Whirwind of Activity

Been holding off for a certain post I'm anxious to make, but like all watched pots, this one is taking longer to boil than I expected... but it's getting there.

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Major progress in the perfomance department, as I've integrated the Murray with the Carlos CP-1 High End with the Godin Multiac into my set now. As it stands now, I play the Murray for the A minor and C major suites, and then I switch to the Godin for the E minor, and G major suites (The E minor and G major suites end with tap-technique pieces, which are easier to play on the Godin, with its lower action). Then I return to the Murray for the D major suite, in which all of the pieces use a dropped-D tuning. By lowering the E down to D when I switch guitars the previous time, with one further tweak, the tuning stays much more stable. I raise the D back to E when I move to the Multiac for the F-sharp minor suite, and stay with the Godin until the break at the end of the A major suite. I've tried this out at a couple of gigs, and my students and regualrs really love the Murray's sound, and the guitar exchanges are quite smooth.

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The key to getting the CP-1 integrated tuned out to be using the EQ effect section in the Lexicon, and matching the levels between the two guitars using a combination of the internal input gain, and the EQ's gain as well. The problem I was having with the Murray turned out to be feedback on the C, B, and B-flat on the low A string. Fortunately, all of the original sounds for the Godin Multiac used no EQ because the RMC Polydrive doesn't need any, so I had that entire block free. The only problem I ran into is that some of the more complex programs were too large, and there wasn't any memory space for the EQ. In those instances, I simply deleated the pitch-shift doubler, which gave the needed space for the EQ.

Keeping in mind that I tune to Philosophical Pitch (A= 432), and that the open A string is therefore at 108 Hz, by using a single band EQ and reducing 127 Hz to -27 (Out of a silly range of 72 for that parameter: Why Lexicon used such a dizzying array of parameter ranges in the MPX-G2 and MPX-1 I just don't understand) with a Q set at 1.8, I was able to eliminate the hump in that range and ended up with a woodier sound to boot.

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Once I figured this out for the Murray, of course, I started in on the Glissentar/CP-1A sound programs, and am going through those right now. It too wants a tad cut at 127Hz.

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Cool timewaster site: That Image Site.

A couple of grabs:



I'm not sure who this is. Anybody know? I'd like to hear the guy play it.



This guy, however, I do know: Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick. Too funny.

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Now that's a glamorous babe.

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Strings: Just When You Think You Have It All Figured Out...

... you have to develop an entirely new worldview.

Installing the Carlos CP-1 High End transducer into my trusty old Murray has required... a whole new learning curve with respect to string choice. Over the years I had gone for bigger and bigger bass output, and the best strings in that department - for this particular guitar - ended up being D'Addario Pro Arte' EJ46C Composites. Using the composite G gave great balance, and the regular nylon B and E gave a smooth upper register with no carbon fiber harshness. Well, guess what? Those strings suck for the Carlos transducer: The A and D strings, especially, simply overwhelm the others. back to square one.

Square one, in this case, is the old standby red card Savarez set. Why? Middle of the road everything: Bass output, response, upper register; just an all-around good point of reference. Talk about hitting it in the sweet spot! I'm wondering, in fact, if Carlos developed his transducer with these strings. One minor major bugaboo: The G@& D@%*#> F#&%^#& G-string! Talk about wimpy-@$$ pound-testage! Methinks that G weighs in at less than 12 pounds in an A=440Hz tuning (And, I tune to A=432/"Philosophical Pitch"). I love happy accidents.

I just happened to have ten nine Savarez red card metal wound G strings laying around from an earlier experiment, and voila'! So, low E through G are now dialled in. High B and E, however, suck unholy @$$! The balsy output of the wound lower strings now makes the old fashioned nylon strings sound, well, old fashioned.

Savarez Alliance Carbon Fiber trebles to the rescue! I had a gazillion of these laying around for the Glissentar, so no problemo.

Oh yeah: I have to re-do all the EQ settings in my Lexicon's too.



And, I have a management contract offer, which I'm going to accept, so Hucbald may be coming to a town near you in 2007!



Just for you, Peg! ;^)

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Sid and Nancy

One of my favorite movies of all time. For reasons you may not expect.



In 1983 I was a roadie/driver/guitar tech for Johnny Thunders, who was formerly in The New York Dolls, who were on the Anarchy in the UK tour with... The Sex Pistols and The Clash back around 1976 (The Year I graduated from high school). This was immediately after Johnny Rotten's "Fuck the Queen" quotation hit the headlines of every rag in Europe. It was the dark flip-side of the Beatlemania phenomenon. Very intense.

Sid Vicious and Johnny Thunders were birds of a feather and long-lost-brother soul mates (A relationship which was absolutely platonic, I can assure you). Johnny Rotten, by comparison, was - and remains - a pathetic poseur.

I used to get enraptured by Johnny's "Sad Vacation": A wrist-slitting nihilistic punk-rock ballad about his sense of loss when Sid died. Sadly, Johnny has joined Sid now, along with Jerry Nolan, the drummer for that tour and for The Dolls, and I'm almost the only one left who remembers any of it.

Except for the bass player, Billy Rath. Wish I could find him. He was cool. Last I heard, he had a Swedish wife half his age. Rock on, Billy.

This was long before I re-emerged as an All-American boy. Long before.



You can call me Huc, you can call me Bald, but don't call me late for dinner.

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Hazy, Lazy, Crazy Days of Summer

Please forgive the light blogging, but there has actually been almost too much going on in my life to be blogging for the past week or so. No "wucking furries" - as an Aussie pal of mine would say - because it's all been good. Very good. So good, in fact, that I don't want to jinx some of it by talking about it. Let me begin by saying that I have spent many man-hours getting the Glissentar/CP-1A and Murray/CP-1 guitars ready for giggage, and that project is now in the pocket.

What I had to do there was develop twelve "virtual acoustic environments" - one for each of the suites in my set - in my Lexicon MPX-G2... for each axe. That required modifying the twelve I had already developed for the Multiac/RMC Polydrive guitar - and which began their evolution back when they were for a Gibson Chet Atkins CEC guitar (There are, without exaggeration, literally hundreds of man hours in these programs) - and renaming/storing them down the user program address chain. I have gotten that done for the MPX-G2 I use in my recording settup, but I still have not entered them in the MPX-G2's I use for my small venue and large venue performance rigs (Remember, I need three MPX-G2's to make my life work).

This has to be done by hand: I have to stack the units and modify the programs one-at-a-time by comparing the new ones to the old ones in the other units because there is not data dump or sysex function in those units (Well, that I can figure out, anyway). That's for each and every parameter of each and every effect in each and every program! So, the reast of this week will be spent getting that done, because I have to re-EQ all of those programs for the various amp/speaker configurations. It's a freaking nightmare.

A nightmare that I must get through, however, as events seem to be conspiring to make me even busier (I'll have to leave it cryptic, as I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch).

I have some seriously cool guitars now.



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I want to take a moment to thank Carlos Juan for putting up a nice splash page for me at his site. It is no exaggeration to say that his CP-1A and CP-1 pickups have changed my entire musical life for the better, and I'm proud to be associated with his awesome products.

I'm too good to be true, and I get better looking every day, don't you think?



(Don't answer that!)

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The Great Irony: While the north, and then the north east, have been suffering with a record-setting heat wave, we out here in the desert chapparal have been having fabulous monsoon rains this year. Here's a pic from a couple of days ago, taken at about 6:30AM, from the back porch of El Rancho Ucobaldo.



"Red sky at morning, sailor take warning!"

It rained furously that afternoon.

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One other thing I'll have to be elusive about is a potential new location for my "Rancho": This will be the fulfillment of a thirty year dream if it pans out, as I have been offered a "sweetheart deal" on some acreage a couple hours north of here. I'm going to scope it out next week. Most of the land sold out here is never listed with a broker: You have to be part of the community for a while, and put out feelers. If folks like you and wouldn't mind having you as a neighbor, then - and only then - will you get some offers. I love that.

Remember this?



Just a couple of miles away.

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Perhaps I'll end up with some neighbors like this?

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Musical Philosophy

Yet another inane thread over at Sequenza 21, this one basically advocating content-free music (I don't think they have anything to discuss, because all of their music seems to be already content free: Mission accomplished boys, that ship has already sailed). I believe the title was "When Did We All Become Philosophers?" or something like that.

It really is hard to discuss this without spewing Coca-Cola all over my monitor and keyboard, because the premise is so patently absurd on its face as to be abjectly laughable. I mean, music is a communicative medium, and so content is mandatory, not optional. IOW, if your music isn't saying something, it is saying nothing. If you have nothing to say, then keep your pie-hole shut, m-kay?

I remember the first time I encountered this form of musical nihilism (And - unlike so many today - I iknow what nihilism is, and I'm using the word correctly). It was when I was in the composition DMA program at UNT back in the mid nineties. My "teacher" at the time was a n00b composition prof named Dr. Joe Klein (I chose him because he was a n00b, and so would allow me to follow my already-set agenda), and he said - and I quote - "I don't write goal-oriented music."

Read that line a few times. Again. Let it sink in. Deep...

Are you laughing uncontrollably yet? If not, you do not understand musical composition. At all.

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Music is often compared to spoken language, and this is often a perfect analog; especially when the musical medium includes song. However, when you come to instrumental music - absolute music - the analogy begins to break down. Sure, there is still phraseology present, and other temporal aspects which music and language share, but spoken language has no God-given component at the heart of it: Language is limited only by the human body's ability to sound, and the human mind's ability to comprehend. Whispers, shouts, beeps, or clicks; any sound a human can make can be used to communicate, and as long as a community agrees upon the meaning, the communication will be effective.

Outside of the given communities, however, all spoken languages are no better than gibberish.

Music, on the other hand, is a universal language: Everybody from every culture will recognize the music of another culture as music, even if they are not steeped in its traditions (This is a fact, by the way, and is not a matter open to debate).

Why is that?

Because, unlike spoken language, music has at its heart a God-given key to the understanding of it, and that key is the harmonic overtone series.



The history of Western art music is the history of the unravelling of the implications of this harmonic series.

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If you were to dispense with the style-related rule-sets of counterpoint - those things which make Palestrina sound like Palestrina and Bach like Bach - you would be left with basic contrapuntal laws which the series explains:

1) Intervals in the series which are consonances and are superparticular ratios in both inversions cannot move in parallel.

2) Intervals in the series which are consonances and which are superparticular ratios in only one position may move in parallel.

3) Dissonances cannot move in parallel.

And, that's really it: All else are simply rules based on taste which can be left to the discresson of the composer.

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Same goes for harmony. The first seven partials of the harmonic series spell out a dominant seventh chord, so every tonic - after it has had its day - wishes to aquire a seventh and be absorbed into a new tonic a perfect fifth below. In order to be able to leave and approach a tonic by this motion (In a triadic environment), major triads are required on I, IV, and V. These three triads make the so-called Ionian mode, or rather, diatonic tonality. The minor is simply a derivative of this: A minor third below the major tonic is the mode which yeilds minor triads on the cardinal degrees.

Further, all root motion types are related to this primordial falling fifth progression. If a falling fifth is a progression, it follows that a rising fifth is a regression, and this is so: Regressive root motions sound like they are going backwards against the natural inclination or desire of the harmony.

Since it takes two falling thirds to make a fifth (And if you use the proper circular transformations, the voices will make the same journey through two thirds as they do with one fifth), it follows that a falling third is a half-progression, and a rising third is a half-regression. This is also demonstrably true, and is a realized implication of the overtone series.

Diatonic seconds are super-progressions when they ascend, and super-regressions when they decend, because they imply a missing root a third below the "theoretical root" (Or, we could call it the "philosophical root" LOL!) of the lead harmony.

And so, all of the effects that the various root motions have can be explained by how well they conform to the primordial falling fifth progression implied by the overtone series.

No overtone series, no universal language.

That's why it is a fact - and not my opinion - that wrongly so-called "atonal music" is noise and is not music at all: Music is the art of tone setting to display philosophical aspects of the implications of the overtone series!

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Ironically, the greatest philosophers of antiquity were all interested in music, and used music to explain examples of their philosophical musings. So the answer to the question, "When Did We All Become Philosophers?" would be, "From the beginning, dumbass."

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My Name in Lights!

Well, sorta/kinda.

Your humble blog author is now listed along with such guitar luminaries as Eric Clapton, Larry Coryell, Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Brian Setzer (Stray Cats/Brian Setzer Orchestra), Brian Adams, Brian May (Queen), and several others in an add for the Carlos CP-1A acoustic guitar pickup.



One of the coolest things about this list is that I am listed right under Mike Brannon and Randy Cordero - both Texas guitarsts I know personally. In fact, Mike and I go back to the late 70's when we were studying together with Jackie King, Herb Ellis, and Pat Martino at the Guitar Institute SW. Later, he and I were at Berklee together, and we still get together fairly often. He's coming to Alpine this w/e, come to think of it.

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In other news, I landed a choice monthly gig at a winery where I'll be compensated - get this - with a base pay fee, a percentage of the door, dinner, and... two bottles of wine! Now I play weekly at a brewery where the brewmaster is a real, genuine German who's been brewing since he was twelve, and monthly at a winery where the proprietors have developed their own strains of grapes for the locality, and I can't pay for a drink at either place!

I love my life.



Makes me want to beat a drum.

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New MySpace Page/An Absolutely Amazing Gig

I've set up a MySpace page. I seem to be kind of late into the game on this, but I really had not investigated it before, and I hadn't heard much about it. Well, it seems like everybody who's anybody has one - along with everybody else who's nobody - so I have spent the past week putting it up and recording some music for it.

Hucbald's MySpace page is here, and like I say, I have made some recordings with my new recording studio setup for it.

After getting the M Box/ProTools 7.0 LE settup for my Mac Mini, I found myself using the Bounce To Disk as MP3 feature all the time. Unfortunately, that feature is a third-party deal, and it comes as a 30 day demo. After the demo expired, it took FOR...EVER to figure out how to get it back. First, I bought the authorization, then I had to buy the disks (I had gotten LE 7 as a free promo download) - silly me bought the WRONG DISKS - then a couple of hours on the support site, followed by 45 minutes on hold with tech support... Let's just say it was an ordeal, and leave it at that. vX.0 of NO software should ever be bought.

But, I eventually got it, so "all's well that ends well," as they say.

I recorded nine pieces in just three takes - 3 Pieces in E Minor, 3 Pieces in G Major, and 3 Pieces in E major - so everything is a first take. I did this to get around the four song limit that MySpace has. Due to "The First Take Challenge" I issued myself, there are a few clams and dropped notes, but I was actually pleased I have gotten to the point where I can do this well on the spur of the moment. I'm telling you, performing live a lot gets your consistency way up. Even if you are a so-so player like I am.

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Now, for the absolutely amazing and super fantastic gig I had yesterday.

It was at a ranch just south of the New Mexico border:



I mean, a real ranch, complete with cattle:



There was a problem: Either take my gear up these stairs one piece at a time...



(Perhaps they look more intimidating from this angle)



...or, drive my truck up this hill:



Did I mention that my truck's trip computer told me it was 104 degrees F when I arrived for this job?

I hate that photo: That's about a 40 degree grade with a lot of soft sand, and as with pictures of angry oceans, the camera just flattens it all out. Pshhh. Anyway...

This was the only gig I've ever played where having a full-sixed 4x4 truck with a 4" Rancho Lift Kit was actually required.



In Texas, it's not the clothes that make the man, it's the truck: This truck is me.

It turns out that only for or five vehicles made it up that hill. The poor DJ's small 4x4 pickup could not make it with his gear trailer in tow. I know that first hand, because he asked me to do the driving, as he was... ah... inexperienced with four wheel drive shennagans. The poor little Ford got bogged down in the sand with it's skinny street tires. At least I had done that sort of thing enough to not get it stuck, and the worst part of the deal was having to back the stupid trailer down that steep grade with the kinks in it.

This is why I'm a believer in small, compact gear, full sized 4x4 pickups with bed covers, and dollys with inflatable tires:



The only things not on the dolly are my guitar and folding chair.

There had been a viscious wind storm the previous day with 60 MPH winds - right after they got everything set up, of course - and the chairs and tables had just been, er... "recovered." The columns with the flowers were left down because the wind was still almost 40 MPH when I arrived.



And, this is where I set up:



Is that cool or what? It looks like I'm just out in the middle of the desert somewhere, and I AM!

By the time the ceremony started at 8:45 PM, the temp was in the low 90's (Not bad for as low as the humidity is out here), and the wind had completely died out and had given way to a gorgeous and serene calm.



There was a Mariachi singer/guitarist performing the music for the ceremony (And, he completely kicked ass), so I was able to enjoy the the ceremony, the music... and the scenery.



(I just snapped these sitting in my little folding chair)...

This was one of the best thought out weddings I've ever played, and I've played... a few.



What a day.





I love ranches.

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