Art & Sound - The Guitar (Part One)

This is in response to this blog  which I wrote quite a few years back where I listed my favourite guitars, and why. It's actually cringe-worthy reading this blog now, I can't believe I wrote something so un-classy! And I had a pretty awful taste in guitars too, seeing as out of the axes I listed, there's only one model on there I still find pretty cool (the PRS guitar - though I've moved on to a few better models).
This is Part One of a series of blogs where I detail my (current) favourite guitar models. I'm actually not sure how long it will go for, as I may have somewhere between five and ten favourite models - it's too hard to limit myself to 2 or 3!
Hopefully my knowledge of these beautiful instruments has increased more sufficiently to warrant enjoyable reading. If not, just look at the pictures and think: it's not just the sound that produces - these guitars look like a works of art as well!

1:

The PRS Mira

Bought to you by my long-running favourite guitar companies, Paul Reed Smith Guitars are custom made and usually very highly priced for the average musician (like me). If anyone's wondering why I have such respect for this company, take a look through their catalogue of artists and then tell me they're not good! Guitarists from bands such as Breaking Benjamin, Switchfoot, and Journey, and solo artists with huge followings such as John Mayer and Carlos Santana, all play PRS guitars. The PRS Mira is not only absolutely beautiful to look at but also, judging from various reviews I looked up, it sounds pretty sweet and is amazing to play as well. One of it's more unique features is having two pickup switches - one is a three-way switch to operate the choice of humbuckers used, while the other splits the humbuckers to single-coils and back again if desired. Absolutely genius - the clean sound of single coils favored by Fender Stratocaster players the world round, as well as the more dirty rock tones of the double humbuckers that Les Paul players prefer.
Really the only problem with these guitars is that they are quite hard to come by in New Zealand, as I've only seen one stocked on the online catalogue from Rockshop. Even then, it was somewhere around the three thousand dollar mark - altogether too expensive for me to purchase. Unfortunately.

2:

Airline/ Eastwood Guitars

I seem to have a fetish for oddly shaped, less-than-conventional guitars with a lot of knobs and special technology features. While previous searches (mostly on Google unfortunately) have turned up with vintage weirdness in the form of guitars like the Vox Guitar Organ, I think I've finally settled on my future dream "abnormal" guitar. And it will probably take the form of an Airline model brought out by Eastwood Guitars.
These guitars just do it for me aesthetically. They look so different, so out-there that if I was to ever see a performer play one of these, I would be instantly attracted to both his guitar and his playing. The Airline guitars of today are based on models made in the 50s so they have a vintage look to them (probably in the rubber casing that makes up the body). The model I have listed are the Custom '59 3P DLX and the Airline Tuxedo.
The Custom '59 features an out-there looking body, a smooth neck, three pickups (single coils and humbuckers) and no less than two pickup switches and SEVEN control knobs! The reason for this is that every pickup has it's own tone and volume knob, and a master volume is included as well.
As one can imagine this would give any player huge potential to alter their sound settings without even needing effects pedals!

At first glance, the Airline Tuxedo looks like a decidedly average retro Les Paul, but it's looks are not what drew my attention to it. I was originally going to post about the Coronado, but a bit of research into it showed that it didn't nearly sound as good as it looked. Disconcerted, I randomly clicked on a link to this model. And I was fairly impressed. On a distorted tone, it had a really nice vintage sound to it which was a lot less muddy than the Coronado. But when it was played clean with a hint of reverb it really stood out. Apparently it gets it's tone from being completely hollow-bodied, yet choosing to shun the sound holes that most hollow-body guitars have. Interesting.
While I'd favour the Custom '59 over the Tuxedo, the truth is I would really just love to have one of these Airline guitars. They are so out-there that they'd surely complement my preferred style of playing. Plus musicians such as Jack White (an amazing guitarist - check out his new song Sixteen Saltines for some sweet riffing!) and David Bowie (a famous 80's glam rock star - shame on you if you've never heard of him!) have endorsed the Airline models in recent years.
The only problem is, they aren't sold ANYWHERE in New Zealand at the moment. So if I was to ever purchase one it would have to be shipped in or bought overseas.... which is annoying because I'm really keen to jam out on one of these guitars!

For further parts, you'll have to keep reading this blog - I'd suggest hitting the "follow" button if you haven't already! And while you're at it drop in a comment about YOUR favourite guitar - whether it's one I've mentioned already, or one I have yet to discover!

Thoughts...

I keep having these great ideas, but no time or no people to help me fulfill them.
For example, I was going to type up an interesting blog, but somehow it's already 11.18 and I'm planning on getting up before 6 tomorrow to go to the Dawn Service in honor of Anzac Day.
This is kind of insane actually, considering how tired I've been lately.
I just can't seem to go to sleep at a reasonable time anymore. And I know it's bad cos I woke up late today and missed out like a full 30 minutes of my band rehearsal at Ucol. Luckily it wasn't too bad as our singer wasn't there so we had more of an informal jam than an actual practice. But still. I felt so terrible about it.
That might have been in part cause I missed breakfast though. Never a good start to the day!

Anyway it may be kind of insane, but it's totally worth it. And I've set my alarm and everything!

Catch you bloggers later,

I leave now to get sleep!

A Summary of Recent Events

Wow!
WOW!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!
Sorry about all the "wows", Blogger.com has changed to a new format and I'm buzzing about it! And other things!
Well I'm finally back in Palmerston North. I got back to the hostel on Wednesday night and have just been kicking around since then.
If you want the truth this holidays has actually been pretty terrible, and I'm pretty stoked that it's almost over. Not that it wasn't good having a break.... and it was cool hanging out with my crazy family!
It's just it could have been a lot better than it was, and I felt like I was letting myself down. I went back to Dannevirke but I didn't really do anything at all. In hindsight I should have caught up with more than just one friend, or jammed out some music with the (ex) band, or gone for a few more runs, or just anything really! Instead I've been studying so hard and (almost) stressing out about this assignment and performances and just life in general.
I was been so busy just trying to get stuff done and to be the best musician, the best writer, and the best person, that I'd almost forgotten to just live...
This weekend I actually had to force myself to stop working. It's that sad!
And once I'd finally done that, it was a pretty sweeeet weekend!
I went bowling with my brothers on Friday night which was crackup as. I ended up winning, but it wasn't really that great a score. We all sucked so bad! I'm sure the first ten bowls of the game were all gutter balls, and it wasn't much better after that haha.
On Saturday I spent most of the day doing.... not much. But the night was pretty cool! I went to "Buddy" - a musical based on the life of Buddy Holly at the Regent with 95% of my Ucol class. It was a really good show - testament to the fact being that I didn't even mind it when they played 'That'll be the Day'! Afterwards we "gatecrashed" the official after party and sat around for ages. It was such a good time! I'd actually missed hanging out with those guys.
Oh and I got to catch up with my "Dad" too! "Dad" is in speech marks because a) he's not my actual dad, he just played the part of my father in a play I did and b) I've momentarily forgot his name (actually maybe it was Alan? Maybe?). Anyway "Dad" was my stage father in Fiddler on the Roof last year and he was one of the cooler people in that cast. Haha, I joke.... But seriously though, he was a legend. I had such a bad experience with that show and he was one of the few good aspects of the whole time I was in it. There was this one day I was feeling particularly down and he gave me and my "sister" Rachel (once again, from the play, not real life sister!) presents he'd bought on a trip to China he'd just returned from. Totally made my day!
Anyways, it was good to see him again. He looked like he was doing well for himself.
Today was also pretty super! I went to my mate Caleb's church and it was such a good service! The sermon was on creativity which really spoke to me cos it'd been something I had been wrestling with lately. The idea that I wasn't on the right track and that I'm wasting my life on a false hope. But the sermon really encourage me to keep going at it. I was talking to the pastor afterwards and he said something really profound to me: "The fear that you can't make a career or a living out of it holds so many people back from being released into the full potential of the creativity God has blessed them with. But it's just another lie. Who needs money?" And this was exactly what I'd been worrying about! It was so good to hear confirmation about it, and to know that whatever the cost, this thing, this life is totally worth pursuing!
Plus we got to hear some Foo Fighters in the middle of a sermon - can't go wrong with that!
The rest of the day I just spent avoiding my assignment, playing guitar and talking to all my hostel mates who've (finally) moved back in after the holidays.
I went to Nightchurch tonight, and while the sermon wasn't quite as touching and needed as this mornings, it was still pretty good. There was one passage from there and it really spoke to me so I'm going to shove it up here just for you to reflect on (read the whole chapter if you can, there's so much good stuff in there!)
"If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need, but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us love not in word or speech but with actions and truth." - 1 John 3:17-18.


Oh and I bought myself a new guitar on Saturday! I've been playing with it all weekend, it has such a beautiful tone! It is so hard to beat the sound of a nice new acoustic guitar, and she really is a beauty!
Anyone keen for an acoustic gig some time in the future?!

Hit me up with a few of those comments letting me know how your weekend went! Or just life in general! As always, would love to hear from you!

Weekends

Weekends always seem to give me the desire to procrastinate.

So at the moment I'm blogging, on Facebook, and listening to my next favourite band, Broken Records, play five of the best new songs I've heard for a long time - instead of doing my assignment.

Admittedly it is a lot more relaxed than I've been in the past week. Basically all I've done in the past nine days since leaving Palmerston North to go on "holiday" is work on my assignment, and play a LOT of guitar.

Starting to feel like I don't have much of a life.....

All the other people in my year who've came back for the holidays seem to either be having epic catch-ups or posting pictures on Facebook about their epic catch-ups. So I've been feeling a little bit out of the loop this past week.
And it's not like I like it this way. It's just I've been so busy with all this work for UCOL I haven't really had time for anything else.
In a way, I really can't wait to get back to Palmerston and start feeling like myself again. It's weird not being surrounded by 30 completely unrelated people. I'm almost surprised at how used to the hostel I've got.

Yet in saying that, it's not been all bad. Played a few games of soccer with my brothers, busked for 15 minutes and made about $4 (epic achievement!), went to the beach for one amazing day, discovered my new favourite band (Broken Records!!!!!), got a bottleneck slide (one of the hardest guitar techniques to master I swear!), discovered my next challenge to learn on the acoustic (Genesis's guitar player- why are you so good?!), ate like 1/4 of a tub of icecream, felt fat afterwards, shot some BB guns, argued with Nate about who was going to buy the fish and chips, read a statement I put in a time capsule 8 years ago (very entertaining reading!) and helped bury a dead possum we found in our roof - actually wait up that last part wasn't fun at all. :P

Still, I find it hard to do anything without feeling guilty about this assignment hanging over my head....

Gosh I'm such a workaholic at times. I really need to be channeling all this frustration creatively and write some music with it....
Speaking of which, I've got those lyrics to write for my UCOL band too....

ARGH!
I can't wait till the "holidays" are over, then I might be able to have a break!!!!

Shoutout time!!!!

WOW!
I just discovered this amazing thing on blogger called "Stats"!
Well actually to be fair, I didn't discover it, it was pointed out to me by Stevee from Cinematic Paradox... (thanks Stevee!)

Anyway, these stats are pretty incredible! I found out that over 10, 000 people have read my blog (or at least looked at it!) which is amazing! That was a way bigger number than I was expecting!
Keep it up guys!!!

According to these numbers, my most popular post to date was one from way back in 2008: A list (about my favourite guitars). This (somehow) had over a thousand hits! I had a look at this post and was quite shocked at how much my tastes have changed since then! I may have to update that list at some point....

Another SUPER awesome thing I found out from these statistics is where people are from who read my blog. Of course good old New Zealand made up a decent percentage. And there was quite a large amount from the USA to (with my awesome followers from over there!).
But I was quite surprised, and unbelievably stoked, to find Alaska on that list too! It totally made my day! Alaska is such a cool place and I'd really like to visit there one day- plus one of my favorite Sky Sailing song's is called "Alaska" - all in all it's a great combination! So from here at the other side of the world, I want to give a shoutout to Alaska and all the awesome people there! Keep reading the blog, and I'll try my best to make it amazing for you!

So as well as my shoutout to Alaska, I'd like to thank anyone who's ever read/followed/commented on this blog. Hope something in here inspired you! Beka from http://imbekahope.blogspot.co.nz/ gets heaps of shoutouts for inspiring me to start blogging in the first place. Also thanks heaps to Hannah from the USA and Rachel from

http://thevoicesinsideofme.blogspot.co.nz/ for being my two favourite bloggers and avidly commenting/readering of my blog as well as writing amazing blogs of their own (speaking of which, you two should both post more often!!).
Drop in a line about why you still like/read/follow this blog, and if there's anything specific you reckon I should post about!
Peace out,

Jords

Easter Sunday!

...Just rounding off my series of weekend posts with this one.

Hope everyone had a good Easter! Ours was pretty good! I ate all my chocolate way to fast though and then like an hour later really wanted some more. First world problems....
Then I decided to do some work on my assignment, only to find that I hadn't hit "save" last time I was typing it up. So I had to go back and rewrite all of Task 2... which was pretty dumb!
Did some more guitar practice before. As usual blues was on the agenda - this time I finally had something besides "Pride and Joy" to play though. However it's still hard - just in a different way. There's no tabs for this solo so I have to work it all out by ear. Fun fun fun.
I'll get the hang of it eventually I suppose...
Apart from that nothing much has happened today.
Hope your Easter was more exciting, and just as good (if not better!) than mine!

And remember:

Christ is Risen!

A most joyous occasion indeed!

Every Saturday

Saturdays have never been the same
I still can't believe you're gone
~ Every Saturday, Seventh Day Slumber

A year ago from now....

Feels like such a long time....

We were so different back then. Things made sense, or at least they had the appearance of making sense...

Yet something wasn't right. I could almost feel it on the wind. Something felt disjointed, sort of not quite whole. And I so badly wanted it to be right. For me to finally be a hundred percent, not just floating around in the 80% mark.

It was good, but it could have been better.

And that Saturday, something spoke to me.

We were at Easter Camp, and there was a speaker on. I can't remember who it was, I can't even remember if it was night or day at the time. All I remember was who I was with, and even more so than that, what that person said.

It was essentially a sermon on Easter Saturday. Which I reckon is one of the most underrated, yet most important, days in the whole year.
Everyone forgets it even exists. To them, it's just another day. But can you imagine what it would have been like back then?
To the disciples it wasn't just another day. They couldn't possibly know what we know now. All they knew was that their leader, this man they followed for three years, and had given up everything for, had been killed the day before. And not in an honorable way either. He didn't die fighting for Jerusalem. He didn't die a martyrs death leading the Jews in an uprising against the Romans. He died a nothing, put to death like a common criminal, in one of the most horrible ways possible.
They couldn't have possibly known what they were in for the next day.
The speaker carried on. What would it be like if Easter just stopped there? If that was it? If Saturday passed, and Sunday rolled on, and the world went back to the same old?
Then Easter these days would mean little. It would probably not still be around.
But that wasn't the end of the story. Thankfully, for both the disciples, and for the whole world, the next day a miracle happened.

And there was one thing in all of this which really impacted me. For so long, I'd been struggling with this feeling of things not being quite right. And what this person was saying made perfect sense.

Sometimes we live in those Saturdays. We look around, and there seems to be no hope. We can't see anyway forward, and all we have to look back on is all we want to forget.

We can learn so much from Easter Saturday. But the most important thing to remember is the main point of that sermon: "It's Saturday. But Sunday IS coming."

All good things come to an end. I went home, feeling different. Feeling better. And for at least two weeks afterwards, nothing could wipe that smile off my face.
Then a month later, everything hit the wall.

In the mess of months which followed, this was all but forgotten as I tried desperately to piece my life together. I tried everything I could to make something, ANYTHING work, but everything sifted through my hands like sand. I could see nothing but Saturdays.
Then the best thing that could happen did happen. I was pulled out from darkness, and I could finally see something good. In that moment, nothing changed, but everything changed.

And yet....
Here now, those words resonate around my head. I think they will stay with me for much longer this time. We all go through hard times and hard places. Yet God never forgets us, and he won't leave us as we are.
It's Saturday, but Sunday is coming...

Jordan

PS This post took me about an hour and a half to write, and it spanned both Saturday and Easter Sunday! Which is so awesome, cos it completely relates to what I was talking about! And I didn't even notice....

Easter Time

Hey bloggers!
Well, first of all I have to apologize for my relatively long absence. I ran out of internet at the hostel, so I haven't been able to post for awhile. And yes, I did miss it quite a bit. I love just being able to write out whatever I want on here. It's one of the reasons why I'm still blogging in today's Facebook-saturated world. I just love it for the freedom it gives!

I've been up to a fair bit lately. UCOL's been pretty intense, with the blues genre ( which is freakishly hard to play on guitar!) to learn and an assignment to get started on. The last day was really great though - had some good discussions (on music of course!) with a few of my classmates who I hadn't hung out with really much before!
So cos it's the holidays, I'm back in my hometown staying with the family. Which is really good, 'cos I feel like I need a bit of break.

Also, in other news, it's Easter, which is such a great time of year! While I think it's really important to remember Jesus' death (and resurrection!) all year round, it is good to have a holiday dedicated too it just to give you that little extra reminder. Sometimes we get to stuck into our day-to-day routines that we think we "don't have time" for God. I've been a little bit that way myself lately. :( But it's really good for something like this to come along and just remind us in greater depth and detail what our faith is all about. 2000 years or so ago, this was where it all started. It kind of has more impact if you think about it like that, I find...

I'll leave you with that thought, as I go find my Easter egg....
Hope you have a happy Easter!