Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

Again, Jason Nocera sent me one of his wonderful comic strips with our two guitar buddies, Buddy and Hopkins. I started to look forward for his strips every week now.

And remember to visit Buddy and Hopkins online store

This is funny, if you consider we have a band here in Romania called Free beer…

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Some time ago I have decided to post here guest posts from other fellow guitar bloggers, hoping this will bring something now to the table, different from what I usually write about. So, this being said, today I will post here an article of Anton Emery, the Community Manager of http://www.RhythmStrummer.com. This site offers easy guitar lessons in a fun & patient atmosphere, taught by teachers who care. Students learn songs & technique lessons across a variety of genres, including Folk, Country, and Classic Rock- all with NO advertising.

Anton sent me today an article about an overview of different tonewoods for acoustic guitar and I am happy to post it here today, hoping we would all learn something from it. Enjoy and comment!

To the beginner buying an acoustic guitar can be an over whelming decision. They come in a myriad of body shapes, all with different specifications and woods. How are you supposed to know what makes one better than the other? In this article we will look at some of the various tone woods that acoustic guitars are made of, and how they impact the sound.

First off I want to say that tone is a very subjective. The words and images I use to describe tone may be different than the ones you use. So while these kinds of articles are good as a guide, there is no substitute for your own experiences and using your own ears. Go out and play a bunch of guitars and be your own judge in the end.

Acoustic guitars generally use one type of wood for the top, and another type of wood for the back and sides. Occasionally you may see one type of wood for the back, and another for the sides, but usually they are the same.

Top Woods

Spruce is by far the most common top wood. It comes in many varieties including Sitka, Englemann, and Adirondack, to name a few. It is a sturdy, stable wood with a high strength to weight ratio, well suited for guitar tops.

Sitka spruce is a good all around wood, being to stand up to heavy strumming and picking, but on the right guitar also being responsive enough for a light fingerstyle player. Of course a lot of this is dependent on how the guitar is built and braced. Sitka spruce has a very loud strong tone, with a decent amount of sustain. I feel as a top wood it tends to emphasize the fundamentals more than the overtones, but there is enough there to keep the sound interesting.

Engelmann spruce is lighter in weight and less stiff than sitka. It responds well to a lighter attack, resulting in a more immediate sound, and one more lush with overtones than the other varieties of spruce. Folks say that Engelmann does not hold up as well to heavy strumming. I can’t verify this, I only know I have really enjoyed the Engelmann topped that I have played fingerstyle. I have a pretty light attack, so they seem to suit me quite well.

Appalachian or red spruce was widely used before World War II. A lot of the great pre war Martin guitars are topped with red spruce. Then the wood was over harvested and folks began switching over to sitka. Red spruce is a fairly heavy and stiff wood. It has good volume, a lot of dynamic range, and generally favors the fundamentals though also includes a good amount of overtones in the sound. Red spruce is generally very expensive as guitar top, and usually only available as an upgrade.

Besides spruce, cedar is another fairly common top wood seen on acoustic guitars. It is much softer than spruce, and more prone to nicks and dings. The appealing thing about cedar is it sounds rich and played in from the start. It responds very well to a light attack, and is a popular top wood among fingerstyle guitar players. Cedar top with rosewood back and sides will make for a very rich and deep sounding guitar right from the start. If you want a lot of clarity and note separation this may not be the ideal top wood for you. Some folks say cedar does not hold up that well to vigorous strumming or a harder attack, and that the sound breaks up or gets muddy. I can’t verify this for myself.

Irish guitarist John Doyle plays a cedar topped Lowden and he is quite a rocking player.

Another topwood you will see sometimes is Redwood. It is said to be the best of both worlds, combining the sensitivity and richness of cedar with the durability and volume of spruce. Folks I know who have redwood topped guitars rave about them, so definitely worth checking out.

Back and Side woods

One of the most common side woods is Rosewood. It has a lot of, richness, volume, and sustain that many players find very appealing. Indian rosewood is the most common and available choice these days. Brazillian Rosewood is another option, though it is a very expensive upgrade. It is illegal to import Brazillian Rosewood logs now, so most of the supply that guitar builders have is from before the ban, making it very limited and desirable.

The other common back and side wood is Mahogany. It is lighter and less dense than rosewood. In my opinion mahogany is kind of under valued as a guitar wood, with folks usually opting for the richer sounding rosewood. Obviously this depends on the sound you want and playing style, but mahogany is a very fine back and side wood. It will have a drier, more fundamental sound than rosewood, with good clarity and note separation. Paired with either a spruce or cedar top a guitar with mahogany back and sides will be a good recording instrument, with a clear fundamental sound easily captured by the mics. Often rich sounding rosewood guitars are great sounding to the player and an audience, but can be harder to record.

Maple is another wood you will sometimes see for the back and sides. It has a very bright and penetrating sound, but paired with the right wood can make for a great sounding guitar.

Other woods you will sometimes see for the back and sides are cocobolo, ebony, Honduran rosewood, and zirocote. These are less common, probably more seen on higher end instruments. They all have a very rich sound, with some people comparing them to brazillian rosewood. Ebony in particular is very dense, and will make for a heavy guitar.

Hopefully that sheds some light on the various guitar woods and will give you some ideas of what to look for when shopping around. Depending on what price range you are looking in, you may not run into all these options, but they are good to know about. And above all else, let your ears be the final judge, not what folks say on the internet.

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I bet you all love cartoons! I know I love them; I love cartoons and comic strips! Yeah!
And we all love guitar music…
So what can be cooler than a comic strip about…playing the guitar?Maybe a comic strip about playing blues?!!

Well, to make a long story short, I give you Jason Nocera, a professional cartoonist who does a blues/music themed comic strip called Buddy and Hopkins!

He owns a site where he publish niche cartoons, http://www.nichecartoons.com, a very cool idea to enter the market, if you ask me, I would never have thought about it, really.

He was more than kind to allow me to publish his work here, so you can all enjoy it.

Today I give you the first one, more to come in the next weekends.

Jason also owns a store on cafepress.com, so for funny music T-Shirts, bumper stickers and mugs visit The Buddy and Hopkins Online Store at http://www.cafepress.com/bluestshirts

Enjoy and comment!

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I was thinking about something that bothers me since my first day on stage:

Can you ever watch/listen your own concerts fully happy with the result?

I mean, every time I watch one of our own shows there’s something bothering me: look, I sucked on backing vocals here, I sound like a choked goat, fuck! Or damn, the sound was horrible, or I don’t know, like, one time it happened that Costin, the lead singer in my band jump right to the chorus when he wasn’t supposed to. We ALL looked at him asking ourselves WTF happened?!!

It happened that I(cheers: yeaaahh!) entered earlier with the solo (stupid me!) and none of us realized that…After the damn solo, the math of the song told us to go on with the lyrics while Costin, the lead singer, knew that after the solo comes the chorus. So he entered that…

OK, but that’s something that happens once in a while, a very rare while, I hope it never happen again on stage. And the fact is that nobody in the crowd realized that, it was one of our own songs, the lead singer realized at one moment something was definitively wrong and he improvised something so we could all stand proud at the end of the show. Nothing happened!Ih!

But the main idea was not to speak about the moments we/you screw up, but about the normal shows that you watch on tape later on. Is there any perfect show there?!

1) Can you happily watch your shows saying well, yeah, that’s one heck of a show right there!!!

And 2) because I started the parallel thread here: what’s the worst screw up on stage you’ve ever experienced?

I will start here by telling you about a contest we were part of somewhere around 1999 I guess, we were playing this song here, “Doar tu” is called (translation:Only you), the song has some breaks here and there and at one moment, the drummer started on the wrong hand, I mean he started half a measure later or God knows what happened, because after that moment we played that song half measure earlier than our drummer who only realized something was wrong when we all finished the song and he kept on playing…

We were close to killing him for that at that moment. The fact is that the next year, in the same formula we won the second place in this national contest, with this song here, the song brought us a contract  so we didn’t actually suck, generally speaking, right? Don’t get that impression, OK?

So, here’s the song, in an acoustic version, no drums or bass, but you get the point.

So, now, honestly speaking, what was the worst moment you have experienced on stage!?

Come on! Amaze me!

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It’s a shitty weather in Romania these days, it’s raining, there’s no sign of sun, I barely woke up this morning, I feel like going back to sleep.

So, naturally, I am in a mood for listening some acoustic guitar…Or Gary Moore. Or both…
So here it is Still got the blues, Gary Moore, on acoustic guitar

And The prophet

Or Samba pa ti, Santana?

So, how’s the weather where you live in terms of music you listen?

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I was telling you a few months ago about one of the most famous and loved bands in Romania, Iris, and about the lead singer, Cristi Minculescu, the most emblematic rock icon in Romania, that needed a liver transplant. His wife was the donor.

Now he is OK, last night he came back on stage in a concert that a lot of fans waited without actually knowing if it will take place or not…Last night it happened.

So I can only say: Welcome back, Cristi and Iris! Welcome back, for good!

Here’s a song of last night, Lost dream it is called, the main idea of the song is that “we all leave like a lost dream”.

On the back screen, images with Mercury, Cobain, Michael Jackson, John Bonham, John Lennon and a few Romanian artists we all loved here very much, that left this world much too soon. You can watch people hailing when their images appear on screen.

PS: in 1996 when they released this song, I was there in the crowd at the official album release concert. What a great time I had!

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Yesterday I posted that article about an analysis of Single ladies, the song of Beyonce and I posted here that video I found on YT of a 2 people band singing it.

I realized I liked that version so much that I listened it about 10 times I guess since yesterday so I decided to go on and explore a bit more, to find out who are these guys playing there.

So I went to their YouTube channel and I discovered a very interesting band, Pomplamoose, with a very interesting music. I say interesting because it is somehow a bit outside what I do. I kind of only know the “band” way of making music. You know, take a guy with a good voice, throw in a guitar, a bass, some drums and maybe a keyboard and hit play. Whatever.

These guys are what I could call a project. A very interesting project that I really enjoyed. I have already told you I liked their version of Single ladies more than the one of Beyonce, it’s fresher, makes me think of a great holiday morning without the obligation of doing anything, you know the high school or college holiday mornings. Yeah! That’s it!

Pomplamoose reminds me of college, I guess also because the way they are dressed and the way they act. However, I love the way they record their music and make clips out of it. Again, it’s fresh!

So here’s another song, September by Earth, wind and fire, a cool cover IMO.

By the way, you can find their music on iTunes and you can download their music from MySpace.

Now, enjoy and comment!

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Today I have found a great article (and I would dare to say a great blog, but I didn’t yet have time to explore it more, but I will), an article discussing a pop-dance melody, Beyonce’s Single ladies.

What, no guitars?! No rock or blues?

No, but I dare you read further and then read the original article!

OK, I must admit I didn’t know the song, I am not spending my time on MTV since a good while and I rather listen radio channels that broadcast music that has some kind of guitar on it. Whatever. Also, my perception of dance, rnb music is somehow simplistic, not much happening there, that’s my call. And I don’t like the music of Beyonce too much. A matter of taste, I guess.

Now, reading this article made me listen the damn song 3 times already. I don’t like it, and honestly I don’t give a damn because this is not the reason I listened it.

The reason is the article of this guy who broke the song into pieces and made an in depth analysis of the whole song from a melodic, harmonic and rhythmic point of view. Conclusions are pretty wild, I didn’t even know you could hide so much under the skin of a pop song.

Read the article here and then come back to comment and let me know what’s your take on that!

Also, I reached that article after listening this song on YouTube. What do you know, I like this version better, I guess it’s more creative IMO.

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The manager of U2’s 2009-2010 World Tour, said the tour is not yet profitable, after 3 months from starting it and 33 concerts. OK…and why is that?

They have this strange looking scene, called The Claw. The Claw costs 470.000 pounds per day, no matter if they play or not!! Plus they have about 200 trucks for the tour. So far, seems that the tour cost is 45.000.000 Euro! Damn, that’s an expensive tour, I guess, I can’t quite figure out these numbers, they are a bit over my capability of perception!

The tour is scheduled to end on 2010. Now you do the math to see how much will they pay until the end of the year for that damn stage.

Now, question: if such a stage is so profitable, don’t you think I should buy one myself and just rent it to U2 or Metallica or to whoever wanna take it? Don’t you think that’s one profitable business?!

By the way, if it costs 470.000 pounds per day, how much could it be to buy it?

Damn business math!

PS: I just figured out why it is named The Claw, cause it gathers the money so easily and it never let them go…I guess

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I am not yet decided if I should be amazed or just used with Mr Vai being amazing…

So I just post this here and let you judge it. If you dare.

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