Tab: Red Dirt Road - Brooks & Dunn

     There are songs that I really like, but never got around to learning. Red Dirt Road is one of those songs. It has some great riffs, a really clean lead, and follows the ever popular "4 chord pop song" model, and the song is well executed. That being said, why learn it now? Because I was up all night trying to readjust my schedule to work Grave Yard shift after vacation. Depressing...

     Anyway, I learned the song in F, but have transcribed it here in D. It's easier for young fingers to play in this key. If you want to play along with the CD you will need to put a capo on the 3rd fret. It's my arrangement and hopefully you like it.

     I also uploaded a copy to http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/ but wanted to include a copy here. If you are interested in my UG profile, you can see it here: http://profile.ultimate-guitar.com/Gruntfish/
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Red Dirt Road - Brooks & Dunn

NOTE: This arrangement is not in the same key as the recording. If you want to play along with the recording move everything up to F major. 

Intro:
    D               A  
 e|----------------------------------|
 B|-3-2-3-5-3-2-3---3-2-3-5-3-2-3----| Hit each shape twice with palm 
 G|-2-2-2-2-2-2-2---2-2-2-2-2-2-2----| muting. 
 D|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0---2-2-2-2-2-2-2----|
 A|----------------------------------|
 E|----------------------------------|

[Verse 1] (With intro riff over D and A)
      D                             A
I was raised off of rural route 3, out past where the blacktop ends,
D     
We'd walk to church on Sunday morn
        G       
and race barefoot back to Johnsons Fence
D
That's where I first saw Mary,
A
On that roadside picking blackberries,
Bm                           G                      
that summer I turned a corner in my soul
         A         D        
down that red dirt road,


[Chorus]
D
It's where I drank my first beer,
A
It's where I found Jesus,
Bm
Where I wrecked my first car
  G
I tore it all to pieces,
D
I learned the path to heaven,
C#/A
It's full of sinners and believers,
Bm
Learned that happiness on earth,
      G
Ain't just for high achievers,
     Em                    F#m                       
I've learned, I've come to know,
               G            
There's life at both ends 
A                D                
Of that red dirt road,

e|---------------------|
B|-/10-----------------| This is played at the end 
G|-----11--11h12p11----| of the chorus and fore shadows
D|------------------12-| The lead coming later in the 
A|---------------------| song.
E|---------------------|
  
[Verse 2] 
Her daddy didn't like me much,
In my shackled up GTO,
I'd sneak out in the middle of the night,
Throw rocks at her bedroom window,
We'd turn out the headlights,
Drive by the moonlight,
Talk about what the future might hold,
Down that red dirt road,

[Lead Over D A Bm G] 
e|---------------------------------------|--------------------------------|
B|-/10-----------------------------------|-/10----10-12-12-12-15-15-17-19-|
G|-----11--11h12p11-----11h12--11-\9-7-7-|-----11-------------------------|
D|------------------12-------------------|--------------------------------|
A|---------------------------------------|--------------------------------|
E|---------------------------------------|--------------------------------|


[Bridge]
     Em             F#m
I went out into the world,
      G      
And I came back in,
Em     F#m
I lost Mary,
     G       
Oh I got her back again 
Em               F#m
And driving home tonight
                    G          A    Asus                    
Feels like I found a long lost friend,
D
It's where I drank my first beer,
C#/A
It's where I found Jesus,
Bm
Where I wrecked my first car
  G
I tore it all to pieces,
D
I learned the path to heaven,
C#/A
It's full of sinners and believers,
Bm
Learned that happiness on earth,
      G
Ain't just for high achievers,
     Em                    F#m                        
I've learned, I've come to know,
               G            
There's life at both ends 
A                D                
Of that red dirt road,

[Ending Lead] 
e|---------------------------------------|--------------------------------|
B|-/10-----------------------------------|-/10----10-12-12-12-15-15-17-19-|
G|-----11--11h12p11-----11h12--11-\9-7-7-|-----11-------------------------|
D|------------------12-------------------|--------------------------------|
A|---------------------------------------|--------------------------------|
E|---------------------------------------|--------------------------------|

Reflections of the world we live in...

 

I have fascination with music which I express mostly guitar. I am not creating order out of chaos or anything so nob I wish I could see and feel color like Monet, or taste the absurd post modern world like Dali, but I can't. I can make sounds on the guitar. Slightly more articulate than the inchoate grunting of a base savage, constrained by the shortcomings of my own misunderstanding of the universe and my limited ability to make sense of it all. It is with this rustic  pallette that i try to communicate the beauty, pain, anguish, love, anger, and absurdity thataI see within the world. When i play a song it is my hope that I can share some of the passion and depth that I feel when I hear and play different pieces of music.

Communication is not as easy as it sounds. Even among musicians there are disconnects. Obviously divergent genres of music have a certain commonality, just as there is a commonality in the language of music theory. How complex is music a  a language if we need an entire lexicon to describe the concepts of this unspoken form of communication? The communication I speak of is less defined and more a reflection of the world as fractured and broken down into its component parts by the prism of my mind/soul.

I have been working to develop an acoustic version of Led Zepplin's Kashmir. the original recording is in a DADGAD tuning. My version is in a standard tuning which necessitates some fast chord changes, but it has the advantage of being one less tuning i either have to do on the fly, or bring a pretuned guitar in order to play it. My version also has a distinctly lonlier flavor than the original due to the generous use of sus2 chords.

While relating this to an aquaintance who also plays music I was surprised to hear him ask 'Dude, do you like do bong hits and then play guitar all day?" I'm still unsure exactly what he meant by the comment. 

Maybe that's why I dig music so much. English is such an imprecise language, and music seems to connect on a very base level, even with people who a not musicians. 

The Quest For Tone: DAddario EXP110

   

     Everyone has their favorite guitar string. Why they have that particular string as a favorite is a complex subject. Obviously no one can try all of the guitar strings available, so how do we get to a point where we can say that a particular string is our favorite?

     Most often it is from a magazine ad or a web endorsement by someone the guitarist in question idolizes. We also talk to one another and share opinions. I recently saw two gentleman guitarists almost come to blows over whether Elixirs are better than Ernie Ball strings. These guys need to get off the net and go practice chord inversions or something. Seriously...

     I have an American Standard Telecaster that I adore. The original strings on it were very nice, and communicated everything about the sound that I had come to love. The US standard Telecaster comes with Fender Standard Tension ST250L, Nickel Plated Steel, light gauge . They are great strings but the folks on the Telecaster forums (You can link to the Telecaster forums HERE) thought that they didn't last very long if you are playing a lot. I practice almost every day, and usually perform every weekend, so longevity is important for me.

     Elixir makes a couple of variants of coated strings (polyweb vs nanoweb) and while I use them on my Taylor, and Fender acoustic guitars, I have never been very impressed with them on my electrics. They sound great and hold up forever, but they are a little too slippery for the style of lead that I play. I like to be able to manipulate the strings without slipping off. One of the folks over at the forum pointed out that they had been very happy with D'Addario EXP110 regular light strings. They are coated similar to the strings from Elixir, but I think they are a little less slippery.
   
     The tone from the EXP's is crisp and dry. It sets a nice baseline for a twangy guitar like the Telecaster. I also put a set on my Yamaha AEX hybrid, which is notoriously brash and thin on the piezo pickup. The EXP's were actually able to tame some of the brashness out of the guitar because there are so many subtle undertones that the ear simply isn't assaulted by so much of the same frequency. They really are a great string.

     Settle in time seems to be about the same as other strings with some stretching going on for a while until they stabilize, but it is on par with the Elixirs. All in all I would recommend trying a set on your favorite electric. They are about $10 online, (I bought mine from Amazon), and I think they are definitely worth the money. I'm was not a fan before I tried these strings, but now I am hooked.

     You can link to D'Addario's website HERE.

Why try and preserve the past? Because it's important!

     When my son +Chris Morris was 15 we found him a classic guitar. It's an old Ibanez from with a set neck and a set of hum-buckers, one of which has a coil tap. The guitar was about 20 years old when I bought it for him. It had belonged to a friend of mine named "Beaver", yes, really, "Beaver". Anyway, the guitar had been originally bought by a dude named Fred Dowdy who was in a band called "Porky and the Beans" yes that was a real band name. Beaver bought it from Fred and proceeded to drag it out every time someone was over and drinking. Countless drunks have punished this guitar throughout the years. It's a great guitar, but it's had a rough life.

     The serial number shows that she was the 5,792nd guitar built in May of 1980. That's the same month that Mt. Saint Helens erupted here in Washington state. The model is an AR-50, but it's a one off. The head stock is not painted like most of the factory guitars made that year. Someone also replaced the tailpiece with a "Bowen Handle" tremolo system. Based on this review it is apparently a decent tremolo option.

     The guitar has been kicked around and I really don't think anyone has done anything with it since I bought it from the Beav. The action is easily .250" at the 12th fret, someone has lowered the neck picup all of the way off of the mounts and the intonation is way off (someone lined up the bridge saddles - for aesthetics?)

     Someone stole a limited edition customer Taylor acoustic from me recently out of the studio. There was no sign of a forced entry, and whoever took the guitar also went through our freezer, and played my drum kit. Here's the weird part though. They left the case. If you were stealing a $3000 guitar I would expect you to take the case, but no someone took it out of the case. The only people that had access to the studio were my two adult sons but they say they don't know anything about it.

     Anyway, this prompted a short inventory and I came across Chris' guitar. I told him I would go through it and get it back into playable shape. The first order of business if the case. It is trashed. Many cases have a small cloth strap on either end that keeps the lid from flopping open all of the way. This case had those straps too, but they have long since rotted out, which allowed the lid to flop down and torque the spliced joint on the end of the case as you can see in this photo.

   
     My plan to fix the joint was to remove the old material, cut a splice out of some left over walnut, and epoxy it into place. The splice won't show because it will be behind the fake fur and padding. I thought about re-doing the case padding for him, but it looks better if it shows its age a bit. All we are doing here is making a safe place for the repaired guitar to live. Below is a photo of the splice being epoxied into the case.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us...

     I like Google. I really do. I see what they are trying to do and it's pretty cool. I like the idea of a Star Trek computer. I actually chose an android OS tablet because of the interconnections of Google products.

     I was an early adopter of Gmail and have relied heavily on it for years. Recently though, I decided that it was time to change my email address after 8 years. Seriously, how many advertisement emails do you need for hair, a larger naughty bit, a hot Russian bride,  or any number of discount medicines? Besides, the email address was a little longer than I wanted to drag around for however many years I have left on earth. It seems a simple thing, so I decided to change it.

     This is where the pervasiveness of Google comes into play. I really like Google Drive in that it lets me work on projects anywhere, and at any time, on any platform. Unfortunately when you change your email you lose everything on your Drive account. Yes, I know you can move it, but it's something that people don't generally think about.

     Not only do you have to let everyone in your email circle know that you are moving to new email digs, but you have to let them know about your new G+ profile, and you have to re-follow anyone you are interested in. On the upside: the numb skull from Pittsburgh who believes he is the worlds greatest guitarist no longer sends me sophomoric emails with insults and links to him gratuitously failing at playing guitar, so there is that.

     Another thing that is really lame and should be well thought out before moving is Blogger. You can pass editing rights to your new profile, but you cannot transfer ownership to the new profile. In some ways this is bad. I lost A lot of work on the sailboat blog. Everything except the most recent post -- which has been updated to the new site. I also lost my other blog "View From The Gutter", which isn't terrible. I started this one in its place. Fresh starts and all that...

     The one part thought that I didn't think about, and is probably the worst effect of moving was my contact list. I can do without a lot of email addresses since they are on people's profiles usually anyway. No, the part I did not foresee is that all of the contacts on your phone that are tied to your gmail profile will be deleted as well. Many of these contacts were from a long time ago. Now I have no idea who is calling me, who is sending me redonkulous text messages. It's sad really.

     So before you move, and maybe even if you don't plan to change profiles anytime soon, make a hard copy backup of all your contact data. I didn't but I sure wish I had.

     Here's a recreation of what it's like getting mystery calls. Don't let it happen to you!

Fender 25R Frontman: The Little Amp That Could...

     Practice amps. Every guitarist has had one, or will have one. Most often it's a tiny solid state affair with 10 watts, an 8" speaker, and an amplifier circuit as cold as a ex-lover's heart. They are usually cheap, and passable for limited bedroom use. They sound awful, but they are cheap.

     I have several amps in the 100+ watt range, and while they are great for different sized gigs, they really don't lend themselves to late night practice, or a jam on the patio. A while back I decided that I needed a small amp. I work evenings and like to play while everyone is asleep.

     There are a lot of practice amps to choose from. Most of them are as I described in the first paragraph, but there are some great small amps. Cost was also a factor for me since the practice amp would likely never go to a gig, I didn't want to spend too much money on it. Why by a $300 amp just to play late at night? I really don't need the amp modeling available on some of the fancier combo amps, I have a Digitech RP-1000 that works for that. I did however want reverb which seems like asking for the moon in small amps.

     I eventually settled on the Fender 25R Frontman. It pushes 25 watts through a 10" speaker. There is a clean and a dirty channel, a spring reverb tank, and it weighs about as much as my Telecaster. I ordered it and was delighted when I first played through it. It sounds like a much more expensive amp, but the cost was right about $100 US. Heck of a deal.

     Small amps usually sound better if they are on an amp stand, and the 25R is no exception, but I really wasn't interested in dropping another $30 on an amp stand. I looked at several DIY amp stands on the web and thought most of them looked pretty ridiculous. For the money I might be better off just using a piece of discarded lumber to tilt it back.

     I ran across several pictures of "Sound Enhancers" during my amp stand search. The company is no longer in business, but their stands still sell for quite a bit on eBay, and the reviews I've read were favorable. The photo on the left shows one of the mini models.

     Looking at the unit it doesn't seem all that complex. It looks like plywood covered in tolex. A home model for me could be painted and serve its intended purpose.

     I started off by measuring the amp opening on the back, and the width/depth of the amp. Then just designed something that would encapsulate the opening on the back of the amp, and redirect the sound out of the front of the unit. Since the sound waves coming from that back are slightly out of phase with the front waves the amp sounds louder, and much richer. I ended up painting mine brown, putting on some feet I had laying around, and even put a carrying handle on the top. My design has an advantage over the professionally made one, mine has a flat surface on top that is large enough to hold a canned beverage of your choosing. See? I'm looking out for you...

    The diagram below shows the dimensions of the amp stand/sound enhancer that I designed and built. Several people have used the design to build their own and have been pleased with the project. If you decide to build it, please send me a photo and I will add it to the website. Please feel free to share with anyone who can use it. Oh, and check out the DIY video at the bottom. =)
   

The dimensions in the measured drawing are in 16ths.

 The measurement 9.07 is 9-7/16"

Why is it so important?

     A better question is what is so important? The answer of course varies with the personalities involved.

     For me "it" changes from day to day. Sure, there are constants that are at the top of the list, but there are always interesting things on the periphery.

     Most of my life is consumed by work. I think most people's lives are consumed by work. What precious little time we have to ourselves is filled with stuff that is important.

     For me the important stuff is church, family, music, a good belly laugh, and anything that makes me think. I am not overly interested in politics as I have come to understand politics as picking a side in an argument. Life's too short to argue with people. I have principles that I should like to believe transcend politics, so there is no reason for me to argue with anyone about them. I don't mind sharing them, but I have no heart to argue.

     I love to play music. I play Guitar, drums, keyboard, and bass, but I am more of a guitarist than anything. Please feel free to weigh in on anything I post here. I enjoy hearing other people's point of view, and I also enjoy a respectful discussion about points of view.

     I have no interest in popular culture. I killed my Facebook account quite some time ago and am very happy about it. I don't watch a lot of television. I do like to watch movies, and I enjoy watching football.

     That being said, I do see a lot of videos on YouTube. I really like seeing people cover someone else's song. It's fun to get a  fresh take on a song. Sometimes you can learn a lot about a song by playing it that you would never know from passively listening. Sometimes you get another perspective from hearing someone else do the song.


     Like this one for instance: Great studio cover, and it flat out rocks.