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The Music Xchange
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Off-Site Links
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long
plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
There's also a negative side.
Hunter
S Thompson
Our diligent staff have spent many well-paid hours of company time mousing
about on the information stupor hypeway to find interesting places to send you that have
nothing to do with The Music Xchange. In the Real World of Retail this is
called Running the Customer Off but
here on the Web it's referred to as Providing Value-Added Service.
We'd probably all be more comfortable if you'd just tell us what you're
wearing right now...
This Will Be On The Test...
- News,
reviews, and press releases... Harmony
Central is one of the Web's primary musical information resources.
- Lap
steel, slide guitar, TIFKAD (The Instrument Formerly
Known As Dobro) and the people who play 'em... Brad's Page of Steel
is the definitive site to find out why cold steel makes hot music.
- John
S. Atchley offers tips, tricks, and some fun reading at GuitarNuts(tm): "Many
experienced guitarists still nurse and cherish 'facts' that are so
incorrect as to be pure fantasy. Some of these guitarists have achieved
great tone, but have done so only after years of very expensive trial
and error - and without really understanding what they did to
finally get the killer tone they were looking for."
- "The
Guild of American Luthiers is a
non-profit educational membership organization, formed in 1972 to
advance the craft of string instrument making and repair (lutherie),
through a free exchange of information"
- Here's
just a hint, not a whole clue:
If you don't know some music history and basic theory, you're going to
spend your time re-inventing the wheel instead of driving around in
comfort. Dimitris Dranidis's 1994 document Introduction to
Music Theory for Guitar offers a straightforward exposition of its
subject. The English is sometimes awkward - the author is
Greek - but the concepts are clear.
- Frets.com has
enough fretted-instrument care and repair tips to keep you reading for
weeks. Please exercise due caution if you attempt your own neck
reset, though.
- Charles
Tauber's Basic
Guitar Setup 101 provides a clear and well-organized introduction to
guitar adjustments:
There are
four basic, universal adjustments that affect the playability of every
guitar. These are as follows: adjusting the amount of relief (or
"bow") in the neck, adjusting the string height at the saddle,
adjusting the string height at the nut and adjusting the intonation. These
four adjustments are what I refer to as "basic guitar set-up".
It Sounded Great Just Before It Started Smoking...
- Bill
Lawrence may be the guy who started the whole replacement pickup
industry. Drop by his Pickupology
page for his insights about how pickups can - and
can't - change your sound: "Sound means imperfection, and this imperfection is the beauty of musical
instruments."
- Tonefrenzy makes a
serious attempt at tracking down that elusive Good Tone and cluing us in
on how to get it: "We post sound files, photos & reviews of
amplified music gear. We offer some comments on what each piece is like,
from a player's perspective, then suggest you listen and draw your own
conclusions..."
- Can
completely cranked tube amp tone be achieved at one watt per speaker?
See the articles at Amptone.com on
three-stage amplification architecture...
- "If
you believe that there is truly no end to the creative journey that we
refer to as The Quest for Signature Tone" you might want to visit The Tone Quest Report and download
a complete PDF sample issue or visit their Article Archive.
- GoodSound describes
itself as "...The premiere publication for affordable
high-performance audio."
Recording Info
- Whether
you record at home or in a studio the Independent Music Site's
recording resources has links to things you need to know...
- The Tweak of the
Week Archives have audio and recording tips and tricks from Sonic
State: "By musicians, for musicians since 1995 ...a Network of Web
properties catering to electronic musicians." It's been a while
since the last weekly tweak, but they still work.
Hardware
- Dan
Torres at Torres Engineering
has parts, pickups, amps, kits, info, and much more... And it's usually
worth it.
- Stewart-MacDonald
offers guitar making and repair supplies; a bunch of tips, tricks, and
some questionably useful (but unquestionably pricey) gadgets.
- If
you're serious about instrument building, Luthiers
Mercantile International is the place to go.
Tune It Or
Die...
- Joel Quarrington
is Principal Double Bassist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and he
tunes his bass, made in 1630 by Giovanni Paolo Maggini, in fifths: CGDA. He's got
some good reasons.
As he puts it:
Someone
studying the history of the Double bass would soon see that two basic factors
determined our instrument's evolution. First and foremost was the influence
of composers and their drive for the low "C". The other was the
technology of string making and what pitches were achievable with materials
of the day.
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