fun video! thanks for sharing

(also super cool Strat!)

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Project: MAYHEM by Hypersonic Secret now available!

Last edited: Oct 17, 2022 07:59:29

Thank you for the tour.

Ray,

A young friend (i.e., about your age) told me his 9 year old daughter has not picked up a guitar since his family moved to a different house. I suggested that he show his daughter your videos. He enthusiastically agreed they should boost her interest.

Conrad

Insanitizers! http://www.insanitizers.com

Last edited: Oct 17, 2022 21:23:12

Squid wrote:

Excellent smiling throughout performance. Not many guitarists manage that. Technique shows high polish, congratulations. Lead guitar tone unusually sweet--what electronics did you use to achieve it?

Thanks, Squid! It took her (me too) like 6 months maybe to learn how to play the guitar and not wear a "studio face". hahaha! I hope her skills have improved. In terms of the tone, we use actually a Boss GT-1 processor and uwe the Shadows Apache tone downloaded from the Boss website, but she dialed down on the reverb a bit and use VOX as the pre-amp. I don't know what she did to mess with the gain setting but all I know is, we are cutting down on gain and have been using very little drive lately. Mina says she is switching to humbuckers these days when playing surf, so for this particular video, since she was using a strat, i remember she was using the middle pickup when recording it but the video showed bridge pickup on the selector.

About your 9 year old friend, in my opinion, little kids give up playing an music instrument quite readily. I formed a band for her with cool people she likes to hang out with and find gigs to play sort of to keep her interested.

Last edited: Oct 25, 2022 22:22:30

chiba wrote:

fun video! thanks for sharing

(also super cool Strat!)

Thank you, Chiba! The Strat is quite awesome. Quite versatile!

thank you all! we are glad you like it!

SixStringSurfer wrote:

Awesome video, very well done. That is by far my favorite Ventures concert. It's the one where Gerry is wearing a pink shirt, I have watched it many times. I do like the outdoor vibe, the filters were cool too.

This is not a criticism, just my own opinion. When you are actually playing live (not overdubbing a studio track), it is a lot harder to smile the entire time.

By the way, if you're in Macau, you're near all those casinos, right? It's like a Chinese version of Las Vegas! Keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing more videos.

Thank you!!! Am glad you like it! yes, that concert is one of our favorites too. I think it was in Japan in 90s perhaps? Some great guitar teachers these folks are (still), even after passing.

About the smile and playing live thing, hahaha! I hope it's ok but I agree and disagree at the same time. ;p It is not easy to smile and play at the same time I must say. But nothing is impossible. For adults, in my opinion, most choose not to smile when playing (McGee did once in a while, to give an old grin on his face) as looking serious and all seems more appropriate. But in the old old days when we started playing, it was too wierd to see Mina playing without smiling. So the challenge then was to try smiling while playing. It took I think 6 months for that to happen naturally (for both me and her); then it was almost not possible for us to stand and play. It took us 9 months; then it took us perhaps another 9 months to play while hanging the guitar low (not like Nokie, cos we wanted to look a but more contemporary). So it did take some time. To us, it really looked not as pleasant to see footages of a lovely kid playing with no smile, both live or in MVs, and not looking enjoyable and all. It'd be like one gives a speech in front all colleagues plus bosses, or a speaker giving a talk at a seminar, to share good information to others. He/she might say he feels happy and honored to be on stage, speaking to all of the guests, but if the face doesn't look happy, it's not easy to convince others, not to mention others might feel he/she is nervous, and he probably is nervous. That's why we thought it'd be a good idea to put some effort on the small things as well: smile, standing, and hanging the guitar low. It's true, dubbing and doing a cover would make it easier of course, but even playing live, it is still possible.

Yes, we are surrounded by casinos, some so huge you don't see the other side of the gaming floor. They helped the city rake in so much tax revenues (for over 100 years already), and we used to have like over 41mil visitors a year. But now, we are still waiting for the tourisits to come back as it has hurt the economy quite badly. to give you an idea, singapore had 330K international visitors last year.

We are already lucky as we have gotten all the guitars and rigs we needed. Many others are not as lucky, and could be struggling. We played last Sunday, then in March and May this year...most other shows have been cancelled or postponed because of the pandemic. In fact, we had a couple of cases this week, and all residents have to do the swab test...all 700,000 citizens. Borders are technically closed again.

So, will just jam and have fun and wait it out. ;-))

Hope you fellow members here and fellow surf lovers are doing well wherever you are. Surf on and good luck to you all! Will see when footages of our last gig will be ready. Of course we played surf music too, full band.