Bivouacking The Guitar Army

Electric guitar technology has certainly advanced in many ways since the days when Leo Fender and Roland's VG-99 Virtual Guitar system, which debuted in October. Streeting at about $1200 and packed with 200 presets, the best of which are truly stunning, this is the culmination of a guitar modeling system that Roland has been crafting since the mid-1990s.

To make full use of the VG-99, you'll also need a guitar with a Roland-compatible hexaphonic pickup and 13-pin cable, such as those made by Godin, or Fender's Roland-Ready Stratocaster, which I used to test the unit. Like the predecessor VG-88, it's also possible to plug an electric guitar with a conventional quarter-inch jack into the VG-99. However with that configuration, most of the more extreme modeling patches won't trigger, but it's a great way to make use of a trusty old Les Paul, Tele or any other non-hex-equipped electric guitar, and it does drive the basic amp sounds.

There are dozens of stunning presets in the VG-99, ranging from bluesy Les Paul tones, to 12-string guitars, to an assortment of DADGAD-tuned instruments, to a pretty exact replica of Roland's GR-300 guitar synthesizer from the early 1980s. In other words, if you'd like some of the tones used by Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Robert Fripp or Pat Metheny, they're all here.

Bringing It All Back Home

In the 1980s, when home music recording consisted largely of four- and eight-track recorders, arranging was typically pretty simple: drum machine on track one, bass on track two, keys and rhythm guitar bounced down to track three and track four alternated between the vocal and lead guitar solo. Fade in, three minutes later, fade out.

As you can see by the above list of products--which merely scratch the surface of what's available--the amount of sounds available to the home recordist is near infinite. So it helps to have some basic arranging skills at your disposal.

That's where Rikky Rooksby's new book Arranging Songs can help. Rooksby, who has a near encyclopedic knowledge of American and British rock and pop music from the Beatles onward, explores a variety of arrangements on hit records, and diagrams what makes them work. He provides specific examples to experiment with, in terms of rhythm, song structure and instrumentation. (And Rooksby's earlier How To Write Songs On Guitar is still highly recommended to any guitarist looking to break his customary songwriting habits by exploring all sorts of chord changes. But then, so are all of the books on this list from a year and a half ago, to be honest.)

Any of these gifts would be more than welcome under the Christmas tree of most serious amateur or professional musicians--and unlike fruitcake or new socks, will get loads of use throughout the year.