Celebrate Christmas 2011 is complete. We shared a wonderful evening with a full house last night.

I am physically exhausted from several days of very little sleep but filled with the joy of sharing the music of Christmas.

I had contacted my friends at Lauzon Music late in the summer to arrange for service on the Les Paul. The guitar needed to be worked on as I was planning to swap out the bridge and tuners as well as move up to a wider string guage, namely 011s.

It took some time for the TonePros to come in. These parts were not available in Canada, at least not where I live, and I sourced them from the United States. After they arrived, I installed the parts myself and then planned to make the trip up to Ottawa.

That happened on Saturday.

After the two-hour drive into the city, I walked in the shop with my guitar in its flight case.

“We’re all full and we are not taking in any more service items.”

“Really?” I replied. “I came all the way from Kingston to get this guitar serviced.”

“What a minute, are you Richard?”

“Yes I am.”

“A 70′s Les Paul Standard?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“No problem, we’ll take that guitar in and get it serviced for you.”

Thanks heavens my name is Richard and that I brought in a 70′s era Les Paul or it would have been a bit of a wasted trip to the guitar shop.

I spoke with the luthier later that day and he was really impressed with the condition of the guitar. Pristine was the word he used to describe the instrument.

He is going to get the instrument setup to my preferences and clean up the electronics. I won’t see the instrument for about four weeks but hopefully it will be back before the Christmas concert in December. I’d like to have it on stage for that evening.

An elephant never forgets. I am not an elephant.

Our annual Christmas concert is approaching quickly and I have 20 songs to memorize. Again. In five weeks. I’ll be spending quite a bit of time in the woodshed.

One word comes to mind: eek.

How to memorize 20 songs?

I would never memorize a story by learning all of the letters in each of the words in sequential order. I would identify the theme and create an outline of events where I would use my own vocabulary to recreate the story.

Music is a story.

I begin with the basics: tempo and key.

I review the covers of the song to get a sense as to how another guitarist approached the part. I am looking at things like tone, dynamics, interesting guitar parts and musical themes.

I then create the song structure by breaking the song into sections usually like A A B A or Verse, Verse, Chorus, Verse. All of a sudden, the song is less difficult to memorize. Most songs have repeating sections, often quite a few repeating sections.

Each section will have a series of chords. Chords typically have a strong relationship to predictable patterns of progressions like I – IV – V (G to C to D) or I – IIm – IV – V (G to Am to C to D). Again, this helps to reduce to challenge of memorization.

Once I have the structure and the chord progression in hand, I go deeper into the musical elements of the song. I consider the phrases, riffs and arpeggios that I will use on the song. And I practice those elements over and over until the muscle memory holds firm (which seems to take longer now as I get older).

With the tempo, key, structure, chord progression and elements for a song firmly in hand, I play the song repeatedly until it becomes automatic. Memorization of 20 songs will take about 40 to 50 hours of practice.

Getting on a stage without charts adds a bit more excitement when playing songs that you only play a few times a year.

I ordered parts to bring my 1976 Gibson Les Paul closer to its original condition. Not as part of an effort to increase the value of the guitar. I am a player, not a collector. I wanted to bring it up to date and keep a vintage look.

Back in the late 1970s I had changed the bridge, saddle and tuners to gold. I thought it looked cool. The headstock looked like this:

I did not do a great job securing the tuners. And I never really liked the gold look on the guitar.

I purchased a set of Tone Pros for the bridge, saddle and tuners from Marquis Distribution. They were really helpful and made sure that I had the right parts for the guitar — even going as far as to validate the correct model by reviewing several photos of my instrument.

Last night I spent several hours replacing all of the components and getting the guitar roughly set. Here is a shot of the new bridge and saddle.

And a shot of the headstock with the vintage tuners.

The guitar looks awesome!

I came across D’Pergo guitars while strolling through the Gear Page.

From the D’Pergo website:

We use tone woods unlike any being used in instrument building today. As distinguished from guitars made from new growth wood, D’Pergo guitars are made from tonally superior, certified old growth tone woods that possess remarkable acoustic resonance, enhanced stability, and increased velocity of sound. These old growth woods are commercially unavailable on the global timber market.

The instruments are expensive. Very expensive. And as far as I can tell, they are custom made so you cannot play before you pay. I have asked for some additional information from the builder. It looks as though they only build out two types of bolt-on instruments: teles and strats.

The strat looks nice.

I think he may be on to something:

“You listen to those old records we grew up with and they are just so good. There was another thing happening at the time, and it was total focus. We don’t have that anymore — our whole landscape has changed because of society’s compulsion to be fully connected at all times. We’re constantly on our cell phones — talking, reading and sending emails, texting, checking our Facebook pages, and tweeting. There’s no longer a time, like we had back then, when you’re completely focused on your work. And when we went home, we immediately played music on our stereo. We didn’t have a computer to run to. We didn’t even have, at one point, a message machine to check! There was so much less involvement with networking and constantly responding to people. There was nothing but the music.

When you listen back to those records, they are phenomenal, and it’s obvious the musicians were thinking about nothing but the music. Sure, today we can do many more things with Pro Tools — we’ve got a lot more channels and many more sounds — but it actually takes far longer to make a record. That’s because our focus is fragmented all over the place. If you took all that time we waste playing with our gadgets and applied it to the music, would the product be better? In my estimation, absolutely. That’s one of the many things that have changed in this business.

Back then, we were playing more. That’s what you spent your time on — your instrument. Also, there was an absolute focus on the project when you were in the studio. None of the other musicians were answering their cell phones, or texting and tweeting. Everybody was more involved in the project — paying attention to the tracks, commenting and reacting to the music. Listening back to records from that era, you ask yourself, how come there aren’t any records like this today?”

Al Di Meola

Via

It was my first good electric guitar. I bought it used for $300 in the late 1970s. A sunburst 1976 Gibson Les Paul Standard.

For whatever reason, I decided that the guitar would be cooler if it had gold hardware. I replaced the nickel bridge and saddle. And I took off the original tuners and put on a set of Schallers. I did all of this in 1980. I guess the Schallers would now be vintage.

I did not do a very good job installing those tuners as you can see from the picture below.

If you look carefully, the tuner on the right side is missing the retaining screw. Actually it broke off when I first installed it. And you can see the imprint from the original tuners. Sad to say, I fared no better on the other four tuners.

I also swapped out the pickups for something else. The something else may have been a couple of DiMarzios. They were pretty popular back in the 1970s. They sound really good so I will keep them.

I have decided that I would like to bring the guitar back into better playing condition. Truer to the original, I will get some nickel TonePros for the bridge and saddle. I will put back new original fit tuners, again in nickel, for the instrument and fill and stain any holes on the back of the headstock. And I will have the guitar professionally set up for 010s.

It is a very heavy beast so I may not be using it on stage very often. But it has a neat vintage flair and still looks great for an instrument that is closing in on 40 years of age.

And so does my daughter.