frank's blog

I don't know what got into me but I had to transfer this tune from piano, where's it's pretty simple, to guitar, where it's not.

My wife and I took a drive today. The past week has been miserable with steely gray overcast skies, damp, cold, and generally not the sort of weather that drew us to Texas. Saturday was beautiful though. Crisp, not too cold, bright blue skies, a pleasant breeze and, as we were much in need of an excuse not to be weeding the lawn, we headed out to do some last minute Christmas shopping.

Here's the output of the file that I uploaded in the previous comment. The filename wound up being "t6321d3211m6321h5d5s5y.wav" and maybe it's just my disorganized nature, but I could see that being awkward at times. The sound however is certainly worth the small amount of fiddling around that it takes to keep your material straight. Please let me know what you think, and check out the folks at Born to Rock (http://www.borntorock.com).

I recently put my hands on a copy of Rockster Plus Pro, version 1.53 courtesy of the the folks at Born To Rock (http://www.borntorock.com). The out of box experience is pretty good. The GUI is attractive and the use is pretty self explanatory. Open a WAV file, click on one of the presets, click on "Test", see if you like it. If it's close but not quite there click on whatever you think may improve matters, and try again. If it got worse, hit the starting preset again and repeat. Once you've got something that you like, hit "Final" and your newly processed tune is saved.

Not sure who wrote this. The first version that I heard was by Jackson Brown, and it was very very laid back. Really hit the mood of the song. Clapton's version was very cool, but it just didn't have that 4 in the morning, wasted feel about it.

I almost put "acoustic guitar" on the title, but it's tough to imagine doing the tune on anything but.

It's incomplete as I messed up on the turnaround at around the 1 minute mark. I think I'll see if I can loop it. If not, I'll re-record it and repost.

This is my first effort with my new USB mic. I had been hoping that I wouldn't have to spend money on a mic to get decent sound but I have to admit that except for the keyboard, everything I've tried using a standard mic has been way too noisy. This mic cost less than $100 so it's not an exotic weird expense.

The tune is more or less Stormy Monday, but I never learned it correctly. The opening break is a hammer-on from Whipping Post (I think). Fun tune to jam with, blues in G, but the turnaround can be tough (G-A-B then drop to B-flat then D9(11)).

This is basically "Twisted" by Lambert Hendricks and Ross, without the chorus. Not sure why but I still can't seem to make the chorus work on this tune. I think it's that I can't sing it. Anyway, it's just a blues in G.

This is something that I've been fooling around with for a while. Just B flat with a modulation to D flat and E flat then back.

Classic Dave Guard tune