Music Is My Rife

...or at least my life tends to be rife with music...

...and stress...

And then there are teenagers...

My daughter spent the last few years saying she couldn't wait to get into junior high school so she could be in a real school band. To emphasize the point, she came to as many performances of the Ye Olde Academy music club as she could and even came with me to the school on occasion so she could help with music club activities. She participated actively in the few music-related events her elementary school offered. She practiced both the piano and the recorder intensely at home so as to get her musical ability up to par. When she finally took the entrance examination for Ye Olde Academy, she named our music club as one of her biggest reasons for wanting to enter the school. Even when she failed to get enrolled, she wasn't particularly disappointed; after all, the band program in the local public junior high school was in danger of being terminated due to lack of membership, so my daughter saw it as a personal mission to save it. She signed her name down on the recruitment roster for the band the day she first visited her new school. She then started pestering me to help train her on clarinet to get a head start, so I made some purchases and preparation toward that end. It was clear that she was both dedicated and very serious regarding her musical endeavors.

Imagine my surprise when I overheard her telling her friends (while she thought I wasn't there) that she had decided to join the handball club instead. A few days later I overheard her telling her mother the same thing (again, when she thought I wasn't there), and she freaked out when she realized I'd heard.

Her excuse? "But the girls in the sports clubs look so coooooool! Besides, a girl I hated in kindergarten joined the band!" Actually, it probably has more to do with the fact that her worst control freak friend (who has been nothing but trouble the past two years) has also joined the handball club, but whatever.

So I've wasted my time and money and now face the prospect of having my daughter going to the only junior high school in this part of the prefecture that has no band (mainly because she flaked out on it at the end, or so its director is currently saying)! NO PROBLEM!!!!!

If you want to know why I've been so testy lately, this is reason #1. Reason #2 has to do with circumstances at work that I probably shouldn't talk about. (Reason #3 was the meddlesome individual who showed up unannounced and uninvited a week before the Big Concert, listened to a rehearsal of the big encore number I'd arranged for the orchestra, had a look at the score, and then said, "Now, there are some parts here I'm going to have you rewrite. These just don't work musically." I might not have minded so much (since I had already listened to...and taken...others' advice in the matter) except that, after he stopped spewing all kinds of esoteric terminology and a few words of Italian in a vain attempt to impress me, the ideas that he gave were just plain daft. It was clear he was only looking at the individual measures without any thought about the tune as a whole. I got even more irritated when he showed up at the dress rehearsal with a couple of sheets of Finale score paper and said, "Here...I've rewritten the first part for you." Maestro Ogawa and I both politely declined...surprisingly enough considering I was only a few centimeters from throttling the guy.) 

I'd planned to get my daughter a learner-model clarinet for her upcoming birthday. Scrapping that, I got something for myself that was a whole lot cheaper. What did I get? Glad you asked!  I got a couple of new guitar effectors!

It was actually kind of an odd purchase.  Since late 2004 I've relied almost solely on my Line 6 PODxt for my guitar recording.  It includes emulations of not only a whole bunch of famous amp models, but also of a number of effector pedals.  (I actually own a couple of the pedals it includes, and the sound is quite authentic.)  My effector collection wound up collecting dust for the most part, sad and lonely in a case under my keyboard/studio racks.  I don't know why, but recently I started taking an interest in that collection again.  Maybe it was because I realized that I was getting close to the limits of what the POD's collection could do.  Maybe it was because I remembered some of the cool things I'd done with those pedals in the past and wondered what new things I could come up with paired with the POD's amps.  Maybe I just heard them whimpering and felt sorry for them.  Maybe it was because I had a look at the unbelievable mountain of effectors (and amps) Kevin Shields (one of my biggest guitar heroes besides Steve Morse, Alex Lifeson, Martin Barre, The Edge, Billy Gibbons, Glen Tipton/K.K. Downing, and Ace Frehley, not necessarily in that order) has been using in the recent comeback tours of My Bloody Valentine.

Most of my pedals are of BOSS (Roland) make.  BOSS pedals are best known for their wide selection and their reliability; it's said you could probably play baseball with one and it would still work (though I wouldn't recommend trying it).  When you buy a BOSS, you know there are probably effectors out there that are more capable, but you are getting at least a very good average that can't go wrong.  I was also lucky to get Zoom Distortion 5000 distortion and Zoom Choir 5050 reverb/chorus pedals, both of which are now rare and much sought-after collectors' items.  (I happened to grab them in a tiny CD/music shop in Itako because they were the only effectors they had in stock at the time!)  I also have a few pedals made by MXR, Ibanez, Yamaha, and a couple of obscure makers I can't recall.  So what did I get this time?  MARSHALL!

I was specifically looking for the Reflector (RF-1) reverb pedal based on some recommendations I'd read.  One of its features is a "reverse reverb" mode, which is unusual among reverb units.  Kevin Shields apparently uses reverse reverb a lot (mainly via a Yamaha reverb unit which is no longer made), and the Reflector is said to be the best way to get a sound like his.  Unfortunately, when I told the store what I wanted, the head clerk there told me he wasn't sure what I was talking about and therefore assumed it was no longer available.  Disappointed, I instead asked for Marshall's "Guv'nor" (GV-1) distortion pedal, which is also widely recommended.  As it turned out, when we looked at the catalog, not only was the Reflector available, but there was also a "Guv'nor Plus" (GV-2), and both were far, far cheaper than I'd expected.  I did the logical thing:  I ordered them both.  And now I've used both.

The Guvnor Plus is fun.  It's apparently designed to produce a sound similar to the JCM-2000 amp and even includes some of its special tone features.  All I know is that it can produce a nice, fat, hard-distorted sound which isn't quite as compressed as what tends to come out of the BOSS (MT-2) Metal Zone pedal (which I have, and which is still a good pedal).  In other words, there's a bit more tonal integrity.  To be fair to Boss, however, both pedals offer a wide range of tone colorings, and I prefer BOSS's switch.  (The Guvnor also weighs a ton even though it and the Boss pedal are about the same size!)  I can't say I've really run the pedal through its paces yet, however, so I can't yet give it a reliable judgment.

Speaking of reliability, next I'll talk about the Reflector.  I made the (stupid) mistake of looking at online user reviews after I'd already ordered it.  Professional reviewers have been unanimous in their praise of the Reflector, and rightly so.  It is a wonderful piece of equipment in terms of capability.  Reliability is another story.  There have been an awful lot of complaints about it suddenly malfunctioning or even conking out, sometimes after only a few days of use.  One guy apparently had his die on him completely after only an hour.  Whether it's a flaw in the digital programming or a mechanical failure of some kind, Marshall doesn't seem to be willing to acknowledge the problem.  People who have sent their ailing Reflectors back to the manufacturer have tended to get them right back again with a note saying, "We can find no evidence of a defect, so no repair or refund."  Well, I've used my Reflector, and it does sound excellent...but I ran into some problems very quickly.  The first time I practiced with it before recording a track I started getting telltale hints of digital distortion (a commonly-reported symptom of the malfunction), but when I dialed the level down and back up again it cleared up and worked fine.  A few days later I practiced and prepared to record another track, and the same thing happened.  This time I fixed it by quickly unplugging and re-plugging the input daisy chain cord.  It worked fine after that.  (Recently I've looked on online forums, and pros are generally recommending the same thing:  disconnecting and reconnecting the Reflector usually fixes it, which makes me wonder if maybe the problem is static buildup or something.)  The bottom line is that this is a wonderful piece of hardware for studio recording, but it would be problematic onstage.  Marshall would do well to try to figure out what's causing the problem and fix it before this becomes a blight on the company's reputation.  Besides, I really do like this thing, and I intend to use it!

Hopefully I'll have a new tune or two to share soon.