I have just finished reading the War of Art:Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.
Steven's main contention is that writer's block or any of its artistic equivalents comes from being too close to the art until one seizes up from fear and suffers a paralysis that stops the artist from ever beginning, or else being unable to stick to the task to completion. And then he dies.....
The way to beat it is to sit down and ignore all the reasons and excuses the ego gives us not to start, no matter how valid. Once started, have a schedule to stick to that should only be broken by either World War 3 or an immediate family crisis.
If you were born to write a symphony, you must fulfill your destiny and write it or else your life has been meaningless.

His other contention is a hack writes for a market, a true artist or poet in contrast is a conduit through whom the Muses transfer into physical reality from the collective unconscious.
Much of the writing on Bob Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" album in particular stands out to me as channeled through him and not of him.
Beethoven's best work also seems to have come from the angels. The Ode to Joy from his Ninth Symphony is supremely triumphant and is one of the most loved, recognised, recorded and utilised pieces of music in Western musical history.
The true artist would pursue his creation if he was never published or never had his record released and died unheard and unrecognised. Vincent Van Gogh apparently only ever managed to sell a single painting.


All The Believers
Almost twenty five years ago, I wrote the following song:I always felt that the song was channeled 'through' me rather than coming 'from' me. It was non-typical of what I was writing at the time, and while I understood the blatant message of the song, I wasn't aware of the possible story in the song until the last year or two.

The story being that 700 years ago there was a non-violent
(amazing!) sect of Christians in the Languedoc region in France who were relentlessly pursued and tortured and killed to virtual extinction by the established ruling Christians.
At the time of writing I certainly wasn't aware of the Cathar story.
Maybe I was selected by the Muse to write this for someone who one day might find it and read it and find it vital in helping pursue an important part of his or her life's work!


They hung all the believers
They hung all the believers
Ten feet, Ten feet high
They hung all the believers,
But the believers would not die

And the truth's still walking
Yes, the truth's still walking
Just like a, Just like a man
To kill the truth you've got to see it,
But only a believer can

They burned the believers
they burned the believers
They burned their, Burned their homes
But that didn't kill the truth,
'Cos truth can stand up on its own

They cut their hearts out
They cut their hearts out
They wrung their, wrung their minds
They sought the truth to bend it,
They couldn't find it, they were blind

They hung all the believers
They hung all the believers
Ten feet, Ten feet high
They hung all the believers,
But the believers would not die

Eric Clapton with Cream was the inspiration that got me hooked for life as a guitar player.

That does not mean that I have spent my life doting on every note he plays or that I try to emulate his sound. He has played a lot since then that I am indifferent to, a lot where he seems to be a parody of himself, although with time the parody has become slicker than the historical him!
I am disappointed in his limited musical growth, in that he rarely creates a furrow in different soil.

When I am asked to profile my favourite music/musicians, I invariably quote myself and those I am playing with. This has nothing to do with being big-headed. It results from me having my own distinct sound and style which has evolved because I am incapable, probably both physically and psychologically, of convincingly imitating anyone else. Any such attempts end up being how I hear music and solve problems when I play, therefore unlike the source. It ends up being the music that I like, sounding how I like to hear it.

It is important for any creative musician to be the first them and not the next whoever.
In rock/pop music entrepeneurs are almost invariably disinterested in the copy cats,after all the originals already exist and probably do themselves better than the imitations.
It is ironic that jazz is meant to be creative and expressive, yet jazz guitarists (and singers!) are often so over-educated within their genre and their instruments, repertoire, and theoretical and technical knowledge are so close to identical that their "self expression" in reality sounds like "clone expression".

Genuine inspiration where the muses channel through you seems to be a reward for those who are willing to solve their own problems and dare to be different.
Twelve (but not the only twelve) distinctive, original and inspired musicians and bands:

Beethoven
Bob Dylan
Les Paul
Matt Taylor
Chet Atkins
Cream
Jeff Beck
Kris Kristofferson
Gene Pitney
Skip James
Antonio Carlos Jobim

and one other.....

My latest published comment on the news in today's Herald-Sun:

From: Stan Ciuchak
Comment:
It is amazing that our society is so reactive to private grafitti when corporate grafitti is shoved in our noses at railway stations and tram stops and on billboards overlooking our main highways and freeways, which can carry government propaganda or be as lewd or offensive as it takes to attempt to earn dollars for the perpertrators!

Eric Clapton's playing and sound with Cream got me hooked as a guitar player for life.
In a conversation with Jed recently, I pointed out that apart from a Wha Wha peddle Clapton did not use effects. His overdriven sound was natural (valve) amp distortion.
During my meanderings on the Internet I found an Eric Clapton stomp box which emulates a half dozen or so of Clapton's signature sounds. Cool! Players, sell your Gibson and Fender, Vox AC30, Marshall stacks et al, just make sure you play air guitar through powered Alesis studio monitors, don't play any bum notes........

I have found a couple of interesting devices from Behringer. One is the Tube Ultragain MIC200, RRP of $139.99AUD. Meant to impart a warm tube glow to miked recording. I figured that there was potential for a valve preamp for my guitar amps, after all there are hybrid amps with valve preamp sections popping up like weeds in every music retailer's garden!
I'm obviously not the only one who saw this potential. Chris from Guitars Plus in Sandringham, which is a guitar-only type shop has a stockpile of these things.
With judicious adjustment of the unit, solid state amps can be coaxed into that warm valve overdriven sound without that corny artificial distortion, and to offer up that glorious feedback sound.

Getting back to EC and wha wha, I had a salesman at an outer South Eastern music shop livid and almost ready to come to blows because I stated that it is criminal that a reissue 60's wha pedal costs $150 to $300 when they are basically just a tone control in a pedal (perhaps with a cheap preamp circuit). Just because a brand name is put on what was a basic cheap effect unit on the strength of the fact that Clapton or Hendrix used one doesn't suddenly improve it's worth five to tenfold, which is what the salesman was defending.
And all this while he was selling me a Behringer Hellbabe HB01 Wah wah pedal!
RRP $69.99 AUD, this pedal has a SOLID metal casing, a boost, a parametric type Q control, and other knobs to control various parameters.
So why settle for an over-priced Crybaby?
The best sounding Wah I ever used was this huge aluminium-cased Fender, which unfortunately wasn't built tough enough. When it packed up, parts were unobtainable for a proper repair. It still resides with me, and I still live in hope....

Ross Nicol from Abbey Sound is a New Zealander!
I guess that had a lot to do with him having his business way out in the sticks at Seaford. (Not too far from the sheep, heh, heh.)

Ross builds and sells and hires P.A. systems, and repairs them and guitar amps too.
Ross at one stage manufactured very high quality guitar amps and if you see one second hand in your travels, snap it up!

He can also often be found manning a mixing desk at live gigs.

His web site has a section titled "Abbey School".
There is some excellent information there about (valve) guitar amps, P.A. systems, and a glossary on mixing.

I have found Ross to be always cheerful and ready to go out of his way to help and to offer good advice.

http://www.abbeysound.com.au/

He also has a life outside music, hence the picture.... Perhaps another reason his factory is in Seaford is he's only about 300 metres from VicRoads!
I hope he doesn't mind me posting the pic here!

At the moment I'm feeling pissed off with Roland Australia.
The GK3 guitar synth pickup supposedly can be fitted to any guitar. To quote from the Roland U.S. website, "The GK-3 Divided Pickup attaches to any steel-stringed electric — no drilling necessary".
I had problems when I first attempted to fit a GK3 to my Signature Les Paul.
I sent an email to Roland support on 16th November last year with a description of my problem, which involved fitting the GK3 as close as possible to the bridge for it to function properly.. On this guitar the original guitar pickup is mounted extremely close to the bridge.
I did solve the problem within a couple of days by some judicious sanding of the pickup surround and by jamming the GK3 between the guitar pickup and the bridge.
On principle, I sent a follow up email on 30th November,and received a letter of apology the same day, telling me my problem has been passed on to a guitar tech specialist.
Guess what, 9th January AND NO FURTHER REPLY!!!!
Roland bitch number 2: Smartarse marketing and product development.
Many of their products require specialised and expensive footswitches to operate to their full potential. e.g. the Boss ME-50 multiple effects unit which is a floor unit can store patches which need bank switching to access. Again, Guess what? The switch is a small finger operated job, totally impractical during a song. Even the power adaptor for this unit is an option! (Imagine everyone running round buying 6 AA alkaline batteries every 12 hours use.!)

The DR880 drum machine also has provision for use of six footswitches.
The Cube 60 watt amps have 3 footswitch jacks. (Not having a Cube, I'm not sure if cheap non-Roland switches will work properly.) Again, these footswitches are NOT included, they are options.
My old Yamaha G100 amp supplied a double footswitch as standard.
I have many Roland/Boss/Edirol products, but in future I will think twice about buying more. Yamaha, for instance, have well-engineered products, and I may look at their products more closely.

While I was never a jazz player, when I was younger I did study a few of those tunes and considered myself an educated player with a good chord vocabulary and theoretical knowledge of music.
So, strumming through one of those blasts from the past, I needed to refresh my memory of a good inversion of a half diminished chord for the piece. (Django's "Tears".)

Off I went researching, and came up with a MONSTER site! All Guitar Chords
http://www.all-guitar-chords.com/

It has a picture of a guitar neck. Select the key, chord type, and click the get button, and the chord shape is displayed in bright yellow on the neck.
Not the right position? Click one of the numbered variation buttons. The number of variations depends on the chord: Cm9 shows 2 variations, Cmaj9 shows 6, Cm7b5 shows 10!

The guitar tuner shows a headstock, with the string names on the tuning keys. Click and the note repeats 'til you click the plectrum stop button.

you can have scales displayed, or input a series of notes to find the name of the input scale.

Click on songs: select Hotel California, for instance, and above the words and chords, is a list of chords used in the song. click on a chord and it is displayed on the neck. Depending on the chord, there are also variation buttons.
Click on chord names: click within the frets and add notes. The chords are named cumulatively as you add notes!

The Guitar Jam Machine is fun! Select a chord type,drag and drop from the neck onto the tab, hit play, and you have a backing track! The chords are named and displayed on the tab in the variation you selected.
You can design more weird progressions for your compositions than you ever would have thought possible!!!!

A link to the site is in my links list.

A salute to the great MCCarthy!

He was already very old when I first met him.
He would shuffle to the door of his shop, fly undone, eye twinkling. (The other one was glass.)

He was the Oz equivalent to Les Paul, bright and inventive, our own true guitar pioneer, and before that, pianist at the silent flicks. (The music folio was bookmarked for gallops, romantic music, here a waltz, there a march, ok you get the picture!)

He was in the orchestra at the Palais when they had a dance floor in front of the screen.

He was guitarist in the ABC orchestra for live radio. The announcer would toodle off to splash his boots, the wags in the orchestra would speed up the song, the announcer would hurry back flushed, and, OOMPH sit on a whoopy cushion.

He even invented the electric guitar. Communications not being what they are today, the electric guitar had numerous genuine inventors. He dragged Carnegie down from his Financiers office above Allans music in Collins Street Melbourne into Allans, and connected the guitar to a gramophone. He never got the financial backing he sought because he was told it would never sell!

I struck up a great friendship with Peter McCarthy and if I didn't have an excuse to visit him, I would drop in anyway, and listened, enthralled by the stories he would tell. I even visited him at his home in Stawell Street Burnley when he retired.

He built great amplifiers. (brand name: Maxim). I had a twin channel 60 watt RMS amp head custom built. It was powered by a pair of KT88's. My contribution to invention was to have Peter modify the speaker box I used. It had four 12 inch Celestions in it, and I had it wired and complete with a switch so that I could run either 2 or 4 speakers at once, or have TWO amplifiers plugged into the one box using 2 speakers each.
It was a great sounding amp, but eventually valves became scarce and extremely expensive. I have used solid states since then because of reliability and lack of maintenance costs.
Peter could use a soldering iron into very advanced years, which I have struggled with, ever since I have needed specks. He had so many electric shocks in the course of his trade that he could tell just by feel which part of the amp he touched that he shouldn't have! 240V AC feels different to 450V from the large smoothing capacitor, or the 6V DC in the preamp section.

He co-invented a waterless washing machine using sound, but the subsonic noise wasn't able to be isolated sufficiently. The co-inventors found that they would get terse and argumentative with each other when the machine was in operation. They shelved that project!

I sold my Maxim amps years ago, but sentiment says it would be great to find one.
If anyone has a Maxim amp sitting disused in the garage, please email me!