Some artifacts in the form of ghost notes crept in during the MIDI to MPEG conversion process. This often happens with really complex MIDI files.

Here's the score, which is just the notation without any fingerings (I'm not to that point yet).



The first decision I had to make was whether or not to notate the flams that Eric plays leading into a lot of the measures, and since it is only a sixteenth note pickup in the bass, I decided to go ahead and put them in. Since I first learned this from an ASCII TAB I found online, and since I'm a composer myself, I did change a few details of the figuration just because I wanted it to go differently in certain places. Those changes are all pretty minor though. He also plays a lot of quarter note triplets, and those are pretty difficult for some to rationalize, but the file just didn't sound anything like right without them, so I put those in too. It's the figures after the triplets that look 'hard" however, but they sound perfectly natural that way. Ack. I am missing a 32nd there though: The E should also have a double dot in measure 10. See what I mean? LOL! The "legit" way to represent these rhythms is with a lot of ties and repeated notes, but I really hate the way that looks, so I do them the way I want to see them since this is for my own personal use. I've dealt with jazzy music so long that I don't need my hand held, know what I mean?



One of the coolest things Eric does with the figuration in this piece are the series of three times five eighths ending with a quarter to fill up two measures of four, like you see in measures 19-20 and 21-22. That is just so hip, and one of the things that makes this piece so unique.



The first time through the "A" section is really pretty straight ahead by my standards, but the varied repeat starting at 38 gets weird fast. He drops a beat at the end of "A" as you can see, and then immediately adds it back: A measure of 3 plus a measure of five is two measures of four. The first of several single line licks then follows in 39, and it's pretty easily represented by 8th triplets with the 16th/dotted 8th at the end, but not perfectly. Guitar articulations just can't be perfectly replicated in a MIDI file. Eric smoothly locks back up with the beat in 40 though, complete with a lead-in flam.



My nightmares began at the end of measure 46. The 5:3 quintuplets were pretty easy to suss out, but the following 7:3 septuplets took a few days of intermittent experimentation to uncover. It's really a common legato technique lick that just goes down an octave every beat, but wow, figuring out how to notate it and make the resulting MIDI file sound right without any tempo changes was a beeotch. Notice that I have two measures of 4/4 represented as 9/8 plus 7/8! It was the only way to get it to sound right.

At 49 Eric locks back up again, and the last lick on the page is another simple 8th triplet deal.



No real big deals on this page, but the two triplets in 69 is sorta/kinda weird with the tie, but that's what sounded closest, so there it is. I still haven't figured out the best way to do 70: It's an over-simplification for sure, but the notes are there and the rhythm is approximated.



Here's the little Flamenco section, and I tried all sorts of ways to segue between the two, and finally gave up and started over, complete with a 1/4 pickup measure. The licks are what Eric plays for 72-77, but the licks starting in 78 are mine: His were just too freaking hard, so I replaced them with some legato tech licks that maintain the Flamenco phrygian flavor. Remember, Eric plays with a pick between his thumb and index finger, and picks the rest of the figuration with m, a, and c. So, it's easy for him to transition into these quick licks. I just can't match that kind of speed with i/m alternation, so I have to "cheat" with legato tech... a lot. LOL!

Starting in 82 I also removed the Flamenco strums, since I don't know how to do those, and that section sounds ridiculous in MIDI because it depends on harmonics to get it's charm on.



The figurations in 84-85 and 88-89 are what Eric plays, but I again ditched the Flamenco strums in 86-87.

And so there you have it. I have no idea how the "official" transcription of this looks, because the Tones guitar transcription book has been out of print for quite a while. I'd be curious to see it, though, as this is one of the most difficult transcriptions I've ever done. All I had to go by was that old ASCII TAB transcription and the recording.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

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Preview: Ultimate Classical Guitar Arrangements

I have finally finished entering the notation for all of the pieces in my set, and I have the fingerings done for my originals and the standard repertoire pieces, but I still have to do the fingerings for the contemporary arrangements. Some of the MIDI files that I'm getting out of my Encore notation program are coming out really well, so I thought I'd give readers a preview... er, or a "pre-hear" as it were.

My favorite of the "100% mine" arrangements is without a doubt my "Jethro Tull-ization" of the Bach Bourree in E minor. Ian Anderson only did the A section for his version on the Aqualung album - a record I was addicted to for a time in high school - so I decided to do the same treatment to the B section. It came out marvelously, and I play it in D minor with a drop-D tuning, which is the same key as the Tull version. These are all MIDI to AAC (MP4 MPEG audio) versions I did in iTunes using the RealFont 2.1 Nylon Guitar 1 sound font, so the link will open Quicktime or whatever you have as the default for streaming audio in your browser.

Bouree - Jethro Tull

Then, since I have played Classical Gas on and off for over twenty years, I have several different transcriptions of it, and have created a "kitchen sink" version that has all of my favorite ideas from about a half dozen arrangements I've heard. It starts out with the simple ideas and then gets progressively more virtuosic.

Classical Gas - Mason Williams

Next up is my brand, spanking new arrangement of Mood for a Day. I was also a big Yes fan in my youth, so I had learned bits and pieces of this, but never the whole enchilada. The Flamenco sections sound ridiculous in MIDI without the strums articulated, but the rest of it came out very well. Me being the consummate contrapuntist, I did fix one of Mr. Howe's parallel perfect fifths, and I must say the that fix sounds better than the original.

Mood for a Day - Steve Howe

Finally, the finale of my set is an arrangement of Stairway to Heaven that has been developing in my head for over thirty years since it was the very first song I ever learned to play "all the way through" back when I was a teen. Believe it, or not, I had never written this out before today. I've actually had guitarists beg me to write this out for them, but the time just wasn't right until now.

Stairway to Heaven - Jimmy Page

It was nice to get this finished... on my birthday!



"Happy Birthday Hucbald!"

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Transcription Milestone 2: Originals and Classical Pieces Done

Posting will continue to be infrequent as I complete the monumental task of transcribing my entire set into Encore, plus it's the Christmas season, so I'm distracted by such things as making peanut brittle with my mom (Mmmmm!). That's what we did today - for the second time this week - and I know everybody says this, but mom's peanut brittle is the best in the world. The recipe is about 100 years old, and you have to get it to 290 degrees so it comes out light, super-crunchy, and the peanuts are deeply browned. Nothing like it, I swear... um, this is a music blog. Alrighty then.

I have now completed two versions - urtext notation only, and right/left hand fingerings - for all of my originals plus all of the standard repertoire classical pieces in my set. That's 112 Encore files in that folder now, and yes, I'm backing it up to every computer and external storage device I have at every step.

Now I'm getting to the, "fun part" as I start in on all of the contemporary crowd pleaser arrangements I play. This will also be the most labor intensive, as some of those arrangements exist only in my head, and ALL of them have evolved since I originally learned them. Not only that, but the sources are scattered all over the place in anthologies, compilations, PDF files, and even a Guitar Pro file (I had to get Guitar Pro 5 just to be able to open that file again!).

This really is the best idea I've ever come up with to improve my playing and memorization, since I am inscribing in granite every little detail about the technical execution of each piece, and I am now using visual reenforcement of my memory when I practice, which makes all the difference in the world now that my set is at about 70 pieces.

While I was at it, I decided to go ahead and enter all of the pieces on my to-do list as well, and so I'll be able to learn new pieces faster and better now to boot. part of me wishes I had gotten this idea a couple of years ago, but another part realizes that I just wasn't ready to do it until now: I didn't have all of the pieces together, I hadn't made all of the mental conceptualization connections... and I hadn't reached the proper frustration level either. LOL!

Speaking of getting all of the material together, after five years of searching, I have at last found the final contemporary crowd pleaser piece so that I have at least one of them in every suite in my set from A minor to A major (Progressing through the cycle of thirds, A minor, C major, E minor, G major, &c.): Theme from M*A*S*H/Suicide is Painless. There are a gazillion versions of it in A minor for solo guitar, but the original Movie and TV themes - there's the film version with lyrics, plus a couple of instrumental versions from the TV show - are all in B minor, which is a very rare key for popular music. After searching for five years, trust me on this.

Well, I was looking at YouTube videos last week, and found a guy who had done a pretty good version in B minor, and he even sells the transcription.



So, I bought it. Of course, I'll just end up using this as a point of departure, but truly, I won't have to change much because it's so excellently done. Just a couple of places where he strums the chord hits I'll probably arpeggiate and I'll probably lengthen it as well. Isn't it cool how it ends up going to the highest note on the classical guitar - the 19th fret B - at the climax? There are so many guitar abominations on YouTube that it's nice to come across cool stuff.

Here's the next piece on my to-do list when this transcription project is over - I fraking love this! - the theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.



I got this transcription too - note: it's in handwritten TAB, so you'll have to "transcribe the transcription" if you get it - as I like to put humor into my set, and this piece just tickles the heck out of me.

And now for another segue: Guys who sell their transcriptions like the two above have given me the idea to do something similar, since I will have a TON of them when this project is over with, but the charitable, wizened old musician in me wants to do it a bit differently, because I know just how ridiculous money problems are for musicians. The idea of trying to make money off of musicians who can't afford it rubs me the wrong way, to be honest, and I like to take the "cast your bread upon the waters, and after many days it shall return to you" approach with my teaching. That is almost the entire point of MMM!

So, here's what I've come up with: I'm going to do an epic series of posts next year called, "Ultimate Guitar Arrangements." I have the blog template field set to 700 pixels in width, so poor student musicians will just be able to drag and drop the JPG files of the music notation to their desktops, complete with all fingering indications, position markers, expressions, &c. I expect 99.9% of readers to do this, because musicians are poor... and people suck. LOL! I kid, I kid. I'm also going to post MIDI to M4A (AAC) files of each piece, so you'll be able to save those to put in your iPod or iTunes, or whatever. If, however, you want a PDF and a MIDI file to practice along with, or import into whatever notation program you use - or both - you can hit the DONATE button and send me a meager $1.50 US per piece with a note telling me which piece or pieces you want, and I'll email them to you, since PDF and MIDI files are manageably small. If, for some reason, you just want only the PDF or only the MIDI, just send $1.00 US. That might seem ridiculously cheap, but I want to make being honest easy. That way, when karma catches up to the deadbeats who could easily afford it, they won't have any excuses. ;^)

To get an idea of the level of detail I'm putting into these, here's a very familiar piece to classical guitarists, Bach's Sarabande in A Minor from the 3rd Lute Suite.



This is the second of three versions, so it has the right and left hand fingerings, but not the position indicators. You'll notice that I change meters, because I write out all of the fermatas: Computers can't interpret fermatas, so I write them out. Same with ornamentation; I want them written out exactly as I perform them, because I'm going to be practicing along with these MIDI files. You'll also note that I indicate virtually every right and left hand fingering. It may not make all that much difference in a little one-page miniature like this, but in more complex pieces where there is a lot of movement and rhythmic vitality, I want to be able to very slowly - in non-real time, if need be - work on the fingering choreography with the greatest detail possible. See why I'm calling these ultimate guitar arrangements? I don't think anyone has ever done a project like this before, and I certainly don't expect that anyone else would ever do something like this unless, like me, they did it for their own personal edification.

I've also developed a fingering indication philosophy by doing this project, which I'll talk more about in a later post. But now, I'm going to watch some new DVD's I got from Amazon tonight... and eat peanut brittle.

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Encore Transcription Milestone: All of My Pieces Entered w/Fingerings

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm entering every piece in my set into Encore so I'll have Encore files, MIDI files, and MIDI to M4A files of every piece in my set. That way, I'll be able to practice along with MIDI files versus just a metronome while reading the music. This will greatly facilitate memorization as well as precision execution of the music.

Well, I've chosen the path of least resistance: First I transcribed all of the preludes in my set, because I had old PDF's of those, and every suite in my set begins with one of my Figuration Preludes (That was 13 pieces, right there), and then I did all of my Axial Studies, since the second piece in most of the suites are Axial Studies (That's another 18 pieces), then the rest of my miscellaneous pieces (Another 12 pieces), so I've completed Urtext and Fingering versions of 43 pieces (86 files total). Whew!

Next, I'm going to transcribe all of the standard repertoire classical pieces I play - Urtext and fingered versions - and then I'll do the contemporary pieces, both versions, as well. After all of the pieces are entered, I'll go back and create a third version of each with the string and position indications, and finally I'll add the performance indications and expressions. So eventually, there will be four versions of each, for a total of over 250 Encore files!

I haven't been so absorbed by a project since I finished composing my first guitar sonata at the end of 2007.

Encore 5 renders absolutely gorgeous PDF files:



This is a 700 pixel wide maximum resolution JPG screen cap I did. For the original PDF, look here. If you have a wide screen monitor like my 23" Cinema HD Display, you can fill the screen up with your browser and the resolution will still be perfect. That's pretty amazing. Encore 4 was not WYSIWYG, so what you ended up with was a bit of a guestimation, but Encore 5 is WYSIWYG, so what I see in the application window is exactly how the PDF turns out. Infinitely superior.

As I do each version, I'm tweaking things like measure widths and note placement, so for the third and fourth versions, I'll tweak the fingering indication placements. This is a great way to work, as each version gets better, and the final ought to be close enough to perfect for even me.

I believe I'll relax with some beers and watch DVD's tonight... which reminds me, Terminator: Salvation, The Director's Cut is available now. I'm ordering it!

It's been a while since we had a redhead.

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Mega-Project: Transcribing My Entire Set into Encore

Five years ago this September just passed, after seven years away from the guitar, I decided to pick it up again with the idea that I'd prefer making less money performing and teaching, than making lots of it and just composing on the side. Since I found myself at 45 with no wife, kids, pets, or girlfriends, why not? My goal was very specific - get 3.5 hours of music memorized so that I could perform a four hour gig with a 30 minute break - and I didn't want to waste any time on anything that wouldn't get me to that goal.

Well, there aren't any books on how to do this, so I was on my own, which is fine by me. I knew I could figure it out by experimentation, and I had many years of playing under my belt previously, so I just went to it. The first thing I did was to re-memorize all of my own compositions for solo guitar, which number over 40 now, and while I was doing that, I broke the monotony by re-memorizing all of the classical standards I'd known previously. All I was doing was memorizing and playing the music, nothing else: No exercises, no scales, nothing.

I took my first gig exactly six months after I got started with the project, which was probably too soon, but it was a friend's art opening, so it was a zero-pressure first gig. A month later, I took my first restaurant background music gig, and did that for a few months and got comfortable in front of an audience again.

Then I got the idea to re-learn some more contemporary pieces that I used to play on steel string, as well as to make my own arrangements of other "crowd pleasers," to broaden my appeal and increase my marketability. Within two years after I started, I was getting into some complex syncopated stuff, so I realized I'd have to do more than just memorize and play the tunes, I'd have to practice them slowly with a metronome as well. That's when I first got back into some technical work.

I realized at that point that I'd learned too much music too fast, and in a haphazard manner, so I eventually had some memory failures and had to go back and re-learn sections. As my set got larger and larger, this started to happen more and more, and I was unable to memorize new pieces as fast as before. So, I started getting my practice routine more and more organized and efficient, and I also got to the point where I realized I needed some regular scale practice to improve my right hand accuracy for some pieces, so I added that in too.

Well, by the end of last year, when I moved, I had over 60 pieces memorized, so my pace was more than one per month, but I was constantly consulting many different sources - books, compilations, &c. - when I wanted to refresh my memory on some pieces. Then it hit me: I should put every piece in my set into Encore so that I have everything in my four computers - two laptops and two desktops - and can access them at any time whether I'm home or on the road.

Of course, as I got more and more into the contemporary crowd pleaser thing, I was putting my arrangements into Encore anyway, but when I actually looked at my set, I was amazed by how many of the pieces existed only in my memory: Stairway to Heaven, Classical Gas, Desert Song, and Spanish Fly. I actually learned Desert Song from an ASCII TAB I found online.

Needless to say, I can't do anything half way, and so I decided to make fresh copies of all of my own pieces as well. Some of those files date from the late 90's, and Encore has been through several major revisions since then, so some corruptions have crept into the files as the program's parameters have been redefined (Especially as regards to MIDI playback). By doing this from scratch - as a virtuoso Encore user now - I can finally get all of my music into a publishable form. I actually have some guitarist friends bugging me to do this now, so there you have it: I'm making fresh files of over 70 pieces of music.

I'm doing several stages of each as well: An Urtext version of the notation only, a second version with the notation and r/l hand fingerings, a third version that ads the position and string indications, and then a fourth and final version with expressions. This is a monumental task that will take months, but at the end of it I will have rebuilt my set from the beginning better than ever, and when I do metronome practice I'll be able to play along with the MIDI file. I actually exclaimed, "Woah!" when that realization hit me.

So, the technology that I've picked up gradually over the past years is now going to be completely involved in my new practice method, just as it has been in my composition method for many years. And, I might add, when I decided to master counterpoint back in 1986, it took me exactly seven years to get to what I considered a virtuoso level with it: I could compose a J.S. Bach Art of Fugue style piece by 1993. When I got to that point, by the way, was when I was using my first version of Encore. Well, I figure two more years and I'll consider myself a virtuoso performer as well. It's a good feeling, because I now know and have control of all of the elements I have to master to accomplish my original goal: To have 3.5 hours of music residing perfectly in my memory, and the ability to efficiently maintain that, and to be able to play it all with a solid level of technical mastery.

BTW: I've worn out my old Kensington Orbit Optical Trackball, and so I've had to replace it.



I've used trackballs exclusively since 1993, when I got my first version of Encore and was trying to enter notation with a mouse. Total insanity. I had an early Logitech then, and got an Orbit mechanical version when I switched to Macs, but this is the best trackball ever made for music notation entry. You don't need a dozen little buttons, just two big ones, and it fits my hand perfectly. Plus, the optical tracking with the Mouseworks utility software is adjustable to an amazing level of fineness, all very intuitively. The old one on the left lasted about four years. You can see that the paint has been worn off by my fingers! Eventually, the clicking got spotty, so it had to go. Not bad for a device that costs less than $25.00! yes, I've tried more expensive ones. They suck because there are too many buttons and they are too small. This is the most perfect trackball ever made, IMO.



Georgia agrees.

As of now, I've completed the Urtext and Fingering versions for 31 pieces, so I'm ripping through it, but after I have all of the first two versions in for all of the pieces, I'll go back and do the final two versions for each piece. What I'm doing is, I'm reading the music as I practice for the completed pieces as I go through my four-day practice routine, and each time through I'm adding the new ones I complete. I really only need the fingerings, so that's why I'm not worrying about the position and string indicators or the expressions at this time. Of course, I'm also catching and correcting errors. I found a notation error in a fifteen year old piece the other day! Fingering errors I can understand, but how that wrong note survived for so long is beyond me. By the time I get the music entered, I will have re-memorized my entire set. Tres cool, non?

One of the readers I communicalte with via email set me a missive the other day with the title, define: virtuoso. That's what I'm working on for my next post.

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Last Word on the Blackbird Rider and ErgoPlay (Promise!)

A quick look at the sidebar, "Hucbald Endorses" section will tell regular readers all they need to know: I have deleted Godin and added Blackbird.

As far as the guitar support - and playing the Rider Nylon while seated without one is virtually impossible - I first tried the regular sized model and found that the Rider's sound chamber was too shallow for both front suction cups to adhere. Then, I got the idea to try the "Kid Size" unit and it worked much better, since both front suction cups stuck, but the shorter frame, though seemingly inconsequential, made more difference than I though it would.

Well, while I was looking at the two units, I thought, "Hey, there's nothing keeping me from putting the "Kid Size" front slider piece on the adult sized frame!" So, that's what I did.



The "Kid Size" slider piece is dark blue, and the regular frame is black, so they don't match, but the difference is subtle enough that I don't really care. The main thing is that it works perfectly, and I'm a ruthless perfectionist... If you don't believe me, I can get you in contact with my ex-wife. LOL!

Of course, most people wouldn't spend almost $80.00 to get this setup, but since I am a perfectionist, I bought two of each size so both of my guitars feel the same. Yeah, my gear addiction factored into the divorce too, I'm sure. LOL!



My roving eye probably factored in there somewhere as well.

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Going "All In" With the Blackbird Rider Nylon/RMC

This is an interesting moment for me - probably of no interest at all to others, however - because after exactly thirty years of experience with electric nylon string guitars, I've finally found one that is above the magical (to me) 90% satisfaction point. If you've hit this blog in the past month, you know that the guitar in question is, the Blackbird Rider Nylon with the optional RMC Polydrive II hexaphonic pickup system (Which is Roland 13-pin synth compatible).

In the beginning, I tried one of the first Ovation nylon string guitars that could be amplified back in 1979. I didn't like it at all, but I was admittedly ignorant about how to amplify a nylon string: I plugged it into my MESA/Boogie Mk I and couldn't understand why the tone sucked and there was monstrous feedback. LOL! That was the last time I tried an electric nylon string for ten years.

Then in 1989 I decided to try again with the Gibson Chet Atkins CE and CEC guitars. I had put my rock band days behind me by this time, and was playing only solo acoustic nylon string. I'm just not an acoustic guitarist, and that's all there is to it. When I quit my last rock band to go solo in 1988, I was playing a Steinberger GL2T-GR guitar through a pair of MESA/Boogie Mk III's - in stereo thanks to two 10U racks worth of gear - and a Synclavier! I got bored without my effects and synth in a hurry.

Well, I wasn't that interested in playing the Synclavier with electric nylon string guitars, but I was interested in trying to get beautiful clean sounds like I had with my high tech - for then - rock rig. I was also interested in downsizing: Hauling two Simul-Class Boogie combos, two 10U racks, and a Synclavier around - which pretty much filled up an 8' bed in my old Chevy pickup - was really, really old by this time.

The first piece of 19" rack gear I ever bought was a Lexicon PCM-41 back in 1981. Over the next 8 years I went from all pedals to all rack gear. By 1989, there was a 1U Marshall Valvestate power amp, MIDI-Verbs, and even a MESA preamp that was rack mountable, so I went that way. I did better with the Chet and that rig, but it still wasn't good enough sounding for me. I knew I was missing some essential understanding, but I also wasn't going to waste any more time on the project, because the gear wasn't up to my standards anyway.

I tried again in 1999. This time with a 6U rack with a MESA Stereo Simul-Class 2: Ninety power amp, a MESA/Boogie Tri-Axis preamp, and a then-new Lexicon MPX-G2 Guitar Effects processor (And a Furman AR-1215 with a blank vent panel), but still with the Chet. I was getting somewhere, but I was still draging around my old electric steel-string guitar mentality, especially concerning cabinets.

Then the breakthrough came in 2004: Ditch the guitar cabinets, ditch the guitar preamp, and go with a mini-PA. The Simul 2: Ninety weighed a ton and had the annoying habit of burning up tubes at the worst moment, so I replaced that with a solid state Bryston 2B-LP. The Tri-Axis was also problematic, being as it was EQ biased for steel string guitars, so I ditched that too and went to using the MPX-G2 in stand-alone mode. With the Furman and a vent panel, that got me down to a manageable 4U. I still use that rack to this day, but there's now a Behringer BTR-2000 RackTuner in the former vent space.

I was using MESA 1-10" cabinets with EV 10M's at that time, so I replaced those with a pair of Yamaha AS-108 Series II mini PA speakers. Eureka! Then the old Chet went to eBay and was replaced with a Godin Grand Concert Duet. This was the first electric nylon string rig I gigged with, starting in 2005: It was finally "good enough."

At this point, I realized that the Baggs system in the GC Duet was holding me back from getting the sound I wanted, because the sound system was working great and sounding excellent. A good friend in the guitar biz suggested I try the Grand Concert SA with the Polydrive IV. I had dismissed that option because I wasn't interested in running a synth at the time, but he said the sound was clear and neutral, so I tried it. I upgraded the Yamaha monitors to Turbosound TXD-081's, but from 2005 to 2009 that became my main gig rig.

The Godin wasn't a... "magical guitar" from a player's standpoint, so I was still in search of the primo ultimo ax. As regular readers know, I then found a Parker Nylon Fly, and spent another grand getting a Polydrive put into it. It played like a Stradivarius, but didn't have the "openness" of a semi-acoustic, so it really wasn't a viable main gig ax.

Enter the Blackbird Rider Nylon: The openness of an acoustic, the sustain of the Parker, and a playing feel right smack dab in between the Godin and the Parker. I'd say it's 92.5% of what I'm looking for. The only major technical flaw is that the fingerboard has a positive radius, whereas a classical guitar ought to have an infinite radius (It ought to be billiard-table flat, IOW). The reason this is the case is that classical guitarists make lots of big stretches, putting lateral pressure on the fretted strings. A radius makes having the high and low E strings slip off the fingerboard more likely: This is still vexatious, after a month of playing the Rider exclusively. I've gotten much better with it, but if Blackbird only flattened the fingerboard, we'd be talking about a 95% satisfaction level.

Nevertheless, I've eBayed off all of my other electric nylon string guitars to go with twin Rider Nylons.



They look identical, but they're not: The original on the right has an action 1/64" higher than a traditional Flamenco guitar, while the "new" one on the left has an action 1/64" lower than a standard Classical. I figure the higher action will give better synth tracking, but I haven't tried it out yet. The lower action tracks magnificently compared to my old Roland GR compatible axes, mind you, but I have to be easy on the dynamic range to avoid string rattle, which causes tracking errors (I like to dig in hard, though, so most probably wouldn't ever notice what I do).

Lastly, I find it interesting that my steel string electric guitar evolution started with a Gibson Les Paul - a traditional wooden electric guitar - and ended with the Steinberger GL2T-GR - so far as I know, the first composite electric guitar in history - while my nylon string evolution really started with the Gibson Chet Atkins and ended with the Rider, also a composite guitar. I've come to the conclusion that wood is bad.

BTW, I fell into the "new" one because a dealer was going out of business, so I got it cheap and had Blackbird install the Polydrive II and still saved a few hundred dollars. Somebody up there likes me.



there's the angel who likes me, right there.

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