True Bypass Looper
As anyone who plays live guitar knows, the pedal board at your feet plays a big role in your performance. In addition to practicing your playing skills, you also need to carefully arrange the equipment at your feet and practice using them seamlessly in a performance. As the complexity of the pedal board increases, it becomes far more likely to make mistakes tap-dancing on the footswitches, or to get confused in the intensity of a fast-moving live performance. So anything that helps to simplify and better ergonomically arrange the pedals at your feet is going to improve the quality of your performance. And for my rig, a true bypass looper is just one of those things. Here’s why:
Pedal Board Update- Zoom G3X Modeler
Modelers generally do a reasonable job with these types of effects, and it saves me having to fit a dozen single-purpose effects pedals on my pedal board.
Here’s a picture of my pedal board before the G3X. I had a noise gate, a couple types of overdrive, a compressor, wah. volume pedal, tuner, and a delay/looper (which fell off the side of the pedal board). I ran out of room for my chorus pedal, and I’m completely lacking reverb, pitch and any more esoteric effects. More
2 Million Views!
Just catching up on some replies today on my YouTube channel, and was surprised to see this on my channel!
Wow! It seems like such a short time has passed since my channel reached the first million, but actually it was a year and a half ago. More
A Year in the Drop Daddies
It’s been a very busy year. I haven’t had much time for making videos and posting blog updates. Here’s why:
About a year ago, I started up a band – the Drop Daddies – with some of the other Dad’s at our kids’ elementary school. Originally, the idea was just to get together on weekends to play some music and have fun. Almost immediately however, a friend invited us to play at her 2012 end-of-the-world party. That humble little gig by the Christmas tree kicked off a very busy year for the band. So far, we’ve learned 60+ songs and played at least a dozen gigs- bars, an auction, carnivals, and parties large and small.
A few observations – each of which should be its own blog post, but I’ll collect them here for now and maybe expand on them later:
Don’t Break The Chain
In my Millionth Anniversary video back in 2012, I talked about Jerry Seinfeld’s motivational technique for tricking yourself into getting things done. “Don’t Break The Chain!”
Since February 19, 2012- I’ve kept my pledge to play guitar every day, no matter what. That’s 660 days! Yes, sometimes it’s just a few minutes right before bed. But more often, once I pick up the guitar, I end up playing for a good session.
I no longer need to draw X’s on a calendar, as in Jerry’s technique- I just know that I don’t want to miss a day. This technique really builds new, effective habits.