It may sound like a elementary school homework but I have really thought about this these last days. I have realized why I love that much playing the guitar.

It is not (only) because I love rock music, it is not (only) because of the beautiful sound or the energy when you hear the overdrive…

The reason I love playing the guitar is the fact that it opens infinite possibilities to my music. Think about it: every time you pick up your guitar you can come up with something totally different, something new and beautiful. I love the fact that my guitar is the door to infinite possibilities of expression.

Think about is this way: me, you, Satriani, Vai, Malmsteen, Hendrix, May, Segovia, Dimebag Darrel, Paco De Lucia , Frank Gambale, we all have the same damn thing: a 6 string instrument, but each one of us makes it sound different.

I love the fact that the same 6 strings are able to produce music that is so different: rock, jazz, blues, funk, classic music, flamenco, folk, damn, there are so many possibilities out there. And all these thanks to 6 strings and a box!

I kept on thinking these days about this and I realize I love the guitar more and more each day, exactly because of this and I realize that I am so small and tiny compared to the possibilities this instrument has. If I don’t make better music is because I can’t. My guitar surely can because it showed it so many times over the years all over the world! There are so many records to prove it!

By the way, IG launched a very interesting idea, “Hug your guitar week” and I think his initiative is a great way to show your guitar you love her.

So tell your guitar here why do you love her and give her a hug on IG’s blog!

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Without wanting to hurt girl’s feelings in any way, I haven’t seen that many good girl solo guitar players so far. Again, Jennifer Batten is a great exception that kicks ass! Yeah!

But while looking around (of course, for something else) I have seen this video on YouTube of a Korean girl playing the electric guitar. Man, she is good and plays very clean so I said it would be a good thing to share it with you here! So, here it is:

And let me hear your opinions on this! Does she kick ass or what?!

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These days I have been away but now I am back to my computer, so, I will try to catch up a bit with everything that happened while I was away.

I took a short 3 days holiday with my wife and a couple of good friends and we headed for a well known resort in Romania, called Lacul Rosu (Red Lake). We managed to see in only 3 days, a lot of places and came back with a lot of photos.

I have decided to only put here a few of them, because this is not the subject of this blog, but because a few days ago I have decided to add a new category called Romania, I think it will fit just fine. So, here it is:

Red Lake was formed around 1837 where it used to be a forest and now you can see tree parts coming out of the water, kind of spooky. We rented a boat and sailed to a couple of them, to see for ourselves how they look like!

This is an area where the concentration of people of Hungarian origin is high so every sign there was AT LEAST in 2 languages: Romanian and Hungarian. Plus German, English, French sometimes… Just as an observation, there are tensions born by historical events and by the fact that Hungarian people there, even if living in Romania, don’t speak Romanian well and sometimes, with just a bit of bad will, it is told they don’t want to.

I can say that we were a bit tensioned in that area at first because you could hear Hungarian speakers all around you, in the very heart of Romania, making us feel like we were in an other country, but beside that, I can say that we haven’t had any problem and people were OK even if in some cases we found it a bit difficult to communicate in Romanian, but with a bit of effort on both sides, we went along fine!

In the above picture, my wife is on the left of the picture, the other 2 people are my friends that joined us for this trip. Of course, I was taking pictures.

We traveled to the other side of the country, crossing an invisible historical border, totally changing the accent. My mother in law is from that side of the country so I am a bit used to the accent. We have found a telecabin where we least expected, especially because we couldn’t understand why is it there. We presumed it will serve a hotel that is currently under construction, but for the moment I can’t see the point… But well, it seems to have clients, at least we took a ride…

We have visited a few historic locations.

On our way back we visited a newly launched salt mine. Newly launched(2 days ago) for tourists, cause it was old and not used, anymore, of course. However, very impressive. I felt like in Jules Verne’s Trip to the center of the Earth. People were playing a lot of games there, buying stuff, etc. We played cards waiting for our return bus.

We took a trip to an old and beautiful medieval city, one of the most famous of Romania, from this point of view, Sighisoara. And just for the fans of this kind of stories, believe it or not, historically speaking we have seen the house where Vlad Tepes’s father lived and where Vlad Tepes was born (Vlad Tepes, the historical personality that is the root of Dracula’s story, ruler of Romania’s lower grounds, which almost all the time is identified with Bram Stoker’s Dracula).

Loved the girl speaking on the phone dressed like “old time” people.

Finally, we took a trip to Sibiu, which was the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2007. Sibiu is a beautiful city that worths every minute spent there. It reminds of German cities because there are a lot of German people living there, a community that blends perfectly with Romanian spirit.

It was a demanding trip and I was very tired when I got home, but I must admit, it was a beautiful trip. I didn’t take my guitar this time cause I knew there is no time, in the evening we were all tired so the only thing we wanted to do is hit the sack!

But now I’m back and ready to blog and play the guitar! Yeah!

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Yesterday I was speaking about the fact that I haven’t found much time these last days to spend in front of my computer and about the Easter grill party that we threw at the rehearsal room. There, I met an old band mate that I haven’t seen since, I don’t know, maybe 6-7 years (OK, I think I have seen him a couple of times on the street but this doesn’t count, cause we’ve didn’t talk too much). He currently plays in a band here that is quite known, Spin is the name, that had, I think 2 hits, and is doing fine, he says.

The previous guitar player of the same band was an other band mate of mine, from my previous band, Kapela…man, WTF am I doing, my ex band mates have good music contracts, I think I must be a lucky person, I definitely must be the reason they are doing well, don’t you think? I think I am some kind of a talisman of some sort, who knows…

By the way, an other ex-band mate, drummer, is also doing fine and has been in a few well known bands here, see, the talisman story stands…damn, I must move to Bucharest too!

But the reason of this post is not the fact that already 3 ex-band mates have a visible music career, but the fact that while drinking a beer and eating some cooked lamb chops, me and Silviu spoke about electric guitars, about preferences and latest acquisitions. And there he told me about his last acquisition, a brand new guitar that he is very happy about! Well, let me have it, what’s that wonder guitar name?

I was expecting some wonder Fender, some high tech Gibson, this kind of guitars, considering his expression. Well, no! How about a no-pickup guitar? No pickup? What? Is it a MIDI guitar or what?

Well, no, after he explained it to me a bit and he showed me on the internet (we have internet connection next to the grill, did you know that?) I understood what he was speaking about.

The guitar he bought was a Line 6 guitar. I have seen it before, just that because it has no visible pickups, I didn’t give it too much attention. A MIDI, guitar, of course, I thought! BUT IT IS NOT A MIDI GUITAR!!! No!

Line 6 Variax is a regular electric guitar,(at least from the point of view of how the string vibrations are caught by the pickups), otherwise you could call it an electronic guitar, I guess!

The guitar has pickups, just that not 1, 2 or 3 regular pickups but 6 pickups, one on every string, but they are not visible because they are in the bridge.

I guess you could call Line 6 Variax a modeling guitar, the way they call it, or an electronic guitar, or a guitar collection, because this is exactly what it is! A collection of guitars, electric and acoustic guitars!! The manufacturers studied a lot of famous guitars, like Fender Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul, acoustic guitars, hollow bodies, etc, and put all those studies and statistics into some electronic processing unit INSIDE THE GUITAR!

Then, by adding an extra knob on the guitar, you could just PICK THE GUITAR YOU WANT FROM THE COLLECTION! I must say I was amazed! With one single move of the knob you could get the sound of a genuine Fender Telecaster or of a Gibson. And if this does not amaze you, how about getting the sound of a regular acoustic guitar? Well? He showed me a live show on YouTube where he was playing his new guitar using the acoustic tone, right from the guitar! I must say it was quite impressive and at first I thought it was not live!

I was also impressed by the line of musicians playing Line 6 Variax, artists like Steve Howe (Yes), Andy Taylor (Duran Duran), Ed O’Brien (Radiohead), David Whild and Donnie Mathis (Outkast), Khaliq Glover (Prince), Charlie Clouser (Nine Inch Nails), because in the beginning I thought it must be one of those gadgets that everybody loves but nobody really uses. Well, seems not!

For a studio musician I guess it must be the Heaven on Earth, because you don’t need to carry extra guitars for getting THE SOUND. With just a spin of a knob you have a double six guitar right there along with the the large hollow body guitar!

There are 25 models the guitar emulates, 3 Telecaster models, 1 Stratocaster, 11 Gibson, 2 Gretsch,
2 Rickenbacker, Guild, Dobro, Danelectro, a Sitar, a banjo, an Epiphone and a National, if I haven’t missed some, see the exact list here and the sample collection with how this guitar sound when emulating the guitars here.

There are a few models, Line 6 Variax 300, 600 and 700, my friend got the 700, which he said it costs around $1400 but worths every cent. The 300 and 600 models seem to have the exact same modeling features, what is different is the quality of the “outfit”.

If you also count the fact that with the use of Line 6 Workbench you can tune the strings the way you want, so you can get the drop D tuning or the open tuning without actually tunning any string other way than the standard international way, then I think you should have a look at this guitar if you haven’t already done it. I know I took a long dive into this new (for me) guitar and I must admit I would love one!

I ask myself, am I too impressed or this guitar is a must have? How do you see this? Would you buy one of these? Do you know anybody using one? Would you invest trust and money into a guitar that has actually no “real” pickups?

Can the modeling guitars be the future of electric guitars or this is just an other direction as with MIDI guitars and guitar synthesizers that will never replace “real” electric guitars?

What’s your call on this?

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