I was reading some blogs today and I just realized that out of those few blogs about guitars that I read everyday, 3 speak about pedals: GuitarToyBox, IGBlog and PickStroke. Or they just read each other too and they’ve got inspired by one’s post?

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In the beginning, when YouTube got popular, I couldn’t understand what is it all about. WTF is that? Why do people use this site? To just post their stupid videos about how they kick their cat? We all live in a world crowded with stupid people or what?!!

Then, after a while I figured it! I have understood how it can work FOR ME. I don’t watch idiots kicking their cats or drinking Cola while eating Mentos but I do watch videos and listen music that I can not find that easy otherwise. After realizing the potential as a worldwide music source, I have started to love YouTube and visit it everyday for listening one artist or an other.

Then I have found Pandora. Man, Pandora (www.pandora.com) kicked ass!! It was the smartest thing I could think of: “artificial intelligence” radio, profile learning skills and stuff, man, I have started a radio channel for power metal and in only one day I discovered about 2-3 bands that I didn’t know about! This was great!

Now, Pandora is closed for me, you know, I live outside USA and that makes me not a great listener or user of Pandora’s music (this is the reason for which I didn’t add a link back :-p ). Whatever, Pandora, I understand the reasons, don’t bother!

“We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.”

Now I have found Songza (Songza.com - the music search engine and internet jukebox) and seems to kick ass too, I wonder for how long? Seems to be a bit dizzy when it comes to recommending songs, I can’t understand what Kapabel & Inf has got to do with Steelheart. It may be “recommended” like in sponsored. Whatever…

An other nice thing, it is integrated with YouTube, I clicked on Watch video and guess what I have found!!! Steelheart, Can’t stop me loving you!!! One of my favorite songs (hair metal rules!)

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Did you ever happen that while soloing to reach a point where to feel a bit lost, asking yourself OK, now what?!! I don’t speak about stopping the solo, just that I found myself when jamming in situations that needed to be resolved in a fraction of a second and I had no damn clue about where to go next. What do you do then?!

I remember speaking to a friend of mine (and band colleague back then) about this, about 10 years ago. I came up with speed as my solution!! When you don’t know what to do, you fall into one of those speedy licks, that’s a solution all the time! Well, my band colleague, who was kind of a local legend among rock fans in my city and way more experienced than me, said that the solution (for him) is not the speed but pentatonic scales (and man, he was a shredder, and still is, but a classy one!).

Really?! Well, it took me a while to fall on to the same conclusion he found, that the pentatonic scale is a winner scale in (almost) all the situations no matter what you play. The fact is that I have found myself over time in hard/heavy soloing as in blues (doh!) or pop-rock solos and all the time a good old note extension in a pentatonic scale was just what the doctor ordered.

I have payed some thinking on why is that and I I got to the conclusion that this happens because of the specific melodic feeling of the pentatonic scale, plus the fact that it has a relatively low number of notes so it kind of falls right on all kind of chord progressions, plus that the scale is so friendly and easy to improvise in.

How about it, am I right or what? What’s your “escape”? Is it the speed? Arpeggios? Or just good old pentatonic scale?

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Somebody, would you please tell me who plays that song on the Flash promo of Guitar Instructor here?! (let the Flash intro play, don’t skip it, that’s where the song is)

I don’t know the song or the artist, but it is brilliant, I love the feeling, precision and bluesy/jazzy sound! Somebody, anybody, please…

Thank you!

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Note: This post is targeted to those young guitar players intimidated by the apparent complexity of playing the guitar.

As with everything in your life, playing the guitar is not an easy thing. I know that in the beginning, most of us look up to various guitar heroes, admiring them, maybe cherish them, even idolizing them. We all say that man, this guitar player is better than I will ever be!!!

Well, there is a big chance that you are right since that guy is probably a professional guitar player that works his guitar a lot each and every day, not being forced to go to work from 9 to 5 to earn a living so he has all the energy just to practice and learn.

But during my life as a person trying to learn one thing or an other, I have understood that as difficult as a particular action or process may seem, in order to master it, the most important thing you can do is to start learning it! I have a saying, I don’t even know if this is a real saying or I just made it up: even the longest path starts with a first step!

So, in order to master playing the guitar, first start learning it, even if it seems you have such a long way in front of you! After a while you will find yourself way in front of other guys that will look up to you saying wow, this guy plays the guitar pretty good! They will start asking YOU for help and tips on how to play the guitar, you will find that THEY will look up to YOU!

And all you did was actually to start and keep on playing the guitar! Remember that in order to become better and better you just need to play and study!

Of course, we can not deny that there are some gifted people that are somehow born for playing the guitar, who seem to have a great learning curve, long and agile fingers, great ear and great composition sense, those ones probably become icons that the whole world looks up and respect. This should never discourage you! This should motivate and inspire you, should give you reasons to study more and play more!

Also, you should keep in mind that playing the guitar is more than shredding and fast arpeggios. Guitar playing is feeling, tone, personal touch, style. All these can be discovered in the simplest songs.

Think of Eric Clapton and his nick name, “Slow hand”. I bet he didn’t get his name for being a shredder. Instead, he is one of the most giving guitar players in matter of feeling and personal touch. He puts his soul in each melody and this gives his playing a particular something that no shredder can achieve.

Think about this and make your first step, playing the guitar is not that hard as it sounds! All you need is start learning it, play from the heart and trust yourself, the rest will follow!

Now go on and play that guitar!

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Since a long time I am trying to make up my mind about the ideal electric guitar but, of course, there is no such thing.

The fact is that I don’t even have one single guitar that for me would be the ideal one. No, it depends on the mood I’m in.

Like for example, I love Ibanez guitars, reason for which I would love to own one, to be more precise, an Ibanez RGT320Q, this one below, which I consider absolutely beautiful! All those Satriani and Vai melodies I have listened made me an Ibanez fan forever…

Of course, because I can not make up my mind and I would also go for an Ibanez RGT220A…

They are both gorgeous, mean and at the same time fashionable, however they don’t manage to satisfy my need for a Fenderish sound, reason for which I would like to also have a Fender Standard Strat HSS Electric Guitar w/Floyd Rose Tremolo.

This is not usual at Fender guitars, but I do want one, because it is my dream, and I do have the right to dream whatever I want. So, beside the two Ibanez RGT guitars above, I would also love to have this one here. It is not a very expensive one, but it is the only model with double locking tremolo, beside Richie Sambora model. OK, that one works too!

I am not sure about the color, I think I would go for an other color, maybe a sunburst, i don’t know!

I would also want a Gibson for Gary Moore and Guns. I am not asking for much, just for a Les Paul. Of course! The reason would be the feeling this guitar gives me, the sustain and the particular tone that can not be copied by any other guitar.

And why not, I would want a Carvin guitar again for the feeling I had playing it and for the sparky-fenderish tone. This one here! With Floyd Rose, of course!

Now, am I asking for much? I don’t know, if I would add those few that I have enumerated here I guess they would cost about $8000, hmm…That is if I don’t go for Sambora signature model, which alone is about $3500 so…

Anyway, I think that I am not the only one unable to make up his mind about the ideal guitar. I think that each guitar player, depending on the mood feels like playing one guitar or an other.

So, what guitars would you love to own? Let’s start somewhere:

• Robert of buildingtheergonomicguitar.com
• Jon of GuitarNoize.com
• Ignatio of igblog
• GLW of Guitarz
• JP of Stratoblogster , somehow I think I know the answer to this one

Anybody else who would like to join?!

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Did you ever ask yourself when guitar tablature was first invented?

Well, I did, to be honest, because I thought that all this madness we face each day, with music industry hitting hard on guitar tablature sites was just something that is started cause the rock and roll era.

Honestly, I’ve thought that some uneducated guitar player, looking for a way to transmit some music but not being familiar with classical music notation, invented this easier way of writing music on string instruments, what we call today guitar tablature or simpler, guitar tabs.

Well, what do you know? I was totally wrong, seems that it was not some uneducated rock and roll guitar player who invented tablature but English lute players of the 15th century!

And seems that it was not the guitar tablature concept that became popular in the first place, but lute and all fretted, string instruments. However, I was right on the second part: these lute players were looking for an easier way of transmitting their music.

When keyboard instruments and orchestral music became more and more popular, the interest in this popular music notation was not that high anymore but came back in the last century, with the ever growing popularity of electric guitars.

As Wikipedia says, tablature may be used for:

“guitar, bass, lute, archlute, theorbo, angélique, mandora, gallichon, and vihuela, but in principle it can be used for any fretted instrument, including ukulele, mandolin, banjo, and viola da gamba, as well as many free reed aerophones such as the harmonica”

but it was the rock music and guitar playing what brought it back to life! Rock on, people!! We rule!

I thought it would be interesting to point that out since it is good to know that the world didn’t start and will not end with us!

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I know I have seen a lot of ugly album covers, there are a lot of posts around for this kind of stuff. But, hey! Could these 3 be like THE WORST 3 ALBUM COVERS IN THE HISTORY OF ROCK, EVER?!!

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While visiting a forum today, I have seen this question as a thread there: who’s better, Metallica or ACDC!

Well, I remembered when we were kids and asked ourselves who’d win, Van Damme or Schwarzenegger. Stupid kids!

How could Metallica and ACDC compare? The inner value of music is so complex that you can not put two bands aside and say that one is better than the other one. It is not about Metallica and ACDC, any two bands could have been there, the story remains.

What would you compare? The speed of the guitar player or the drummer? How high the lead singer screams? The value of the compositions? How about the sound they have? Or the image, or the money?!

Why not the feeling that they start on those who listen? How about the joy in the hearts of all those teenagers all around the world who grew old keeping the joy in their hearts? How about the feeling of flying above every living thing when you hear your favorite ballad while holding your girl at a concert?

How about it?

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Reading Dr J’s blog this morning, I have found and interesting article about bloopers in famous songs and really it made my day! Of course, as the article says (and how right the author is), the mistakes were probably left there for giving a note of realism to the song.

I think that this is indeed, a good way to do this. Usually artists are seen as stars, people out of reach, perfect people, but they are just humans. Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Sting, they are all people.

I remember that while in high school I loved Nirvana unplugged concert. Do you know what really attached me to that recording? May sound stupid, but it was that mistake that Cobain makes on The man who sold the world, when while soloing he misses a note, sounds flat and…they let it there on the album.

I loved that part, it was so true, uncovered, real! I remember that while playing this song we were even playing that mistake and used to laugh about it. That was the “human touch” of that album. OK, beside the fact that acoustic albums were the hip things of the time, music back to people, less complicated music, etc.

The fact is that mistakes happen. I know I had some also. Like for example, after recording a fast-drummed punk-like song, while home listening the song, something was bothering me without knowing exactly what it was. So I played the song on and on and I discovered that among all those fast drum hits it was one that was off-timing. My colleagues made fun of me, come on, let it go, there is no such thing. It was, and back in the studio for an other session, we expanded the drum track (midi drums) and indeed, we have found a drum hit not being where should have been. Fixed!

Also, for a pop-rock song, we had some chorus background voices entering on the 4th verse of the song. Split vocals, that is. By mistake, the mixing engineer moved one part of the split vocals on the 3rd verse so instead of having split vocals on the 4th verse, we ended up with a voice singing on the 3rd verse and an other one on the 4th verse. Well, I can only say we let it like this cause it really gave a more “human” feeling to the song.

Things like this happen and if you have ever recorded anything, than I guess you have your share of “bloopers” too.

Now, for the funny part, one that really makes me laugh is (or at least I consider it to be a “blooper”) of a very famous band in Romania, Iris, band that I really love and respect.

They used to play heavy/hard for 15 years gaining an undisputed fame here, switching to a bit more commercial music (still rock), these days. They have now 30 years in music business and going strong.

So, they recorded this song, cover of Bad company, Feel Like Making Love. If you listen the last part of the song, the lead singer, instead of feel like making love to you says can’t you see I’m making love to you?!!!

It sounds funny to me due to the meaning of it. Don’t bother me, girl!Can’t you see I’m making love to you?!!

I have listened the original song to see if there is the same thing there, well, it isn’t. I just think the lead singer missed it when recording and let it like this.

Is it a blooper or not? What do you think?

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