Archive for February, 2007

• Elixir Nanoweb Strings - incompatible with heavy picking?

  My main guitar these days is a Taylor “Big Baby”; it’s a 15/16 scale dreadnought with an enormous voice for its size. When I bought it, from the excellent World Guitars in Lapworth, it was strung with Elixir Nanoweb strings, and I’ve stuck with them ever since.
  Until now.
  For years I’ve been a rhythm guitarist and [...]

  February 27th, 2007

• Recording and dulcimer tab - Arglwydd Dyma Fi

  In recognition of St David’s day 2007, I had a go at recording a Welsh hymn tune on the dulcimer.
  I learned a couple of things from doing this - namely that even really thick double-glazing is no defence against boy-racers with noisy exhausts (clearly audible about two minutes in!) and also that when close-miking [...]

  February 25th, 2007

• National Concertina Band at Hawkwood College

  Thanks once again to the tireless organisation of Jenny Cox, this year’s meeting of the National Concertina Band was as always a wonderful way of spending a weekend. The sound of 30-odd concertinas playing parts together is at once a marvellous, sonorous, absurd, and joyful noise - and one that can almost certainly only be [...]

  February 3rd, 2007