Blogging Ottinger (tim)

It’s not like I need a reason. It’s Frank Gambale and Steve Smith.

Hiram Bullock has passed away. I remember many years ago when I went with my friend John Kirkbride to see Miles Davis play at Clowes Hall in Indy in support of his Tutu album. Hiram Bullock was the featured guitarist. Of course, a lot of credit goes to Dewey, but Hiram B was fabulous on his solos and in support of Miles work. His work was funky, emotive, and beautiful.

I was saddened to hear of his illness and related demise. He was a heck of a guitarist.

I didn’t find andy Hiram/Miles videos, but I did find something pretty cool with another iconic figure I miss rather a lot.

Especially Tal Wilkenfeld. She looks like a little kid, but she doesn’t play like one.

She was at the 2007 crossroads guitar festival (organized by Eric Clapton for the sake of the Crossroads Centre, Antigua for the treatment of drug and alcohol addictions). Tal played with Jeff Beck, who is a favorite guitar player. Videos are available in the Crossroads DVD (recommended) and also on YouTube, which is embedded here:

Before someone jumps on me for being sexist or ageist or something, the “girl bass players” line is courtesy of a young lady bassist I know (Hi Andrea!).

Nobody on earth sounds like Jeff Beck, except maybe Jeff Beck. This song, and this video make me smile. There are plenty of high-speed, high-accuracy shredding videos on youtube and most of them only impress me with how fast they are, not how good they sound. Beck’s guitar sounds great, and he knows just what a song needs and when it needs it.

And he’s even better alongside Stanley Clarke in 2006.

I’ve lately been giving some of my regular guitar heroes a break, lest I wear them out. So for a little while, no Dave Weckl, no Larry Carlton, no Lee Ritenour, etc.

Almost all of the jazz I’m now listening to has come from eMusic. That subscription makes me want to pull down more music than I’d normally be purchasing, and the price is quite good. Now I’m into Niacin, Jimmy Bruno, Joe Diorio, the Jazz Mandolin Project, some old classic Wes Montgomery and Earl Klugh (who I understand didn’t consider himself to be jazz, but popular music). I don’t get around much, so some of these I’d not even be aware of except for eMusic’s search services and recommendations. Very cool.

I’m also listening to some new Phil Keaggy releases that just came to eMusic. I love to listen to Keaggy.

Odd that I play guitar, and listen to jazz guitar, but I’ve never tried to play any jazz. You’d think I’d be working through all these great solos and trying to learn the craft, but I’m not. Nor have I learned many pop songs. I tend to compartment too much. It would be cool to be able to do more, but I’m more of an audience than a doer when it comes to this great music.

I think that my next renewal to eMusic will be a downgrade, though. 65 songs a month is really cool when you start out, but you don’t really need to collect that much music in a year. Admittedly, if some more of my old favorites were there, I could manage to do this another year. Still, I’m discovering bands I like in multiple genres. It’s cool.

I was ‘helping a friend look for pickups’ — actually he’s looking and so I wanted to listen to a million different kinds and see what I like. I found three great comparison pages:

• Seymour Duncan’s tone wizard page
• Acme compares various pickups
• Rio Grande pickups
• Kinman pickups (awesome)

Courtesy YouTube, I am just groovin’ on Larry & his friends tonight, following MPTV’s viewing of the Clapton Guitar Festival.

1. Just an Excuse
2. Josie
3. Room 335 with Lee Ritenour from “Larry and Lee”
4. BP Blues HEY! That’s not his 335!!!

There’s more on YouTube, but if you don’t know Larry C, then this will do a pretty good job of getting you acquainted with the master. There is much, much more available than these songs. Larry’s been a hard-working man.

I already own:

1. Larry and Lee with Lee Ritenour
2. No Substitutions (Live) with Steve Lukather
3. Fire Wire
4. Sapphire Blue
5. Live at the Greek (Stanley Clarke & friends)
6. Collection

I lost and desperately miss Christmas At My House, which was so beautiful it brought a tear to my eye. Such masterful and emotional playing. What a guy.

Today I started a new experiment. I decided to finally get involved with a music service. I’d been putting it off because I am so very anti-DRM and most music services are crawling with it. Then I found an article about eMusic. I decided to give it a shot and signed up for the 24-song trial membership (which I exhausted in one evening). I can listen to 30-second samples of songs for free, or can download actual MP3 files if I decide I want to “take it home with me”. I can copy it, listen to it, burn a CD, whatever. The price is not too bad, on the order of US$0.25 per song. That is pretty close to what I want to pay. eMusic has some free stuff too. I was surprised to hear that it’s the #2 download service after that apple place. I would have thought that someone big and powerful (and greedy) would have stopped them by now.

I don’t care for those services that require a special client application (last.fm, etc), and almost quit on eMusic until I realized that I could turn off the download manager option and pull down the tracks I want in MP3.

I am really only interested in MP3 and OGG file formats. I could pull down FLAC and convert it, but that’s more work. I don’t want any DRM. None at all. Nor should you. To help you pick good formats and good policies, Wikipedia has a pretty large music store comparison table. That is helpful for picking services that match your politics and pocketbook.

I have been pleased to find that independent and alternate music vendors are doing well. I have already blogged about Magnatune music store, Music Rebellion, and iRate Radio. I have a link to some favorite Live365 radio stations on my link list. Of course, we shouldn’t overlook the podcasts as music sampling services. I have been enjoying Spin180 as a way of keeping up with the new Christian bands.

I wish I could find a similar site specifically for worship music. Oh, look! I did a google search and found several! Well, there’s more to blog about later.

P.S. I found this odd little placeholder site today also.

I started listening to DrHorner’s jazz internet radio station. Very tasty stuff. Between this one and Attention Span Radio I should never be short on tasty jazz listening.

I was also listening to Magnatune’s jazz radio mix and found much to like about it. There is more to magnatunes than their policy and business model. In addition to not being evil, they do have some good stuff to listen to.

It really is a good time to be alive. The whole digital music thing is very good. It brings music to the masses in a way that physical media cannot. Of course, it is intimidating to those recording companies who live on the old model, but I think that they have to adjust or die out. I hope they can adjust.

In the new world, it won’t be a business based purely on per-copy pricing, and the public will never tolerate per-listen pricing. The new model is probably going to be a low yearly fee or a free service to listen to all kinds of music (from many sources), plus a low price for purchasing non-DRMed downloads or a slightly higher price to get the songs + all the collateral (jacket, lyric sheet, pix, CD + Case or USB stick).
People will go for it, and it will be “lucrative enough” considering the very low costs involved in duplication.

Enjoy the new world now. Listen to Live365 free (or buy a premier membership for a nominal fee) and try out Magnatunes for free, and maybe buy the materials you like. It’s a cool thing.

I found a little guitar store and spent a little time playing the guitars and talking with the owner.

The new Washburn guitars look wonderful, and I played around a little unamplified. I did decide to plug in when I found a “Montgomery”. The guitar I played was a few years old, but hardly played and it still had the plastic over (most of) the pick guard. It looked a lot like this:

The price was reasonable, but I’ve not met the conditions for buying a new guitar. I still have a strong urge to run out to a guitar store where they’ll let me play a ES335 (pref the Larry Carlton model), but I’m interested in other hollowbodies also. This one is pretty and sounds good, so a guy could do worse.

I also spotted this cutie on the wall and played with it (not plugged in) for a while. The picture is identical to the guitar I had in my hands:

It is not an expensive guitar, but it’s gorgeous. The lesson, I think, is to have some kind of structure so it doesn’t look like a plank (arch top or beveled sides or something), and to have wood stain covered by some lacquer finish, plain or translucent and colored. People like to see wood grain showing through the finish. Those opaque polyurethane finishes are ugly, or at least lacking in elegance.