Finished putting the "California" pre-amp into my SUB UBass. Everything fit just fine, even if (unlike in the California) I have to unplug the LiPo to recharge it. That built-in tuner makes it so much nicer to keep it in tune (those floppy Pahoehoe strings stretch constantly.)
I'm still thinking of a set of metal-wound strings but for now...
Went to Guitar Center and purchased.....a guitar. I checked out the ukuleles but I feel I really need guitar sounds for the pieces I've been thinking about. Dawdled a while over a guitarlele but the thing is...they aren't good at being ukes and they aren't good at being guitars. It is an interesting instrument with unique potential, but the final thing that decided me is that it has nylon strings on top and steel-wound below. Meaning most of the uke strums don't work right.
Probably because they get so many people getting a guitar for their kid, Guitar Center has a wide selection of kid-sized guitars, at mostly starter prices. What grabbed me was a used Yamaha 3/4 steel-string folk guitar. Not as deep or rich as a full-sized guitar but a sweet tone that reached out and grabbed me. I dithered for a while over a 3/4 dreadnaught with much better low end, but when I tried a little picking on that one I found the upper strings had an unpleasant boxy sound. So the JR2TBS it was.
I've been avoiding guitar because I already went through uke chords and I was afraid of how many frets you'd have to remember with six strings to work with. Turns out -- since the top three are identical tuning anyhow -- the uke chords more-or-less work. Guitars (I say this as a uke player) cheat. Many of the standard chords don't even bother to fret half the strings, and just say "please don't hit these ones on your strum."
However. I'd forgotten the reason I'd also shied from 3/4 scale instruments, preferring to go the uke route; those strings are way close together. So fretting is both easier and harder than I expected.
But I still like the tone.
I re-discovered a performer on YouTube who is probably who first put the idea in my head of going one-man band. He performs all the parts for his game and movie theme covers. With some surprising fidelity...he went out and got, for instance, udu drum, steel pan, vibra-slap. And a set of horns in black to suit the look of his James Bond theme cover.
And that last was quite informative. I could see the P-bone label clearly; that's a hundred-dollar plastic trombone. And the violin looks suspiciously like a Cecilio. So, yeah, the advanced students and the actual gigging musicians can claim, fairly, that cheap instruments sound cheap, he's getting the sound he needs out of them.
Similar note for technique. I was looking to see if he was doing arm vibrato on the violin (that's a mark of someone who has more than one year behind them) but when a camera angle came around to show his arm properly...I couldn't believe how far his wrist was collapsed. So, yeah, the spotty articulation and tone issues I was hearing are there.
I'm not saying he's a poor player. Like I said, the finished effect is great. But he is underlining something I've said before about how a skilled musician knows how to get a musical result from poor chops...or a poor instrument. Because he's playing to his strengths and arranging to the musical assets he has and those arrangements are great.
So, yeah, I've looked up additional brass and winds (and one of my major objections is I'd have to buy a whole batch more practice mutes) but what I'm going to do instead is experiment with electronic modification. Starting with octave shifting. I may want to record as many parts as I can acoustically, but I'm not silly. I fixed timing and pitch issues on the "Khajit" piece and I'll gladly do the same again.
Biggest issue I'm looking at right now is a place to record the louder parts. I'm not sure doing it at work is going to fly...
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