Mike Overly's 12 Tone Music News

The Latest Guitar and Bass News from around the World Wide Web . . .
August 22, 2019
In This Issue


The author states: Throughout grade school and high school, I was fortunate to participate in quality music programs.
Our high school had a top Illinois state jazz band; I also participated in symphonic band, which gave me a greater appreciation for classical music.

It wasn't enough to just read music. You would need to sight read, meaning you are given a difficult composition to play cold, without any prior practice. Sight reading would quickly reveal how fine-tuned playing "chops" really were.

In college I continued in a jazz band and also took a music theory class. The experience gave me the ability to visualize music If you play by ear only, you will never have that same depth of understanding music construct.

Both jazz and classical art forms require not only music literacy, but for the musician to be at the top of their game in technical proficiency, tonal quality and creativity in the case of the jazz idiom.

Jazz masters like John Coltrane would practice six to nine hours a day. His ability to compose and create new styles and directions for jazz was legendary.

With few exceptions such as Wes Montgomery or Chet Baker, if you couldn't read music, you couldn't play jazz. In the case of classical music, if you can't read music you can't play in an orchestra or symphonic band.

Over the last 20 years, musical foundations like reading and composing music are disappearing with the percentage of people that can read music notation proficiently down to 11 percent.

What can be done to reverse this trend?

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It's made of fire truck-red plastic! The headstock is shaped like Gumby, and the guitar's face looks like a droll robot. Usually when we see a guitar made of plastic, we assume it's of low quality. But every now and then, the acoustic properties found in fiberglass, acrylics and even carbon fiber surprise us. Built by Valco, this mid-'60s Supro Folkstar resonator guitar is partly made with fiberglass - or as the company dubbed it, Res-O-Glas. And it doesn't just sound good - it sounds great!  
IN THE BASSMENT
 
Jackson has scaled things down about with their latest Concert bass - literally. The JS Series Concert Bass Minion JS1XM has a scale of 28.6 inches, which is tiny compared to the standard scale of 34 inches. It's aimed at aspiring kids just starting out on bass to seasoned low-end players looking for a fun and easy-traveling instrument.
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www.guitartruth.com and www.basstruth.com are subsidiaries of 12 Tone Music Publishing, LLC.
WATCH THIS
 
Awhile back, we stumbled upon an old forum with the headline "White Knuckles" vs. "Eruption." We know which guitar performance we'd pick, but-just in case some of you aren't all that familiar with the late Gary Moore's solo-guitar shred showpiece, we thought we'd let the two ancient tunes duke it out. P.S. "White Knuckles/Rockin' and Rollin'" is from Moore's 1980 album, G-Force.
LEARN HERE 

Why does an instrument cost what it costs? Let's following the chain of costs associated with how a piece of music gear gets to its retail price. For the purpose of illustration in this piece, let's use a $200 MSRP boutique overdrive effect pedal made in the US by an actual company that is available at many major retailers.
GREAT GEAR
The Electro-Harmonix Mod 11 pedal features 11 wide-ranging types of modulation. Mod 11 includes tap tempo controllable via the built-in footswitch, and a Momentary Mode which enables the user to switch in and out of effects mode. The pedal comes with hidden parameters accessible through its Secondary Knob Mode, which according to EHX, enable the player to take greater control over its effects.
ARTIST AWARENESS
 
Del Palmer first took up the bass guitar after borrowing the princely sum of £20 from his mother in 1967 to buy himself a Hofner Artist. One of the southeast Londoner's very first bands, Tame, morphed into the KT Bush Band after Bush's brother Paddy suggested that the group could offer his talented younger sister some vital live experience. On such fleeting moments does the course of history turn... https://bit.ly/2KXeT3L 

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  www.guitartruth.com and www.basstruth.com are subsidiaries of   
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