Paul Ille [dot] com

It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted a top of the line Martin.

(Their new building is made to imitate the look of their original factory just a mile or two away)

I can’t imagine any other guitar player who loves a good acoustic doesn’t feel the same way. As far as I’m concerned they make the best acoustic guitars hands down and the runner up has some catching up to do. Their guitars have a warmth in them that I haven’t heard elsewhere, but of course as with anything else that’s good in life, they come with a price tag.

(The walkway in is a guitar headstock! and their lobby [wish I could capture it in picture] is the continuation of this walkway as it’s in the shape of a guitar)

They have a line called the x-series that starts around $500, but those are really just budget acoustics IMO.

Martin DCX1E

If you want to jump into the start of the quality lines you’ll have to pay around $2,500. Their pricelist has several guitars priced out at $10,000 and even some, made of Brazillian Rosewood, that can cost as much as $100,000. Apparently this is due to the rarity of the wood. All I know is a 100k guitar should play by itself lol

Martin HD-28 Standard

I’ve been thinking about buying one of their backpacker guitars for my office at work One of the things I like about working from home is that I can spin 180 degrees in my chair, pick up my acoustic and play for a bit. I find it really rids me of any stress or fatigue.

Backpacker

Anyhow, the last time I was in the studio, Mozart gave me a heads up that their factory was just over the border in Nazareth, Pennsylvannia - about 1 1/2 hours away from here. I hadn’t even realized. He told me about how they give free tours and he and his son really liked going. With Jonathan recently starting to play guitar, I’ve had it on my mind for a while now. So, Sandy and I took off work today and planned a surprise road trip. 

We hung around for about an hour, played their guitars and checked out their gift shop until the tour started. They have a smallish room filled with their high end guitars in it that someone needs to unlock with a key to let you in. Not only are the acoustic guitars awesome, but the room itself had such a great sound that anything you played sounded like a million bucks. Jonathan was whipping out some Enter Sandman and Sweet Home Alabama. He’s impressing me with how quickly he’s picking up the guitar. I don’t think I picked it up nearly as fast. Then again I guess I didn’t have a Father who played.

When the tour started, they gave us headphones and a receiver so we could hear the guide and he took us and 9 others around the entire place. They had walkways all through the factory marked by yellow lines that you were asked not to step out of. We were able to see the entire process from start to finish of how they make their guitars and the level of detail and craftsmanship they put into them is really inspiring.

Here are some of the pictures I snapped on the tour.

(It’s amazing how much of the guitars are made by hand. They have machines in many areas such as benders, sprayers and polishers, but most of everything else is very manual. They even have an area where they make acoustics using the same methods they used back when they started in 1833.)

(Ah, the finished product.)

(Some last minute guitar detailing.)

(This is a massive guitar mock up they said they built for a parade float. Unfortunately it never got used so it sits there.)

(They have a really amazing and inspiring museum. It’s truly awesome to see craftsmen take such pride in the history of their work. So many people have not only used their guitars, but have had signature series designed for or by them.)

Our visit was something we’ll never forget and I highly recommend it even if you aren’t a guitar player. Being an American company started in 1833 coupled with the quality of their work and the history…I was really in awe most of the time. And it doesn’t cost a dime so how could you go wrong!

There is one side affect however. Don’t be surprised if you get back home and learn of your new love/hate relationship with your non-Martin acoustic. I’ve tried rubbing the side of my Yamaha and chanting “Be Martin, be Martin”, but it’s still a Yamaha. I was truly spoiled in that playing room they had.

Back on 9/18, the Friday before the wedding, I picked Jonathan up from school and snuck over to Mozart’s to record a couple songs I’ve had circling around my head. I still haven’t had time to mess with my own recording equipment so I figured I’d use his. It was Sandy’s birthday and I wanted to do something nice for her so I figured I’d surprise her. Tack on a couple candles and a cake and she was surprised and happy

The first song is based on a poem I posted a while back called Break with Trains. The second song I wrote for my new ball and chain

I have to admit I feel good about this post because it’s been a LONG time since I posted anything at all about music. An indication is a folder on my external hard drive called ‘My Music’. Until today’s new folder entry called ‘06-07-2009′, the last time I added anything there was in 2006. Yikes!!! Can that be possible???

Anyhow, over the past couple years I bought a new drum machine (Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-670) and a Gibson Les Paul. I also just recently bought a Blue Snowball USB Microphone which is impressive for the price and is great for quickly recording various inspirations that pop up (I recommend it). While the snowball fills a simple need, the rest of it has kinda sat by for lack of time and also the ability to tie them into something I can record with.

So I finally bit the bullet and bought an Alexis MultiMix8 USB 2.0 mixer. It will hopefully allow me to turn out some music by giving me the ability to easily link up all my equipment to my computer. This way I can use Adobe Audition (so far my favorite) to record and mix and such.

I’ll need a few more things as I go forward such as more microphones, a couple of effects pedals and a bass, but that will come in time (hey Santa! ). Anyways, I’ve only had time to do a ‘proof of concept’ equipment-learning type thang as I’m still learning how to use the mixer and drum machine, but I’m happy with the quality so far.

Here’s some pictures of my temp setup:

So here’s what I recorded in the wee hours this morning. “Be This Chance” is something I’ve been kicking around here and there for a while now. All I really have is a chorus though which is the main melody in this recording snippet. I just tossed a few solos around it off the top of my head to have content. I think I may develop this as as instrumental since I just can’t sing as high as the vocal would need to be.

Christmas is coming and I haven’t recorded any new Christmas songs so you’ll have to settle for last year’s recording. Enjoy!

Yesterday I dropped in at Mozart’s Studio again, but I really didn’t have much planned. I figured I’d put down a couple covers of Gavin songs. Enjoy

Yesterday I dropped in at Mozart’s Studio to record some things. I didn’t have much in way of originals except for a ton of unfinished bits and peices so I decided to just record a few covers of some of my favorite tunes. Enjoy

Since I don’t have anything new to post being that I haven’t gone into the studio lately I figured I’d reach back to the early 90’s when I was a teenager to post some things I converted over from tape. It’s a lot of fun for me to listen to these, but I’m not sure anyone else will enjoy them much lol. I’m only posting them for nastalgia reasons lol not for anything else.

These were recorded with a 4-track in my basement so the quality isn’t great. Not to mention the fact that most of these recordings were fairly lazy so above them being fairly poor in general there wasn’t much effort put into these songs. They aren’t even named.

I have tons more of these songs so enjoy

I stopped into Mozart’s Saturday morning to record a few songs. I did “Blackbird” by the Beatles and “I will follow you into the Dark” from Death Cab for Cutie and then a few originals that I wrote recently. As always it was a lot of fun and I hope to do it again soon. You can listen to the recordings below or in the player under Studio Set 02-11-06. Enjoy!

A good friend turned me onto this Karaoke site that I messed with for a while called www.ksolo.com It’s actually a really kewl idea. I thought I’d post one of the things I recorded Check it out!

Well, it seems that Trevor’s brother Garry liked the first attempt I made for his Australian backpacking type video and used it for his project without any changes. I have to ask him for a copy of the video so I can see how it turned out. Since he apparently liked what I gave him, he asked me to work on another project now which is a little more difficult and for a paying customer. The task is to take the older style theme song of an Australian tavern slash resturant slash sports club, called the Blacktown Workers Club and modernize it a bit for a video Garry will be making for them. I warn you it’s not spectacular to listen to lol…

…The song seems to be a copy of I’ve been working on the railroad but with different words. I guess that was the popular music for the time. At the present I suppose we do the same thing. Everyone seems to just sample music, talk over it and make G money yo.

Anywhos, I don’t think the job to make the video is secured yet and I’m also being asked to come up with how much to charge for doing the music when he gets the go ahead. That’s somewhat challenging for me to do since I’ve never been paid for music before and certainly not for music created for a video. I’ll probably just ask for a percentage so it’ll be fair for everyone involved.

Garry’s looking for two variations, one faster and rockin and another slower about half the speed. Unfortunately due to the fact that Bella partially ruined my trusty, most wonderful and magical old computer microphone things have been somewhat delayed. Also after replacing my sound card with the Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi, I’m not so happy with the sound I’m getting. It comes out a bit tinny for my liking. Maybe I’m not used to it.

So yesterday I went out and picked up a new computer mic, but I should’ve known not to get it since it’s an omni-directional mic so it picks up too much crap in the background. I need to pickup something more directional so it cuts down on the background noise a bit. Unfortunately CompUSA didn’t have much selection which is why I got it. You can see the one I got in the picture below.

So here’s my first attempt at the slower paced one. The recording isn’t so great, but it works for proof of concept. If this job goes forward I’ll do this recording in the studio. I have a feeling the rockin version will be more difficult to do. I wonder if I should pick up a guitar slide. I know I have one around here somewhere, but I can’t find the darn thing!

Paul Ille - Old Tin Shed Take 4