Tambourine

I think this song was in a country songbook I owned but I'd never heard the song so I didn't bother playing it. Then I ran across the song again in another songbook and decided it was time. The lyrics were intimidating and now that I've learned it I know why I steered clear earlier. This is some long long phrasing for a country song, but that's what gives the song its uniqueness. It's like a whole paragraph that only has two rhymes. 

"She played tambourine with a silver jingle and she must've known the words to at least a million TUNES. 

But the one most requested by the man she knew as Cowboy was the late night benediction at the Y'all come back SALOON."

Two rhymes. Tune and Saloon. But that's a lot of words to remember without a rhyme. I sort of learn songs by memorizing how the lyrics rhyme together but other times I need different approach. For example, the song "The Weight" by The Band has 5 different verses. So, how do I avoid singing the wrong verse, since the story isn't exactly linear? Well, the first verse is "I pulled into Nazareth..." The second verse starts where the first verse ended when the narrator got denied a bed, "So I picked up my bag..." And in that second verse is a line "I said 'Hey there Carmen, come on let's go downtown'..." and I used that line to remember that the third verse starts with "Go Down Moses there ain't nothing you can say..." because the word Go is in the second verse. The hard part of the third verse is not singing, "...nothing you can DO" Because that word rhymes with "judgement Day in the next line and if I sing DO then it will not rhyme with Day. The Fourth verse still throws me because I sometimes get nervous and start to sing the fifth verse. IF I do that then I have to sing the 4th verse last. But the fourth verse is "Crazy Chester followed me..." How do I remember that? Because of the way Levon Helm sings it in this affected southern accent and this is my one chance to ham up my southern accent in the song as I impersonate Helm impersonating Crazy Chester. The fifth verse starts "Catch the Cannonball and take it down the line..." referring to a train, I think. The train is leaving the station so this verse gets sung last. But each line of the verse is rhymed with the last word in the line so it's easy to remember the words once I remember the start of each verse. However, with this Oak Ridge Boys tune, there are only 2 rhyming words in each of the first two verses. The third verse doesn't have any rhymes but still works. And the rest are sung in this effortless story telling style that tells the story but don't rhyme, so the singer has nothing to do but remember what he is singing because the rhymes don't happen often enough to help. I simply break it down into sections...we introduce the audience to the singer who plays tambourine in a smoky bar...then we demonstrate that all the patrons in the bar actually pause when she starts her version of Faded Love, in some kind of moment of prayer to lost love. The Bridge is actually a blatant reference to the song Faded Love and its context within this song. The last verse introduces the nameless cowboy and gives some context to why he requests this song and how he always leaves the bar after it is played. I break the song into those three stages... Bar Singer...Bob Wills...Cowboy...and I get through the song ok.

It took me many many attempts to record this song without any mistakes. And there are only 4 or 5 chords! But the lyrics are not easy to remember.

This song is probably the best country western song because it manages to include a lonely cowboy, pinball, Amarillo, a bar singer, smoke, booze, a clever melody metaphor and it pays tribute to Bob Wills (Faded Love is a BW song) all in 3 verses. My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys is my second favorite country western tune.

Worst That Could Happen

I had a burst of creativity that was directly related to my disco shirt and flare jeans. I wrote an explanation for this, and it was completely justified in my opinion, but I think the explanation was a distraction. So I will let this exist without explanation for now.

Foolish Heart

It took an act of congress to keep Oggy working. That's not a good sign, in case you need a translation. But while we wait for the merciful end at least there is a good soundtrack I'd like to share with y'all. The movie Phantom Thread features some retro jazz piano improv for a moody soundtrack that blends into this a la carte Oscar Peterson piano solo. It was hard to figure out where one song ended and the other started but this melody sticks out and forced me to hunt it down. It's good enough to be confused with a Schubert or Schumann song but it's pure Victor Young, composer of some tasty tunes such as 'When I fall In Love". The movie takes place in the musically blessed 1950s so this song is relevant for more reasons than one. True, I am a Ray Bryant loyalist but this melody is expressed to the max by Peterson's lithe personality.

Tasty Piano

This tune is in a Django songbook I have so I tracked down some other recordings of it. Sam Cooke sang a ridiculous version. Nat King Cole recorded it too. Especially with super nasty guitar licks. But Errol Garner blew this away. The octave melody. I think I could listen to 100 different arrangements of this song and not get tired. Mean to Me by Dean Martin is another tune to get you started on infinite recordings. Jazz is common literature performed by the many.

Cowboys and Casinos

These are some fine country songs. Norwood and Supernaw were part of a generation of 'hat acts' in the '90s who really worked that accent and some simple chord structures to their advantage. Hear the fiddle and lap steel guitar and you hear the fading echos of Bob Wills. Both Norwood and Supernaw have richer pipes than the Bob Wills singer Tommy Duncan, but it's evidence that the best pipes don't necessarily make the best songs. Bob Wills was not a very good singer but he fit his tone of voice to the song. Norwood could sing the phone book and make it sound good. These are easy songs to listen to and they both fit into my heart broken/denial/ lonesome cowboy songlist. Or maybe you prefer Tommy Duncan and think I don't know what I'm talking about. Ok. I can live with that.

Riding Down the Canyon

This is the only existing footage of this performance. The fiddler ran up on stage with me when I started the Gene Autry tune. I'd never met him before and have no idea who he is. If we'd rehearsed maybe once then this would've been a little better. I forgot the real chord progression and faked most of the chords.

One Night Only

An odd scenario places me on stage with a strange guitar but I managed to play a clumsy version of Four Strong Winds. In case you were wondering who Nicolete Larson is...she recorded Neil Young's "Lotta Love" back when Oggy was a youngster. Young also recorded Four Strong Winds, which is maybe why that guy in the video thinks I sound like Larson. Otherwise, his comment makes no sense since Larson is a famous female pop singer and I'm a burger flipper.

There is a 3rd verse to Ian tysons that I'm working on. The point is to find closure. 

It's been 20 years since I've seen you

But you haven't aged a day

The same sunlight glows in your daughter's eyes. 

I tried to get back home 

But the road went on and on 

And by now you've heard all of my alibis.

The Last Dance

There is a story behind this broken performance. I'm slaving like an Egyptian clay farmer in the desert and get paid so little I must tell myself that it's an eco-volunteer retreat because it involves solar panels. The bigger lesson is that solar projects are as chaotic, if not more chaotic, than the chaotic oil field projects. Training is non-existent. But at least in the oil field there were teams and some vague orientation, plus more money. But on this solar project there is no orientation and no teams. It's simply 20 Workers Vs. The Project, which is a sure recipe for disaster and inefficiency. I don't have a problem with manual labor as long as the result is more than swollen knees. But I have no more idea of what our goal is then when I started. I already knew that wires must go from Point A to Point B. Yes. That much is clear. But there are some critical details such as What Wires, what gauge wires, what gauge conduit and finally, exactly where is Point A and Where is Point B in relation to all the other points in this vast world? This is not complicated stuff for a field technician but these answers are apparently state secrets so I have no clue and simply dig and compact with futile effort.

To dull the pain of my sagging ego I turned again to wine and music and invite you to the party.

She Thinks I Still Care

Another song in the fun category of 'Songs In Which The Singer Is Deluded'

The sad part is 'she' doesn't think about me at all so the song is doubly deluded.

I was kicked out of the Walmart parking lot, blacklisted, run out with the rest of the riff raff. So, laid off, fired, broken neck and spine, had van brake failures...

and then kicked out of the Walmart parking lot all in the week surrounding new years. 2017 is gonna be pretty fucking awesome!

Song Medley of Broken Hearts

Got inspired to sing a few songs that I've been rehearsing.

Master of Melancholy

Leonard Cohen was honest. His lyrics had some poetic elements but most of all they were honest and he sang honestly. Maybe he decided to memorialize only the melancholy aspects of his life, or maybe he was always melancholy. Either way, he demonstrated that with honesty and a few chords then you can make some music worth listening to. Karen Carpenter can sing melancholy, but I think she faked it. She was a good actress and her voice can capture melancholy in a way that is perhaps more poignant than Cohen, but Cohen was honest and melancholy in the way Bukowski mostly told fake stories but did it in a way that you knew he was bending the facts for the good of the story, not for his own benefit. He was often the villain of his stories but only because the truth wasn't that interesting. Cohen was not as gifted a singer as Dean Martin or Bing Crosby and his songs are not up to Cole Porter's or Burt Bacharach's standards and his melodies are monotonous, but they always suit the words. Cohen had his finger on the pulse of the broken heart. I'd like to record a cover song from his songbook but he deserves his own voice. Go search for a video with him singing. Somewhere, angels have stopped strumming on their harps because the real artist has arrived. Cohen is not smiling, he sits down, takes his time, grabs his guitar, tunes it slowly, strums a minor chord, and sings something true.

B Goode

Another song from the Parking Lot Sessions. This time a slow cover of the popular blues tune about an illiterate guitarist from Louisiana. Johnny B Good by Chuck Berry

Sunday Soul Day

Nothing beats Otis on a Sunday.

Chick Webb

I understand that when people think of Jazz they think of Charlie Parker or Miles Davis and the Kind of Blue album. Jazz has been linked to that album through flawed propaganda and easy mystique and even I am guilty of combining vastly different eras into one playlist of my music program called "Jazz", but honestly I skip every Miles Davis tune until I get to Chick Webb or Glenn Miller. When I think of Jazz I think of Chick Webb and Count Basie and Duke Ellington and also Bob Wills because these were band leaders and arrangers and sometimes even composers. Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were instrumentalists and sometimes composers of melodies that sound good when stoned on heroin. Big dance bands of the '40s required complete reconstruction of the prim and proper musical considerations of the '20s. Davis and Bird had nothing to do with that. The whole smooth and fusion jazz era was fueled by opiates and an acknowledgement that there was no way to top what Basie and Ellington had done. It's like what happened after the Romantic Era in classical music, composers gave up the sonata form because it had reached a peak with Beethoven and Mozart that no one could ever improve on. They could only pay homage, which is boring, so Stravinsky and Schoenberg experimented. If you've never listened to classical/orchestral music then why would you ever start with Schoenberg, and then conclude 'Classical' music is not for you? Schoenberg is the classical equivalent of Charlie Parker, without the heroin. 

Jazz has a shorter history, but it went through remarkable changes in a short period of time. I watched the Jazz series by Ken Burns and was sort of disappointed Bob Wills didn't get featured, since Wills is the whole reason I went to Texas, and also Wills swung as hard as anyone with a fiddle for dancers who never heard of Ellington. But many key figures are highlighted in the series, like the provincial Webb, who built the New York City swing movement. 

I think people get confused when they hear big band music and believe all the notes were written out like with a symphony, but band music only notates the melody and certain fills, while the music that makes up 3/4 of the recording is improvised at the moment the recording started. The arrangement, when certain instruments play certain notes, is so important and then the musicians had to learn it and in some cases black musicians were expected to be illiterate so they had to memorize the melody and play without written music to appease the ignorant white dancers.

I define Jazz as a type of music where the musicians were expected to improvise to demonstrate their musicianship in the course of playing a melody. If you are curious about Jazz then save Kind of Blue for your suicidal/divorce/junkie period and start with Chick Webb. That will get you in the right direction.

Maldito Amor

 I am learning this song on the mandolin. Vicente has the strongest voice of all the Ranchera singers but I think I can tame the melody to something in my range. The lyrics basically curse the woman who broke his heart, or maybe they curse himself for falling in love with the wrong person.

Feeling Baker

This is a cool recording because Baker is evidently too blue to blow his horn and there are two rhythm instruments but no bass. Kind of breaks all the rules but is still solid.

Chet Baker, vocals
Bobby Scott, piano
Kenny Burrell, guitar

Pathetic

I was going to post a clip of myself revisiting some melancholy songs on the piano and I'll get around to it once my chops are back in gear. As you can imagine, living in a bathroom next to a car wash parking lot in Mexico, under a Zumba studio is not super inspiring. 

I like Mexico in general and am now on a first-name, "Your regular table?" status at the local Senor Pastor Taco joint as well as the Yong Feng Chinese Buffet. But this familiarity does not transfer to piano skills, which were painfully acquired and easily forgotten. Many mornings find me wearing only a stained tank top with a pillow over my face to block out the sun. I don't want to get up and the ringing in my head has reached Edgar Allen proPOEtions. I don't get to use Poe in a pun very often so I took my chance.

...Sigh...the fucking trials of life, brother, are really wearing me down. I weather one storm after another, one ridiculous blunder after another. Reliving all my mistakes, cursing my fate, my luck, my personality, my choices, my parents, my era, my culture, my van, God. It's pathetic and that's the name of this Piano Sonata #8 by Ludwig: Ode to Pathetic Oggy.

Enjoy Beethoven. If you like classical music then go support some symphonies. See a recital. Beethoven music is one of the few guaranteed joys in life.

 

Saddle

Started to shape one half as practice.

I got this new guitar and decided the action was slightly high compared to my 20 year old Seagull guitar. Well, I didn't really examine my Seagull because the truth is that the action is ridiculously low and the neck is backbowed and the top has sunken AND the bridge itself has lifted up badly from the oven-like conditions in the van in Costa Rica, and the nut has worn down and most of the strings buzz. So, why would I use this as any kind of example or template? Because I love the way it plays and sounds.

Then polished one half

So I decided I wanted action as low as my Seagull, ridiculously low, like an electric guitar. And I look at the Fylde and think it's off by 1/32'' or more. Now, the first step to lowering action is to make sure the neck is as flat as you want it. Getting the neck flat isn't part of lowering the actual action, but if your neck has too much relief then you will be lowering the action with the saddle to the point that any later change to the neck relief will cause buzzing. There's an order to go in. So they are connected.

I looked at (eyeballed) the neck relief and decided the Fylde was fine and I shouldn't mess with the truss rod. So I shave a little off the saddle, and then shaved a little more. And the action was much improved to my fingers, but then I really examined the neck and decided it had too much relief and was unsatisfactory. My Seagull was SUPER flat and I wanted the Fylde to be SUPER flat. But I've already shaved the bridge down...so what to do?

luckily my Swiss Tool has cable shaving groove that works on bone

Fuck it, I'll adjust the truss rod anyway and I do that as recommended in small 1/8 turn increments taking days and weeks to adjust and after maybe 3/4 turn I decide the neck is as close to flat as I want it, and the Seagull shouldn't be considered a role model. And after full examination and adjustment to the point I am pleased with a hair of relief and the saddle is totally shaved to the lowest point, I can unfortunately get the low E string to buzz annoyingly by plucking it hard. This is the only string to buzz and only when I fret the string at the 12th fret and really pluck it hard. Well, when am I ever going to be beating on the low E string while playing the 12th fret when I can only reach the 14th fret under the best circumstances? The answer is never, but that doesn't mean I'm content. So, I decide I'm going to shape my own saddle because I'm determined to own this guitar like no other and make it my #1.

So, saddles and bridges are called "Huesitos" or "Little Bones" in Spanish and I hunt 2 square cut, unpolished bone saddle blanks down for a dollar a piece, though I looked at the receipt later and the clerk only charged me for one so that is another moral irritation because I have to go back there on my illegal, unregistered moped across town to retroactively pay for the other one and my explanation will be so baffling in my bad Spanish that I will probably be arrested. I also like to think the bones these saddle blanks were cut from belonged to dead bullfighting bulls, like these pretentious prehistoric mastodon tusk saddles on archtop mandolins.
"What kind of guitar saddle is that?"
"Oh, Mexican bullfighting bull horn."

Now, the internet is full of tutorials about sanding saddles down but they all skip steps for the novice. I think everyone is trying to monetize and commoditize their skills from installing wheel bearings to guitar setups and posting crappy videos on the internet and trying to make some nickles. Good for them. God bless us all. But it doesn't mean they know how to instruct or train people. I'll give my photo essay of my first attempt.

This should be in any guitar tool workshop

My first mistake was shaping the top first, because if the width won't even fit in the bridge slot then I will eventually have to sand down the entire length of the side and that will ruin whatever shape I gave to the top at which point I'll be going in circles. Ok, rookie mistake.  All the videos include how to sand the flat side of the saddle down, which does indeed require some finesse, but nothing compared to the top side of the saddle where the strings sit and has a curved radius. This area affects intonation and action. Fortunately, the Fylde has a zero nut so the saddle is not compensated Compesanted saddles mean it has a zig zag flat spot slightly further back on the B string to account for the variation in the width of the B string compared to the core of the wound G string, which is actually smaller than the B string...and the high e string is more like the core of the low A string...blah blah blah.

The worst file in the world

I mean a hair, not even a millimeter further back, but it affects intonation. This saddle doesn't have any compensation that I can see and I'm deaf anyway so I don't care about a hair of intonation. In fact, I care mostly about the possibility that there will be a buzz at the 13th fret if I ever fret the 12th fret low E string and bash on that string.That idea irks me.

Getting in the ballpark, still too long and wide and high

The guitar sounds good and for my first carved bone saddle ever I'm going to try simply to get a perfect top shape and perfect height for this mostly flat neck relief.

The main question I have right now is what shape should a saddle top have? A perfect inverted U? A slight inverted V? I'm going with an inverted U. Because, it's not rocket science, but it's not easy, to shape a perfectly uniform and symmetrical saddle top from rare bullfighting bull bone with a piece of sandpaper and some nail files.  Bone is forgiving and I can see the attraction of scrimshaw and carving with material that responds easily. Bone saddles actually have all 4 dimensions to deal with, height, width, length and also density, but I can't really adjust density without plutonium. Bottom has to be flat, top has to be uniform (or compensated) length has to fit and width has to fit. Also, is a saddle normally symmetrical? Or is the bass side slightly higher than the treble? If we accept that the saddle should match the guitar fretboard radius...then it should be symmetrical, and maybe the slot in the bridge itself is routed out at a slight incline...I don't know. This seems impossible to match the radius of the saddle to the fretboard radius and still get the high e string lower than the low E string. Because a perfectly symmetrical saddle will lead to an identical action height of the e strings. And I want the high e string to be lower, so either the saddle bottom has to be leaning or else I have to drop the top of the saddle under the e and b strings. This Fylde Alexander seems to have a 16'' radius fretboard (or maybe 15'' or 14''?? These are so similar I have no idea which is a better fit. They all fit!), which feels similar to the Seagull. So, is it a perfect arc? Of course, it must be or else these tutorials would not bother talking about a radius arc since you really end up with a roller coaster of different elevations. What the hell do I know? I'm just a guy who lives in a van. Turns out the radius is indeed a perfect 16'', but it is tilted a degree or two down to the treble, so it's not perfectly matching the fretboard anymore. See, the radius itself matches the fretboard, but because it is tilted the saddle is lower toward the treble side. This takes so clever sanding I will get to later.

After some further investigation that involved a micrometer caliper to measure the depth of the saddle groove and the width and even the sensitivity of my ego I determined the saddle is indeed symmetrical but human hands can not cut an exactly flat groove in a bridge. Measuring with a depth gauge along the whole length of the groove I got 6 different depths. Which means that the saddle bottom, no matter how perfectly flat it is, will never perfectly mate with the bottom of the groove because the bottom is not perfectly flat. We are talking about .165'' compared to .147, and .164, .167, .153 and .133.  that is a .02'' difference in depth, but the bone saddle is not pliable and will not conform to these changes in depth so there will be gaps between the saddle and the bridge, which is the exact point of contact for the tone production. So, this is a luthier engineering issue I don't even want to investigate further because how can you cut a perfectly flat surface into a bridge of wood, when we know the wood will splinter and cause imperfections in the depth. This might be a case for composite carbon bridges and saddles because you will never cut a perfectly flat groove in wood and if there is a .02 or .05'' gap between the saddle and the bridge then you lose tone production. Talk about the devil being in the details! You build a guitar for a month and the tone still comes down to a nearly impossible task of mating a piece of bone to a cut piece of wood. It won't be flush. Oh, sure, .02'' is pretty close to flush, but it's not flush. I'll bet every saddle groove in every guitar from $100 to $10,000 is not perfectly flat if the bridge is wood. Because how can you cut wood, which is a sinuous grain, as though it were glass? Every tiny chip that is created when sanding even with a saddle slot file/level is a different level. I guess I need to build a guitar workshop full of tools to test my theories before running my mouth. I see the luthier added some graphite to the bottom of the groove so maybe that is what fills in the .02'' of gap and my depth gauge is selectively missing the graphite and if I ran a slot file down the slot (assuming the file is true) then I would not be able to measure any grade differences. So the slot is flat and true, although compensated, and the saddle bottom is flat.

At least I know the saddle is symmetrical horizontally, although the top of the saddle presents an issue since the strings only hit one side of the curvature and the other side facing away from the bridge doesn't touch the strings but has to serve as a perfect ramp toward the fretboard. Furthermore, my attempts compensate the action lower on the treble side are thwarted by a symmetrical saddle. I have to lower the treble strings but the G string already buzzes when I really pluck it like a Bow. So if I lower the treble half only of the saddle bottom then the G string will really buzz. So I have to lower the top, which is also going to cause troubles with tone. It's a puzzle and, if you haven't noticed, I like to overthink things until they crumble beneath my superior intellect.

It took many hours to hand sand this bottom saddle from the top blank. The width and length and radius all fit. It is a spare and needs only to have the bottom shaved for a different action. If I were going to do this regularly I would need different tools such as a true 16'' radius sanding block. Eye-balling a 16'' radius is no good. I used a multi-grit fingernail polisher, 120 grit sandpaper, and a metal file. The radius might match the fretboard but if the saddle is symmetrical then the action won't be right since both e strings will be the same action and the high e should be lower since it has a tighter vibration radius than the low E. The only way that can be done is by either carving special indents for the e and b strings or else sand an incline into the bottom. Or, I guess, you could rout an incline in the saddle slot, but that would be insane since it is irreversible and the saddle can always be changed for a few dollars. To rout an incline in the saddle slot you would need to cut a sliver wedge that the router climbs up as you pass the router through the slot. It would be madness. Bone saddle blanks with the correct radius and width are available and only require you to shorten the length and sand the bottom. A good saddle must be done by sanding a slanted bottom so the high e sits 1/32 lower than the low E.

This whole ridiculous project is because I'm trying to get the high e string action to be at 2/32 and because the saddle is symmetrical it is now at 3/32. So how do I get only the e and b string 1/32 lower? With a slanted bottom in relationship to the radius top. But because I already sanded this saddle almost to the absolute lowest point if I sand any more to get the unwound strings lower then I will probably start the wound strings to buzz. Thus I carved a whole new saddle to experiment. But until I figure out how to sand a perfectly flat but inclining bottom I will be content to play the guitar as is. I should add that this 1/32 of additional action height on the e string is the only reason I can't play like Tal Fallow. I think about $50 in basic luthier tools will solve this problem and since an action set up is around $25 minimum it's a good investment.

So, this ongoing project reached a boiling point recently.

I had managed to get the action on the Fylde to 3/32 and the neck relief was near a bare minimum of .15mm or around .006''. Ok, the action on both e strings was 3/32'' or around 2.38mm and I really wanted around 1.5mm for the treble e and around 2mm for the bass E. I live in a van, so here is a picture of the equipment I was going to use.

carpenter's square, 'L' bracket, machinist ruler, 2 'C' clamps, 2 vise grips

I ended up clamping the saddle to the ruler as a straightedge. This dented side of the saddle and almost crushed it. Notice the slant! If the bottom is perfectly flat then the action will be equal, unless you sand the top of the saddle, which is also an option.

The issue is not only removing exactly 1/32'' from the bass end, but removing 2/32'' from the treble end at the same time in an even slope. Man, I puzzled over how this could be done and decided it was not possible with my hand alone, I needed a fence that would stop the sanding at a certain point, while allowing me to sand a slant. I almost bought a vise, but I knew the vise would not be level. I tried to sandwich the saddle between two rulers but gave up because it was very hard. Maybe gluing the saddle to one ruler would've made it easier because I needed 4 hands to hold the saddle in place while locating the opposite ruler at exactly the same slope. Also, the width of the saddle was so narrow I needed to add a second saddle below the saddle so the two rulers would press equally. I think it could be done with two 'L' Brackets bolted together like a vise, provided the holes were in identical spots. Then you could sand off whatever was protruding out the top. Less is more!

I should point out that this amount turned out to be about a hair too much. The strings don't buzz, but man they are cllllllooooose. Actually, the treble e string does buzz when fretted at the 14th fret. There is zero clearance for string vibration from the neck joint to the end of the fretboard. Everything else is ok, and that part can't be adjusted for radius so I know the saddle is too low. It feels so low I fret a chord before I even feel the strings. This action is ridiculously low, maybe the lowest action I've ever felt on an acoustic guitar. It's even lower than my electric but the relief is absolutely perfect for the vibration on a fingerpicked string so there is no buzzing*, but it's actually shockingly low. I'm sure it would buzz a little if I wailed on it with a pick, but simple picking has no buzz. Playing bar chord jazz comping was a real chore at 3/32'' action height. I'm spoiled by low action of my Seagull and Ibanez. It was no good so I needed lower action and got it.

This is absolutely as low as it can get.

This is the bridgeplate on my 21 year old Seagull, bought new in 1995. I wanted to inspect the bridgeplate for damage and found none. Yes, the wood is splintered, but it looks like it was always splintered. The ball ends are working their way slowly into the wood and maybe 20 years from now they will embed another 1/64''. Maybe.

The main things I've learned were from this luthier site. It's kind of fundamental, but not something I've given much thought to as I've struggled with Dorian scales and mental anguish. Neither the Seagull nor the Fylde has slots in the bridge for the strings. They both have slotted plastic bridge pins. I never gave this much thought, never examined a guitar that was any different. The Seagull action setup lasted 20 years without adjustment. Yes, the bridge has finally lifted from the top because the glue melted in the ridiculous beach heat in Costa Rica, but that's another story. I never gave much thought to break angle or string ramps or saddle height or neck relief or neck angle. None of that mattered. If a fret buzzed I took a framing hammer and hit the fret, denting it, until the buzz stopped.

Well, I've been going to school these last few days to learn what I should've learned long ago. These bridges are not slotted, but it's quite common to cut slots for the strings if the need arises, and then cut and sand rounded string ramps and then use either solid bridge pins or turn these slotted pins around so the un-slotted surface forces the string into the bridge slot and keeps the ball end in place. Wow, that's simple, yet something I'd never give much thought to. It's like zippers and pockets on pants. Have you really given much thought to the different kinds of pockets and zippers. Only tailors think about these things. I'm designing another pair of leather pants and have spent days looking at pockets. I feel like the Howard Hughes of pockets and zippers now. Suffice to say the variations are almost unlimited and only a resignation to accept what clothing manufacturers give us makes us think there is such a thing as a normal pocket. Like sex, there is no such thing as a normal pocket; there are only pockets we prefer or reject. And seams, I'm obsessed with seam styles and variations. There are so many it keeps me up at night wondering which seam to use on which part of my leather pants. The variations are infinite especially when combined with pocket variations. Well, enough about clothes: this is a mini lesson in bridge slots and ramps and I will tell you what I've learned so far.

I provide the photo of my Seagull to show that damage caused by the ball ends is minimal after 21 years. Ok, and the action was pro setup from Gryphon in the Bay Area with respectable break angle and it was perfect until the bridge started to lift and the frets started to warp. Still, the guitar plays and sounds good and I recently took the tension off the strings to let it rest until I can do something about the bridge. The top seems to have bowed out slightly so I can't simply glue it back on. The belly has to be reduced, involving heat, maybe more work than I want to learn how to do. We'll see. My point is that with no string slots and no string ramps, the Seagull played great, although had very little sustain and volume comparatively. So, it has some upgrading to do one day. My point is that the Seagull didn't need ramps because the break angle was ok and the action was perfect.

Almost no saddle left on the Fylde.

However, the Fylde now has incredibly low action, I can probably get used to action this low. But the break angle, and thus the downward thrust on the saddle, is pretty minimal

View from above. No string slots, no ramps. Slotted plastic pins.

 So, if I am indeed content with action this low, and I don't decide to shim the saddle a hair higher, then the only way to add break angle is by cutting a little ramp into the bridge so the string exits at lower point, maybe 3 mm inside the hole, and thus it will be increasing the angle of downward thrust on the saddle. Either the saddle must go up or the ramp must go down. I'm new at this so there might be another option such as shaving the whole bridge top down so the saddle appears to be higher relative to the string exit, but those are the major options and if I really like the action height, then I am totally in good company to cut a ramp and file a nice rounded edge so the string exits lower. Now, that is not necessarily a string slot. No. I can file a string ramp to provide for more angle downward on the saddle, instead of a sharp angle on the bridge itself, but I DON'T have to cut a string slot. The string slot is actually a different modification that doesn't actually impact the string break angle. The string slot is a modification so that the ball end will be 96% caught by the bridge plate and 4% squeezing through an added string slot, rather than 85% on the bridge plate and 15% trying to squeeze through the bridge pin slot (as pictured in my Seagull). That's the issue with a string slot, contact area of the ball end with the bridge plate. It's unrelated to the string break angle, but it seems the modification is normally to slot the hole and add a ramp regardless of what kind of action you like. In my case, the Seagull never needed string slots or ramps but it's possible the tone would improve with string ramps to improve the angle on the saddle. It's possible and probably desirable because the angle was not very pronounced. I didn't break strings but the volume was weak and the overall vibration of the soundboard was pretty weak, considering it is solid cedar. And if I'm going to add ramps then I might as well add string slots and change to solid pins. It really makes sense considering how weak the volume was. The Seagull has some issues that I'll deal with eventually. 

But the Fylde is an ongoing project. Aesthetically, I don't care about the break angle looking so shallow, and as far as I could tell from before and after, the top vibrates equally and the volume is the same and in general I can't tell any difference with less string angle. And I know that the ball ends will do no damage over the next 21 years so adding string slots is not a modification that needs to happen today. But the treble e string has such a shallow angle that I can move the string out of the tiny chip in the saddle if I push it hard enough. I can't lift it off the saddle, but I can slide it. The downward thrust is greatly reduced because now the greatest strain is where it comes out of the hole of the bridge. But that part of the string doesn't vibrate much so I don't want the greatest point of stress impact to be there. I want the greatest angle to be on the saddle top. So I have to add ramps to the treble strings at least. There's even a tutorial on the site that sells the tools so I don't have much excuse to leave this unremedied, except I can't get these tools in Mexico.

Let's recap: So, there is two step process. 
1) What is bridge slotting/ string ramping? 
2) Do you need this done.

Bridge slotting is cutting a groove in the bridge pin hole and bridge plate from top to bottom, so the string has a separate channel to sit in and the unslotted pin fills up the hole and the pin end forces the ball end to be wedged into the bottom of the newly cut slot. The ball end will never have 100% contact with the bridgeplate because that's impossible. The string has to go somewhere, but the idea is to reduce the null surface the ball end can try to escape through. I should point out that if one were careless and cut an extra wide slot in the treble e string hole, then the ball end could conceivably come right up the slot and then you are dealing with a bridge plate and bridge replacement. See? The pin will no longer hold anything down since the string slot will effectively be a second hole. Don't do that! The slot should only be the size of the string itself, and at most sized to accommodate the windings of the string. Any bigger than that and you'll have problems. If there is any advice against adding string slots this is probably the biggest issue: you are compromising the bridge and bridge plate itself and adding a slot against which the whole tension of the ball end will rest. Instead of trying to escape through the bridge pin hole, which it will never accomplish as long as the pin is there, the ball end will now try to escape through this channel that you just cut into perfectly sound bridge plate and bridge wood. If this slot is slightly too big then the ball will wedge into it. Why compromise this critical area if the bridge plate is not damaged and will not be damaged in 20+ years? If you want ramps for a better angle, then cut ramps. Why cut a slot all the way into the bridge plate? This is the argument against the slots: It might affect tone for good or ill, might protect the pins and brigeplate over 20+ years, will not affect play-ability, but might lead to the complete destruction of the bridge if the slot becomes an escape tunnel for the ball end. This is the equation. Another argument is, "If it was so good, then the manufacturer would always do it." Well, this is a factor that is debatable. I know the Seagull is perfectly fine without string slots and ramps. So, they made a good decision leaving that modification up to the user. The Fylde is probably the same thing. I looked on the Fylde site and might email Roger to see his opinion, but I think it's basically an irreversible modification that he would do if you asked, but if you don't ask then you can do it at a later date if, like me, you choose action so low you require ramps. It's probably looked on as elective surgery, cosmetic, sort of frivolous, but arguably a good idea over a 40 year instrument lifespan in a heritage guitar like a Fylde. The only reason a $250 beat and broken Seagull should get this $100 modification is for me to experiment. Still, a decision left to the owner, not the maker. It's irreversible. Like action height, this is a user preference that is best left to the user. The 3/32'' action did not need any ramps, so if the luthier precuts ramps then they aren't usually needed since 3/32 is generally low enough. Only a sissy like me who wants super low action because he has been spoiled with a badly buzzing electric guitar will need ramps. See? Only when I went crazy and lowered it to 1/16 on the treble side did the angle drop too low, and the string buzzes too! The bass e string angle is acceptable to me and some might even say the treble side is ok too and not bother with ramps. But, if done well, the ramps and slots will not harm anything and might help. We will see. I guess if you want to cut string slots because you are afraid that in 30 years the bridge plate will be worn or the $2 plastic pins will bend, then look at my Seagull pic again. 21 years has done nothing to that bridge plate and the ball ends have embedded into the bridge plate about 1/64'' and the pins have not bent. All but one pin I lost is original. So if I added string slots 20 years ago then who can tell if more damage would be done due to the compromised bridge plate and bridge. I don't know. Would the tone be improved? Maybe. It can't be much worse. People say they think it sounds good but I know better; it's very weak, no bass, no sustain, no volume. I'm willing to try it with the Seagull because in comparison to the Fylde it has no volume and the soundboard cedar top barely vibrates when I pluck the bass. It has no bass. I can't feel the vibration like with the Fylde. Maybe the break angle is to blame. Maybe the ball end being slightly inside the peg hole is to blame. Maybe the bridge lifting is to blame. Maybe there is a loose brace. Maybe it's a $250 plywood/laminate/ solid top guitar that will never sound very good but I didn't know the difference so I was happy.

21 Years with plastic pins and without string slots. If I cut slots the ball end would be in the same place, but the string would be going straight up instead of at an angle through the pin slot.

So, the string slot holds the string, the pin prevents the ball end from getting out of the hole. The ramp maximizes the angle of thrust on the saddle and you could say it minimizes the angle of thrust on the bridge surface. Eventually, in maybe 20+ years, the string will cut a ramp. The ramp on my Seagull is barely getting started, and I've never had a string break there and don't change strings more than I need to. The bridge wood is hard but it's not so sharp as to cut metal. I don't think the concern is that strings will be breaking between the saddle and the ball end where the string contacts the bridge coming out of the hole at a sharp angle. No, the wood will give before the metal. But the issue is downward thrust on the saddle and that can only be increased by raising the saddle or lowering the ramp. 

In my case, I will play the guitar as it is because I don't have the tools to cut slots, and maybe the action will prove to be too low and raising the saddle will remove the need to add ramps. I suspect I will personally cut ramps no matter what and either pay an experienced guitar tech to cut the slots or else learn the hard way myself. I'm talking about a .012'' slot, maybe a little bigger for the winding, but absolutely no bigger than the winding. Very delicate work requiring practice on a scrap piece of wood, steady hand, focus. I can do it, but I can also make a mess.

Here we see very little break angle. Remedied by either raising the saddle or cutting string ramps. If I like the action height then I must cut ramps, which is perfectly acceptable.

Usually, a saddle this low means something else is wrong, but in my case I've lowered the action to incredibly low standards. When it was at 3/32'', which is arguably the lower end, the saddle height was fine and the break angle was fine. It looked completely normal. If I had shaved a hair off, with a slope down toward the treble end then the angle would be a little sharper down on the saddle, but still I think I've reached the limit of how low an acoustic guitar action can be. The neck angle is good, the relief is good, the guitar is brand new, but I've shaved so much off the saddle that there's no break angle left, so I'm going to cut some ramps and one day I'll probably cut string slots and use solid bone or unslotted horn pins. Right now the action is 5/64'' on the bass E sloping down to 1/16'' on the treble e. I love it. The action is ridiculously low and I think the vibration of the top and tone has not changed from when I had maximum string break angle. But I would feel better with a string ramp on all the strings. The physics suggest I should get a better angle on the saddle and reduce the angle on the bridge surface, so that justifies the ramp. Then I will decide if the tone changes for the better. This guitar in general needs only a little more tweaking for perfection. The action was the biggest hurdle, the wider string gaps over the soundhole and wider neck at the 14th fret is an adjustment I'm still adapting to and the slight modified V neck profile bothers me mostly as a mental issue because I've played a normal C shape for 20 years and now when I play a minor7th with a root on 4th string I feel my thumb hit the slight V edge and it's not comfortable. Only on fancy jazz bar chords does my thumb hit that V edge and it's noticeable, even though it's barely a bump. Shaving the V off is not an option so I expect I will adapt. But the deepening of my guitar functionality IQ has grown so there's no price too high to vanquish ignorance.

My Ideal

Step 1) be desperate and lonely
Step 2) go to bar and get rejected by everyone there
Step 3) buy cardboard box of wine
Step 4) drink alone in dirty room with Chet Baker record playing
Step 5) nod your head knowingly

This hits me where it hurts.

Carpenters to The Rescue

When things look their bleakest I can always count on Karen Carpenter to lift my spirits. I do listen to The Carpenters recordings but I prefer to play from this vintage Greatest Hits songbook I found in a St. Louis thrift store with accurate keys and arrangements far superior to the others I own (yes, I own multiple Carpenters songbooks). The arrangement of Ticket to Ride might be Richard's greatest accomplishment because the original Beatles version could easily be mistaken for a peppy pop rock song when the lyrics are obviously melancholy. Same applies to Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. But Goodbye to Love is the ultimate melancholy song and even the key change at the end is only a harmonic nod to resurrection of Oggy's spirit, when the lyrics still confirm his heart's demise. I really belong in a dark cavern far from the meddlesome trauma of love and longing.