These last days have been kind of slow for me. Slow, from the point of view of blogging, otherwise they have been crazy. We celebrated Easter (I am Christian Orthodox by religion, like probably 90% of the people here) and these last days me and my wife visited every possible relative because, of course, everybody was inviting and expecting us. Which is a wonderful thing, just that a bit demanding after a while…

And of course, the guys from the band asked their share, so, Costin, the lead singer, called to invite me to a barbecue at the rehearsal location (I don’t dare to call it room, cause it is not just a room, it is a building with a big yard). After 2 visits that day, I took my wife and my guitar and went to the rehearsal studio.

I can only tell you that I was part of the “team” handling the mixed grill (my wife says I still smell like smoke after taking like 4 baths) and Costin was part of the “team” handling the lamb cooked over the fire (which is way more difficult than cooking the mixed grill!). There was beer, music, food and a lot of fun! Everything was again organized under the same conditions as last time.

Everything ended up after a lot of playing the guitar, jamming and singing, around 1 o’clock AM, I think, when we decided that it was a busy day and we should all go home and take some rest. I know I needed it!

I have more stories to tell, but really, I find so little time to spend in front of my computer these days, but I will be back soon…

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Well, speaking about stage outfits…

I think this will do just fine, if you think about it, people came in for the music, right?

Or not…

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Looking again for some information on Roland GR33 guitar synthesizer, I found THIS THING, cause I have no idea how to call it. It is some kind of guitar-like instrument because it has a fretted neck and a guitar like “modus operandi”.

OK, actually it is called SynthAxe and it consists of a MIDI guitar like controller. Seems that SynthAxe was invented somewhere around 1984(?) by Bill Aitken.

If you ask yourself who would use such a thing, well, think again, my friends! And wonder! Al Di Meola had one, Allan Holdsworth had two such things!Yep! Two!

He must have had a nephew in love with guitars, I think it makes a great gift for birthdays. Look, buddy, I’ve got you a present! And it really plays! And I couldn’t resist the temptation and I’ve got one for myself too, now we could play together!! (Damn, here play has such an overloaded meaning!!!)

Here’s a video demonstration of how it actually sounds. I don’t know how playable it is, but I do appreciate the angle of the neck that gives me the impression that you can “operate” it better. Or should I say again PLAY better?

You like it? Or you have a nephew who would love such thing?

By the way, seems to cost around £10.000! Damn, an expensive gift!

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I’ve found via Dr J’s blog about a Seth Godin’s post, that I consider to be quite an interesting one. I used to read Seth Godin’s blog everyday some time ago, not that often lately, but still…

I will try to summarize here the main idea of Seth’s post, but in a guitar oriented way: what you do everyday helps you improve your playing or musical knowledge or is just “playing around”?

Personally I love to take my acoustic guitar and play a bit when I get home in the evening, it relaxes me, I think I am some kind of Einstein playing his violin in the evening. OK, I am not an Einstein, but I like the comparison…

So, when you pick your guitar, you just play whatever comes to your mind, or you play scales, try to work on some stubborn lick or just love the sound of your guitar? I know that this is heavily dependent on many things, that must be considered, like the mood, how tired you are,etc, and nobody says it’s wrong to play for relaxing in the evening, heck, I love to do that, so I couldn’t argue my own habits, you know…

But how about you? When you pick your guitar, do you practice or play?

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It is vital to have the right technique when playing the guitar, there is no doubt about it. The question is what can you actually do with that technique? Or what is the best thing to do with that technique? Shred?

From my personal observation, I can tell you that the lately I am more and more interested in artists who achieved a high level of technical skills BUT DO A LOT TO AVOID OVERUSING the techniques they master. And here I think about Joe Satriani and, the reason of this particular post, John Petrucci.

It is great to master the guitar like nobody else, but think of showing those skills everywhere, everyday, on all your songs. Think Malmsteen, for example. Doesn’t get boring for the audience after a while? OK, I know, people know you for something and comes to your shows for that particular something, so you need to give the people what the came for, right? Bread and games, or how was the ancient Roman habit(more familiar to European readers) for keeping people under control?

But I do love a great artist who is a master of his instrument who comes up on stage and shows that he is looking for something more than showing skills and techniques, showing he’s looking for soul, for expression, to touch the hearts of audience, even if this means breaking new grounds, which the audience may not be quite used to do in the context of that particular artist.

Actually, I think that the true power of expression can only appear after you have conquered everything you can regarding your skills, when you know every note on the guitar neck and every possibility of expression, then, and only then, you can choose those notes that make the most of your song.

That’s where the soul begins…where virtuosity ends…

What do you think?

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This morning, while driving to the office I was listening on the radio Aerosmith and Run DMC with Walk this way. I love this song and the guitar riff is one to always remember, in my opinion. Joe Perry is one creative guy, I won’t discuss this.

Just that when the song reached the solo, I asked myself the same thing I keep on asking each time I listen Aerosmith songs: does Joe Perry know his solos? Can he play the same solo twice? I asked myself this question when I listened Crying, Crazy and now Walk this way because his solos always seems improvised right the very moment he’s in the studio, recording.

I can imagine Aerosmith recording a new song: OK, guys, let’s go. Hey, Joe, did you have time to work on that guitar solo? Aaaa..uh…yeah, I tried like a couple of times…don’t worry, I’ll work it out there as I do all the time…

I realize that maybe this is the exact thing that makes his solos recognizable. Not necessarily the solos but his musical style, his way of feeling the music, but I could bet that he can’t remember the exact solos he played on the record.

The fact is that the structure of his guitar solos is not fixed, we don’t speak here about a short, fix form solo like let’s say, Bon Jovi, for ex.

However, the question still remains, does Joe Perry know his guitar solos or is he’s just working around a theme every time he faces the moment? It must be interesting to improvise over the same theme for over 30 years…

What do you think?

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That is right, I dare you again to guess the guitar player in the left image. Somehow looks like him today so there may be a great chance to guess right.

Well, what do you say?

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A few days ago, my wife asked me to tidy a bit my “office room”, where I keep my desk, computer, etc. Looking through the stuff there I have found a promotional brochure of Carvin guitars, brochure that I have received when testing a Carvin guitar some time ago. I was very happy about this so I sit and started to browse it.

I saw this guitar, I am not sure what was the exact model, but I found a similar one on the internet, for the sake of the example. I found it very strange that the guitar (of course, a Carvin model) had a Floyd Rose installed on it, but no lock on fret zero (see the picture).

I am used to the double locking tremolo to have both parts, the lock and the floating bridge, but this one had no lock! I ask myself how efficient could it be and what is the actual advantage of not installing that lock?

It is considered that a floating bridge gives a weaker sustain, while through body strings give the stronger sustain, thing that I don’t dare to argue cause it is obvious. But, as far as I know, and of course, can be considered an argument if you judge by the above example with through body strings, the thing that actually lowers the sustain is the floating bridge, right? Not the lock! Because it doesn’t have mass to resonate and sustain string vibration the same way through body strings have.

Then what’s the use of a Floyd Rose system without the lock?

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I was thinking these last days about a particular topic: guitar players that studied music with keyboard players. Here I think about two guys. Two, because nobody else comes to my mind at this point. I am thinking of Frank Gambale and Joe Satriani.

Frank Gambale is quite famous for his strange way (I would call it) of playing riffs. I know, he plays fusion jazz or whatever you want to call that music and to a metal head or at least to a rock addict or even to a blues guitar player, it may seem strange, because in all the above enumerated styles, patters are more obvious, while in fusion/jazz, well, not quite.

Do I make any sense so far? Judging by my standards, Frank Gambale, which I like, by the way, plays strange. At least to my ears and this is exactly what makes his music interesting.

I asked myself at one point why and how could he think of those patterns and lick. The answer came from himself: he studied music by listening to keyboard players! He said it, not me! This is a very interesting way of learning to play the guitar, don’t you think? When you study guitar music to play it on guitar, patterns are more likely to match your finger possibilities, you can easily stretch your fingers to reach those notes, because the original song is played that way, but when you try to match keyboard music on your guitar, man, I can only imagine how difficult should be to play the licks, because they are not designed for guitar!! They are designer for 10 fingers reaching notes in particular fixed positions.

I had a class mate who used to play piano since he was a child and I remember him saying about guitar that it is a strange instrument. Why? Because I can not imagine why you can find the same note in more than one place! On piano I always know where that note is, he said! Guitar is a very stupid instrument! Right!

Ok, we could use this to our advantage, right? When you can’t play a note in one position, you can always play it in an other position, there is the same note. It may have a different flavor depending where you play it and how, but it is the same note in the end.

Personally I have tried only once to play some piano music on guitar, OK, twice, and actually just a few arpeggios, because I liked how they sounded, but this can not be called playing the guitar by piano music. What can be called like this is Frank Gambale’s music. I can not tell if the way he sounds is only because of his piano music education or because his further education in fusion/jazz, but it does sound strange.

Also, if you have the curiosity to study his picking style, you will see he does it differently, he even has a guitar method oriented towards this, but that is an other story, not related to his piano music background, but does contribute a lot to the way he sounds.

On the other hand, when I listen to Satriani, if I wouldn’t have seen it on Wikipedia, I would have said he always studied guitar by listening to guitar, which is not true.

So, do you know other guitar players that studied music by listening to players of other instruments? Frankly I can not think of anybody else right now? How about you?

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I don’t think it has anything to do with music, but I think this might be the world record for right hand speed picking!

That reminds me of that joke with some guy stopping two police officers on the street asking them something in English, then in French, then in Spanish, then in German, without the policemen being able to understand anything. After they guy leaves angry at the two officers, one of them asks: Did you see how many foreign languages this guy knew?! Yes, answers the other one, but what was the use?!

So, does this have anything to do with music or not?

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