Friday, December 13, 2013

The Galaxy Guitar to be Released from Hospital

It's official that the Galaxy Guitar is healthy again and will be released by Steve Lamb's Guitar Hospital (i.e. Lamb's Music) tomorrow.  It's thanks to the generosity of very dear friends that I can set her free and they are exceptionally beautiful people.  This isn't the first time they have helped me and I have thought it inappropriate to blow their covers but there's so much naming and shaming on the Internet that I believe a bit of naming and faming gives some equal time to how people really are.  Thank you!

There is also one other thing that will happen today and, fortunately, it will not be expensive.  Usually you can't do anything in a musical store that costs less than a couple of hundred dollars but there is one thing:  a ceramic slide.  Metal and glass slides are the ones you will see most commonly but both sound a wee bit too scientific to me whereas a ceramic slide creates a more 'organic' sound.  The beauty part is you can get one for about eight bucks at Guitar Center and that's not far from Lamb's Music.

It's not my intention to become an all-out slide player but there are things you can do with a slide that can't be done with normal fingering as, in a way, it gives you a violin bow you can wear on your finger.  There is a good reason for not using a violin bow as my friend, lefty Unplugged, has just reworked a violin to make it play left-handed and he has been agonising with learning the instrument.  I admire and respect his cojones for trying it but I'll be going with a slide instead.  (Major hat tip to Mrs lefty as it takes a lot of love to live with someone learning violin!)

What I like to do is put the slide on my index finger as that permits somewhat normal fingering if you like and then to switch to the slide as you like.  I never much liked putting the slide on my ring finger as that cuts off any potential for doing that kind of switching without a great deal more difficulty.

When she gets back here I will take another picture so I can run a Before and After set to show you why it was so important to get the Galaxy Guitar into the Hospital in the first place.  Thanks again to Sister Julie the Poet and Crap Mariner for rescuing her.  Much love!

First gig:  next Thursday at Cat's Art MusikCircus.  Yahoo!  (I'll verify 1pm or 2pm SLT with Cat prior to putting it into the schedule and we usually do the update for the week on Sundays)

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