Although, like all musicians working in the reggae idiom, I had known for a long time who Clement (Coxsone) Dodd was, I had never met him. During the years I worked in Kingston, Jamaica as a session guitarist, from 1980-1985, I had certainly heard about him. Lloyd Parks, the great bassist and bandleader of We The People, had made his first record for Coxsone at a young age as part of the vocal duo The Termites. Lloyd, I think, was somewhat embarrassed by the group’s name, and the title of their biggest hit, “Have Mercy Mr. Percy.” But he did have a copy of the Studio One “Presenting The Termites” album in a rack high up on his record shop wall, safely out of reach of anyone who might want to buy it.

Lloyd is not a verbose man, but when I pressed him about the album, he said, “Coxsone never want to pay. ‘Five pound a tune, that’s all me pay,’ him seh all de while. Me proud fe start deh still. Nuff artists come outa Coxsone stables.” He never would play the album for me, despite my pleading, and I never got around to buying it before I left Jamaica.

My friend Bernard Collins of the Abyssinians had taken me by 13 Brentford Road (just renamed Studio One Boulevard), where the studio was located, since it was near his home in Trench Town, but we never went inside. And none of the musicians I knew that did sessions ever worked there. When I inquired, I heard the same thing. “Coxsone only pay thirty dollars a tune. Me nah work for dem money deh. Him have him own musicians.” Many of us were not above playing for less than the forty or fifty dollars Jamaican per song that was the de facto recording scale at the time, but still no one ever admitted going there recently, although some had worked for him at the beginning of their careers.

As I got deeper into the scene, I realized just how much of reggae is built from the Studio One catalogue. For a typical American reggae fan like me, whose first exposure to the music was through the movie soundtrack to “The Harder They Come” (which contains no Studio One tunes) and believed that the reggae albums released on Island and Virgin in the seventies were the peak of the genre, this was a revelation.

Over and over, at sessions and rehearsals, the other musicians would jump on a tune and play it instantly, before I could even catch my breath. I’d say, “But you know it already,” and they would look at me pityingly and say, “But Andy, a Studio One riddim dat. Oonu fe know dem ting deh if yu a deal wid reggae.” But how to learn them? The records were easily available, but I was living a bare-bones existence at that time and did not have a turntable. Nor did my funds allow for many mix tape purchases.

Soon I realized that the oldies shows on Jamaican radio were veritable gold mines of Studio One tunes, although they never announced who any of the artists were. Every night that I wasn’t recording or rehearsing, I would sit on my mattress and play my electric guitar, unplugged, along with the radio, trying my best to copy the tone, timing, and feel of the guitar parts exactly. When I realized that the bass lines were actually the defining element of the songs, I learned them too.

After I had played Skateland, (a roller rink in Half-Way Tree that also served as a concert hall and dance venue) with We The People a few times, I finally got up the nerve to attend the sound system dances held there. Living in Kingston, one could hear the sound systems in the distance almost every night. But once I went to a roots dance myself and saw how the selector and DJs interacted with the dancers, I began to hear the true power of Studio One. Every Coxsone tune generated excitement no matter whether they were dropped early or late in the evening, years after they had been originally released.

So I knew Coxsone’s music long before I met him. But that did not happen until I joined Winston Grennan’s band in New York shortly after I moved there in 1986. Winston had played drums on many of the Studio One classics, and felt that Coxsone owed him a favor (if not also some money). So he approached Coxsone about recording the band. Coxsone agreed, and so it was that I went to Coxsone’s Music City, 3135 Fulton Street in Brooklyn, for the first time, along with the rest of the Ska-Rocks Band.

Music City at first glance looked like just about every other Jamaican record shop I had ever been in. Glass topped counters with CDs and reggae paraphenalia inside, records mounted in wire racks on fiberboard, and stacks of 45s behind the counter near the cash register. Two things were different about it.

The first was the fact that at this point in history the corner of Fulton and Norwood was one of the worst crack dealing centers in the city, and the street scene was absolutely intense, even for Brooklyn. The second was the gray-haired, stately Jamaican gentleman wearing a cricket cap behind the counter. He regarded me gravely with large, deep eyes, evaluating.

Winston introduced us. “Andy, this is Coxsone. Coxsone, Andy. Andy plays guitar in my band.” I extended my hand. Roots Jamaicans do not readily shake hands, so this was a test on my part to see how used to non-Jamaicans Coxsone was. As I expected, he was not at all uncomfortable and met my grasp.

“Pleased to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“The pleasure is mine.”

“Are we cool parked out front?”

“Yes, mon. Those people don’t allow anything to interfere with dem business. It’s daytime, you’re fine for now.”

During the session that followed, Coxsone said little, either about the performances or the recording. This did not surprise me since it was Winston’s project. He did mention liking one song that had a boogie-type bass line. At the end of the session he asked for my number. Being new in the city, I was of course pleased, but didn’t expect anything to come of it.

Several days later he called. “Can you come out to do a session for me?” Of course I could. After we agreed on a price, the engineer fired up the twenty-four track tape recorder, I tuned up, and plugged in.

I must take time out to describe the studio itself, which was a source of never-ending visual fascination. It consisted of a small control room, and beyond it a larger recording room, both connected to the front of the shop by a tiny passageway. When I first started working there, there was an actual door separating the control room from the recording room, as is standard practice. After a few years, the door was taken out, which meant that studio chatter in the control room could leak onto the recording. This happened more than once, but never seemed to bother Coxsone much. The door was supposed to be replaced, but no one ever got around to it.

This passageway, like the rest of the studio, was made even smaller by the tape boxes, keyboards, electronic equipment in various stages of repair, boxes of albums and 45s, and whatever treasures Coxsone had recently acquired at auction, waiting to be shipped to Jamaica to be sold. Coxsone loved auctions, and often spent Sundays attending them. I could usually tell if he’d scored something of interest, as it would appear at the front of the shop, waiting to be packed and shipped to Jamaica.

Over the years I worked for him, the piles of junk grew higher and higher as more and more work was done in the control room. If he had recently been to an auction, there would hardly be enough room to get into the studio and set up the amp and mic. Coxsone always insisted on miking the amp with an old Neumann (which he used on everything). He was open to different mic techniques, many of which I would try depending on the patience of whoever was engineering, but he disliked the sound of the guitar going direct. He also insisted on putting guitar on nearly every track he recorded. (Bless him!) Without it, he said, a tune sounded like a demo and not a finished record.

The show was very different each time, although a few of the space-themed songs, including “Space Is The Place,” generally turned up in the set. One set was entirely Fletcher Henderson arrangements, played straight except for some of the solos. Another set was a forty-five minute two chord vamp that ended with John Gilmore, (the band’s legendary tenor sax player who showed Trane a few things) and Sun Ra, arm in arm, dancing and singing “God Bless The Child” together (including the bridge) and somehow making it fit over the two (very odd) chords. At another show, Sun Ra announced upon entry that “Anyone who doesn’t want to travel to Jupiter should leave the room now.” Nobody did. I don’t know where we went, but it was far from Telegraph Avenue.

Sun Ra had a set of very old keyboards out of which he conjured the most unique sounds ever while leading the band, and MCing the show with an otherworldly charm. Their books of arrangements were enormous, the largest I’ve ever seen. Each one was easily the size of two phone books stuck together, and ragged charts hung out of the sides. Most of the musicians played three or four instruments, many of which I had never seen before, in addition to their regular ones. Some sets, Gilmore wouldn’t even touch his sax, playing a second drum set along with the regular drummer.

When the space permitted, they set up projectors and ran slides and home movies, consisting of scenes from countries they had visited, African and space themes, and whatever other visuals might complement the show. These were projected on the walls and ceilings while they played. Even for 1974 it was very low-tech, and they didn’t need any help visually, but there was something very moving about the juxtaposition of the slide show and the music. You could see why they went to the trouble.

They also sold self-produced albums at the shows, the first band I ever saw do this. I still have them. Their stage uniforms looked like they were made from curtains by somebody’s mother, but they wore different ones each night, with complementary skullcaps. Sometimes local players augmented the band, though there was a a core of about fourteen that were always there. The locals all wore the uniforms too!

The non-musical highlight was talking with John Gilmore at the Keystone Corner between sets. I was very nervous about even approaching such a legend but he could not have been kinder. He took me and my questions completely seriously. It was the first time I had ever talked with a true musical master, and his presence and manner were as inspiring and affecting as his music. I had never met a musician so dedicated to the pursuit of excellence; he was almost monk-like in his demeanor, very different from my rock and blues heroes. He had very deep eyes that had seen much, about which I suspect he chose to say little. John spoke slowly, deliberately, and seriously.deeply affecting. I asked him some questions about the harmonies he was using in his solos, and he said that they collected scales and other musical ideas in their travels and worked them into the music. asked him how much they rehearsed and he said, with a look that was half exhaustion and half pride, “ALL the time.”I talked with some of the other musicians later, at other shows, but none of them struck me the same way John Gilmore had.

A couple of years later, I took a jazz history course at the University of Hartford taught by the late, great Jackie McLean. Jackie was usually polite when discussing other musicians, but he had very definite, hard-won opinions. It was always clear when he didn’t have much use for something. We were all in awe of him, and with good reason. One day, with some nervousness, I asked him in class what he thought about Sun Ra’s music, and his reply surprised us. “I came up with Sonny Rollins and Bud Powell and we all knew and learned from Bird and then I played with Miles and Mingus and had my own groups. Sun Ra’s band is the only other group I would ever even consider playing in now, if he asked me. That’s the only gig I can think of now where I would really learn something.”

It was a remarkable thing for a young musician to witness for an extended period: a big-band sized group of musicians touring and doing something absolutely unique as well as it could be done with total commitment and no possibility of any reward beyond the music itself. Sun Ra and his Arkestra, by their very existence, threw down the gauntlet. “You think you’re serious about music? We’ll see if you know what serious means. This is serious. We’re walking around here with these albums and uniforms that we made and these gigs that we set up ourselves because we’re not waiting for anybody else to do what we all know needs to be done.”

After a long period of not listening much to Sun Ra, I saw the band a year or two before his passing, and it was still great, but they were relatively much more successful and the DIY charm of the period I saw was no longer. In a peculiar turn of events, my son Liam was born the day Sun Ra left us for the spaceways forever, May 30, 1993. I’m not sure what to make of this.

Of course, the next question I got was, “How do you calculate your age in reggae years?” I had never thought about it before, but it was an excellent question. So I reverse engineered Facebook’s calculations and came up with the result.

Here’s the formula. The year you started working in reggae is your reggae birth year. The current calendar year minus your reggae birth year equals your bass age. (This assumes that a) you are still working in reggae and b) that you have worked continuously in the field; no extensive detours into other idioms like gospel or R&B.)

Now multiply your bass age by the Alms House Coefficient or AHC of 2.027027. (The AHC represents the difference between the amount of aging that takes place in a year in reggae versus the amount of aging that takes place in a non-reggae year.) The product of the bass age and the AHC is your reggae adjusted correction (RAC) in years. Now add your RAC to your bass age; the sum of the two is your age in reggae years.

For the math-challenged­, here’s an example: You are currently 40 years old according to your driver’s license. You started playing reggae professionally at 25. So your bass age is 15 (40-25). Multiply 15 x the AHC of 2.027027. This gives you a RAC of 30.4. Now add your bass age to the RAC (25 + 30.4) to get your age in reggae years. Congratulations­! Thanks to the magic in the music, you’re now 55.4 years old! Praises!

“Overrated? I don’t think so. The Beatles had two of the greatest popular songwriters of the twentieth century. They had two of the greatest rock singers of the twentieth century. Their third best songwriter and lead vocalist would have been the primary songwriter in 95% of the other bands working the same idiom at the same time. Their singing was almost perfectly in tune (except for Ringo) in an era when you got it live or didn’t get it at all. Their harmonies were spot-on, unique, and imaginative.

Their quality control, particularly in view of how much they recorded, and how busy they were on the road in the first four years of their career was stupendous. It’s hard to find an original Beatles song of less than B quality, and in my opinion 75% of their stuff was A- or better. Their artistic evolution was unparalleled. The writing went from “Love Me Do” to “Yesterday” in four years. Name another band that achieved a comparable amount of growth in a comparable amount of time.

Not only were the Beatles great studio players, three out of four of them also were influential stylists on their instruments (though admittedly not virtuosos). The only group of their era that topped them in this regard was Booker T and the MGs with four. (As much as I love the MGs, they don’t come close to the Beatles in any other regard.) In the two-hundred plus tracks the Beatles recorded, you can’t find one where the tempo is shaky, or varies more than a couple of BPM between the start and the end of the tune. There is not one gratuitous note in their basic tracks. Their playing was as economical and efficient as that of any of the great studio bands of the era.

In the eight years of their career, they not only sold more records than anybody else, they were an enormous influence culturally, they revolutionized record production, and they revolutionized the music business. Before the Beatles, groups that had no definite front person, wrote their own music, and played their own instruments were unheard of. After the Beatles, their model became the standard. After their breakup, each member continued to have significant, sometimes massive success under their own name for as long as they chose to do so.

You may not enjoy their music. But no other group in rock history did so many things so well and so regularly with that level of artistic and commercial consistency and success for that long.”

Please note that I don’t listen to the Beatles much myself, though before I was a musician I was an enormous fan. I can’t even play very many of their songs without a chart. But I call ‘em as I see ‘em, and this is how I see it.

An Open Letter To Those Who Preach On The Subway

You know who you are. Please read this before you attempt to save me again. I am sure I am not the only one on the train who does not appreciate being awakened from a nap by your loud, illiterate preaching. Many of us in the outer boroughs work multiple jobs, and/or are going to school. Sometimes the only sleep or study time we can manage is on the train. That nap you thoughtlessly interrupted is the only thing that may keep me from crashing the car on my way home from my gig or session tonight.

The teenager next to me who is studying for her chemistry final can’t really concentrate either. Your voice is really loud and annoying, even to me, who has a dip in the middle of my hearing chart that looks like the Grand Canyon. Anybody with normal hearing must be in agony. You’re killing her. Maybe she’ll get a scholarship if she does well on the test. You’re not helping.

And the single mom with three kids that she’s trying to keep from sliding off the bench while you’re yelling? I bet she’s not really interested. Not right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if she goes to church already. And if you haven’t noticed, the little girl in her lap is really frightened. Watch how she’s staring at you. She thinks there’s going to be a fight. What do you really think you’re accomplishing?

Now I may not look like one or act like one. (Opinions differ.) But I was raised as a Christian. I attended St. Albans Episcopal Church every Sunday for sixteen years, unless I was deathly ill. My mother taught Sunday school there. I sang in the choir. I played tenor banjo in the youth group. My parents took me along when they went to church committee meetings. I even helped my father, a fine amateur carpenter, build shelves and a movable podium for the services downstairs.

Of course I read the Bible cover to cover at least once a year. There was a time when I could name all the books in the Bible, in order. I used to read through the hymnal and try to figure out the chord changes. I sight read and sang all the lower parts, not just the lead part.

I read the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Over and over. There was nothing else to read. I even read all the rubrics in the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer. You know the teeny fine print in the back of the book that nobody reads? Those are the rubrics. I read them. More than once I’m not even sure that seminary students have to read those. Why? I’m a compulsive reader and I was bored out of my skull. (Our minister was a fine person but not a compelling public speaker.) I could even quote you a couple.

But perhaps, Mr. Subway Preacher, that doesn’t impress you. Maybe you think that the Episcopal Church of my childhood is not the real deal. Your church is more exciting and vibrant, possessed by the power of the Holy Spirit! Your ministers yell, and your church music has drums, six string bass, electric guitar, and modern synthesizers, big amplifiers and a loud PA system, right inside!

I’ll grant you that where you worship is probably a lot livelier than St. Albans. The Christian church three blocks from my house has an excellent band, a cranking PA, and soulful preaching. I’d actually consider going in there occasionally if I hadn’t been accused by one of the parishioners of being a spy for the Devil when I stopped to watch the band rehearse for a few minutes one night on my way home from the gym.

Well, I know something about this kind of church too. It might surprise you to know that when I was in Jamaica, I lived for several years in a house that had a Pentecostal Holiness church in the garage. My landlady was the minister. It wasn’t a big house, even though there were twenty-two people living in it. I couldn’t have avoided contact with your religion short of soundproofing my room, sealing the windows, and wearing shooter’s headphones.

It was nothing like St. Albans. There were services several nights a week and, of course, long ones on Sunday. Candles were lit in order to achieve various specific goals. The Books of the Maccabees were consulted. (I know because I bought them for my landlady at her request when I was on tour. I got some pretty funny looks in Customs.)

People preached, sang loudly, and talked in tongues. Old women crippled with arthritis were possessed by the spirit and danced like young girls. I heard and saw all this for myself. On Easter, the singing and drumming and praise went from noon until midnight.

One day I came home from the studio and hundreds of church officials from all over Jamaica, in amazing and beautiful outfits, were gathered in the yard in my landlady’s honor as she was ordained (I think as a bishop, I can’t remember for certain). They were a wondrous sight in their purple and white robes, seated in row after row of rented chairs. It was quite a party, and yes, there was food.

Apart from prolonged exposure to two very different Christian denominations, I have had other incidental contacts with people who believe as you do. I have made several gospel records, and performed, in church and out, with gospel singers. One of my best friends in the world is a devout and extremely well-informed, studious Christian, and we spent many nights on the road staying up until dawn discussing Christianity, religion in general, and ethics. He’s a serious guy. He walked away from a wonderful career in secular music because he felt it was in conflict with his beliefs. Are you that serious?

I also work with very devout and observant Christians every day. So, Mr. (or Ms.) Subway Preacher, I am quite familiar with both the seminal texts of your religion and a number of manifestations of it in practice. And do you know what? Just about everybody who’s ever engaged me in a serious discussion about it, no matter what their background or denomination, was smarter, better informed about the subject, and more articulate than you are. (Which, based on your painfully loud monologue I endured tonight on the way home, is not saying much.) You’re not exposing me to anything new, or even restating the old in a compelling way.

And if there was any chance on this earth that your preaching would lead me to the light, where these other people could not, IT WILL NOT HAPPEN IF YOU WAKE ME UP OUT OF A DEAD SLEEP. I am not a morning person. I will not be receptive. In fact, even if I agreed with you, I’d be furious. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d straighten out some of the things you say that I know are incorrect.

P.S. When you asked us for contributions at the end of your “sermon,” that was really lame. You’re bringing me the good news because your cup runneth over with blessings and you can’t keep it to yourself? And then you want me to put money in your cup? I know Christians can be broke just like anybody else. And people give money in church. But that’s because they already believe, and they are there voluntarily. I didn’t listen to you voluntarily. The opposite, in fact.

I usually give money to people when they ask respectfully. Even if it’s a con, the fact that they’re trying to con me means they have bigger problems than I do. Plus, if J—- is coming back, as you say he is, he’s probably coming back first as a beggar, or a homeless person. He’d want to check people out and get a feel for the state of our spiritual evolution before he pulls the plug on anything grandiose like the stuff in Revelations. That’s the way he’s rolled in the past.

I may not be a believer, but I’m not above playing the odds. I’d hate to see the Don Dada in his golden chariot on Judgement Day and go, “ZOMG! That’s the dude that I blew off on White Plains Road when he asked me for subway fare! He’s looking right at me! Boy, that was a mistake.” So I usually give. But not today. I’ll take my chances that you don’t have anything to do with the Second Coming.

In closing, please note that I don’t stand up in subway cars and harangue you, or anyone else about my politics. (Though I guarantee it would be more interesting than what we endured today.) Please allow me the same courtesy when it comes to your religion. If you have to preach, do it on the platform or in the station. I won’t be any more impressed with you, but at least I’m already awake. Thank you.

The Real Question

The dogs bark
The caravan moves on
And we are the caravan.

We did our little molecules.
Develop pockets of expertise.
Database the feedback.

Breaking down the silos.
Helping peeping into the living aspect.
How can we add value to the table?

Sandy is flight pilot for the labs.
I think there are blends going on.
The bigger picture is to get through these meetings.

How does this operationalize?
We just want to get unconstipated.

Wellness is something that we want to do.
How do we database it?
What can we do to capture some of these greatest hits?

The real question is: what are we, and where are we going now?

Mitt Romney has no prayer in twenty twelve
His plans for higher office he must shelve
His Etch-A-Sketch positions won’t go far
He lies like hosing dog mess off his car
His managed care returns back to haunt his life
His hazing prep school days have caused him strife
His wife for one shows peasants no rapport
His hound as well will not provide support
His right wing thinks that he’s a total fraud
The undecided vote is under-awed
Unlike the POTUS, B. Hussein Obama
Mitt’s speeches have no, fun, finesse, or drama
There’s just one hope for this entitled jerk
That no one will remember Bush’s work!

There are four different ways to get distortion.

• You can introduce the distortion before you get to the amp input (with a fuzz box, amp simulator, or anything that adds an extra gain stage and level control in the circuit).
• You can introduce the distortion by overloading the preamp circuit (the little tubes). This is how early master volume circuits like the Mesa/Boogie worked. They simply took a two channel Fender amp and ran the output of one preamp stage into the input of the next stage.
• You can overwork the power tubes (this is what you do when you turn a one-tube amp like a Champ up all the way).
• Or you can overwork the speaker.

For completeness, I must also add that if you are recording or miking the amp, you can also introduce distortion in that process (the guitars on “Revolution” were recorded direct into the board and the channel outputs were cascaded; it was a tube board which is a lot more forgiving). There are also lots of excellent sounding amp simulation plugins. I use them myself a lot in the studio. But this won’t help you for live applications unless you want to bring your laptop to the gig and patch it into your rig. There are people who do this, but they usually have road crews and large budgets. I don’t recommend it; there are too many things that can go wrong.

Each of these types of distortion has a characteristic sound, with pluses and minuses. A distortion pedal allows you to dial in a good clean sound on the amp and modify it for solos, but often the solo sound isn’t as convincing as the clean sound. Preamp distortion often sounds overly compressed (think Larry Carlton seventies session stuff, a great sound but not a lot of dynamic range). Power tube distortion often sounds the best, but it generally involves running the amp up at least 3/4 of the way, depending on the circuit, and with a big amp that gets LOUD. And speaker distortion risks frying the speakers. Also, with power amp and speaker distortion, the bass strings can get floppy.

Probably some combination of the various types of distortion will give you what you want. To control distortion from the guitar’s volume knob effectively, at least one gain stage, and probably two, have to be distorting when the guitar is up all the way.

First, get the speaker up off the floor so that it’s out of the equation. Put it on a chair or small table so it decouples from the floor. (The floor can add bass and be very deceptive when trying to figure out how the amp works.) Start with your guitar’s tone control up al the way and your volume pot at around seven. If there are two inputs, plug into both of them in turn and start with the louder one if there is a difference. If there’s a bright switch, turn it on. Pick a bit lighter than normal. Then set the amp with modest settings on your tone controls (all on 5) and gradually turn up the amp until it distorts noticeably on your lowest note.

Do you like how it sounds? If so, now experiment with your guitar volume and see where it cleans up to the extent you want it to. Now use the amp tone controls to EQ your clean tone to where you want it, and you’re done. (They have much less effect at higher volumes.) Turn it back up to your solo volume. If the lowest note is woofy, roll off some bass, then check your clean setting again. Go back and forth until you find a medium you like.

If you don’t like the sound, analyze the problem. If you are basically happy with the tone you’re getting but it’s too loud, you need to cut the efficiency of the power tubes.

The first thing I would try is running the amp with a mismatched impedance, if you have that option. For example, if you have an 8 ohm speaker, use the 4 ohm speaker output. This will make the amp operate less efficiently and will also change how it responds to the speaker. You’ll have to turn it up louder to get the same amount of volume so the power tubes will have to work harder. (Larry Carlton used to do this back in the day.) You will wear out the tubes a bit faster, but as long as the differential is within a factor of 2 it’s not a big deal. However, the speaker resistance should always be equal to or greater than the amp’s output impedance. A 4 ohm amp into an 8 ohm speaker is fine. (I do this all the time with my 1962 Bassman.) An 8 ohm amp into a 4 ohm speaker is not a good idea for the speaker. A 4 ohm amp into a 16 amp speaker will work, but maybe not for long depending on how overbuilt it is. Old Fenders can take a surprising amount of electrical abuse both at the input and the output stages, but I can’t promise the same for newer ones, or any other model for that matter.

The next option is to pull two of the power tubes. Yes, you can do this! On a Fender style four tube amp, pull out the two middle ones. (Use gloves and be careful, they get hot.) This cuts your power by half and also induces an impedance mismatch, so it’s a more radical effect than just an impedance mismatch. If you don’t like how it sounds put them back in. I would call a tech first though to make sure that this will work with your particular amp. There are a LOT of circuit designs out there these days, not like 30 years ago.

To overload the preamp section in a non-master volume control amp, you will need to introduce a gain stage in front of it. This can either be a distortion/fuzz box or simply any preamp that you can patch into the circuit. (People used to use Revox tape recorders back in the day, among other things. The preamp circuit sounded great for guitar.) Tube preamps are particularly good, but anything that boosts your signal can work.

You can turn most distortion boxes into more or less clean boosts by turning the volume all the way up and the gain almost all the way down. Turn down your amp volume and, with your guitar volume on about 8, turn the gain/distortion/preamp up until the amp distorts. Now bring your amp volume up. It will be a lot louder! Hopefully you will like what this does to the sound. If it’s much too loud try either the impedance mismatch or removing the tubes to tame it.

If the sound is close, start playing with the amp eq to tailor it a bit. Remember in most tube amps the tone controls are passive, meaning that they are “flat” (no guitar amp is flat) when turned up all the way. So when you turn up the treble, you are actually letting the treble the amp is generating actually pass through to the output stage, for example.

Another thing you can try with a passive EQ is to turn all the tone controls down all the way. With a Fender style circuit you will get either no volume or very little. Then turn up the amp to, say 8. Now, GRADUALLY turn the EQ up a number at a time until you start getting the volume you want, balancing the tone as you do. I don’t like how this sounds but some people swear by it.

What you are trying to do with all this fiddling is get to a place where the power amp and preamp are both working pretty hard, to the point of overload. At that point, a number or two on your guitar’s volume control will make a lot of difference in the amount of distortion you hear. Note also that most guitar volume controls are tapered so that most of the volume increase happens between 7 and 10. If you tweak your amp so it’s clean at 4 or 5, a small adjustment will get you into distorto world. But it will also give you a big volume boost more often than not.

With master volume amps (any amp with two volume controls on the same channel), with your guitar at around 7 or 8 set the first volume control up to the point of distortion with the master down to maybe 3 or 4. Then turn up the master volume to the volume you want. Now when you turn your guitar down it should clean up nicely.

Here are a couple of further thoughts. First of all, not all distortion boxes are created equal! My old yellow Boss one lets lots of articulation through. My Tube Screamers, less so. But I like their midrange peak because I play clean Fenders a lot and they work well for the two or three solos I take a night in that setting. I wouldn’t use one as my main distortion sound for a rock gig. I just got a Carl Martin one that does an amazing, just about amp-proof Marshall simulation into the most characterless amps you can imagine, and it has a clean boost too.

What I do on rock and blues gigs is to either bring my weird 100 watt Marshall combo (which defaults to distortion even at low volumes) or, for smaller rooms, I bring a couple of small amps that break up well and patch them together with my stereo chorus or echo. I have an Ampeg Gemini I which sounds absolutely amazing and works just as you describe without any additional gear needed, but isn’t loud enough to get over a strong drummer, as well as an Epiphone Valve Jr. that does a great AC 30 imitation at a quarter of the volume.

With two small amps you can also run stereo effects if you like that sort of thing. The disadvantages are that they aren’t necessarily any lighter and it’s really hard to carry two amps on a train. You might want to look into the Fender Blues Jr. amps, which are quite loud for their size and very portable, especially if you are being miked up.

Any old Silvertone amp will break up nicely. They used to be very affordable before that horrible Jack White drove up the price by getting popular. Look around for off-brand old tube amps of any description, not just guitar amps. Look for old PA heads too. Some of them are super cheap and built with very similar circuits to guitar amps.

If you ever come into some money, look into the Dr. Z amps. They do what you describe very well, aren’t unbearably expensive for a boutique amp, and hold up on the road. The new Vox AC-15 with Celestions sounds great too, though I don’t think it will travel as well without a good road case.

Playing slide well is a combination of three things: being able to hear the note and how close you are to it, the muscle memory to get close to the note without hearing it, and the ability to adjust when you miss.

Remember that NOBODY on an unfretted instrument plays totally in tune all the time. Not Heifetz. Not Casals. Nobody. The trick is to develop good muscle memory and quick ears so that you adjust quickly enough so that the listener can’t hear when you miss.

I find that slide is best played with fingers (either with finger picks or bare fingers) rather than a flat pick, as you can use the fingers to damp the unused strings. Start with resting the little finger on the high E, the ring on the B, and so on. The thumb covers the low A and E. Dedicate a right hand finger to each string, and damp with the fingers that aren’t in use. It takes a while to get the hang of this but you will have very clean results. If you need to play fast quickly before you master this, alternate your thumb and first finger, using your palm to damp.

I put the slide on my little finger so as to be able to fret with the others. You may find that you have more control with your ring finger. Bonnie Raitt uses her middle finger. Try them all and see what works for you.

It’s a good idea to have a guitar set up for slide if you own more than one. That way you can raise the strings enough so the slide doesn’t rattle or fret out. I also recommend at least an .012 set for slide, and you should consider a wound third and heavier strings.

Tunings for slide are a whole other world, but apart from standard tuning you should experiment with at least open D (DADF#AD, low to high) and open G (DGDGBD, low to high). It’s a gross oversimplification, but open D sounds like Elmore James or Duane Allman and open G sounds like Keith Richards or Robert Johnson. The big difference is that in open G the third is on the top two strings while in open D the third is between the fourth and the third. In standard tuning the third is between the third and second string, so learning an open tuning means that the chord forms you know either don’t work, or produce a chord you don’t expect. It didn’t take me that long to find most of them in open tuning though.

Here are a bunch of slide exercises for any tuning.

Hit an open string, for example the low E, and let it ring. Then slowly slide up or down to an E on any other string and listen to the beat frequencies as you bring the note in tune with the open string. Take your time and try to relax your left arm.

Then do the same thing with fifths, fourths, thirds, etc. Spend a lot of time with each interval, hearing what it sounds like against an open string. Check your work often by fretting a note, then sliding to it.

If you have a good tuner, play plugged into the tuner, and observe what happens as you gradually bring the note in tune. Then go to another note without looking at the tuner and see how far off you are.

Then try the same thing in different keys, moving the drone chromatically up the neck. A loop or delay pedal is good for this. You can loop your drone note in any key and play all the intervals against it.

Then try going for specific intervals starting from each note of the chromatic scale. (Do each of these exercises on one string. If you can do it on one string, it translates to all.) Start on, say, F. Then hit an F an octave higher and go back down, both sounding the slide between the notes and muting it. Then go from F to E. Then F to Eb, etc. Then reverse the process.

Do NOT do these exercises fast. Do them slowly and listen and correct yourself. Train yourself not to get angry when you miss, but adjust.

After you’re sick of this stuff, play a simple tune with a diatonic melody. I like “Amazing Grace” or “Silent Night.” But pick one you really like, because you are going to play it OVER and OVER again until it glistens. Play it on one string first. Then two, then on however many strings you like. Play it in every register on the guitar, starting on every string.

Now experiment with the articulation. Play every note separately, as if they were fretted. You want to be able to simulate fretted playing with the slide, as the contrast will be much more effective when you start adding the articulations. Then start connecting the notes, sliding into them from above and below, and so on. Play the tune very slowly and LISTEN to the effect of the glissandos.

Once you can nail diatonic tunes, work on a standard such as “All The Things You Are” that has a simple melody and moves through a number of keys.

If you like blues or country slide, experiment with sliding up to just under the third, fifth, and flat seventh. Slide is about the infinite number of pitches between two points on a string. (So is string bending.) Try to find as many of them as you can, and observe how they make you feel emotionally.

Once you can play a standard in tune, start copying female singers note for note, inflection for inflection. Try to match their vibrato. How fast is it? How wide is it? Does it start at the beginning of the note or come in after the pitch is established? Slowing this stuff down can be really instructive.

Dionne Warwick is a good one to start with; classic phrasing, great pitch and time, without a lot of extraneous flash. But pick one or two you really like. The more melismatic singers like Patti LaBelle or Aretha are for more advanced study if you want to go down this path. I spent two weeks with an Aretha Franklin greatest hits tape once and it was one of the best things I ever did. You should do this with your regular string bending also.

Remember that tempered tuning is not the same as the intervals generated from the overtone series of a vibrating string. Learn to hear both, so that you can play “in tune” with a keyboard or a tuner, or “in tune” with your vibrating strings and harmonics. Thirds in particular are slightly different in each case.

To develop your vibrato, start slow, with quarter notes on the metronome. Move up and down equally distant from the center pitch. Then systematically speed it up a few beats at a time. Like delay, vibrato is very effective if it has a rhythmic relationship to the beat. Don’t be wedded to this concept but be aware of what you can do with it.

Once you have all this together, if you want a real challenge, you can start learning things like bebop heads or Bach cello suites on slide. Hours and hours of family fun! But no matter how far you get, do basic intonation work (intervals sounding against a reference pitch) at least fifteen minutes a day. In my experience, intonation, vibrato, and sight reading are the musical skills that deteriorate fastest if you don’t practice them consistently.

This should keep you busy for a while!

My Disorganized Religion