My calluses are getting thick. I’m playing a lot of guitar. It’s the main way that I procrastinate from writing.
In 2020 I’m going to learn blues guitar inside and out, top to bottom, theory and all. My two vectors into this subject are the music of Peter Green and fingerstyle Mississippi Hill Country blues.
Is it possible for a grown man to fall in love with a guitar tone? I would say, based on my own personal experience in life, the answer is yes. I am madly in love with the Peter Green tone from 1967 to 1970 when he played in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and the electric blues band Fleetwood Mac.
Here is a YouTube link to an example of that tone – one of the clearest distillations of it that I could find on the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdik8L_Wxx4
How do you get that tone? Well I’m not to the point of buying a new guitar, yet. If I did it would be a 1959-style Les Paul and I would install Patent Applied For Humbucking pickups with with one coil wound backwards and out-of-phase. You know, like the special “Greenie” pickups they sell on Sweetwater or Musician’s Friend. But that’s another story and I’m not that far gone, yet.
I have been working the “Greenie” scales hard, hard, hard on my Stratocaster. And I have the metronome out.
And I’ve added some reverb to the practice amp that I use, with this pedal:
With the “Greenie” tone, one of the things you want to do is take whatever reverb you have and add more. Peter Green was a “reverb junkie,” as someone said. So the rule is, you never have enough. Even with a practice amp at low volume, you want the notes to sound like they’re bouncing of the stone seats of an Ancient Greek amphitheater on a moonlit night with a temperature inversion. “Epic” is the one that works pretty well with this pedal.
So this is me social distancing in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Playing my “Greenie” scales and riffs and songs from the confines of my Greek amphitheater:
And yes, as they say, I should be writing. But I’m in love.