College kept us apart most of the year, so we mostly played in the summers, and every June we could look forward to the annual tradition of trying to remember the old tunes while adding a few more to our repertoire. And, every year, our tastes would change, so we’d throw one or two songs out of the mix as we brought in the new ones. For the better part of a decade we only had 15 songs, but by the end we were only playing 2 of the songs we had written during our first year together. Back when we were all 17 or 18. Man, time flies.

While a lot of these elements may have kept us from being as prolific as we should have been, it did do one thing – it made us really good at playing with each other.  We knew one another so well we could changes songs on a dime, extend and twist sections beyond recognition and create a synergy that the crowd really fed off of.  I think we had lots of fun playing with each other and that feeling was infectious – people came to watch us because we looked like we were having fun.  The music hardly mattered.

We’re playing together again, for the first time in four years, this Sunday at the Someday Lounge.   We managed to get everyone together for two rehearsals over the past couple weeks – also the first time in four years we’ve all been in the same room, let alone playing music together – and the energy’s still there.  I think it’s a going to be special.

Do you live in Portland, OR?

Come down and see us on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 @ 7pm @ The Someday Lounge.  There’s a $5 cover.

I’ve played guitar for most of my life and somewhere along the way I developed a taste for really thick, really expensive guitar picks.  Now, really expensive is relative – $10 is not a lot of money, but $10 for a single guitar pick probably seems ludicrous to some people.  Regardless, I couldn’t help myself.  Once I found Wegen and Dugain I stopped using those ordinary 25-cent picks you can find at the corner music store. The extremely heavy gauges (~3.0mm-5.0mm) and beveled tips make every note sound rounder and fuller to my ears and just seem to compliment my bizarro, pseudo self-taught style.

What Prompted This Project

Still, the mightiest of plectrum love affairs can never topple my thrifty tendencies coupled with my love for projects, so I decided to find a way to make my own. Using acrylic, laser cutters, a lot of sand paper and some trial and error, I eventually came up with picks that were more than just an adequate replacement – I actually prefer my own picks over the ones I was buying for $10 a pop before!  I loved them so much I decided to use them for the first installment of my Weekend Project Project and start a little side business selling them online.

The Result: Roma Guitar Picks

If you like custom guitar picks or just like to look at pretty, artsy-crafty things, you should check out Roma Picks. I used acrylic because it’s cheap, lightweight and produces a remarkably warm and musical sound. I chose the material mostly on a hunch that that’s the same material used for Wegen picks. Whether or not it is, I’m sticking with it because it works very nicely.

The website is dead simple and mostly a gateway to my Etsy store at the moment, but I think it will be a fun side project to have in my life. I only have six picks up at the moment, but I have many more waiting in the wings as well as some creative design ideas and interesting materials I can’t wait to try out.

Promotional Stunt!

As a promotional stunt, I’m going to offer to send a free, random pick to the first 3 guitarists who contact me. Just put “Free Random Pick” in the subject line and send an email to contact [at] romapicks [dot] com with your mailing address.  The free picks have been given out!  Thanks!

Weekend Project Result

Success. I built the site, started accounts on Etsy and Twitter, scanned some photos of the picks and did some very basic promotional stuff (Stumbleupon is great for quick traffic boost) and now my project is out there in the real world.

RomaPicks.com

The nature of these endeavors varies wildly, from art projects to tiny side businesses I’ve thought about but never taken the time to get off the ground properly.  Regardless, the idea is every Friday I choose one of my neglected projects and focus on it exclusively for the rest of the weekend.  It may not have to sparkle and sing, but by Sunday night or Monday morning, I have to try and get it to a state where I can say it’s done; that it no longer exists solely as an idea; that it lives as something slightly beyond proof-of-concept and delves into the realm of an acted-upon concept.

So, without further ado, I’ll present the result from last week’s installment of the Weekend Project Project in my next post…