How to Play Guitar Using Snap Picking
Music legend, guitar innovator Les Paul dies
Les Paul, the world renowned guitarist and guitar innovator, has died. He was 94 years old.
The cause of death was respiratory failure, and he had been suffering from pneumonia. Les Paul had a number of hits with singing partner Mary Ford in the 50’s, such as “How High the Moon” and “Vaya Con Dios.” His legacy, however, will rest on his innovative techniques in improving the electric guitar, with dual pick-ups. The Gibson guitars he developed had a fatter, hotter sound than the Fender guitars of the time. His signature Les Paul Gibson guitar has become a standard axe in rock and roll, with guitarists like Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend and Slash relying on its massive rock and roll sound. When you hear the first crunching chords of Led Zeppelin playing “Whole Lotta Love,” it’s a Les Paul guitar that’s making that sound. He also developed innovative studio techniques, and pioneered the first eight track recording.
Yet even if Paul had never played another note, his place in the musical pantheon would have been assured from his inventions, many of which he never patented. (“I was too busy playing,” he shrugs.)
Perhaps most crucial was his work with so-called sound-on-sound recording, or overdubbing, which he used to layer Ford’s vocals into shimmering harmonic choruses and his guitar into dense, multiple voicings. “Nobody had done that before,” says Brad Tolinski, editor of Guitar World magazine. “In that sense, Les Paul is the father of modern recordings.”
Paul’s relentless tinkering throughout the postwar years brought forth several seminal innovations. He designed the first eight-track recording machine (the original, which stretches to the ceiling of his home studio, was used to remix some songs on the Capitol box set); perfected slap-back echo; recorded his guitar on a machine running slowly, then speeded up the tape to raise its tone several octaves. Bucking the then conventional wisdom that singers should stand no closer than 2 feet from the microphone, he introduced the now-standard technique of positioning the vocalist inches from the mike, which captured every rasp and sigh of Mary Ford’s smoky voice. While encased in a body cast after his 1948 car accident in Oklahoma so mangled was Paul’s right arm that he instructed the doctors to set it at a right angle so he could continue playing, he designed what would have been the first musical synthesizer. “I had the schematics drawn up–it would have been as big as your refrigerator,” laughs Paul, who let the project go after his recovery.
Then there was the Log, the solid-body electric guitar he cobbled together in 1941. Unhappy with the tone and feedback problems of hollow-body electrics, Paul mounted two pickups on a 4×4 block of maple and attached to it the wings from an Epiphone guitar he had sawed in half. When he pitched it to M.H. Berlin, president of Chicago Musical Instruments, the parent company of Gibson guitars, Berlin dismissed it as “a broomstick with pickups.” In the early ’50s, after Leo Fender had scored with his solid-body Telecaster guitar, Berlin reconsidered. “He said, find that guy with the broomstick with pickups and sign him up,’ ” Paul says.
Paul’s unassuming bearing belies his considerable stature among musicians of virtually every persuasion. Over the years he has, it seems, played with just about everyone: Art Tatum, Charlie Christian, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby (with whom he recorded “It’s Been a Long, Long Time”), the Andrews Sisters, Andy Williams even W.C. Fields. Rock guitarists from Jeff Beck to Edward Van Halen have acknowledged their debt to his studio techniques and guitar design, and the walls of Fat Tuesday’s are papered with photos of Paul draping his arm around the players who drop by to pay their respects: George Benson, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton and perhaps Paul’s biggest fan, Jimmy Page, who is said to travel with a framed portrait of his idol.
Les Paul was much loved by countless people in the music business and will be missed.
Bass Amplifiers Recalled by Fender Musical Instruments
The recalled amplifier’s wiring can overheat, posing a fire hazard.
Washington, D.C. – infoZine – The following product safety recall was voluntarily conducted by the firm in cooperation with the CPSC. Consumers should stop using the product immediately unless otherwise instructed.
Name of Product: SWR® Natural Blonde™ Acoustic Bass Amplifiers
Units: About 90
Manufacturer: Fender Musical Instruments Corp. (FMIC), of Scottsdale, Ariz.
Hazard: The recalled amplifier’s wiring can overheat, posing a fire hazard.
Incidents/Injuries: None reported.
Description: The recall involves the SWR® Natural Blonde™ 120V acoustic bass amplifier, model 44-60600-000. The amplifier measures about 26 inches x 16 inches x15 inches, and has a blonde-textured vinyl covering with a black control plate and black stamped steel vibration-free grill. The model number is located on the top rear panel of the amplifier. “SWR” and “Natural Blonde” are printed on the front of the amplifier.
Sold by: Authorized musical instrument retailers from April 2007 through May 2009 for about a MSRP of $1,550.
Manufactured in: Mexico
Remedy: Consumers should stop using the recalled amplifiers immediately and contact FMIC for a free inspection and repair. Fender is directly contacting consumers who purchased the recalled bass amplifiers.
Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact FMIC at (800) 856-9801 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. PT Monday through Friday, visit the firm’s Web site www.swrsound.com,or email the firm at consumerrelations@fender.com
Patty Larkin soars with latest soundscapes in new CD
By Sue Harrison
WELLFLEET –
Larkin soars with latest soundscapes
Singer-songwriter Patty Larkin
They are getting 12 topnotch tracks on “Watch the Sky
Wellfleet-based Larkin’s new CD has a twist — she does everything on it alone. The solo effort earned her unstinting praise from critics. The New York Times named it a Critic’s Choice and Billboard called it “masterful.” Performing Songwriter went further and called the CD “drop-dead brilliant.”
Larkin and partner Bette Warner recently formed Narrow Roads Productions to present benefit concerts for various community nonprofits. The first is the above-mentioned benefit in Wellfleet for NPR affiliate WCAI. The concert is Thursday, Aug. 6, at 8 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 200 Main St. in Wellfleet. Tickets are $25 for open seating, $50 for reserved seating and after-party at Winslow’s Tavern, and $75 for those plus membership in WCAI. Tickets are available at (866) 811-4111 or at www.pattylarkin.com.
Mindy Todd, host of The Point on WCAI, Cape & Islands NPR, will host the concert and it will be recorded and broadcast on WCAI.
“Every year I do at least one benefit concert for the community,” Larkin says. “It’s such a joy. I’ve done them for WHAT, WOMR, Preservation Hall, even the outfall pipe. It’s part of the give-back and that dovetails with WCAI.”
She says she listens all the time and likes the programming NPR offers to Cape and Island listeners. She knows that money is tight for public radio these days and budgets are stretched thin. “I want to make sure that what’s important stays around,” she says, adding that her next concert will be for kids.
Larkin and Warner adopted two little girls in the past seven years. “That changes things once you see these lives coming up and being added into the community in ways you never imagined,” she says.
When she started work on this CD she was roughing in the parts, expecting she would join up with other musicians as it progressed.
“I started putting down ideas, musical sketches and when I was halfway through I had more soundscapes than ever,” she says. When about two-thirds of the songs were written, Warner asked, “Why don’t you do the whole thing yourself?”
Patty Larkin – “instrumental” at The Grey Eagle
Larkin started laying down tracks in earnest, playing a variety of electric and acoustic guitars along with bouzouki, drum loops and even a toy organ. She layered her own voice over the lead vocal and ran it through old amps to create an even more ethereal sound.
It was freeing, she says, to work alone. If it fell flat, there was always the delete button and no one else would ever hear it.
The resulting songs are solid musically and lyrically. Larkin’s voice just gets better every year. Its mid-range tonalities are perfect for the kind of intimate stories she tells.
The cuts that survived the delete button run a gamut of styles. In the first track, “Phone Message,” there is an almost Beatle’s going-to-see-the-guru psychedelic musical refrain, and in the next, “Cover Me,” she moves to a dreamy, pensive sound.
When “Hallelujah” starts it is truly a soundscape. It rolls in big, like the music behind the credits on a wide-screen Technicolor movie. The next few songs continue to add to the parfait of sound and emotion, and track 6, “Hollywood,” starts out with a slide guitar riff like the jarring signature sounds on the dark cable hit “Breaking Bad.” The slide is paired with smoky vocalizations that almost break as they creep around the lyrics.
In “Walking in My Sleep” she turns her voice loose and it stretches out like a cat in the sun.
“All Soul’s Day” downshifts into a quieter mood and she follows that with the instrumental “Bound Brook.”
“Traveling Alone” is upbeat in the manner of a breezy Sting song.
But when she moves into the unadorned “Here,” she reveals a heart-stopper.
The CD ends with “Waterside,” a kind of traditional tune that brings the set to a comfortable end.
She has about a dozen guitars but tends to play her Fender Stratocaster and James Olson acoustic the most. She also uses a baritone by Telsco that is tuned a quarter to a fifth below normal tuning.
When asked how her stage persona differs from her private one she says, “The person on stage is the person I want to be. I feel really open and have a good comfort level on stage. No matter how weird my day has been, I can step out and say, ‘I can do this.’”
She says she is not so good at the meet and greet, but the performing part comes naturally. “When I play, my goal is to find the interior of the music. You become mesmerized by the sound, by what attracted you, the something that brought you to that song.”
The stage experience is a primal part of creating the music and it takes her somewhere she needs to go.
“I’m not necessarily going where the audience is going but hopefully we will all go somewhere,” she says with a laugh. Then she remembers what an old friend who is also a musician said about playing.
“No matter what happens, we still need to play it out.”
