Bright antenna bristle with the energy

Many moons ago, I was a bass player. To be blunt, I was pretty lousy - strictly a root-fifth kinda player, but I enjoyed it. I had a couple of roommates who were a decent guitarist and a passable singer, respectively, and we would jam together once in a while.

The main reason I played bass was the same reason as 90% of all the bass players in the world - I was never a very good guitarist. Seriously, go see some local bands (you don't do that enough anyway) and talk to the bass players - almost all of them began as guitarists, but started "filling in" on bass as a necessity. Sure, there's the occasional guy who grew up obsessed with Geddy Lee or Jaco Pastorius, but those guys are weird and usually wind up composing sci-fi rock operas in their parents' basements. See, guitarists & singers are a dime a dozen. Drummers are pretty common, but are frequently replaced due to their tendency to drink all your beer & sleep with your girlfriend (but they're the ones with a van & a rehearsal space, so it's a fair trade). There is always a shortage of bass players, because nobody's that into it. I mean, really, if you were an average kid growing up in the suburban wasteland of America, did you wanna be Eric Clapton or Jack Bruce? Jimi Hendrix or Noel Redding? Eddie Van Halen or Michael Anthony? I rest my case. Nobody likes the bass player. That's okay, though, I looked at it as job security.

My favorite part was the gear - I had a beautiful Ibanez bass, as well as several others. I had an insanely large Trace Elliot amplifier rig that I got for a song when the company was sold off. And oh, the stompboxes. I had dozens of 'em. Everything from your everyday Boss & DOD effects to vintage Electro-Harmonix boxes and outrageously expensive pedals from boutique manufacturers. I had to build a massive pedalboard with a custom wiring system to hold 'em all. I would run a synth through a ring-mod through a flanger and just get the trippiest space-rock noises ever.

After getting out of school and suddenly finding myself with a job and a car and a mortgage, I didn't have much time to play and was pretty much perpetually broke. One day I was sitting in my home office, paying bills and generally lamenting my lack of funds, and my eyes wandered over to my gear. Thousands of dollars' worth, just sitting there, gathering dust. So I slowly sold all of it off via eBay, and that was that.

What's the point of all this? Well, as I've mentioned, I recently bought a new Mac. It came with the requisite (and handy) iLife apps, including iDVD and iPhoto, but the kicker was a relatively new addition: GarageBand. I opened it up and played with it a little. I like to edit together vacation videos & family photos into movies to give as stocking-stuffers, and initially I thought "This might be a cool way to add some simple background music". As I played with it a little more, I realized: I could actually do something with this, music-wise. Sure, it's not ProTools or Logic, but it's a surprisingly feature-rich program for home recording, considering it's free. It's light-years ahead of the little 4-track PortaStudios I used to play around with. And just like that, I was back into it. I bought a simple USB keyboard to use as a MIDI controller, but that wasn't enough - soon I was dusting off my old mics and heading to eBay to bid on some basic mixers and cables. My town is blessed (or cursed) with both Sam Ash and Guitar Center retail locations, and it wasn't long before I was headed their way (during a freak snowstorm, no less) - I needed a guitar. I am consciously trying to restrain my budget, so I bought the cheapest Strat they had in stock. I could practically feel my wallet itching at the effects counter, but I settled on the least expensive multi-effects pedal I could find. Weird, because I was always an analog snob before when it came to effects. I have started tearing my home office apart in order to dig out everything I'll be using, and to re-wire the computers to do what I need. It'll probably be awhile before I have anything I'm ready to share with the world, but someday I hope to post some stuff here. I will post some pictures of my "home studio" setup as soon as it's in order. The bad news is, the big Guitar Show is coming to town in a month - Lord help me...