A quick post

Been a long while since I last blogged. There are so many things that have happened that I don’t know where to begin, and even if I did, a bunch of them I’d rather not talk about.

I’ve been keeping myself busy with work and making songs. And today, after almost a year, a string on my T5 finally gave way. What a waste; none of them were rusting at all. Though I think I know why it happened.

When I first got the guitar, the first thing I did (when I got home) was to have the machine heads replaced with locking tuners. I still used the same strings that shipped with the guitar – mostly because they were Elixirs, which are probably the best/longest lasting strings money could buy.

Anyways, long story short, I was essentially re-winding an already practically “used” set of strings. And if that wasn’t enough, I started winding one of them the wrong way! I eventually corrected it, but the fact that it was steel that had already been bent both ways – then it’s not so surprising that that particular string wasn’t as strong as the rest. And today was the day it finally gave out. Still, pretty impressive for it to last almost a year.

Now I just re-strung my guitar with strings from my bulk pack, now to compare how fast these babies oxidize as compared to the Elixirs.

New guitar stuff

The stuff I had Pia buy from the US finally arrived. Which is perfect since I was contemplating on recording some shit once again.

I think I’m beginning to become a Planet Waves whore. The sheer practicality of the stuff they make reminds me of those Japanese inventions for practical living. They don’t look so good, but the concepts are very useful for living. Planet Waves‘ stuff on the other hand do not suffer from that dilemma as their products both have function and form.

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New song (sorta) with T5

I took a break and fiddled around with the BOSS GT-8 (with the T5 of course), and I thought I ought to at least try recording some of my new material. I have tons of them… but guitar and vocals only.

It’s simple enough to make songs with a guitar and a pen (in my case, the text application of the laptop). The real killer is coming up with the accompaniment to complete the song (bass, drums, strings, etc.). Even if I had a clear idea of the accompaninment – it’s still tedious to sift through the software and pinpoint a patch that is closest to what I had imagined (not to mention having to go surgical with a myriad of plugins and EQ just to shape the tone into what I want).

And that’s only the “laying in of the tracks” part of it. Mixing, then mastering is a whole different beast altogether. Read More

T5 last minute adjustments

Auto-trim Locking Tuners

As I mentioned in previous posts, I got a couple of extra guitar parts along with my T5, namely some straplocks and locking tuners.

Yesterday, Mom and I went out to get my temporary license (since my license was stolen along with the money in the airport last month). I figured it was the perfect time to send the guitar to a luthier as well. Arjay had given me the contact info of this guy who does all the guitars of all respected musicians in the Philippine music industry (as soon as I saw Cesar Aguas’ name there, that pretty much convinced me)

The day went as follows:

  1. Went to guitar shop, drop off guitar.
  2. Had lunch at Cafe Juanita (Kapitolyo).
  3. Went to LTO and fixed license.
  4. Went back for guitar.

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