Jimmy Dillon and Acoustic Guitar Blues

Normally, I play acoustic guitar when I lead congregational singing with our team, but I’ve chosen to pull out my Telecaster for the first time, for a couple of reasons:

My mate who usually plays electric in our band is away We, have a new drummer & had been going accoustic /  sans-drums the past few months The songs which fit the text will sound good with electric I’ve been wanting to play it for a while, and the three reasons above were a good excuse

It’s been a really interesting experience (learning curve) to come back to electric guitar over the last 12 months or so. I had an electric guitar when I was in uni, but enjoyed a different kind of style back then: one which really just needed cranked distortion, primary barre chords and no other effects. I’m getting much better at using electric in , but the kind of sounds and textures you can create by layering tracks is very different from what you can do playing live. At our practice on Saturday, as I was attempting to play rhythm guitar, I struggled at times to get a sound which blended well with the rest of the band, but that wasn’t lost or the other extreme of being harsh, particularly when it came to using overdriven and distorted effects. What sounded good on its own, in my apartment, didn’t necessarily translate well to the mix of the whole band.

One problem was, perhaps, that I was using a DI amp simulator which I often use for recording at night (It was easier to carry on the tram!) but I think I will take my amp for (Bugera V5 tube amp).

I’m not alone in this. I went online to ask a few friends with more electric-worship experience, including my mate James, who was a far better punk-rocker than I ever was:

Anyhow.. as it happens James was about to write a post himself on! You should, as it’s really helpful (with, I confess, a very slight reservation on my part about some of the Jesus Culture theology behind #2 – but that’s something best talked out over a coffee or some other beverage 😉� ).

I’d just like to highlight one thing (#5) which applied to my predicament: