Guitars
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At this page you can find information of my musical instruments and my own written songs. Take it for what it is, you are welcome to comment. There is also some information on what my text is all about. |
When and why I started playing guitar.
It took several years until I started to play an instrument at all. I have always been interested in music but could never picture me playing. One day in October 1993, I was at my friends place who play a great deal of guitar. He told me that is was easy to play but I did not believe him. The next step was to persuade me. He showed me the easy to understand tablature format and I tried to take some tunes from a metallica song and it sounded wonderful. I was amazed of how easy it was to learn small parts. Since I was out of a job at that time I borrowed my grandma's guitar and started to play almost 8 hours a day. I got good training there and ever since that day I have tried to play and learn more. I have even written some songs on my own. Some are okay and others really bad. The guitar is still the only instrument for me to play. It gives most possibilities I believe, but what do I know. I still do not know how to read notes and I feel no need to learn yet. But, someday I probably will have to. I was 22 when I started to play the guitar.
Instruments of mine
Acoustic guitar
My first guitar was not mine. My grandma played some during her growth. I remember that when I was a little boy. I used to ask if I could borrow it and try. It never turned out well I lost my temper, as usual in my earlier years. The guitar is a nylon acoustic guitar without microphone. The sound I think could be described as a little bit strummed. I think it is nice to play on and to compose with. A picture will come later.
12 String guitar
A couple of years later I read about a 12 string in an add in the local newspaper. I thought it would be cool to have a guitar of my own, so I went to look at it. It was a very old "Kasuga", Japanese I believe, but the sound was okay. I got it cheap so I bought it. It is kind of hard to play on such a guitar since you have to push so much harder to hold the strings down, but the sound vary a great deal, if you know what I mean. If I want a lot of sound and "duration" in my songs I use this one to enhance that feeling.
Mandolin
Some time after I bought my 12 string. I was at a garage sale. There was many things and especially a mandolin that caught my attention. I looked at it many times and it was kind of greasy, but I thought I could clean it. I bought it fairly cheap and took it apart to clean it up. Since then it has been hanging in my appartment. I do have a chordbook for it but I have never tried to use the Mandolin. If you got any good songs to play on a mandolin, tell me!
Keyboard
In addition to the guitars I have a Kawai MS710. I use it to accompany the guitar and to make sequences in Cakewalk on my PC. It has no sensitive keys so the sound is a bit plain. I am looking forward to buy something better in the near future.
Rock, Blues & Country
The kind of music I like is mostly Rock and Blues, but lately even Country. The country side of me is not that usual country stile, but the one that sounds more like rock and blues together, but in a happy and loving way. The songs I write always tend to go to the more slow kind of music and the texts is very much about love and sorrow. I do not mean to write it that way it just happens. I just love blues when it is basic and clear with texts that take part in the music. I have many artists to listen to in the different musicstyles, but there is also very many artists that are exceptionaly good but has not yet reached out. I am waiting for them to take the stage. When I write music I have in every case but one always written them alone with only the guitar. The first real song that I participated in doing, I wrote the text and music idea, and then a friend helped me out with midi-keyboard and a studio recording. He even got a woman to sing the song. I think it turned out well, but as always it was not quite as I wanted it to be. Today I sometimes try to develop some sort of backbeat but it never turns out good enough. And it doesn´t sound like the real drums. I think my music style is stuck on rock, blues and country for life now. But who knows, everything is possible.
Recording at home
It is hard to actually do any recording at all when you have no equipment at home. I have build my own mixer and I have the sound through my computer so that I can record digitally. The software I use is for the moment CakeWalk 5.0 wich I think is ok. But it always takes so much time when you sit down with the computer. That is why I never mix up composing with editing in the computer. Instead I imagin how I want it and try to put it down in text and then maybe one day I will have time to bring them in to the computer and record it on a CD. I just rebuilt my mixer so I can control it with a microcontroller.
I am currently looking for an Electric guitar with a fairly good Amp. And I really want a blue steel guitar to play with out at the beaches.