A discussion today with one of my friends and long time guitar buddy made me remember a story that I have forgotten. Or at least I thought it is forgotten…

During my high school period, I went camping with a couple of friends somewhere in the neighborhood of a village. We spent there a couple of nights around the fire. I used to have long hair and of course, my acoustic guitar with me.

When we wanted to return to the city, we realized we missed the bus to get us home and the next one was leaving the second morning, so we had to spend one more night there. So we decided to spend the night in the bus station and play the guitar.

We met these 2 young ladies, sisters, that were living there, they saw us playing the guitar and they joined us in the bus station; they played and singed very well and we had a great time there. One of them told us that her boyfriend also plays the guitar and sings. Well…

During that night they sang a few songs, that I don’t remember, except one because of 2 particular reasons: the girl playing the guitar and and singing lead used a very interesting combination , going from D chord to Dm and still keeping the G key and damn, it sounded so beautiful. The second reason was a verse something like “God only has clothes for beautiful girls”.

The next morning we left and we never saw these girls again.

3-4 years later?

I was in the university this time, still wearing long hair, still playing the guitar, this time in a real band, hard rock. Of course, the night life was great, we had parties all the time, mostly in the university buildings (where students live when they are not from the city, damn, I can not find the word!!!).

Best friends. Beer. Girls. Girlfriends. Drinking parties. Guitar.

The girlfriend of one of my best friends tells me one day: you know, I have a cousin playing the guitar and he sings also, with his girlfriend, maybe we could all meet one day. Well, why not? Let’s meet. Of course, the proper occasion was an other party in the same location I can not find the name for.

So, we meet. I meet the guy, his future wife, his sister, who was part of their singing band at these parties, damn, a lot of people. We became friends, playing and singing together at every such party. We played once on the roof of the university facilities, in the middle of the night, with this friend that made me to remember this story. He also plays the guitar.

So, around 8 months pass, time when we’ve got drunk a lot of times playing the guitar and having a lot of fun. Everywhere where those parties took place, we played together.

Well…One night, the wife of my guitar friend takes the guitar and starts to sing a beautiful song where she used at a moment a D to Dm change over a verse like “God only has clothes for beautiful girls”. My eyes popped out! Where do you know this song from? Well, she says, I composed it!! My jaw dropped…Where did you say you are from? From there…Damn! Do you remember about 3-4 years ago 3 guys playing the guitar in the bus station…her eyes popped out! It was YOU?!!! YEAH, DAMN IT! IT WAS ME!!!

I should tell you that everybody around us didn’t quite understand the story, of course, after we explained it everybody made fun of us because for 8 months we didn’t recognize each other but because of a song we did…For many months this story was told to our friends who were not there the first time and of course, for for a long time everybody made fun of us.

I should tell you that I would really love to hear this song again and I think I am going to ask this (girl)friend of mine,when I will see her next time, to record it for me and send it because it seems that really marked a moment in my life.

So, how is that for a real guitar story? Huh?

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Again related to the relic guitar topic, an idea that came to me from reading JP’s blog (Stratoblogster):

Does the price of a relic goes down with time passing?! I mean, does a relic depreciate after 10-20 years because it gets…well…scratches?!!?

That’s one of the most funny things I have heard. Imagine people paying big money for a brand new guitar that looks old and paying less money for it after 10 years because…well…IT GOT OLD!

Look man, it has scratches, I can not pay you that much for it. Yes, but it is supposed to have scratches, it is a relic guitar! No, man, I mean, forget the factory scratches, look, it has here a scratch that does not belong to the original “set”. Doh!

Now, question: if you payed like $3000 for a new guitar that looks old, EXACTLY BECAUSE IT HAS SCRATCHES AND LOOKS BEATEN UP, wouldn’t be normal that after 20 years when it will have even more damages and to value even more?

After all, the scratches it has got over the last 20 years are the real thing, right? Or not? What do you think?

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A few weeks ago I have written an article about Variax modeling guitar and, if you remember, I was quite amazed by how it sounds.

But so far, despite the fact that I have watched enough videos about it, I have never seen these 2 videos that blew me away! Really, no joke, I have seen the list of guitars a Variax emulates, but when you hear every one of them AND SEE PICTURES you really understand it!

Here’s the complete line of guitars a Variax guitar emulates:

and here are “just” the acoustic guitar sounds:

Frankly, my jaw dropped and I am still watching the videos! Isn’t this guitar great or what?

By the way, you can buy this guitar from Amazon.

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One of the things I was never able to understand is what is this thing with relic guitar?! Why is everybody crazy about guitars looking like they were played by somebody’s grandfather?!

I know that there is a high demand and a lot of love going around for those smashed, scratched, aged guitars, but is it just me or what? I don’t know, but personally I would rather play a shiny, perfectly looking, beautifully stiled guitar than an artificially aged one.

Now think about it: if you would go for the real thing, think how difficult would be, on the long run, to play one that is 50 years old. Something somewhere must crash or break. Technology wasn’t that great back then, things get broken quite often when it comes to old things. I know that with guitars it is somehow as with the wine: they get better with time, but I know the story we had here with old cars. Everybody had one 20 years back and man, the parking lot was full of people fixing them. They loved it, but it was a time eating thing. I guess it is the same with old guitars.

OK, 2 years ago I played for a show here a Fender Stratocaster that was, as the owner said to me, probably older than me, and making some calculation, it even proved to be right. It was scratched and hit and aged (naturally) but that was the real thing and it was the result of time passing, but again, why mess up with a perfectly looking guitar to make it look old?

Cary of Electric-Guitar-Review started an experiment turning a brand new cheap Telecaster into a relic. I watch his blog lately for this, to see the result when the guitar will be ready, but I can tell you I already feel bad about the guitar. It was so beautiful in the beginning…

Now, let me hear you, do you fall for this relic guitar thing or would you go for a brand new guitar? What’s the story? I guess because I don’t understand it, I can’t really see the meaning of it, but if you do, please tell me cause I really would like to know!

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I guess that childhood memories and heroes always haunt us over time. I guess this is the case with Aranjuez Guitar Quartet playing Pink Panther theme on classic guitars.

After the first smiles, if you have the patience to listen to it until the end, you will see they also transformed the theme a bit and improvise over a blues progression keeping the original idea. Sounds interesting.

Enjoy!

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I was reading this morning in a local newspaper that Red Hot Chili Peppers split for about 1 year. That’s a sad news but at the same time, a good one. Good because they took a break, it is not an end. A year that will give them time to recharge their batteries and think of new things.

I think that once in a while, a break is needed, especially when you speak about a band that toured heavily. I think that the need of being close to your family starts to ask its share at one point.

I only hope they have the power to come back after one year because they really have an unique take on rock music.

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Looking for interesting guitar players on YouTube, I have discovered this girl, Brittni Paiva playing Carlos Santana’s Europa on Ukulele. I must admit this gives a very interesting sound to the song.

Of course, it is an adaptation, because I don’t think you can ever get Santana’s licks on ukulele as much as you would try. But, I think you would appreciate a bit of variation. I personally enjoyed it because I have never listened such a version before.

So, how do you find it?

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Warning: this post should interest everyone of you people having a guitar related site!!!

As you probably know, these last days I have started to think on how to make this blog about guitars make some money because one way or an other I need to pay for hosting and I also invest time in writing articles. So far, the income generated by this blog is very low and does not help me very much.

I am sure that everyone of you reading this blog finds himself in a similar situation, isn’t it?

Don’t you feel that your blog can earn more money that it currently does?

I know I feel it because I run other websites where I have a good return on my investment while this site brings me money just about to buy peanuts.

So, these last days I have done some research about what revenue possibilities are for a blog about guitars and this morning I have found this site, GuitarAlliance.com that offers a smooth way to monetize your guitar site.

Seems that there are more sites in this network that you can promote in order to get a share of their sales:

• guitarmojo.com
• riff-o-matic.com
• justacoustic.com
• fretboardmemory.com

All you need to do is to create an account on GuitarAlliance.com and add a small banner in a visible area of your site. It is that easy, after this, it all depends on your traffic and on how visible the banner is. You will get a percent out of everything people will buy from those sites coming from your guitar blog. So, you will only have to worry about what to write on your blog, and not how to pay for hosting! Get it?

By the way, I have found out about this thanks to GuitarMX and his free guitar lessons, thanks buddy

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Today is that day again. The day when I look back to what I have done this month and publish here my stats.

As you probably already know, I am on a quest to get 5000 visitors per day. While it is not an easy thing to do and to be honest, my efforts were a bit slower in the last period of time, I experience new things each and every day and I find a great joy in everything that happens with this site.

To make a long story short, here’s what happened:

A very good StumbleUpon activity

Yes, this is one of the parts that made me very happy: out of those 30 days of a month, I had 10 days with good traffic caused by SU. I am not speaking about 3-4000 visits per day, but something like 500-700 visits per day from SU, which is great. Also I had 2 days with 1100 ans 1200 visits. So, if you have the pleasure of stumbling me, be my guest, you’ll make my day!!

Growing traffic, day by day

Beside SU I can say that this site grows in traffic with each passing day. Or week, to try to look for an average. If I speak about the first 2 weeks of this month, I can say 250 visits per day as an average. If I speak about week 3, I have around 300-350 visits per day while in the last week I had around 400 visits per day.

Where is this growth coming from?

Search engine traffic is growing day by day and it is normal, if you write every day, but also being stumbled a lot means you get a lot of recursive, residual traffic from SU. StumbleUpon is good from this point of view, if you have something on SU, you will receive traffic long after the spike has gone.

New layout for my blog and experimenting with ways to make some money from this blog

This month I have also redesigned my blog to have 3 columns. This is because I have started to think of a way to monetize it, to make some money from my blog, because it needs to earn it’s living. It pays rent, you know, hosting, traffic, and I want to have it pay for it. That is why I have set an advertising page that I invite you to read.

New plugins

I have installed and tested a few new plugins, some of them were OK, others were not OK so I removed them. One of the thing I intend to use is the plugin for having some posts only for RSS readers. I intend to publish the results of my dare to also monetize this traffic, to let you know how it goes, what I do and how much I make with this blog, because it could be interesting for everybody running such a guitar blog. You all write out of your love for guitars, but why not make some money out of it so you can pay your hosting expenses easily?

So, I will tell you how it goes, every step of the path, just that I will only publish money stats on RSS so subscribe to my RSS feeds to get these stats.

And now the numbers for this month:

• 14200 visits
• 19600 pageviews
• 1.38 pages per visit
• 10 StumbleUpon spikes
• highest SU spike: 1200 visitors in one day, the article that caused this spike, and at the same time the article that has the most page views is the one about why I love my guitar.
• RSS readers: 129 and grows day by day

Also, for the previous reports, see them below:

• First stats report on my 5000 visitors per day dare
• Second report
• Third report

And remember: starting today I am going to also publish stats on the money I earn from this blog, but they will only be available to my RSS readers, so subscribe now and get my experience on how I try to monetize a difficult traffic: social media blog traffic!

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This extended weekend (Saturday to Monday) was a very demanding weekend for me. While Saturday I was on a driving trip with my wife and a couple of best friends, and it was very pleasant, on Sunday I had a personal thing to take care, “thing” that took me 2 days and 800 Km (not in only one piece but in 3, however, very demanding) of driving with only 2.5 hours of sleep. I can tell you that there are parts of this road when all I remember is my GPS telling me to turn left or right, my radar detector telling me to slow down and loud music in my ears. By the way, these 2 gadgets really saved my ass a couple of times…

I have listened a lot of music while driving these 2 days, mostly rock and regarding a post of a few days ago I can tell you that the best music to listen when driving proved to be, after a lot of thinking, Michael Kiske and Gamma Ray’s “Time to Break Free”. On the last 60 km I only listened to this song over and over again, it kept me awake.

I had 3 Red Bulls, 2 of them one after an other, it was night and I was very tired. I reached a point where I was feeling kind like in a video game: the road was made of 2 white stripes, everything was black and I had no understanding of what “car” meant anymore…the car concept was replaced by the while lights coming to me or running away from me. On top of that add the Red Bulls and Gamma Ray playing over and over the same song very loud and you can get a pretty good impression of the situation… Looking back, after a good night sleep, I think I was kind of a Duracell rabbit on Ecstasy!

Also I found that Live and let die of GNR gives a great feeling when driving. Not the slow part, that sucks when speeding, but the high paced guitar parts. Man, those parts rock! They should make a full CD with that part and call it music for speeding.

And you know what? Europe does a very good job too, I guess due to the “riding” rhythm.

Also, I came back from this driving session with a lot of ideas in my head, to post here. The ideas came from listening all this music for a lot of hours. It is actually impossible to not think of a lot of things when not having too much to do…Hmm, could people with less on their heads be the most prolific bloggers? No offense, I guess you need time for all those ideas to come and put them on “paper”…

So, I guess that in the next days I will have some posts that will be the result of this trip (that is if I will still remember them, considering the state I was in)

PS: BMWs rule the road. I don’t have one but I would surely love to have one…

Here’s the song that kept me awake, put it on a CD about 20 times and drive on! Also take a couple of Red Bull cans. It helps.

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