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Friends? I’d like to introduce you to my new guitar amplifier: Zeus.

Look out internet, Zeus will shake you with its Thunder.

Volume scale:
1. Loud.
2. Do not play in a confined space without ear protection. Damage to ears is possible.
3. Suggested volume for practicing in a basement with your band.
4. In an average space, this volume will drown out your bassist and rhythm guitarist
5. Clears sinuses.
6. Acceptable volume for playing in an Arena.
7. Frees slaves.
8. Cures cancer.
9. Builds dynasties.
10. Spurs Revolutions.
11. Provides evidence for the Big Bang Theory.

Zeus has only two channels. The current Mesa Dual Recs on the market have three channels, but their sound isn’t quite the same as the original two channel variety. The two channels pretty much indicate rock and more rock. Zeus contains 6L6 and KT-88 vacuum tubes. I’m going to play around with those a bit and try to find a good set of tubes to complement my playing preference. Zeus is a beautiful machine.

What do you think of Crocea Mors it was the name of Julius Ceaser’s sword and is latin for Yellow Death.

I WANT THESE.

Keytars.

Today I’m headed to Providence to witness my sister Theresa’s thesis defense. Yes. She is one requirement away from achieving her PHD is social psychology. Way to go Tree!!!!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Yesterday, I learned about the Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Amp. I spent some time talking to friends, reading reviews, and researching and… DANG. This one sounds ideal.

It also sounds pricey. $1300ish for the head. Then more for speakers. Yikes!!!

Perhaps I can use some of Uncle Sam’s rebate in June to help fund such an adventure. Guitar equipment is awesome. Totally totally awesome.

Yes, I can resist paying a dollar for a soda at the soda machine, but I have the hardest time resisting absurdly expensive awesome guitar gear.

It is with extreme excitement that I can officially report that my sister Alicia won the competition yesterday and will be starting her first big-time official symphonic gig with the Oregon Symphony. This is such huge overwhelmingly fantastic news. Alicia’s been working hard and taking auditions furiously since she graduated from college. She’ll be playing 2nd chair and will be starting up in August.

She’ll play for a year and if everyone’s happy she could pull a tenure spot.

Join me in Congratulating Alicia!

Yay!!!!

So the last four days have been pretty wild. I’ll start with Thursday and include updates of the rest of this past weekend as this week progresses.

Thursday night I played at an open mic in Berlin. The place is called the Pine Loft. It’s actually a pizza parlor and not the type of place you’d expect to have an open mic setup. Tall pine columns and bright heavy floors give the feeling of a boy-scout camp more than a musical oasis, but the organizers do a good job with it. The guy running the sound seems to know what he’s doing and the musicians who play are quite skilled.

I went with Keller, Ernie, Cordelia, Cathryn, and John. I played two tunes: Sunshower by Chris Cornell and Posters by Jack Johnson. I would rate my performance as ‘passable’.

Waaay more cool was the fact that I got a whole bunch of compliments on my beautiful guitar. It was refreshing and made me quite proud. Boy that thing is nice. I’ve been trying to get practice time in every day. Soon… yes… soon I will be able to play guitar well enough to live up to this guitar’s majesty.

As for a name? I’m still not decided. At the moment I’m leaning towards ‘Olivia‘. Specific heat, which got the most words of praise in the previous post, is too long for me. It doesn’t have any mystique to it either. The greek names intrigue me as well. I remain undecided.

First of all, have I mentioned how much I adore my guitar? It is so perfectly hot.

I’m here to talk a bit about names for said guitar. I contacted Cindy. She’s pretty amazing at coming up with good names for stuff. I sent her a picture and asked her advice. She responded with the following suggestions for guitar names:

Lust Storm
Red Devil
Dionysus
Specific Heat
Olivia
Pandora
Ambrosia
Stolen Fire
Prometheus
Persephone

And there are still those that were recommended previously:
Mary Jane
Gillian
Slayvixen

thoughts?

The pictures have started rolling in.

The Color
The Glisten
and
The Rock

The Guitar has Landed.

I will be rocking on the flute a la Ian Anderson at 11pm. That’s right, 11pm. Awesome food and beer upstairs at Cambridge Common… awesome rock downstairs.
For a preview, see here.

UPDATE!

It’s at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge MA with the Cello Chix

UPDATE 2!!

It’s Friday February 8th!

Speaking of bands, mine got together this past weekend. Dave (guitarist), Jaime (drummer), and I rocked out for a couple hours yesterday.

I am stoked. I think that this thing has a pretty good chance to get us out to a few bars and such by… say… June-ish. It will also help further justify the purchase of the PRS513. Speaking of which…

I got a call in early January from Guitar center. I picked up the phone to hear: “Your Guitar is here.”

the next night I drove up to Hartford, giddy with the anticipation of a black cherry PRS513. I arrived and the box stood majestically against the PRS desk. Brian came out and greeted me:

“Mr. DiDonato! Come to the desk and open your guitar!”

I walked over to the case. Unclicking the three locks, I braced myself and pulled up the lid… but the guitar wasn’t red. It was blue.

“huh? This isn’t a black cherry PRS513″
“uh oh.”

And as it happens, PRS made a mistake. They’d supplied the wrong guitar. So I went home guitarless that night… and we’re probably still 3 months out.

tragic.

Today is going to be super interactive.

I have recorded a bunch of different song pieces with my new PRS513 guitar. Your task is to identify the tunes. Some are alarmingly easy, others are really difficult. Not only because the songs are hard… but also because I play them poorly.

People who have lived in the same residence as me within the last year are not allowed to post answers because they probably already know all the songs that I can play.

At the time of posting this feature post, I only had 21 different rock riffs. That means there might be some pictures of my sweet guitar posted during the day too. We’ll see!

In any case, Good luck!

Last night before bed I decided to sit down for a few minutes with my guitar. As usual, those few minutes turned into well over an hour. But what made this particular session unique was that I think I made a significant improvement to my technique. It’s not often when something just clicks like that, so I figured I’d write about it.

Last night I switched from left hand control to right hand control. It came in the form of alternate picking. I’ve been trying to increase my speed for quite a few months now but couldn’t comfortably get past say… 210bpm with notes on the up and down beats. As I played, I would control the speed with the movement of my fingers on my left hand. Last night, I suddenly tried just letting the left hand go and instead focused on keeping my right hand fluid.

And just like that, a significant improvement in speed and quality. My left hand did what it was suppose to do without having to really think about it. My right hand increased its speed and the result was one notch closer to rock. I think when I can finally be comfortable with making that left-right transition I will have extreme speed possibilities.

I want a band. A real band. First, let’s review the bands of the past

Giant Robots Smashing into other Giant Robots: My first band. I played bass and played it in a mediocre manner. But we still rocked. And of all the bands, this one may have had the best name.

Sammy G and the Mike’n'ikes: We owned open mic nights with our ridiculous antics. Highlight? Destiny child’s ‘Say my name’ complete with Holla Back outfits.

So Tired: Rick Large was perhaps the single best lead man I’ve ever seen… rivaled only by Jim Morison. and maybe Axl Rose. we must have played about 6 to 8 shows and we actually made some money. highlight? WPI’s Novemberfest. Huge turnout and raucous party.

Showers Etc: The weakest named band and entirely acoustic. but we had a trombone and that alone was pretty sweet.

Generally Electric: A band formed entirely of General Electric Co-op students. I think we only played once. But it was fun.

8 of Bass: My crowning achievement. A band made entirely of bass players performing only Ace of Bass music. We only had one show. And we only played four songs. But 200 people showed up and the mood was explosive.

Now that I have the PRS… I’ve started practicing more heavily and the potential for real rock is… well… real. Jesse has suggested he might be willing to play some bass. And Dave Dude of 8ofBass has thrown out interest in dual lead guitarrage.
what I need is a really cool drummer. without percussion we are lame.

I also still need a really sweet name. I could resurrect Giant Robots… but it might be a disservice to the founder.

This band wouldn’t play every weekend. It would be play Quarterly. But those shows would be unstoppable.

These are my band dreams. Yes. It will happen.

On Friday I purchased the PRS 513.

I decided to go for the Black Cherry guitar. It will arrive in 4 to 6 months. In the meantime, I took home a loaner Blue Matteo PRS 513. The pictures today are of that guitar.

Playing this guitar is so smooth. The two most obvious differences between this guitar and my last guitar are the stability of the neck and the quality of the sound. Playing this guitar feels so solid. It’s like the guitar is grounded in the rock of ages and it will not be swayed by any amount of distortion. This could be because of the guitar’s weight. The PRS weighs in at 8.5 pounds. I’m not sure what my last guitar weighed, but it was much less.

The second thing is the sound quality. When you set the guitar up with the humbucker settings there’s really nice noise cancellation that’s so pleasant.

The headstock has lock down tuners and a scalloped nut. The guitar has a deep neck and wide frets that play so smoothly. The wood work is gorgeous and the stain, despite being the less than gorgeous (in my opinion) blue matteo, is very well done.

It’s got a huge range of sounds. I can pull off a really quacky twang or a super mellow growl with the quick flip of a switch or twist of a knob.

The internal electronics are intense. Instead of a wire nest that you’d find in a normal guitar, the PRS has a sweet circuit board that keeps everything clean and orderly.

The bridge, complete with a sweet tolerance fit whammy bar connection point, is reinforced by 4 springs in the back as shown below. I was actually really impressed with the whammy bar. My last guitar had a threaded shaft for the whammy bar. The PRS seems a lot better designed. It fits together really nicely.

While the guitar is noteworthy enough, I also got a VOX ToneLab LE. It is a powerful robust effects monster.

It’s got 30 banks and 4 channels for a total of 120 preset settings. Each setting can be EASILY modified from a standing position by smashing your foot against the correct foot switch. There’s also a pedal for fine tuned modifications. It’s pretty wild.

I’m pretty excited about my purchase. And while it was very expensive, the guys at the guitar store dropped $275 bucks off the purchase price of the VOX ToneLab.

The only thing I don’t like about the guitar is that, as I was telling Ben, it has a seriously high rock quota.
My other electric has a very low rock quota, so it was easy to find things to play. The PRS 513 demands superior guitar playing. It demands the rock of legends.

I need to practice my sweep picking.

Tonight… I’m planning on getting the guitar. I am very excited.

I talked to the guy at the guitar store and he agreed to give me about $250 worth of free gear if I order the guitar before the end of the month. So the only things left to decide are:

1. What color guitar should I order?
2. What should I get for sweet free gear?

The colors are located here. I was pretty set on the ‘orange’ color which is featured in the primary pictures… but I just saw a red one here. DANG. What do you guys think would be the best color option?

So let’s recap.

Orange
Red
Black Cherry
Whale Blue
Natural (i think)
Blue Mattao

I’ll be getting a Blue Mattao as a loaner until the color I want arrives.

As for secondary gear, I’m planning on getting something related to pedals. though i don’t know if i’m going to go for a pod or a series of individual effects. Either way, it’s going to be an exciting day.

I had an interesting conversation with the dude from the guitar store yesterday. Now that I’m pretty darn sure that I want the PRS 513, I called to make sure I get a guitar that screams rock in its coloration.

Turns out they only have two colors in stock… across the nation. Blue Matteo and Violin Amber.

That means in order to get the orange I’d have to have it specially built. It’s pretty exciting that I can do this for a comparable cost. The only problem is there’s a four to six month lead time.

Now comes the cool part. Apparently, because ordering a custom PRS is a significant sale, if I pay up front, I can choose a PRS from their stock as a loaner for the 4-6 month period of time before the desired guitar arrives. And, if I happen to fall in love with the loaner, well… I can just keep that one instead.

It seems like a pretty solid deal. The store does it because it allows them to take the sale for the current month instead of having to wait four-six months like me.

I still have to check into a few things like:
1. what happens if the loaner somehow gets damaged
2. can they give me any sweet equipment deals if I buy the PRS (I kind of want an overdrive pedal and a METAL pedal)
3. are there any other nearby PRS distributors that can get me the same guitar at a cheaper price

In any case, these are very exciting times.

Also: Sweeeeeeet!

For the past 7 years I have been playing on a C.C. Clark electric guitar. My folks bought me the guitar for Christmas in 1999 and, for me, it opened up the door to rock. For seven years I practiced this hip orange/red guitar. I changed my amp from a starter Fender to a Peavey 112 (in actuality, it’s a bass amp but it’s robust and gives great umph when amplifying a guitar) but the guitar remained the same. Recently I decided it’s time to upgrade my guitar. Upgrade to something that I can hold on to. Something high quality.

So here I am, standing at the threshold of guitar equipment, realizing that I know absolutely nothing about guitar brands or guitar manufacturing.

clearly, this calls for some research.

There are a few basic things we need to know before we dive into the difference between specific electric guitars.

Here’s a representative guitar MSPaint with some vocabulary defined. When a guitarist plucks a string on her guitar the steel string vibrates. The pickups, which consist of a magnet, each have a little magnetic field around them. The physical vibration of a string is turned into an electrical ‘vibration’ in a coil of wire around the magnet when the string meddles with the coil’s magnetic field. The electrical signal is transmitted to the amp which then amplifies the signal to turn it into a rocking sound.

When it comes down to it, there are two kings in the world of electric guitars: The Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul.

The Strat.

The Strat was designed by Clarence Leonidas Fender in the 1950’s. It’s the quintessential rock guitar. It has a tight bright sound that was and is preferred by a huge heap of popular musicians. Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmour (pink floyd), Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughn have all been avid Strat players.

The Strat has three pickups, a headstock that’s perfectly in line with the neck, two cutaways for high fret rocking, and a solid body that, these days, is often made out of ash or alder wood. The toggle switch shown on the image above defines which pickups send their signal back to the amp. The pickups closer to the bridge tend to give a bright lead ‘wailing guitar’ sort of sound while those closer to the neck give a more wholesome rhythm sound.

The Les Paul

The Les Paul was designed by Lester William Polsfuss. He’s a Jazz musician who stormed into the world of guitar design with the Solid Body guitar. It started off with the infamous ‘log’ which was no more than a 2×4 with electronics attached. Les Paul then collaborated with Gibson and fine tuned the design into a guitar giant.

The LP is heavy. It has two ‘humbuckers’ which are essentially double coiled pickups. These pickups are said to eliminate the hum of electric guitars. They also give a much thicker tone than the strat, some describe it as a growl. Like the strat, you can change the tone slightly with the toggle switch. Typically, the Les Paul toggle switch has three positions, front humbucker, both humbuckers, and back humbucker. Each pickup also has its own tone and volume knob which help fine tune the sound you get from the guitar. Unlike the strat, the headstock of the Les Paul is pitched backwards a bit which supposedly helps with the guitar’s natural sustain (though I don’t know why that works). Also, the strings of the instrument are kept entirely on top of the body of the LP. The strat, on the other hand, has the strings go through the body at the bridge.

Jimmy Page, Peter Frampton, Kieth Richards, and Slash all played Gibson Les Paul’s at one point or another.

When you’re looking to buy a high quality electric guitar you’ll find that musicians everywhere seem to have one piece of advice: look at the musical superstars that you most admire and choose a guitar that will allow you to mimic their sound.

That advice didn’t sit too well with me. I am all sorts of impressed with all sorts of guitarists. The next best thing was, of course, to go to the store and try a bunch of different instruments.

And that I did. It was only afterwards that I found yet another fun brand to research:

The PRS

PRS stands for Paul Reed Smith, the inventor of this guitar. Smith developed his guitar and pushed and marketed it himself until the company flourished. Now PRS is a famous brand known for high price (bummer) and high quality (sweet!). It’s a beautiful guitar.

Santana, Al Di Meola, Peter Frampton, and Dave Navarro have all explored the PRS. From what I can tell, the PRS stands halfway between the brightness of the strat and the growl of the LP.

PRS does not make a left handed guitar. so unless you want to pull a jimi hendrix and flip your guitar… if you’re left handed you’re out of luck.

I think I’m going to get the PRS 513 (shown above). The 513 stands for 5 pickups and 13 settings. The five pickups are two double coils and one single coil. The double coils can act just like a humbucker or just like a single coil with the flick of a toggle switch. The guitar has a 25.25″ scale. The scale is defined as the distance from the bridge to the start of the neck: the playable length of the string. It’s made of mahogany (check out all sorts of great guitar wood information here).

I’m really excited. The purchase will probably take place sometime in the next month.

The problem with Guitar Hero is that it’s kind of more fun than playing real guitar.

Last night Jesse visited. We played guitar for about 20 minutes and then essentially said “the heck with this… let’s play guitar hero.”

Yay! Weddings!

I put together a video/picture montage of Jesse and Alicia’s wedding. Check it out here. Ideally, watch it with sound. It’s much better that way.

Jesse and Alicia’s Wedding from mikedidonato and Vimeo.

Congratulations Jesse and Alicia!!

Jesse and I have been talking about my buying out Jesse’s half of the house. Last night we completed negotiations.

The negotiations were a perfect mirror of the excitement that is the House of Rock. Jesse and I were going back and forth, each of us trying to be fair but at the same time looking out for our own financial stability. It got down to an $800 difference in our prices. This may not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but 800 is 800. And both Jesse and I are cheap.

I offered to split our difference at the half-way point: 400. Jesse said 500. Neither of us would budge.

We stared each other down and then… sat down for a $100 game of backgammon.

An eerie silence fell across the table. We set the doubling cube aside and positioned our pieces on the board. Jesse and I play very different games of backgammon. I’m aggressive and take chances, Jesse tends to be calculative and more conservative. I think I have an advantage on him in the main play, but his end game is flawless. Recently, most of the games have gone to Jesse. His end game is too good.

The starting roll went down. Jesse would start with a 5-2.

Game play continued from there. Jesse had an unlucky streak of rolls with consecutive 5-2’s for three turns. I followed with consecutive 1-2’s (not quite as bad considering the layout). But the critical point came halfway through.

I had five points covered, split half way through by an empty spot. Jesse was on the leading edge of my potential prime and had a single piece on that dividing point. I rolled a roll that gave me the opportunity to hit his guy. But at the same time it left me open to a risky coup by Jesse’s leading piece. If Jesse could knock my guy back, the potential for a prime would be lost and Jesse, whose home row was locked down tighter than Fort Knox, could surely capitalize on his superior end game. But if the dice fell in favor of the D… a prime would be one roll away and with it victory would be all but certain.

I went for it.

Jesse rolled…

.

.

.

Some say that as the dice dashed across the backgammon board guitar distortion could be heard throughout the Appalachian mountains. Others report that the clouds above Connecticut parted and a haunting figure of Jimi Hendrix could be seen walking down Plumb avenue, Stratocaster in hand. What can be certain is that when those dice came to rest an epic era of the House of Rock ended and two fiends started their journeys down diverging paths.

Here’s to good times, good friends, and great rock. Jesse will be missed greatly.

A week ago I was at Ryan and Ruth’s place and I happened to look at the calendar.

On Saturday, July 7th was written: “Get married. Quarter to 5am. The Knob. $75.”

“Ruth?”
“yeah mike d.”
“are you getting married on Saturday?”
“… maybe…”

And sure enough, they had a secret elopement!

Photos!

Let’s talk fashion. Here we have Ruth in a stylish yet comfortable dress with matching accessories. Notice the necklace and earrings. Ryan’s decision to go with a bold pink collared shirt was a wise one. The pink works well with his complexion.

Here they are exchanging vows. Notice the official paperwork of the judge, complete with official alligator clip.

“The Knob” is a pretty beach spot in Falmouth. Ryan’s sheer joy is evident in this photo.

Tim Sweetser got married too? Tim chose to go with a short sleeved collar shirt. This business casual look is particularly fitting as Tim is a mathematician and his shirt resembles graph paper. Let’s get a close up on the shirt.

See that? I do not lie.

Champagne for everyone!

Congratulations Ryan and Ruth!!!

Does someone want to get me some of these for my birthday?

from Ben.