One of the things that I really think about for a long time is what skills a performing artist needs on stage and I am not speaking here about musical skills, studies, licks or tricks …

Be an entertainer

What I speak here about is social skills, that quality that separates a singer, a guitar player, a musician from a real performing entertainer (in the good sense of the word). And before jumping to slap me because you didn’t study long years how to play the guitar just to entertain people, think about it for a moment.

Entertaining people does not mean necessarily making them laugh, OK? It means making people feel good at your shows, no matter you are Sepultura, Iron Maiden or Shakira. Think about Manowar and the motorcycles they use in some of their shows when going on stage, think about ACDC and Angus Young’s almost trademarked jump.

I know that some of you may think that music is what really matters, not acting foolish on stage, but in my opinion that matters also. It matters because it is part of THE SHOW, it is part of the whole thing going on there.

We have here a band where the lead singer is also an actor. It helps. It really helps. The guy does not have the best voice, he has range, OK, has a particular sound of his voice that differentiate him, has good songs, but he often sings flat on stage, loses his air and he really couldn’t care less because what he does on stage is not singing, is acting, is performing, is entertaining the audience.

What makes them different is, beside the songs, the fact that they seem to live every moment on stage and the public feels it very well…I have paid some thinking about this since we don’t have this on stage every time and we should really invest some time in this.

Teaming the beast

Also, speaking about social skills, I guess one of those skills you really need (at least at first) is the capacity to overcome unpleasant moments.

I remember one interview of two famous Romanian stand-up comics performing together. They were explaining how in one of their shows, in a club, some guy from the public started to make fun of them and didn’t want to stop. At one moment, one of the artists kind of blocked not knowing how to answer to what the guy from the audience was screaming at them, moment when the other comic, with over 20 years experience in this, decided to answer back and shut the mouth of the poor bastard in everybody’s laughing. Call it experience, but it is also part of those social skills you need on stage.

At one moment we had such a show where it was a mixed audience, rock and hip hop (small town, not that many bands, make a show, call everyone there. Bad idea!). At one moment hip hop fans started to throw things on stage at rock bands. Hip hop fans are not hard rock fans and will probably never be…well…

The reason that started this post is a video with Paul Gilbers and a stage “moment” he handled great! Take a look and let me know what you think!

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Warning: this is not related to guitars!

Did I scare you away? Well, if not, then read and watch forward!

Because most of the videos we share online each and every day with our loved guitar players, moments of joy, love and even happiness come from YouTube, it is very interesting to watch this presentation below regarding YouTube audience.

Take the time to watch at least the first minutes of it.

By the way, they also speak about Ozone, the Romanian/Moldavian boy band and their Numa Numa song(Mai ah hii).

I told you it is not going to be about guitars…now share it with the rest of the world by stumbling it and digging it!

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A very interesting thing I didn’t know about: the Xavian scale, Steve Vai’s “own” scale. Well, did you know about that? A very interesting topic that I have never thought about. Really, it shows you how deeply involved in his music Steve Vai really is.

For me, all those scales out there contains some of the same 12 notes in a “standard” chromatic scale and honestly I have never thought about another way of dividing the space between 2 octaves. Well, I guess somebody else did…

Think about taking this available “space” and divide it in another number of equal intervals, not in 12 as we commonly know. Divide it in 10 spaces, or in 8, or in 9, or in 20 spaces…whatever… The result? Well, you could name it “another chromatic scale”, I guess. This is exactly what Steve Vai did: took this space and divided it in 16 equal spaces and then, by experimenting a lot, he took 10 notes out of 16 and built his “own scale”, Xavian. Speaking about playing like Steve Vai…

Of course, you won’t be able to do this with a regular guitar, no matter how good you are, since it is not built for this. Vai couldn’t do it either so he asked Steve Ripley to build such a 16 intervals guitar for him. He also has a 24 intervals guitar…

Seems that Deep down into the pain song is the only record where he actually used the Xavian scale. Listen closely the end of the song. I know that Steve Vai uses strange modes all over his music, but his own scale with notes outside the known Universe, man, that’s weird…

What do you think about this? Read more about this here and come back and comment, I would like to know your thoughts on this!!

Stumble and Digg this!

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A few days ago, Carol (She-lives) awarded me with Brillante Weblog Premio 2008.

Last week, Jon of GuitarNoize appreciated my blog as “excellent” and named it among the few sites in his list of “who’s who in guitar blogosphere”

A few months ago, Jack of Pribek.net rated me E for excellence (read my list of bloggers that I also awarded back then). Because I haven’t had the time to do it so far, I will say it now: thank you, guys(and gals), for your nice words! I am always happy to know that somebody out there appreciates my posts.

That fills my heart with a strange feeling of satisfaction and happiness. Really, I feel like some kind of balloon right now!

It is very interesting how much motivation such things can give you. This blog is not about money and not money is what keeps it running. This blog is about electric guitars, about acoustic guitars, about rock and blues music, about me, you and everything around music. Such appreciations along with my love for guitars keep this blog running.

So, again, I want to say thanks you for you reading my blog and a bigger thank you to those of you that took the time to subscribe to my RSS feeds(by the way, if you haven’t done it already, subscribe now and get my posts everyday by email or RSS)!

And for all of you, read on because so many post are still waiting to be written here! If I only had the time…

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Lately I have decided to put much more weight on reviewing guitar related websites because we spend so much time on the internet these days, so today I am going to speak about www.guitar123.co.uk.

Guitar123.co.uk is a site dedicated mostly to guitar enthusiasts located in UK and presents guitars by type and brands, telling you where you can buy them from and at what prices. The main advantage (and I think the value of the site) is the fact that once you decided what guitar are you going to look for/buy you can see a list of shops that sell that particular guitar and their prices. Pretty convenient, I’d say, especially if you are located in UK.

The fact is that this site is a start-up at this moment, the guys behind it still work to grow it so every passing day will bring new guitars and new opportunities for the guitar enthusiast.

Considering the fact that things are still moving, what I would add if I would build this site is a subscription form where people enter the email address to be informed about new guitars, or a “inform me about this particular guitar” option. Maybe you found what you are looking for but you are not yet happy with the price. I think it would be interesting.

A feature that I really enjoyed is the fact that they present a YouTube video with that particular guitar, where it is available. Yes! That one is a good thing, because I can not remember how many times I have been searching for YouTube videos for a particular guitar after reading a review and seeing prices, because I just wanted to see how that particular guitar sounds. Having a video embedded right on the site helps the visitor make an idea of how it sounds. Like for example you look for a Fender Telecaster or a PRS guitar and beside models, prices and resellers you see the promotional video of this great guitar.

For the moment, only 4 types of guitars are available, electric guitars, electro acoustic, acoustic guitars and bass guitars but I am looking forward to modeling guitars and midi guitars since I have my Variax guitar from UK so I am curious about the prices there…

And speaking about prices, I find it somehow difficult to convert prices to USD or Euro, I wonder if an online converter would help. But again, the site is dedicated to UK guitar enthusiasts so I should keep my mouth shut.

So, to conclude, if I were to live in the UK and didn’t want to spend my last penny on buying an overpriced guitar I would pay this site a visit to feel the market and find the best price around!

What do you think?

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One of the things I deeply admire at great guitar players and great musicians in general is the capacity to express so many nuances in their music in a few simple notes and it has always been a dare and a constant quest for me to express this.

The reason that started this post is actually Dream Theater. I really love their song “Another day” and each time I listen it I find myself charmed by all those nuances there…Listen for example the starting riffs, 3 simple notes or the solo guitar theme/intro or even the drums!

Now that I have started this, I think that if I would need to define Dream Theater in one single word, that would be NUANCES, nuances all over. This is actually the result of their musical studies at Berklee School of Music, result of theory and practice, I’d say, and I guess that even if you are not a big fan of progressive rock you agree with me that no other rock band can be represented by this word better than Dream Theater: nuances…

Here’s Another day for you! Enjoy and comment!

Am I right or what?

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A quick and funny one, from Guitarist.co.uk site:

New AC/DC album to weigh in with a whopping 15 tracks

The wheels on the chariot of the gods of rock are finally turning again…
AC/DC have confirmed that the title of their new album will be Black Ice as widely rumoured, with the first single being Runaway Train.
Reports that one of the songs includes an F minor chord cannot be confirmed at this time.

What?! Reports that one of the songs includes an F minor chord cannot be confirmed at this time!!

Really, I am also interested to find out about the album, but about the fact that hey, listen…ONE OF THE SONGS INCLUDES AN F MINOR CHORD!! Man, this is mad!

I don’t know, maybe I am not THAT familiar with ACDC’s chord choices,but is this something out of the ordinary with Angus Young or what?

Their albums have never included a minor chord so far, or what?

I think that’s a news for the really eager fan! Man…

PS: That article is not against Guitarist.co.uk site, in any way, I really like the site and I read it often, but I just found the news hilarous and I just had to point this here! Man…

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At last rehearsal with the band we decided to cover Don’t cry from GNR, after all, it must be pretty easy, we all like GNR and this it’s a song we sing and play since high school, we know it by default, right? Eh, when listening the song I was surprised by a few nice progressions there, that I didn’t expect, that helped the song a lot. But that’s not the subject of this post.

The subject is actually the guitar solo or the guitar behind the solo, to be more exact. I didn’t pay too much attention in the beginning to the chords behind the solo, presuming they go by some repetitive chords like the chorus for ex. How wrong I could be!

After working this part with they guys in my band, I could say that my impression is that the solo was created first, and then they created a backup track to support the solo, which is totally strange from my point of view. I say this because the chords under the solo don’t follow any pattern, the length of a particular chord depends on the particular passage the solo plays and not the other way around.

My way of soloing is to actually improvise over a common pattern in the song, like the chorus or some intro, f.e. and I have never written a solo that I needed to back up later. I have some passages in particular songs that I needed to explain to my band mate playing the other guitar when he joined the band and I did need to find chords to match a particular progression but I was the only guitar player in the band at that moment and the only melodic backup was the bass line, which can be pretty free; I think this does not apply to GNR since Slash was never the only player there, isn’t it? Then?

My opinion is that Slash worked the solo without the second guitar player, in a free way, making the solo sound nice and then they searched for some backup chords to match the solo.

Listen here and tell me your call on this.

PS: When embedding this video here I was totally charmed by this song and listened every note of it until the end, totally forgetting I have this post under editing!!

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I guess today I am in an acoustic mood, who knows, I have watched a few videos on YT with live performances with just a guitar and a voice and I have decided to post here a video of Avril Lavigne live.

The reason for which I post this video here is that I really liked how the rhythm goes on guitar and how they both managed to transmit energy and freshness with only one guitar, no drums, no bass. I like how the guitar player plays the fast rhythm passages on acoustic guitar. If you would have asked me I would have said that punk needs electric guitars. Well, how about it, works great with only a voice and an acoustic guitar if you have the right artist.

How do you find it?

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I guess that if you run a blog that has a certain level of success, you receive a number of emails from people asking you to speak about their products.

I know I receive my share of such emails and I don’t write about all those products, because many of them are just plain useless, but, once in a while I receive something that starts my interest, like for example that thing with the high quality guitar cables, or the news about Dean Zelinsky leaving Dean guitar.

Well, today I have received 2 such emails, one of them being about a site that publishes guitar tabs, Songsterr.com and comes with a particular angle. Or as they say, in their own words:

Songsterr (www.songsterr.com) is an online guitar tab player that solves the biggest problem of guitar tabs. Tablatures do not represent the rhythm or lengths of the notes – only their pitch. It can be very difficult to get a feel of the music simply by studying the tab without playing it through. With Songsterr you can see and hear the song as it is being played with a realistic guitar engine, thus you can get an idea of what it should sound like and how fast it should be played.

I have seen plenty of guitar tabs websites on the internet. Damn, my initial intention was to also publish guitar tabs, don’t ask me why, but when I visited this site, well…how to put it…it was the end of my productive evening.

I spent my evening playing various songs there, enjoying every moment of it. By the way, Sweet child of mine intro can be quite a finger twister…

I don’t know how accurate those tabs are, those that I have tried were fine. Interesting that they have the possibility to slow down a song to half of the speed, for you to try it slowly. You can also position the cursor on a particular position on the song and play it from there.

In one word? Fun! Why don’t you try it and write your impressions here?

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