musician/pederson/steve

The endangered cat is out of the bag. The Snow Leopard (Uncia uncia) is classified as a member of the order Carnivora (Carnivores) and is a member of the family Felidae. It is classified as an endangered species due to an estimated population of no more than 2500 snow leopards and the fact that it has no subpopulation numbering more than 250 mature leopards. Snow leopards can be found in eastern Asia.

Well, another snow leopard has just been released into the wild. This one, however, hears no current threat of endangerment. In fact, it has been released by the thousands and will quickly grow to find a place in millions of homes and offices around the world. It has been officially released as of August 28th from its breeding ground in California. It is the latest operating system from Apple: OS 10.6 – code name: Snow Leopard.

I ordered my copy on August 26th. I assumed that it would ship out on the 28th and that I would see it a few days later. Au contraire! When the FedEx fella showed up at my door delivering my personal new kitty cat on the 28th, he said he had a whole truck full of ‘em! Seems like everyone is eager to pet this new feline.

Hold the phone! What has this got to do with being a musician? Hold the phone indeed! Don’t install that software just yet if you are a musician like me who uses Pro Tools as your go-to DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). The Digidesign website has not officially declared this cat safe for running their software on. Well, like a prowling predator, we’ll have to wait and be patient for the right time to strike.

Sibelius Six seems like sensible software!

In other software news, I just recently upgraded my version of the great music notation software Sibelius from version 5 to version 6.

One of the new features that I really like, being a guitar player, is the fretboard window. You can make all sorts of edits and even input notes exactly where you think they should be (as opposed to where the computer thinks they should be). I appreciate the fact that I could turn off the translucent windows in the Preferences, because it was very difficult to see what was going on with all those lines and notes behind the fretboard. The only thing I haven’t figured out yet, and maybe this is due to a lack of understanding on how to arrange notes, is how to get the fretboard to display multiple parts. I don’t think it can. When I write a guitar piece, I often write it in two different parts – say, for example, if there are some lower notes that are to be held out for 2 beats while the upper notes are doing a run of quarter notes.

Sibelius 6 is quicker. I especially notice this at start-up. The program doesn’t take quite as long to get going, which is a useful feature if you’re experiencing a bit of inspiration…or just impatient. It’s a very cool program. I love the integration with ProTools 8. This program comes in very handy for making arrangements and parts for my school band.

I’ve never met him. I’ve never seen him in concert. The only recording I own of him is a cassette tape of his greatest hits, which I will admit is not my favorite. Yet I have to say that this guitar legend has impacted my guitar playing more than most guitar players ever will. His name is Les Paul, and he practically invented the electric guitar. He passed away on August 13, 2009 (on the eve of my 10 year wedding anniversary) at the age of 94.

American composer Libby Larsen has called the electric guitar the most important musical instrument in the last 50 years. Think of where popular music would be today if the electric guitar had not been invented.

Les Paul is most notably associated with the iconic symbol that has come to represent rock ‘n’ roll – the Gibson Les Paul electric guitar. Every guitar player has to have one in their collection. In my earlier days, I owned a 1972 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop with mini humbuckers. What an incredible instrument it was. Later on, I would have to sell it to pay for college tuition. Truly a sad day. Now I own a Les Paul copy that I found abandoned in the basement of a house I was renting.

I can think of some references to the Les Paul guitar. There was a commercial a while back where there was a Les Paul connected to (I think) a Volkswagen Beetle. Another commercial about a guy having a dream of becoming a guitar god featured him playing a Les Paul. In his song There’s Only One Way to Rock, rocker Sammy Haggar encourages us to “crank out the drums, crank out the bass, crank out the Les Paul in your face!”

Please enjoy these videos, courtesy of YouTube, and please read more about Les Paul on wikipedia.org.

Saturday, August 15, 2009. I was back at my neighborhood coffee shop, Grazie Cafe in Edison Park, doing a 3-hour gig. The evening coincided with the Edison Park Fest, so there was no shortage of people in the area.

I just recently purchased a used Marshall AS50R acoustic amp from the Music-Go-Round near my mom’s house in Roseville, MN. I walked in to the store looking to see if they had any used personal PA systems, like a Fender Passport. I was budget conscious, so a brand-new, $600 Passport (without the stands), was definitely out of the question. They didn’t have anything on hand, and I was about to leave the store when I decided I would just have a look at the acoustic guitars. In the acoustic room were two acoustic amps – one of which was this Marshall. I had never considered an acoustic amp before, but I noticed this particular amp had 2 channels – one for the guitar and one with an XLR and RCA inputs. This was a feature I needed, since, for some tunes, I play along to background tracks on my iPod.

After going back to my mom’s place and doing some research on this amp, which I discovered is discontinued and is followed up with the AS50D, I went back later with my guitar and iPod in hand to give it a test run. It sounded amazing. There was another customer in the acoustic room with me who agreed that it sounded amazing and commented that it seemed like a perfect fit for me. With a price tag of only $229 it was within my budget. I would just have to wait to buy the MasterWriter software at another time. Before buying it, I had the salesman hook it up to a PA system so I could make sure the XLR output worked fine. I also purchased an amp stand.

This is really a great sounding amp. I had been previously using my Fender Blues Junior amp, which sounds terrible in this kind of set up (acoustic with iPod). This Marshall has all the frequency range and power in a small package that I need for such gigs. My buddy Rick Heath, whose ears I trust a great deal, showed up at the gig and said he thought the amp sounded great.

The only unfortunate thing I discovered was that the reverb was not working. I seem to remember it working fine when I tried the amp in the store. Somehow, through its travels, something must’ve come loose. Of course, I didn’t try the amp again until the day of the gig, so there was nothing I could do about it that day. I will take it in to my friends over at Minstrel Music on Milwaukee Ave in Niles and have them take a look at it.

Well, the headline pretty much says it all. My official blog has been launched! You know what this means, don’t you? This means I am taking responsibility to keep you, the reader, updated on a consistent basis.

I was inspired to relaunch a blog for my site after reading the Industry Insider article on Jonathan Coulton in the August 2009 edition of Electronic Musician magazine.

Wish me luck, or pray for me – and not just for my blog, but for my career as well. Pray that I don’t end up like ol’ Johnny Knoxville here – nearly killing himself doing something stupid!