With a few non-musical activities behind me for a short while, its back to guitar practice but this time with some accompanying vocals.
Through November and December I have been paying attention to learning / rehearsing five songs, trying develop two guitar skills and also learning how-to-use two items of equipment.
The five songs that I have been working on are covers of:
- Only You by Yazoo – my guitar arrangement with a Guitar Phaser effect. Completed;
- Just One Look by Doris Troy / The Hollies. Completed;
- Time of Your Life – Greenday – My relearning challenge;
- Wonderful Land – The Shadows (Instrumental).
- Demons – Imagine Dragons – A song that I sand with The Awesome Choir Of Rock.
The two guitar skills I’m focusing upon are:
- Vibrato – by hand and with tremolo arm – for ‘Only You’ and ‘Wonderful Land’;
- Melody – lead guitar playing in general.
The two pieces of kit where I’m wading towards the deep end are:
- Zoom G3Xn Guitar pedal – I started bytrying to get ‘The Shadows’ Sound for Wonderful Land. Now I have moved on to look at Delay, Chorus, Tremolo and Reverb effects coupled with ‘Tap Tempo’ timing. More aimed at thickening sound than the Shadows saturated use case;
- TC Helicon Mic Mechanic vocal effects pedal – learning about this new to me piece of kit and trying to set tasteful delay and reverb levels along with the default tone settings for EQ / De-Ess/ Noise Gate. So far this suggests that it is going to help with my vocals.