alcoholfueled_vii's Xanga

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:11:29 GMT

ei-51 meets Windfall at the Richmond Night Market

Date: Friday, July 30th, 2004
Time: 7:30 - 10pm
Location: The Richmond Night Market
Who: original bands Windfall and ei-51

A rare chance to see 2 Vancouver Chinese bands get together for 1 night of true, original music.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Tue, 27 Jul 2004 06:48:37 GMT

Thanks to all those that came and watched our show at Blox. To recap what happened, there were some time management problems on the organizer's part and everything ran late (they wanted to have a dance after the bands played). ei-51's set was thus cut short. We really enjoyed our time playing and watching the other bands play, though!

Hopefully I'll get to watch you all of you guys play at least one more time before I leave :)

We will be playing a final show at the Richmond Nightmarket this Friday (July 30th). Please come and support~!

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Sat, 19 Jun 2004 03:54:32 GMT

Guitar Daily

Final Touches.

Good news: neck is stable, no signs of joint wanting to come apart ever again (truth is, most of the time, cured wood glue is harder than the wood itself). Action is not bad, but some spots have some severe fretting out. One or two frets seemed alot lower than the others and I doubt this is X's or Puerto Rico's fault - you get what you pay for. So a little fret levelling is in order.
The Underpants Knome's Enterprise Theory: Step 1: Collect Underpants Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit First step is to make sure the neck is straight. Ideally, the frets should all level the same amount. However, I prefer to slope off at the higher frets to avoid any further fretting out. The upper registered is used less and the 19-21 frets being too tall can cause problems.
Second step is to mark the frets with a marker. This way I'll know if I miss any frets. I usually use a medium marker and make sure not only the top is marked, but the entire fret is marked.
Here comes the fun part: taking a flat stoning block, stone the frets until the marks are gone. Using this method, one must remember to follow the fretboard radius and not over level certain areas. Some people prefer to use diamond grit sandpaper glued onto precision steel blocks to ensure 100% straightness. Some others like to have a radiused block matching the radius of the neck. There are many ways of accomplishing this so long as you remember: RETAIN THE RADIUS!
Here's a halfway shot of what it'll look like after the mark's removed slightly (shy a few strokes) and the levelled fret. Note how the fret is no longer like a mountain top, but more like a trapeze. Also note how only the center of the mark is removed, the sides are still marked. Keep it that way. This will save you alot of work later.

This part sucks ass. Tape the fretboard with masking tape (2 layers preferrably). Go thru with a X-acto knife and make sure the entire fretwire is exposed (just score the edge of the fretwire/masking tape interface if any tape is covering part of the fret).
This part sucks ass too. Go through the entire fretboard, and re-crown the frets. Crowning means make the frets nice like a mountain top - with a small peak and rolling off to a base. Stewmac makes some wonderful tools for doing this. I HIGHLY recommend doing it their way. This ancient method of going thru each fret one by one with a triangular file means that I have to file twice (each side) for each fret... and not to mention - I have to inspect each one by eye. The fret crowning tool will save you tons of time.
After several hours of filing, the frets are sanded - 600 -> 1000 -> 1500 -> 2000 and then polished (I polished the fretboard too... just for kicks).
2 final shots. Nice and shiny.

The electronics were removed and I swapped in 2 passive pickups. Here's the guitar - ready for the next lucky player (Wilson?).

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 20:41:14 GMT

Guitar Daily

Finished! ...somewhat

After the repair process is finished, the guitar was cleaned up to remove sticker debris, guck, and whatever unsightly matter that was bothering me. My weapon of choice: Goo-Gone.
The fretboard was particularly dirty. This problem is quite common for people with sweaty hands (or people who play guitar with dirty hands). Make sure you wipe your guitar clean everytime after you play (kevin... hint hint... x_japaan... hint hint). If you have acidic sweat, it wears out the strings and frets alot faster.
Stickers on guitars - cool. Gluing picks to your guitar - not cool... borderline retarded. The previous owner (aka X_Japaan) thought Zakk Wylde glued his guitar picks to his Les Paul. No... you use double sided tape foo... Luckily the finish on this guitar is damaged in more than one spot. So I'm not too compelled to sand away the glue and fix that spot. It's not very visible anyway.

A new graphite nut was installed along with a set of 10-52's (my preferred string gauge). A full setup was done to factory specs (the way I like it). Some people prefer even lower than factory action. However, most people think my action's pretty low as it is (it's actually the same measurements as stock Gibsons).
The finished guitar. After setting it up and all, there are a few areas where it's fretting out for certain bends. So next up... fret levelling and dressing.

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Thu, 10 Jun 2004 07:21:13 GMT

Guitar Daily

Last night, the repair process began.

The following are two photos of the initial gluing. Enough glue was used so that the glue would flow into the crack as best as possible (with the aid of an X-acto knife too!). The neck crack and fretboard contact was glued. Excess glue could be wiped off with a wet towel.

Here is the shot of the guitar neck all clamped up. The glue will squeeze out even more, but that's an easy clean up job.
This morning, further work was done to clean up the area. A few things should be noted though: The guitar is already damaged cosmetic-wise; the body has many dings and paint chips/scratches. I do not have the resources to match the same colour. This just means that I will spend less time in making the result cosmetically pleasing. If the guitar were finished in a common colour or a nitro-cellulose finish, I would definitely take the time to patch up the paint job. Of course, another consideration is that I might choose to strip the finish and repaint the entire guitar down the road (but it's not really worth it in terms of monetary value). Here are two pics of the guitar after the clamps came off. The smeared glue will be cleaned up (most of it peels off).

The rest is sanded down starting from 150 - 200 - 400 - 600 - 1000 - 1500 - 2000.



... and finally buffed to shine.
The repaired neck... the crack line is still visible. But the neck is smooth to the touch. No way you could feel it was fixed if you were blindfolded. Next time: Removing the dirt...

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 02:55:11 GMT

Guitar Daily

Just received X_Japaan's guitar. This is a classic example of a teenage punk not knowing how to take care of his posessions - the guitar was dropped on the headstock and he said it broke only at the nut... or so he thinks... I was in the market for an EMG 85 to complement my already abundant stash of 81's. So he agreed to send me the guitar free of charge for just the pickup price. Sounds good to me.

This is the photo of the guitar just after unpacking. The guitar has been mistreated and there's paint chips, glue (who the fuck glues picks to their guitar?! You use double sided tape!!!), and maybe some bodily fluids... not sure. A wipe down with Goo-gone should do the trick.
As mentioned, the nut is completely screwed. It's broken on the low-E side and also it's basically lost the adhesion. Luckily, pre-slotted graphite Trem-nuts could be had for $10. You could also opt to get them custom cut at NJAMS or L&M... whatever tickles your fancy....
Now... this is what I call a sticky situation. At first glance (and from X's description) "only the nut sustained damage" (paraphrased). However, upon further inspection, it's very clear that where the nut broke off, there is a small crack propagating down the neck separating the fretboard and nut. Textbook damage for too much force horizontal force applied to the nut.
The plot thickens.... Usually, guitars falling on their headstock will either be okay, or the neck will split. It's one or the other. It's very rare that enough force will be applied just to break the nut. As the following pictures show, this guitar suffered a classic 'blow to the head and splitting of the neck'.
As this picture will show, the crack isn't severe enough to break the headstock completely off. This is also an area where the strings help keep the headstock on the neck.
Okay... so off to fix it. We whip out the trusty wood glue and clamps - now... this is something to be careful about: there's many types of wood glue. For our purposes, we shall use Pro-Bond (Tite-Bond, Elmer's, LePage also works) since the area of breakage was kept pretty clean and also the strings will hold the neck in place anyway. Just make sure if you're using water soluble wood glue that a) you're not going to leave your car ever (the heat can melt the glue) and b) that you're not subjecting the glue joint to lots of moisture. Too much moisture - especially on a maple neck such as this one - could cause future problems.
A couple bonus pics

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Tue, 04 May 2004 09:35:00 GMT

Before we start today, I'd like to clarify something: ei-51 was not involved in the performance of CASS's Game of Seven murder mystery drama. The band that played the ei-51 song was the club's own house band.

Guitar Daily

Alot of people don't realize how easy it is to play fast runs - as long as you develop a strategy that allows you to follow some sort of repetitive pattern. For example, a major 7th chord arpeggio could be played as follows:


E-------------------7-8-12-8-7-------------------
B-----------------8------------8-----------------
G---------------9----------------9---------------
D----------9-10--------------------10-9----------
A-----7-10------------------------------10-7-----
E-7-8----------------------------------------8-7-

Nothing wrong with this at all, it's also a standard way to play the sweep maj7 arpeggio (third inversion & root position depending on if you skip the first note or not). However, for increased speed, this pattern is too complex. A better way to approach this would be:


E--------------------------12-15-12-------------------------
B--------------------12-13----------13-12-------------------
G---------------9-12----------------------12-9--------------
D----------9-10--------------------------------10-9---------
A-----7-10------------------------------------------10-7----
E-7-8---------------------------------------------------8-7-

I strongly recommend playing this out on a guitar and seeing for yourself. What happens here is that since the pattern of a major 7th chord (Cmaj7 in this case) is made up of 4 notes, we choose to do 4 notes per cycle.. and just do it 3 times - since the intervals between each set of 2 strings are the same (remember, on a guitar, all strings are separated by a perfect 4th, except the G and B string). Doing that, you're just repeating the fingering by shifting over (i.e. what you're playing on the E & A string is repeated on the D & G string, just 2 frets over)

With this strategy, we could develop other patterns... say, the A minor scale for example.. what if we decided to play all 7 notes over 2 strings, and then just repeat that fingering pattern:


E--------------------------------------------10-12-13-s15-
B-----------------------------------10-12-13--------------
G------------------------7-9-10-s12-----------------------
D-----------------7-9-10----------------------------------
A-------5-7-8-s10-----------------------------------------
E-5-7-8---------------------------------------------------



E-17-15-13---------------------------------------------------------
B----------17-15-13-s12--------------------------------------------
G-----------------------14-12-10-----------------------------------
D--------------------------------14-12-10-s9-----------------------
A--------------------------------------------12-10-8---------------
E----------------------------------------------------12-10-8-s7-s5-

This is the lazy-man's way of playing fast and without much thinking :) Give it a shot!

Sunday, April 04, 2004

Sun, 04 Apr 2004 09:53:10 GMT

"¯u±¤¤µ¤é¡A¦]¬°¥¦´N¬O©ú¤Ñ¬ü¦nªº¦^¾Ð ~ °Úª÷" - ª÷Âû2

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Thu, 18 Mar 2004 08:30:24 GMT

Guitar Daily

Hopefully by now you've gone thru the previous exercise and learned all 5 patterns inside and out. With that, you can now play all 5 patterns of pentatonics starting in ANY MINOR KEY as long as you know the root note position on the low E string (if you don't understand the previous statement, go and review your note names on each string!).

Today's lesson is simpler to understand yet involves more dexterity. This is for people who:

cannot break the speed barrier

stuck with playing the same pent. licks over and over

lack dexterity in finger movement

The exercise involves 2 pentatonic patterns. In this example, we shall employ the I and III patterns (look to reference guide below):


e----------------------------------------------------------
b----------------------------------------------------------
g----------------------------------------5-7-----------7-9-
d---------5-7-----------7-10---------5-7----------7-10-----
a-----5-7----------7-10----------5-7---------7-10----------
e-5-8---------8-10-----------------------------------------


e-----------------------------------5-8----------8-10------
b---------5-8----------8-10-----5-8---------8-10-----------
g-----5-7----------7-9------5-7---------7-9----------------
d-5-7---------7-10-----------------------------------------
a----------------------------------------------------------
e----------------------------------------------------------

and do the same in reverse of course (going back down).

Now, the beauty of this exercise is that it's transferable to all the other positions (i.e. we could use III & IV, IV & V, V & VII, VII & I etc...)! For example, using the next set of patterns (III and IV) we get:


e-------------------------------------------------------------------
b-------------------------------------------------------------------
g----------------------------------------------7-9-------------9-12-
d------------7-10--------------10-12------7-10-----------10-12------
a------7-10--------------10-12-------7-10----------10-12------------
e-8-10-------------10-12--------------------------------------------

etc....

And of course, this works in all keys...

Friday, March 05, 2004

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 05:36:27 GMT

Quick plug:

CCS & ACG PROUDLY PRESENT
PLAY IT LOUD~ @ BLOX
March 5th (Friday)
Bandshow @ 7:30, Dance @ 12
Regular : $8 expires @ 10
VIP : $10 expires @ 11

Featuring bands : Detrimental, DES, ei-51, Epic, Kino Eye, MadComplex, Maigo, & Windfall

Please come and support!

Guitar Daily

Okay, back to the lessons.

Today's lesson start with something a bit more melodic and practical -and it will develop into something with an ethnic twist eventually: pentatonics. The heart and soul of every rock guitar player are pentatonics scales. Let's go over the simple theory behind pentatonics first. I'll assume all of you come from a western music background.

Pent = 5, therefore, Penatonic is the 5 tone scale.
However, we will refer to the diatonic (7 tone) scales for reference.

Let's look at the simplest one: A minor scale

notes in A minor: A B C D E F G (A) and so forth

There are 7 distinct tones. For a pentatonic scale, we will only use 5 of those, namely the I, III, IV, V, and VII (1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th of the scale).

Hence, the A minor pentatonic is: A C D E G (A) and so forth.

When playing pentatonics there are 2 different approaches you must learn: playing by shape of the fingering "boxes" and also the notes themselves. It's especially useful to learn the A minor note locations since they have no sharps or flats (accidentals).

The five distinct box shapes are as follows:

How to read this:
The 6 lines represent the strings, with the thinnest high e at the top and thickest low e at the bottom. The 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7's are the NOTES - NOT THE FRETS. The patterns are named I, III, IV, V, VII according to the note in the pentatonic scale that it starts.

Let's do an example. A minor pentatonic distinct notes:
I - A
III - C
IV - D
V - E
VII - G

Therefore, for pattern I, we will be starting on the A position on the bottom e string. The tablature that follows is:


e---------------------5-8-|-8-5---------------------
b-----------------5-8-----|-----8-5-----------------
g-------------5-7---------|---------7-5-------------
d---------5-7-------------|-------------7-5---------
a-----5-7-----------------|-----------------7-5-----
e-5-8---------------------|---------------------8-5-

See if you could visualize pattern one's box pattern shape onto the fretboard while you're playing that!

Now, while you're doing that, you also want to take note of the 1, 3, 4, 5, 7's written.. therefore, you should be reading out the note names while you're playing. So when you're playing the first two notes, you should be saying "A", "C" and etc...

NOTE: Do not continue until you understand the above.

Now look at pattern III. Pattern III is called such since it starts on the 3rd note of the scale: C in this case. If you look carefully and did the above, you would've noticed that "C" was the second note played. So now, you start on that exact "C" and play the pattern by superimposing that box shape onto the fretboard like so:


e--------------------------8-10-|-10-8--------------------------
b---------------------8-10------|------10-8---------------------
g-----------------7-9-----------|-----------9-7-----------------
d------------7-10---------------|----------------10-7-----------
a------7-10---------------------|---------------------10-7------
e-8-10--------------------------|--------------------------10-8-

Two things to notice:

The box shape overlaps! If you didn't see this, look again. All the notes on the left hand side of box shape III overlap box shape I. Keep this in mind

The tones should be exactly the same. If you start at the A and play until the next A, it should sound the same - thus a scale.

We will stop here for today.. this is alot to digest - even for those of you who have already taken lessons on pentatonics. I urge you to learn this and make it part of your active knowledge. In addition, the fingering you should use for this depends on the type of player. Certain players (i.e. Zakk Wylde) tend to use 2 fingers: index and ring ONLY. Paul Gilbert assigns one finger per fret for each pattern. Please leave a comment if you don't understand any of this. But also try reading it over a couple more times first!