#fender hellcat

which means time for my Fender Hellcat. After trying out a lot of guitars I decided to buy this one a while ago. It is not very loud but it has a sound that suits my needs very well. It has skulls too...

I tried out various strings to get the best results and it took a while to find the right mic placement. I ended up with a ribbon mic pointing to the 12th fret of the guitar and a condenser mic above my right shoulder. The ribbon supplies a very full-bodied sound as expected. The condenser will give me an open-sounding addidtion to the ribbon  if I am heading for a little more presence.

I am quite satisfied with the results.

Some experiments during the session included the heavy use of a capo, different tunings (I often used DADGHD), and the infamous Nashville-tuning (the octave-strings of a 12-string set). In fact there is one track I used a DADGHD tuning with the octave strings and the capo on the 9th fret; kinda fake mandolin ;-)

So... I booked in to see my counsellor from a few years ago. (His name's Dominic Davies- London UK based... any gender variant people out there looking for counselling services, I'd thoroughly recommend him)

Anyway, this time round he felt it would be more beneficial for me to see someone who specialises in addiction and alcoholism, and I totally agree with him, as it's not his specified field. I have my first appointment with this specialist next Thursday.

I've been focusing a lot on my band and making new music, we have our first gig on the 28th which I'm stoked about... actually I've been pretty much obsessing over music in place of obsessing over staying sober. I invested about £150 on new records and merch from 'All Ages Records' (my fave CD shop ever in the world.) I think.

Bands I now love include:

Masshysteri (awesome Swedish punk-rock band)

La Plebe (classed as a 'mexican Dropkick Murphys- need I say more?)

Knugen Faller (Swedish power pop punk band, real fun, female lead vox)

Signal Lost (Female fronted punk band... very Pretty Girls Make Graves-esque)

Anyway, I also stopped by my favourite comic book store and found out they have just released some brand new TMNT comics!!! Naturally I purchased all of them.  Also had a tattoo consultation today to expand my chest piece with two sugar skulls. It's gonna incorporate a pro-create and pro-sobriety theme, I'm so fucking excited. 

It appears that staying sober is proving quite expensive... in place of going to bars and getting fucked, I'm going to shops and purchasing things I love instead. I guess it's a better and more productive way of spending money, especially on new music, I like to think of it as education y'know? I'm also getting a new acoustic in about 2 weeks time ^_^ it's a Tim Armstrong Fender Hellcat!

Keeping busy and staying relatively creative has become my main priority. I've got a dissertation to hand in by the end of April that I've been fucking about with ideas for, for over two months now. I've got a graphic novel I've been wanting to make for over a year that I plan to start in the next few weeks,(it's about a socially awkward horse- may be slightly autobiographical), I've got a relationship that I have neglected to nurture for the past few months with a person of whom I love dearly, I've got old friendships rekindling that I had kicked aside in the space of getting drunk.

Basically, I feel like I've got a lot of shit to focus on. The isolation I was initially faced with upon being sober is slowly dispersing. I am reminded of what's truley important and what real friendship feels like... and I'll tell you something, it's certainly not makeshift friends who wanna be by your side for one night per week and don't give a flying fuck about you unless you're in a shitty club getting wasted with them. 

Incidentally, my band is called THE M∆KESHIFTS.