sleeping in

Well, first of all. I cheated. This morning, I did not get up to mow the lawn at 8, No! I didn't even get up at 9:30 to work at 10. No! I opened the door for Ben and Andy, went back to bed, got up at 10:30, wished it was still 6 am, and wondered downstairs sleepy-eyed hoping they weren't just looking at the stairwell waiting for me. They weren't. Thank God.

I think I played the last electric guitar on the record last night, though. It's been a very fun record to play. I got to do a lot of John Leventhal style stuff. Low baritones and clean strats. So much fun. I actually have rediscovered the Strat on this record. I've used it on almost every song, and gotten sounds out of it I didn't realize were in there. I'm excited for people to hear it. It's fun to listen to something you just did and go "man, that sounds like the dude actually knew what he was doing!"

I never know what I'm doing. I play guitar like Jackson Pollock painted. And his paintings annoy me. I never took lessons or anything, so everything I know how to do, technique-wise, I had to learn by playing, hearing a part that needed to be there, and figuring out a way to do it. I guess that's how anybody learns anything, though. At first you just have a couple tricks, you learn a few new ones, and after a while your tricks start blending together until you really actually have a sort of mastery of it. Or at least a good framework.

In other news, I wrote yesterday about Ella smiling. Well, we sure tried the rest of the day to get her to do it again, and no dice. We know she can, though, so that's good news! When she's sleeping she makes all kinds of different faces, or as Cason calls it, she's "scrolling through facial expressions." It's pretty cute, and you can see her muscles learning how to move in all those different directions. Pretty amazing.

Also, if you use ProTools ever, make sure to leave on Auto-Save every 5 minutes. It's under the Prefs menu. Somehow ours got turned off, and we just lost an hour of drum editing and Andy P's lead vocal he just spent an hour on. So he has to do it again. Which gives me time to write my post about church.

it's late, but you need to see this

it's 2 am, and we just finished up on AP's record for the night. I have to get up at 8 to mow the lawn. Ouch. But you need to see this, it is important and life-changing. Click on the video. You will thank me.

smiles

Ella smiled this morning. Alison kissed her cheek and she instantly started smiling really big. She hasn't done that before and so we kind of freaked out with excitement. It's so cute.

We have three days left for Andrew Peterson's record before it goes to mix. We're just about done with electric guitars now, and we're doing a lot of bgv's. This afternoon we're going to Paul Moak's place to use his B3 for a couple hours and then back here.

Tonight I'm playing with Michelle Avery again at the French Quarter in East Nashville. Cason's playing bass this time, so that will be fun. It's the first show for the new pedal board, so I'm excited about that. I'm about to start on the big one maybe this weekend. I think I'm going to sell my Ernie Ball volume pedal, if anybody wants it. I need to get one smaller so I can fit some other stuff on the board. Let me know if you want it and I'll cut you a deal.

I think we're going to try out a new church this weekend, and I've been excited about that for the last few days. I want to write more about that later, hopefully today, so I won't get into it now. 'East of Eden' is continually a better and better book. It might become my favorite Steinbeck. Well, I think I have to go sing some ooh's and aah's, so I'll write more later.

Monday morning

Ella had a hard night last night. Many tears. Probably gas. I've read two hundred pages of East of Eden in the last two nights. I don't start until I get in bed. This means I've read three or four hours each night. The Gullahorns are here in the studio singing background vocals on the new Andy P record. I'm really tired. East of Eden is really, really, really great, though. You should read it.

new pedal board

I have finally put together my new flight pedal board, and I'm pretty jazzed about it. It's pretty ridiculous to have two different set-ups, but I've found it's been a great relief to have one for big shows and records, that can be as big and obnoxious as I want it, and one that's easily portable, light-weight for flights and little gigs around town. The one I'm going to show you is my flight board. And here we go...

This first shot is all the pedals that will go on this board, the power supply and cables. This is how I've been going to the last few shows. I'll be glad to not do this anymore.



This is the empty pedal board. It is a Pedal Train 2, their medium model, and it's sitting on its case. It's a great design. A light-weight steel frame with four slats 2' wide. The board comes with 2' velcro that lines up perfectly on the slats. You then velcro the bottom of your pedals and they stick right to it. The real genius of this board is that you can wire through the slats, keeping some of your longer cables out of the way and under the board. This makes it very easy to sway pedals out, or rearrange your signal flow. They're really a great design, and if you're looking for a pedal board, I couldn't recommend them enough. Anyway, moving on...



Here are the pedals with velcro on their backs.



Now we get to the good stuff. Afer you have them velcroed and you have all your power and audio cables ready, it's time to decide on your signal path. This is VERY important, and something I didn't understand the first couple boards I made. You need to take stock of what pedals you have, what they do to the sound, and then what order they need to be in. Putting different pedals on either side of a delay will provide the best example of this.

My set-up on this is fairly standard, but the tremolo is in a different spot than some might typically use. I start out with the tuner. This has a bypass output and a muting output. The muting on/off output goes directly to the Baggs DI on the other side of the board. This is for an acoustic guitar or mandolin. That way I can use the same cable for every instrument, but I don't have to shut off all my distortions and delays to switch to an acoustic sound. The bypassed output goes to the volume/wah. This is a cool, little pedal I got off ebay for like 30 bucks. The wah sounds great and the volume is very clean and complete, something my other volume has a problem with. I like it's tiny size as well.

From there it goes to the Rt. 66, which is a compressor and an overdrive, which I had modded to be more of a clean boost. Then it goes to the Rat, this one modded for a less-nasally heavy metal sound to more of a seventies distortion, to the Danelectro Overdrive. I had these originally swapped, but since I'll never use them together, and they fit better on the board in this formation, I moved them. Then I go to the tremolo and the Ibanez delay, which is the first pedal I ever bought and still one of my favorites. Then I go to the A/B box. From here on of the sends goes to the "dry" amp. This is considered "dry" because it will have less delay on it.

The other output here goes to the H2O, which is a nice analog delay and chorus. A very great pedal, both sonically and economically. This, and the TU-2 tuner, are the only pedals I have on BOTH my big and little boards. From here the line will go to the "wet" amp. I left some space after this on the board for whatever randomness I decide will be fun to have, maybe a pitch-shifter or phaser, and these would only go to the "wet" amp, as well.



Here is a shot of the wiring underneath the PedalTrain.



and a close-up so you can see the ties that keep it neater and less likely to wear out your cables.



and the same view from the front



Building a pedal board is never easy, and I find I need to believe in myself and go with what my heart says is true to be able to pull it off. That's why I need some encouragement.



Now, the fun part: trying it out!



It sounds great and everything works correctly. The guardian of the Velvet Eagle, the Super-Gorilla looks on with rock approval.



Now I'll fit the board snugly in its case



And it's time to make sure this wasn't all useless. If it weighs more than 50 pounds I'll have to pay an extra amount every time I fly to a gig.



36 Pounds! Awesome. This gives me room for a few more pedals, cables, strings, whatever. Take that American Airlines!!



Also, I can't say enough how you need to have good cables to have good tone. Cheap little plastic deals can cut up to 10% of your volume with each cable you use. If you use seven or eight in a row, you're losing almost 3/4's of your guitar's initial volume. I strongly recommend George L. cable, which is a little more expensive, but so worth it. The George L. comes separately as cables and jacks, and you cut the cable to the length you need and then screw the jacks on the ends. Very hands. Unfortunately, I ran out of George L. today, so I used a couple spare plastic ones, but I will replace them next week. Here are the two different kinds I used today.



Also, and I don't have a picture, but you can see the plug in the shot in the case, a good, cheap power supply is the Visual Sound 1Spot. It's made by the same company as the H2O and Route 66. They're like twenty bucks, and chains that will power 5 pedals are an additional ten bucks each. I am using two chains off one 1Spot on this board. They also make little adaptors for different style jacks, so that it can work with any pedal. I have three different jack styles on this board, and this little guy saved me probably a hundred bucks to power them all. And it's very quiet, unlike a lot of chain-styled power adaptors.

Well, there she is, and I hope you weren't bored to death. As you can see, I really love this stuff. I'm blessed that I get to do my hobby for a living, for sure. I also truly believe that excellence in what you create is a reflection of your Creator, and so I always try to make these work and sound the best they can. It also saves you a lot of headaches later on. Thanks for reading this, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Also, thanks to Geof who told me how to do photos on here. Next up: Invasion of the Baby Pictures!!