I recommend one of these for everyone

This Talk Box thingy is a blast so if you're feeling blue, just plug in, stick the hose in your mouth and become one with your guitar.

I get to play with this this coming weekend on 2 different tunes and since I am only doing lead guitar, the way this system works, I won't need a guitar amp so I get to pack somewhat light.

The topic this weekend is "Myth - God Wants Me To Be Rich" so we are going to do a jam on the Pink Floyd - Money progression to open the service and then for the song before the message we are doing Weezer's Beverly Hills. Now I just need to figure out how to fit this into every tune I do. :-P

I did learn something about these. Apparently the old ones used to have a bypass on the guitar amp so the amp would switch between using it's speaker or blowing noise through the tube. Apparently this switching back and forth was kind of risky for the amp so this Rocktron Banshee model has its own built-in amp and speaker system. When you hit the switch it bypasses it completely and goes straight to your amp in the same way a Boss Tuner works.

By the way, if you want to play my Talk Box, bring your own hose. I'm not into swapping spit unless it's with my wife.

Guitar Talkbox

So we're doing a song at church that gave the excuse and I had a little extra cash from some things I've sold so I bought me a guitar toy that I've always wanted for fun since the 70's. Besides Frampton, Jeff Beck, Bon Jovi, and Stevie Wonder have made this famous and now you can hear it alot using keyboards with some hip hop tunes.

Introducing Presonus Inspire

A few weeks back while I was in Kansas City attending a family wedding, my son and I stopped into the Guitar Center there. I thought I would check out recording equipment and I ran into a sales guy who actually seemed to know his stuff pretty good. He was able to explain the pros and cons of the different systems that could do basically what I wanted which was turn my computer into a mini-recording studio. So for bang for the buck, he showed the Presonus Inspire GT. The GT was a labelling package that Guitar Center had put together just for them, otherwise this unit is known by Inspire 1394.

So the pros? It has the ability to record 2 channels at one time in either 1/4 inch or XLR connections. It came with a miriad of software which most of it I am not sure I will ever use. The system came with a CD (that I could read) with Cubase LE and tutorial videos to get quick started. It was fairly simple to set up although a bit involved but the biggest plus I got all this at a pretty decent price comparative to the other options and features.

And the cons? The "bonus" DVD with the software can't be read (could be damaged, not sure). I need to get myself over to Gtr Ctr here and see if they can do me some justice. My first recordings played back hiss and static which I couldn't figure out where or why it was doing that although I cured it with a firmware upgrade. Our sound man at church one Sunday happened to be using a 16 track mixer and his iBook with Cubase and I was able to pick his brain a bit and he was the one who told me to try the firmware upgrade. bingo! Thanks James.

So after fumbling a round off and on for a week or three, I finally am doing some simple recording. This is one of those things you can easily get lost in and 2 or 3 hours can fly by in an instant. The hard part now is finding the time and energy to devote a few hours to focus on this as the days continue to go by. I am hoping as time goes on, it will just get easier and become an easy tool to use.

1 Year Later

So I decided to dust off this idea again and try to figure out how I could easily record song ideas I have and think I have something new and somewhat inexpensive to try. The M-Audio Fast Track USB may be the ticket.

I've heard the 'lite' audio engineering software that comes with it will do exactly what I need which is basically let me record a vocal melody line and my guitar playing a chord progression good enough to make an mp3 I can share with my fellow bandmates.

I know there are even more 'suped' up versions of this but I'll worry about that once I take a baby step.