JD Vance to Europe: You Have Been Served

My old heart fluttered when I read JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference. You can find a transcript here.

tl:dr

As far as Vance is concerned, there are three major threats facing the West:

1) Mass immigration 

2) The creeping loss of freedom in the UK and Europe, where an unaccountable administrative class with a contempt for ordinary people, has acquired legislative power and is using it to enforce what look like Soviet-era restrictions on freedoms 

3) Oh, yes, that whole Russia-Ukraine thing. And maybe China as well. And spending proper money on defence.

The USA will ally with and defend countries that share its values, and right now it's not looking much like the UK and EU are respecting those values. So should UK and EU-area politicians carry on enforcing Soviet-era censorship and treating the electorate as fodder for their projects, the USA will walk away from defending it.

Which seems like a perfectly sensible position to me.

Learning Electric Guitar: Let's Talk About Ability

Playing classical music, the difference between me (or better, someone who can actually play with their right-hand fingers) and the latest crop of graduates from the music schools, who go on to record a CD of guitar music by composers who were once named only in the lesser-read pages of Groves, is one of degree: they can read music better, interpret better, play the notes with more confidence and accuracy, their technique is smoother. (The same might be said of the latest crop of Berklee graduates as well.) I know what to do to get to where they are, even if I don't have the energy to do it.

That attitude, when carried into rock or even jazz, is mis-directing. It means a focus on technique, and specifically fingerboard virtuosity. Berklee has convinced everyone that jazz is about music theory and the fingerboard technique to apply that theory.

But rock, folk, soul, funk, dance, ambient, post-rock, country, and many other generes, are not about technique. They are about music first. The technique enables the music, but does not direct it. There are some consummate professionals in country and jazz, but they aren't there because they can shred.

They are there because they can do what's needed, and contribute when it's needed.

The difference between me and Tim Pierce, Steve Lukather, Larry Carlton, Chris Spedding, and Steve Cropper... and that's a silly way to even start a sentence. It's not that they play better than I do. I could learn all the scales and chords and music theory and it still would not begin to close the gap. They have better ears and can hear what the chords are and what they need to play over those changes. They can compose breaks, riffs, solos, and in some cases, songs that got to the top of the charts. They understand and can play within the conventions of genres from blues and funk to rock and country. They can hear a solo or a song a couple of times and play it back. They can hear the effects another guitarist is using, and work out how to get those effects. It's the whole package; they are simply much better musicians and much more complete craftsmen.

While I was playing my trusty old acoustic, I never thought about all that. Taking up electric made me aware of it. I don't mind not having the chops, but finding out there was so much else I didn't even know about, and have subsequently turned out not to be so good at, has been... if I'm honest... disheartening.

Learning Electric Guitar: So Now Let's Make Some Music

The classical guys are trained to play the notes other people wrote. That's how classical music works now - though in the past, the composers were also often virtuoso performers (nobody ever shredded better than J S Bach) and the instrumentalists fill in chords and bass lines from the barest notation, while the singers were given a tune and expected to improvise around it. Mmmmm. Sounds familiar.

Contemporary classical is not how rock and jazz work.

If you learn and play the Rikki solo, you're either in a tribute band (when the closer to The Skunk the better) or you're not, in which case, you're just imitating The Skunk, and it's lame.

   

Putting something that recognisable, and that good, in the middle of an otherwise competent but not inspiring song would distract from the song. Nobody would remember anything else. Oh, yeah, that's the song where they use the Rikki solo. The song needs its own solo, as generic as it may be, and people will say "nice guitar". That's what the guitarist is hired to provide.

This is partly about the law. In rock and jazz, the Rikki solo and its like are protected by copyright - that can be worth the cost of enforcing. In classical, either the copyright has run out, or the fees are cheap, or it's not worth the cost of enforcement. Which is why all those string quartets can play Bartok and Beethoven quartets without bankrupting themselves, and why it is worth the musician's time learning to interpret them, and learning to read music in the first place. (Something similar applies to jazz, when it is treated as a classical form.) Rock musicians often don't read because they are not in the business of reproducing other people's music faithfully and interestingly.

Professional guitar-playing is about being able to learn a piece of music quickly; adapting your tone to the needs of the band / song / studio; and composing or improvising solos, breaks and backing phrases as needed. (Also showing up on time and ready to go, behaving well and getting along with everyone - but that's pretty much standard operating procedure in any job.) The fundamental skill in rock guitar, even more than jazz, is the ability to make music. Even a four-note phrase between the lines of the verse. (Especially that, now I think of it.)

The technique and music theory is an enabler for that. You can know a zillion scales and chord extensions, but if you don't have the taste to apply them when needed, you may as well stick to the basics. The distance between learning the technical stuff, and actually playing, is huge. It's about one's ability to hear what is going on, and play something that fits in with it.

Noodling ("improvising or playing casually on a musical instrument") is primarily therapeutic. How many people sit through a slow movie with an acoustic in their lap, playing scales, riffing chords and phrases, to fill out the time between plot points? Electric guitars open up the possibility of noodling with tone as well. One can noodle one's way into learning the Turkish Diminished Locrain scale, or into getting the cowboy chords at the tenth fret. It keeps the hands in and the fingertips hard. One can spend an hour comparing Santana's tone on the CD with what's coming out of the DAW or the digital pedalboard. One can noodle with aplomb, and one can noodle so badly that one disappoints oneself. (Sighs. Puts down guitar. "Time to do the washing-up".)

Learning Electric Guitar: Welcome to Tone.

Classical players do not have to deal with tone. Almost all acoustic guitars of the same size with the same strings sound almost the same. Pluck or pick near the bridge, and all of them sound snappier and twangier. Pick near the bottom of the fretboard, and all of them sound rounder and smoother. (This also applies to electric guitars, because it's physics.) It takes about ten minutes to appreciate the range of tones available from an acoustic, and another ten to convince yourself that, yes, resting your hand on the soundboard does take a little off the treble frequencies.

Start by trying each type of string, from flat-wound to pro-steels, to get an idea of what each one sounds like. I would stick to one string maker to keep the variables down. And try 9, 10, and 11 gauge. (Yes, it makes a difference. 9's feel thin against the fingers and a way easier to bend.) Play DR Blues 9's or 10's and you may never buy another brand again. 

 
I understand that kids these days do not buy amplifiers. They buy an interface (say a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2), plug it into their Macbook, make all the modifications in Garageband or some other DAW, and listen over a £69 pair of headphones via the interface loopback. This is one way to do it, and I understand that this is now taught in primary schools, or is just intuitively obvious to anyone under fifteen. The weakness in this method is headphone quality. If you do go this route, get decent headphones, say, Sennheiser HD560S or better. You ears will thank you.

Amps. Valve vs solid state vs modellers, Fenders vs Marshalls vs Vox vs Roland JC's vs Boss Katanas vs the list is endless. 

(Fender Blues Junior)

You Tube demos and reviews are a reasonable starting-point. YT audio is heavily-processed and that's before your laptop or phone soundcard gets at it. If an amp sounds bad on YT, it most likely will sound bad in your room. You should try them out in a store, but only if the resident shredder is being quiet.

The amps in You Tube demos are always cranked. Those lovely crunchy rock tones can only be obtained at 85 dB and more - just look at the dB meters in the background of Andertons videos - and with a valve amp. Half the time, there are pedals as well, but those might not get mentioned. Below that, you will only ever get a clean tone, with maybe a pinch of distortion from an effects pedal. It will sound different, but it won't sound... glorious. If you're playing jazz or blues, it's fine. But if you want that big stadium-rock / metal sound... you will need to record into a DAW, apply the effects there, and listen over headphones. Learning to use a DAW well does not happen in an afternoon. Or sound-proof your room.

Well-meaning people will suggest a Katana. 

It is excellent value for money, it has a pre-amp volume, a Master volume and an attenuator / power control, so it provides lots of bites at the volume control cherry. It has decent effects - many based on BOSS's own pedals, so they should know - built in, and control software that lays everything out really well. The only thing you need to know is how to EQ it so it provides a reasonable approximation to a "real" amp. 

The majority of recorded guitar sounds you have heard have been played through Fender amps, with Marshalls and Vox's a distant second and third. Fender amps are bright, light, clean, and like a sunny day on the beach. Marshalls are darker, heftier, distort more readily, and are like a funfair at night. Fenders are an easier place to start. To get close to that sound with a Katana (I don't know about the other modelling amps) takes implausibly extreme EQ settings. (See this post for details.) However, the base level valve amps (a Fender Blues Junior or a Fender Vibro Champ) are at least twice as much as a Katana or other modelling amp. 

Guitar amps are loud. For the same wattage, nearly twice as loud as a pair of hi-fi speakers. 1 watt through a 12-inch Celestion speaker 

will produce between 95-100dB, which is well into Health and Safety territory. 1 watt. You don't need 2, let alone 100. Watts are used as a proxy for build and component quality: within the same manufacturer and range, mo' watts generally means mo' quality. A Fender Blues Junior provides 15 watts, and the Vibro Champ provides 5 watts. That means the Blues Junior is about 5dB (i.e. not a lot) louder at full power than the Vibro Champ. All the volume is in the first watt. 

Having chosen your amp (on the basis of reviews, what your mates said, budget, volume, weight, and looks, as well as how it sounded in the store) you need to get a sound you like from it. This will not be done in an hour. You need to hear how the the sound varies with how high or low you have the guitar turned up, what effect the tone knobs have, and what effect the amp EQ controls have. Hearing the all-important difference between gain and volume, and finding out when to use gain (as little as possible).

Later on you can buy a digital multi-effects pedal, such as the Helix HX Effects, 

to start experimenting with effects. Compression, distortion, drive and fuzz; chorus, flanger, tremolo, phaser, and weird stuff like ring modulators. Reverb and delay. Those rabbit-holes go deep. Or if you never want a pension, you can buy separate pedals.

Now watch a video that explains how the guitar sound you hear on your favourite track is not actually what you think it is. What goes on in the mixing desk, and the mastering process, can make more difference than anything you're doing with your pedals. What it takes to sound good in your bedroom rehearsal space on your own, is not what it takes to sound good when playing live, and when in the studio.

It's all good nerdy fun. But it's a much bigger workload than guitarists had back in the 1960's. No-one tried to sound like anyone else, and there were almost no pedals. Now it's not enough to learn someone else's notes, you also have to get a good approximation of their tone. Effects were made in the studio by huge bits of equipment that cost as much as a house did back then. Now every guitar player needs to be their own sound engineer - until they get into the studio, if they ever do.

Learning Electric Guitar: The Guitar

If you must play electric guitar, make your first one a single-coil. Fender, Squier. A Telecaster 

for preference, though you should try a Stratocaster, because a Tele neck is like a half-a-baseball-bat. If you have a bit more money, try a PRS Silver Sky SE,

which is PRS's only single-coil guitar. The overwhelming majority of guitar sounds you have heard are single coils through Fender amps. Single coils keep their tone through a much wider range of volume change than humbuckers do. Leave the Gibsons, Epiphones, any other PRS, and the others, because getting a good tone from humbuckers is a long journey with many false ends.

Learning scales and modes, and all the fancy picking techniques, takes time and practice, but it isn't hard. Learning the chords, if you do it by rote, is harder because you need to learn to move all four fingers at the same time, like some ballet dancer on all fours.

Making sense of chords is a task. It does not help that guitar chord books show you "chords called A-something". Which is not what anyone needs. Which is a book that shows us "chords in the key of A" (A major, B minor, C♯ minor, D major, E major, F♯ minor, G♯ diminished - for a start) which are scattered all over those books. (An A minor chord is not in the key of A. It is in the keys of C, F, and G major, and also A, D and E minor.)

Everybody talks about the major and pentatonic scale "shapes", but nobody talks about the chord shape-sequences that make up the chords in a scale. You may get a mention of Nashville numbers and cowboy chords (all the chords you can play in the first position with minimum use of barre chords). Oh yes, and barre chords. That will take way more time that anyone lets on, unless you're a natural.

This may all come easily to you. Maybe you got the same brain wiring Davy Graham did - some of the Tik-Tok players undoubtedly have. Maybe you have perfect pitch, or darn good relative pitch, and you have picked up without knowing it what sounds are where on the fretboard, so you can play back a phrase after hearing it once. A lot of people can do that, but even more cannot. Maybe you can just play stuff out of thin air - that's what it takes to improvise. A lot of people can, and far more cannot. Maybe you take to reading tab, or to reading proper notation. Like reading words aloud, some people are better at it than others, almost from the start. Maybe you can form muscle memories quickly, but maybe you're like most of us, and you need to play-it-or-lose-it.

And the guitar is only half the instrument, unless you are going to play jazz, when you only need half the guitar (because jazz only uses the neck pick-up).

Minimum Age for Social Media

I read in our fine print media, that according to many people, the minimum age for social media use should be 16.

I beg to differ.

The minimum age for using social media should be 45.

Up to then, people should be...

doing homework, passing A-levels, going to university to make friends, read books (and online lecture notes) and get a degree, finding a job afterwards (good luck with that), finding somewhere to live that isn't at your parents (good luck with that as well), finding someone with whom to share your life (because that's the way I've always heard it should be, and really good luck with that), getting new jobs because promotions don't come with pay rises anymore (more good luck), having and raising children, and all that stuff. Which defeats most people even if they aren't wasting their time scrolling through the carefully-edited posts of their Facebook friends.

Social media is for professionals to advertise their services. It always only ever was about advertising.

Better living through less exposure to advertising.

And after 45 you won't give a toss who is selling what.

The Great Tone Journey (Cont)

It's been a long time since I've written about my Hunt For Tone. I know, you've been missing it.

I'm after tones that make me want to play more notes because the sound is pleasing. I'm not after the Beano tone (really). I have no desire to sound like Dave Gilmour (honestly Guv). I have accepted that in my bedroom, I must temper my ambitions. Also the one benefit of being an amateur is that one can sound like oneself. It's the pros who need to be able to sound like other people.

None of this applies to using a DAW and its effects and plug-ins. I'm still using old-school things like amplifiers and digital pedals. And guitars. With strings.

None of the Guitar Tubers who talk about tone come right out and say that at bedroom volumes (less than around 75dB at one metre from the speaker) it is simply not possible to get full-bodied crunchy, drive-y, distortion-y tones. Those come from valve amps, the valves need to be driven, and that requires serious amounts of dB's.

Pedals will not do the trick. I have tried every effect in my trusty Helix HX Effects, and while they get close if the humidity and air temperature is just right, none quite get the full-bodied sound we are looking for.

My Paranormal Telecaster has been the single most significant learning experience in the whole search. Single coils don't lose tone as the volume goes down, and don't gain it appreciably as the volume goes up. There's a change, but it's not from WOW to OH-UH. That's what happens with the humbuckers on my McCarty 594 SE. At 8 and above, the sound is all there. At 7 or below it goes flubby, rubbery - the strings feel like rubber bands under my fingers, which is totally a psychological effect, but we're talking about psychology here. Unless I use a fuzz pedal, when it's all just fine at 5 - and that's with the fuzz level control turned down a lot.

So I've learned to separate the effects of twiddling the humbucker volumes from twiddling the effect controls. I set the effect up with the Tele (single coils), and then check it on the McCarty (humbuckers). As long as the humbuckers are 8 or more, it usually works.

The EQ is the final part of the chain, and that is there to correct for the Katana, not the guitars. On a 10-band EQ pedal, this is +15dB on 62 and 125Hz, +21dB on 2k and 4k Hz, and -20dB on 8kHz and 16kHz. This requires two EQ blocks in the HX Effects, and the second one makes the difference.

The signal chain is now: guitar -> HX Effects -> Katana Power Amp In, and HX Effects -> Scarlett 2i2 -> DAW.

The basic clean chain is: LA Compressor -> '63 Spring reverb -> EQ1 + EQ2. 

Distortion pedals work better in <i>parallel</i> with the main signal chain. I put a Y-split after the compressor, place the Y-join before the Reverb and EQ pedals, put the distortion in the B-channel, set it up so it sounds good, then take some dB out at the Y-join. The Helix Y-connectors provide that functionality. I've got three drive pedals, each in its own panel. 

The settings work for both guitars, though the ODs sound different when hit by humbuckers or by single-coils. Which is the way it should be.

(edited 20/2/2025)