Gig Wits

Develop your gig-wits! What I mean is be aware of your surroundings. Musicians are never given enough room – never given enough light – never given enough time to setup or tear-down – and always surrounded by hard edges and people who aren’t paying attention. These are the eternal and unchangeable facts of live music whether you’re gigging at Carneghie Deli or Carneghie Hall.

A few years back, a guy at a jam put a big crack in the side of one of my favorite guitars and I don’t even think he knew it. He was bouncing around like a pinball leaving carnage in his wake and I was just one bumper along the way. It caused me to think. So I started watching how musicians move. You know who my gig role model is? John Jorgenson. I’m sure he still gets a few dents, but the guy knows how to move on a stage. His equipment is perfectly set up and he knows his entrance and exit. When he has control of the show, that guy is on stage, jacked in and ready to go in seconds. Romane came to Djangofest a few years back and he was the same way. Every time I go to a concert now I can’t help but notice how the musicians move on stage. Sting, Paul McCartney, Wynton Marsalis, and Edgar Winter – all of them have rock-solid gig wits. You know why? Every single solitary one of these guys started at the bottom and worked their way up through thousands of gigs in every imaginable type of venue.

Call it professionalism, call it “payin dues”, call it what you want, but top professional musicians develop gig wits. So can you, and your guitar will thank you for it… and so will I, if you own one of mine.

Strings

Travel

Temperature

Relief

Action

If you can’t find a good bridge option, get some rosewood veneer and do a clean job of gluing it to the bottom of the bridge feet and then file things smooth and stain the feet. That’s what Francois did to 503 when he cleaned it up for the museum.

For best results, your action should be no lower than about 2.8 for the bass side and 2.3 on the treble side with relief of about 11/1000″ and no higher than about 3.0 on the bass side and 2.6mm on the treble side with about 14/1000″ relief. If you’re trying to set the guitar up higher or lower than this, then you either have a technique issue to solve or its an indication that you’re looking for a guitar with a different sound. Guys who spend a lot of time trying to set their instruments up too high or looking for the stiffest gypsy strings or thickest gypsy pick very often simply haven’t yet mastered the specific type of rest-stop picking (yes, it’s different than standard western rest-stop picking – it’s more similar to a Sitar or even Shamisen style picking, and the placement of the pick is critical too – the sweet spot for power and tone ranges between the back of the soundhole and the bridge. If you’re picking over the center of the soundhole, you’re too far forward.)

For people who find thick picks uncomfortable, try playing with a Dunlop Gator Grip 1.5mm (green) pick held backward, or a Wegen BigCity 1.8mm pick. Many pros play with these picks and they feel less cumbersome than a standard 3+mm gypsy pick while still responding well to good gypsy picking technique – though they’re perhaps just a touch scratchy for rhythm playing. My favorite pick is the Wegen BigCity 2.2mm which I find ideal for both lead and rhythm playing. If you play a 1.8 for a while and acclimate to it, you can then easily switch to the BigCity 2.2 with comfort. I’ve played hundreds of picks made from nearly everything and I’ve yet to find anything I prefer to a BC2.2 – and no – I don’t get a penny from Wegen to say that, nor did he introduce me to that pick. Stochelo Rosenberg did, and then a few months later I saw Michael Horowitz using one and decided to give them a try.

Intonation

Humidity