The Gift that Keeps On Giving

...or what happens when you procure an electric guitar for a minor

Do the words, "Only 43 more shopping days until..." send a shudder down your spine? Are you dreading the daily avalanche of mail-order catalogs brimming with monogrammed pastel polo shirts (in "our finest ever cotton pique!") and polar fleece ear warmers? Depressed over the thought of spending your money on another round of meaningless, generic, impersonal gifts?

Ho, ho, ho -- welcome to the darkest days of winter. As if shoveling the driveway and scraping the windshield every morning aren't enough of a time sink, from now till just after the winter solstice we're all doomed to burning the dwindling days in fruitless search of the Perfect Gift.

Let me suggest a happy alternative: music.

No, I'm not talking about more downloads from iTunes or yet another pair of designer earbuds that will end up in the washing machine within a week. I'm talking about real, make-your-own, hands-on music.

When my oldest son was in 5th grade, my wife and I were stumped about what to get him for Christmas. He was in the tweens--too old for toys, to young for a shaving kit. And we wanted something more active and participatory than an mp3 player, video game, or movie on dvd. We knew he loved listening to music, and that summer we'd treated him (and the whole family) to a concert featuring his favorite band. So it wasn't a big leap of insight to think of putting a musical instrument under the Christmas tree.

But which one? He'd already dabbled a bit on piano without much of a spark, and he didn't show any interest in dad's acoustic guitar. We puzzled over this for a week or more, until it dawned on us that maybe he'd enjoy playing the same kind of music he listened to 24/7. That made it easy. Rock plus roll equals electric guitar!

We headed to our local music store, Piccolo's Music. (Disclaimer: I now teach lessons at Piccolo's and write their blog, but then you know that!) They had a great kid-sized Squier electric guitar that cost less than two video games. We bought a small amplifier, too, and a cool guitar strap. Still wondering if we'd done the right thing, we waited to see our son's reaction on Christmas day.

That Christmas was a decade ago. Our 5th grader is now off at college in another state, studying marine biology. I'm thrilled to say that he has a guitar with him in his dorm room, although I'm sure he was disappointed that there was space for only one of his four guitars. He turned out to be a talented musician, better than his old man. His passion for music really took off when he discovered that playing music was even better than just listening to it. Since then, he's jump-started many new friendships simply by having a guitar in his hands. Playing music has also enhanced his self-esteem and confidence--it's a consistent, positive ingredient in how he sees himself among his peers, in who he is.

Buying that little Squier Stratocaster all those years ago seemed risky at the time. Now it's the most obvious, sensible thing we've ever done as parents.

Music gifts are easy to tailor to that hard-to-buy-for person on your list. If they already play a musical instrument, check out all the accessories, sheet music, and instructional materials available for that specific instrument. Musicians will always appreciate an upgrade to a better instrument, a new instrument stand, or better sound equipment. For someone new to music, go with their favorite genre of music and consider which instruments are used to play that genre. Strings, reeds, sheet music, tuners, and metronomes all make great stocking stuffers. When in doubt, you can always get them a gift certificate. And don't forget a starter set of lessons with a good teacher.

This year, leave the polo shirts and polar fleece for someone else's tree. Give the gift of music.

Hum a Ditty for Humidity

Don't leave your guitar in the snow.

Weird October weather for Montana. Still in the 60s, and no frost yet here on Helena's Upper West side. I can't remember such an extended Indian summer in Montana in the last 30 years. Usually we see at least one snow storm in September (or late August)--this year, nada.

I must have a biological clock, linked to my musical instruments, though. I keep reminding myself that winter's coming and it's time to get serious again about humidifying instruments. I use Dampit brand hose humidifiers in my fiddles, mandolin, and acoustic guitars. A Dampit is a piece of green rubber hose with a sponge inside. You run it under the faucet, squeeze out the excess moisture, towel it dry on the outside, and then stick it in the instrument. And then--an important step--put the instrument in its case when you're not playing it. This keeps the humidity in the case and in your instrument, instead of just wicking away into the house.

The guitar Dampit comes either as a plain hose, or with a plastic soundhole cover. I quit using the soundhole cover because I want to humidify my fingerboard, too, not just the inside of the guitar. When a fingerboard dries out, the wood shrinks, leaving the metal frets poking out the sides. Ouch!

So the guitar Dampit fits between two strings and dangles into the soundhole. The mando and fiddle dampits snake into the f-holes. Al of these have a wide cap that prevents them from falling completely into the instrument.

I check the sponges every other day when the air dries out. I aim to keep the humidity in each case around 45 to 55 percent. Heating our houses in the winter can drop ambient humidity into the low teens or even single digits, which can crack a top or back, or cause seam separations. Much easier (and cheaper) to use a simple humidifier.

Beginning Guitar: 5 Easy Steps

At some point, nearly everyone decides to take a stab at becoming a guitar hero. They buy the cheapest guitar they can find, learn two chords from a friend, and three months later the guitar is back in its case, slid under the bed or lost behind never-worn clothes in the back corner of a closet. Sound familiar? Sadly, many people never get beyond this first washout. But there is a better way, more likely to lead to success and genuine guitar heroics. You can learn to play guitar.

The first step is to ask yourself a few questions. What style of music do you like? What type of music do you listen to the most? If the music you enjoy is full of guitars, you’re on the right track. (If, instead, you discover a deep fondness for flugelhorn solos, you may want to reconsider this guitar fetish.)

Chances are, if you like rock, blues, or jazz, you’ll be looking for an electric guitar and amp. On the other hand, if you enjoy country, folk, or bluegrass, an acoustic guitar will deliver the sound you’re after. This is an important choice--the style of music you want to play largely determines what type of guitar to buy. It’s not true that all beginners should start on an acoustic guitar. (In fact, electric guitars are typically easier to play because the strings are lighter and closer to the fingerboard, making it easier to hold notes and chords.) In the long run, you’ll end up learning most of the same chords, techniques, and musical concepts, regardless of whether you start on acoustic or electric. Your choice of which kind of guitar to buy should be based on the kind of music you want to play.

The second step--before you go to Picccolo’s Music and buy a guitar--is to make a commitment to yourself that you’ll actually put in the time to learn how to play. Just as with any other skill, you won’t learn and improve unless you do it. Learning to play guitar requires a minimum of 15 to 30 minutes of focused playing each day. It’s important to play every day, not just once a week.

The third step is fun and exciting. Come on down to Piccolo’s Music and play a bunch of guitars. Talk with Fred, Julie, or John about the different types of guitars in the store, and tell them what kind of music you want to play. Sit down and make some noise on a guitar. And listen to Piccolo’s staff play so you can hear what each guitar sounds like. Think about how much you want to spend. In the beginning, it’s okay to buy a cheap acoustic guitar or cheap electric guitar, provided that it’s a real musical instrument, like the ones you’ll find at Piccolo’s Music. You’ll find great beginner acoustic guitar deals starting as low as $79.95 and beginner electric guitar deals starting at $129.95. Piccolo’s also carries 3/4 size guitars perfect for kids and smaller adults.

The best acoustic guitar for a beginner is one that is the right size, sounds good to that person, is easily playable, and is affordable. The best electric guitar for a beginner would have the same traits.

The fourth step is to take some lessons from a fun teacher who can start you off on the type of music you want to play. A good teacher will be friendly and personable, articulate, and able to demonstrate and clearly explain the techniques and concepts of playing guitar. Not all good guitarists make good teachers--the skills involved are different. Piccolo’s Music offers in-house lessons with a choice of teachers to suit your style and personality.

The fifth step is to simply enjoy playing guitar. Play every day, whether practicing on specific skills or jamming along with friends. The more time you spend making music on your guitar, the easier it will be and the more music you’ll find inside you just waiting to spill out.

Happy 20th Anniversary to Piccolo's Music!

Mark your calendars--Saturday, October 2nd, Piccolo's Music is throwing a party to celebrate 20 years of helping people make their own music. If you're in the neighborhood, swing on over from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for hot dogs, hamburgers, live music, and free stuff.

Between them, Barb, John, Fred, Julie, Ron, Tom, Tricia and the gang boast a few centuries of experience and expertise in everything musical. In today's market, it's rare to find a music store that succeeds both as a specialty shop (want a high-end mandolin? need the urtext sheet music for Mozart's violin sonatas? can't live without the best flat pick on the planet?) and as a general music shop (acoustic and electric guitar strings? saxophone reeds? drum sticks?). Piccolo's Music does it all, and does it all well.

As the store celebrates it's second decade, it continues to grow as a full-service shop. You can come in and browse, play instruments, and ask for expert advice. If you're outside the local area, you can shop online (http://piccolosmusic.com/store/). Piccolo's also offers in-house music lessons on acoustic and electric guitar, piano, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and ukulele. You can also bring in your string, orchestra, and band instruments for quality repair and maintenance.

Here's to another 20 years!

Coda Bows: Carbon Fiber as Good as Wood?

Dear Mel,

After three years of violin lessons, I’m looking to upgrade from an adequate student bow to something more responsive and lively, and that I can continue to grow with. I see on Piccolo’s Music web site that they are a dealer for the Codabow brand of carbon fiber bows. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I thought that all good violin bows were made out of a South American hardwood called pernambuco. Are carbon fiber violin bows even worth considering? I’ll give them a try if you can give me five good reasons why I should.

Signed, Old School

Dear Old School,

Ahhh, the wonderful three-year mark. For many violin students, this is when all the hours of playing really begin to show results. Something clicks, and the bow suddenly feels like an extension of your hand instead of a twig with a hank of horsetail tethered to both ends. Sounds to me like you’ve had the epiphany: all this time you thought you were learning to play violin, only to realize that you’ve learned to play the bow. Congratulations!

But now the quality of the bow truly matters, eh? Let’s ponder that for a minute. What makes for a “good” violin bow? What specific qualities do we look for?

First off, a good bow should be stable, not overly bouncy or skittish. A stable bow feels balanced in your hand, not too heavy toward either the tip or the frog. It runs straight and smooth when you draw the length of it over a string. (You can sight down the length of the bow to check for any sideways curve or warping.)

But a good bow also needs to be lively, responsive to your lightest touch. For this, you want to be able to feel the string’s vibrations in your hand, especially where your index finger and thumb touch the stick. This is a subtle feel--not buzzing like a power sander. But in a good stick the vibrations come through. The stick should also retain some camber when the hair is up to playing tension. You want a bit of springiness (without undue bounce).

Finally, a good bow is comfortable. The frog should be free of sharp edges, and the pad should feel slightly tacky for traction with your index finger.

Now on to wood vs. carbon fiber.

Based on the above criteria, you may find that carbon fiber actually does a better job than pernambuco or other hardwoods. Carbon fiber is light for its strength and incredibly stable. Carbon fiber bows are almost unbreakable under normal use, and they won’t warp. When properly constructed, the carbon fibers transmit vibrations and “feel” as well or better than wood and they project volume very well (some companies are now making professional quality violins and cellos completely out of carbon fiber).

Sure, some people simply prefer the look and feel of pernambuco. In blind trials, however, I could not tell which bows were wood and which were carbon fiber. I conducted my own “taste-off” between Coda carbon fiber and a range of pernambuco bows, and the Coda bows always came out on top.

With these qualities in mind, Coda models their bows after the best traditional wooden bows. The result is a strong, powerful, lightweight, well-balanced, lively bow that is nearly indestructible, and at a price far below most wooden bows of equal quality. Also, all Coda bows come with the finest horse hair and can be rehaired in the traditional manner.

Piccolo’s Music carries a wide range of Coda bows for violin, viola, cello, and bass. The top-of-the-line Diamond series is often the professional’s choice. The Prodigy and Joule series offer the same state-of-the-art quality for specialized uses. Bassists can choose between the Infinity and Revelation bows, available in both French and German styles. Gold, silver, and nickel mounts allow for a range of affordable pricing. And remember, Coda bows ship free from Piccolo’s Music!

Small Guitars for Kids' Big Dreams

"No matter what I did, I just couldn’t convince her to spend her loose change on a 108-pipe steam calliope. My musical dreams were shattered."

Dear Mel,

My grandson, Aldo, wants to play guitar. As a toddler, his favorite toy was a plastic guitar with a singing cowboy painted on the top. Aldo dragged that guitar everywhere, twanging on the strings and yodeling his little heart out. Now that Aldo is 8 years old, I want to get him a real guitar. Does anyone make kid-sized guitars that sound as good as regular guitars?

Signed, Doting Grandma

Dear Doting Granny,

Aldo’s a lucky lad. Not only has he found a passion at a tender age, but he has a patron of the arts to help him on his way. Few of us are so fortunate. When I was a tyke, I too desperately wanted a special musical instrument of my own. I pestered my grandma for months, begging her, doing chores around her house, walking her dog every morning, all to no avail. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t convince her to spend her loose change on a 108-pipe steam calliope. My musical dreams were shattered.

Art & Lutherie Ami Parlor Guitar

Where was I? Right, guitars for kids. You and Aldo will be happy to learn that a few companies do indeed make guitars scaled down to fit younger kids. This is important because trying to stretch little fingers around a full-size guitar neck is difficult, hugely discouraging, and may even lead to strains and sprains. Also it’s almost impossible for a small kid to get an arm around a regular guitar body to pick the strings.

Start out by making sure you buy the right type of guitar for the sort of music Aldo wants to play. If he dreams of being the next Marty Stuart, he’ll likely want an acoustic guitar. But if Slash is his guitar hero, he’d be better off with a solid-body electric and a practice amp. Piccolo’s Music carries both types of guitar in kid sizes. The Yamaha JR mini folk guitar is three-quarter size, but actually closer to half size, with a shorter (21-3/4-inch) scale and slightly narrower neck for smaller hands. For $129.99, this guitar comes with a gig bag (Editor's note: Currently out of stock but there's more on the way!). A Little Martin or Baby Taylor ($299 each) also works well as a kid’s guitar. For kids with bigger hands, consider the “Ami” ($279) made in Canada by Art & Lutherie. This small-bodied, 12-fret acoustic guitar features a solid cedar top and “big guitar” tone and projection. The Ami is a lot of guitar for the money. The neck is standard size, though, so maybe let Aldo try one before buying.

Squier Mini Strat

(also available in black)

If you’re looking for an electric guitar, any kid will love to rock out on the Mini Squier Strat ($129.95). The three-quarter scale neck and body are easy to handle, and the axe’s three single-coil pickups and hard-tail bridge deliver big rock tone and sustain. Don’t forget an amp. Decent practice amps start at about $80, but for just $20 more, you might want to spring for a Peavy Vypyr 15. Your budding rock star won’t soon run out of sonic territory to explore with this amp’s 24 different amp models and 11 awesome effects.

(Oh, and Granny, if you’re reading this, all I have to say is, no, the cheap harmonica you gave me did not satiate my desire for a calliope. And while we’re at it, old Boomer didn’t run away that day I came back without him. I sold him to a long-haul driver at the truck stop.)

Signed, Mel

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sneddon/ / CC BY 2.0

A $35 Flat Pick!?

Dear Dr. Mel,

A few weeks back, you wrote a truly enlightening and profound column about flat picks. I laughed, I cried. Remarkable! It must be difficult to bundle so much talent into your socks in the morning. But I've been waiting and waiting for your promised follow-up about a special pick--I think they were called BlueChip Picks. So what's the deal? What's up with these picks, and what's so special about them?

Signed, Easily Amused

Dear E.A.

That's just the weirdest thing...your comment about the talent bundled in my socks. Do I know you? Not even many of my closest friends are aware that I type this column in my bare feet, with my toes (so I can keep playing tunes with my fingers all the while).

Ah yes, the mysterious, elusive BlueChip Picks. My stock broker, Billy Joe Bob, first told me about these, and I thought he was trying to sell me yet another bad stock pick, some big-name, "bluechip" Wall Street sinkhole for my hard-earned retirement funds. (Never mind that we all now know AIG stands for "And It'$ Gone!") But then Billy Joe Bob took a tater bug mandolin out of his closet and pulled a shiny brown pick from a pocket in his dirty coveralls, sunk it into the strings, and...well, let's just say the clear, ringing, big-as-a-cathedral-pipe-organ tone piqued my curiosity.

And then Billy Joe Bob told me that these BlueChip picks cost $35 a piece.

That’s not a typo.

Read it again. That’s right...thirty-five smackeroos. Each.

I know what you’re thinking: “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaha....”

Yes, you can buy a perfectly adequate flat pick for 25 cents. Or a pick with a few bells and whistles for 50 cents or even a whole dollar. And then there are those bulletproof (made of Kevlar) Wegen picks with grip holes that run a whopping $5 a piece.

So c’mon...$35 for a single pick?!?!?

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say this: If you’re the sort of person who spends more than $600 on a guitar or mandolin, once you try a BlueChip pick, you’ll end up buying one. Happily paying $35 even if you have to pause your daily latte habit for a week or skip the theater and see the next big movie when it comes out on DVD. Why? Because these are the best picks, bar none, in the history of picks to date, period. Read on.

BlueChip Picks are made in Knoxville, Tennessee, in a small machine shop. They are not blue, nor are they chippy. At first glance, they look like just another flat pick, thicker than most, and the UPS brown color doesn’t exactly sizzle with curb appeal. But there’s a peculiar sheen to the surface, and even before you handle one you’ll likely spy the beveled edges on the point, vaguely Stealth Bomber-ish.

The first thing I noticed when I tried one was how tacky the pick is--the ultra-smooth surface simply sticks to your fingers. Within seconds, my thumb and forefinger were more relaxed than with any other pick. No need to grip a BlueChip, it just stays put, even resisting the tendency to swivel away from the string. As I played, the easy, relaxed feel soon had me playing faster and more smoothly than usual. (And I'll take any help in that department that I can get, thank you.)

That speed and smoothness may also come from the pick material itself. Here’s how the company explains it:

“Our picks are produced from a very high grade, self lubricating composite material specially formulated for great playing qualities. These one of a kind picks cannot be found anywhere else in the world. The patent pending material has great tone and speed like tortoise with none of the drawbacks. BlueChip Picks are precision machined and never need polishing because they do not flake at the corners like tortoise shell picks do. Their self lubricating properties make them extremely fast. If you have been using tortoise picks to get that special tone and speed, try a BlueChip and you will never go back.”

Yes, they really do glide over the strings more easily than picks made of other materials. If that’s not enough, consider that these picks also deliver a crisp, clear, yet creamy, chocolatey tone, drawing out the best of what your guitar or mandolin can offer. And they’re more durable than any pick you’ve owned before. And they come in a range of shapes, sizes, and gauges. You can even get a BlueChip thumbpick for your dobro, fingerpicking guitar, or banjo.

After playing a BlueChip for a month or so, I asked the guys at Piccolo’s to consider carrying them. The good news: Piccolo’s Music now has an assortment of BlueChip picks in stock. The even better news: you can come into the shop and try out the different shapes and gauges to see what suits you best, and to see for yourself if the picks live up to the buzz.

The cost? Let’s put the $35 into perspective. That’s two sets of Elixer strings. Between the pick and the strings, guess which will still be around in a year, five years, ten, performing as good as new? Or think of it this way. When you spend $1,000 or $2,500 or $5,000 on a great guitar or mandolin, why chintz out on the pick? Especially if a great pick draws the best sound from your instrument and helps you play cleaner, smoother, faster.

So that’s the scoop. Come see (and feel and hear) for yourself. And don’t be surprised if a Bluechip pick doesn’t curl your toes and knock your socks off.

Signed, Mel