GEAR DATABASE

Well this is a bit different! We attended Thomann Gear University during May 2018 and bumped into a lot of friends old and new. One of our dear chums is Mary Spender – find her on YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/MarySpender – and among her many talents is her wonderful singing. So Dan and I decided to take a TPS-sized wrecking ball to that and ask her to sing with us!
What follows is more or less exactly as it happened, in the spirit of trying to get you to sing. Even if you’ve been telling yourself you can’t, you can.
Singing is great for the soul and it’ll make your life better, especially when you do it with other people. Sure, you absolutely will feel silly at first and you might not exactly be Aretha Franklin in the pipes department, but put some time into it and you’ll be amazed what you can achieve. If nothing else, it will really help your guitar playing too.
Now, importantly, this is purely designed to whet your singing whistle. We'd highly recommend hitting up a specialist site or channel if you're getting into singing for the first time – there are lots out there!

So as we say, slightly off the beaten track for us, but, erm, we were in Germany. And some other things. There is much more to come from our time at TGU over coming weeks.

MASSIVE thanks to the good people of Thomann who put this whole event on. And of course to Mary for being a good sport. Check out the various #TGU18 hashtags on social media and Thomann’s own YouTube channel for much more stuff.
Enjoy the episode!


Pedals in this episode…
There are no pedals in this episode, but there are acoustic guitars and an teeny-tiny acoustic bass…
• Gibson J-45 Vintage 2018
• Martin D-18
• Ortega Lizzy Bass. We think. Going into the Morgan, possibly.


Interesting bits and go-to sections…
- Intro playing and singing: 00:17
- What are we doing & why? 2:00
- I like that bass! 2:30
- Singing gets you gigs: 3:00
- How does really basic harmony work? 3:29
- Gadzooks! Doe, a dear. Really?! 3:42
- The major scale: 4:48
- Three notes – major and minor triad: 9:05
- Working out Jolene. A few cringes, but we kinda get there. Ish: 10:02
- Worts and all because it’s what you have to do!:16:41
- Charles & Eddie. What?! 18:15