Due to the buzz my post of a few days ago about Tiago Della Vega generated and the discussions about this guy lacking other skills but speed, I have decided to show a video I have found on YT with him playing a slow instrumental song, Isabella.

The fact is that I was a bit surprised about him not jumping right from the start to those fast phrases, I guess I had a predefined idea that this is all that this guy, Tiago Della Vega, is, a fast player. But he also has nice phrasing, a good tone and a beautiful song structure, so without any other words, I give you Isabella and Tiago Della Vega, the fastest guitar player in the world, 2008 playing a slow song.

I ask myself if it isn’t boring for him to hold a long note…hmm

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I know that playing really fast is not quite related to music, even if Symphony X or Malmsteen fans will contradict me, but this guy here,Tiago Della Vega, deserves mentioning here since he plays really (and I mean really, really) fast.

I have posted here some time ago something about a guy that said he is the fastest guitar player in the world, but what he did was actually playing with his right hand only, not not actually playing the guitar.

Tiago Della Vega here plays a song at the fastest tempo I have ever seen so far, 320 bps, to a point where it seems he doesn’t actually play anymore, but just move his left hand over the frets.

The fact is that it is quite annoying and really is not music anymore, but for the sake of the record, you just have to listen it till the end. So, without any more comments, I give you Tiago Della Vega, the fastest guitar player in the world…

Well? Anybody dares to beat this guy? In playing the guitar, I mean…

Later edit: To all of you coming from StumbleUpon, thank you for visiting in such large numbers!! I am impressed! Please don’t forget to give a thumb up to this page! Thank you!

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Call me stupid, call me uninformed, call me whatever you like, but I swear I didn’t know about this girl, Tal Wilkenfeld, who at only 22 yo!! has been touring with Jeff Beck, Chick Corea, Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock, Steve Vai, and the Allman Brothers. Damn!

I have found out about Tal Wilkenfeld by reading Little Rock Jam’s blog and once again I realized why I love blogging about music so much! Everyday I get the chance to find out about something new and wonderful in this world! That is why!

So, who is Tal Wilkenfeld?

Tal Wilkenfeld has been playing the bass since less than five years! She started playing the guitar at 14 in her native Sydney and switched over to the electric bass three years later.

“I’ve always just picked up any instrument and been able to play it―I could sit down at the drums or the piano and just play for fun…But as soon as I started playing bass I knew it was my instrument. It was like, ‘Yes this is it. I don’t even want to play guitar anymore, this is amazing.’”

I am not going to reproduce the original article since this is not the idea of this post, you should visit Little Rock Jam and read it for yourself there, but I am going to post a video here so you get my point!

By the way, here’s her MySpace page and also her website.

Well, what do you think about her?

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I discovered Dusty Ciggaar (what a name!) reading JP’s Stratoblogster blog and I was very surprised to see how well this guy knows his way around the guitar. He seems to be only 17 now but has such a fluency and feeling, plus the fact that he has some complex licks that are not everybody’s chops, if you know what I mean.

The videos I have seen featured him playing at 15 yo so the guy has this in him since a long time.

For the moment I don’t know much about Dusty Ciggaar, I have seen on MySpace he plays in a band called Rhythm Chiefs and they do it good! He lives in Netherlands and this year appeared on a jazz compilation and man,this guy is all booked up!

Dusty Ciggaar won ALL age categories of the Sena Guitar Awards when he was just 14 years old! Imagine that!

I would have loved to put here the first song on his MySpace page, at http://www.myspace.com/dustyfc, but I can not. So, you go there and listen that first melody cause it really made me blue. The picture with Jimmy Vaughan stands as an interesting social proof! I wish I had such a picture myself

Enjoy!

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These last days I’ve got interested again in Guitar Idol competition. While I am a fan of Gustavo Guerra due to 1000 reasons that I will discuss at a later time(and I hope he win the competition), I listened to every one of the guys presented there in the final. I must say that in many cases, the video they entered the contest with was not the best choice if you also look for them on YouTube because, in my opinion, most of them have other pieces that are better.

But OK, I understand the reason for the songs presented there: they needed songs that show a broad range of skills and I can say that you could see in 3-4 minutes from speed picking, melodic sense, creativity, control, tone, tremolo bar works, 8 finger taping, slap, finger style, whatever else they could think of that I can not even imagine…

This morning I was looking on YouTube for this guy, Chris Feener, who is on the 3rd position considering the number of votes, but didn’t quite impress me.

In the beginning, his Ibanez K7 guitar was what set me back because it immediately made me think of a pattern: the young shredder, Symphony X fan that will drive me crazy with fast notes from moment one to the end of the song without understanding anything of the actual melody (if there would be any). Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Ibanez electric guitars and a 7 strings Ibanez guitar has been something I have dreamed of for a while, until I understood that you don’t need 7 strings to play well. You need something else…

However, listening him on YouTube, I have discovered a 20 yo guy with a great collection of skills and techniques, with pieces far more interesting than what he presented for the contest.

So I have decided to put here one of his covers, Andy Timmons Groove or die song which I like very much, by the way, as almost all the songs of Andy Timmons.

So, without further comments, I give you Chris Feener and Andy Timmons’ Groove or die:

Question: considering the notoriety that YouTube builds to these guys, where do you think we’ll see him in a couple of years? In what band?

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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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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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I don’t know if you are familiar with Guitar-Idol.co.uk website. I wasn’t until I recently found it and I can tell you I was surprised. To say in a few words what it is about this site (even if I think the name it is self describing)

Online competition to find the hottest new guitarist - have YOU got what it takes to be Guitar Idol 2008?

Play in front of thousands of guitar fans AND open up on the main stage for a LEGENDARY guitar virtuoso at the London International Music Show - and win tons of fantastic prizes! …

So, curious, I have started to listen the guys there trying to bet on the next guitar idol. Of course, most of them were Malmsteen, Satriani, Vai fans. Nothing to surprise me here. By the way,at a first glance, I think Malmsteen has more followers than Satriani and Vai. Just an observation…

And then, while listening around, I’ve seen this guy,Rick Renstrom!

He has entered the competition with a video posted on YouTube.

I thought I don’t see well! I looked on his website and on his MySpace page and finally understood it:

This guy, Rick Renstrom, has problems with his hands, birth disabilities I guess!

I don’t want to offend him in anyway by speaking too much about this on my post, because I didn’t find anywhere anything related to his situation on his website or MySpace page so I presume he doesn’t want to speak about it, but I just find his guitar playing freaking UNBELIEVABLE.

I know I have heard guys playing the way he does, advanced Malmsteen fans are familiar to this style, but this guy is just unbelievable considering his situation! And he is also the lead singer in his band!

To date, Rick has recorded on 9 total albums and has collectively played to over 100, 000 fans worldwide.

Man, I had the belief that because of an old surgery I had on my little finger on my left hand, (I had an accident at one of my tendons while in university), my playing will never be the same. It is bullshit! Total bullshit! It is all in my head! This guy proves it!

So, to Rick Renstrom, all my respect! Man, you rule us all!

I invite you to see more on his website and MySpace page.

Later edit: considering the number of diggs received by this article, I am that close to make it on the first page of Digg, and YOU can be a part of it! Digg me NOW and help me to make it on the first page of Digg FOR THE FIRST TIME!

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This morning I found myself visiting again the page of Sungha Jung, because I just felt the need of listening him again…

The truth is that I was charmed by how he plays the guitar. It is the admiration of somebody knowing that what he sees is out of his reach, and so it is. He plays at 11 better than me, I am not embarrassed to say this in any way. I don’t play fingerstyle guitar and for me what he does there is so fresh that I just can’t stop watching over and over again.

The fact that he is very young and playing with such dexterity makes people consider him a guitar wonder. And if I think about it, why not? I think that Sungha Jung may be considered this way cause I don’t know any other kid of his age to play the way he does fingerstyle guitar.

Keep in mind that he developed this dexterity in only 2 years of playing the guitar!! This is amazing, I don’t want to remember where I was after 2 years playing the guitar cause I wasn’t too far from the starting point…

I was going to embed here a video of Sungha Jung playing More than words of Extreme, first because I love that song and second because Sungha plays it lovely. However, after listening him covering Rylynn of Andy McKee, I had no other choice but to put this one here.

I promise myself to watch this kid in a a few years when probably he will join Andy McKee on stage playing at the same level. Sungha Jung, the professional fingerstyle guitar player, his dream…

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I stumbled upon this kid a few minutes ago! Man, is this guy great or what?!!??! What are they feeding these kids?! He owned me for good!

“Hi, I’m Sungha Jung from South Korea. My dream is to become a professional acoustic fingerstyle guitarist.

I had been watching my dad play the guitar for awhile before I finally jumped on it myself two years ago. I just turned eleven in September, 2007.

Currently, I am taking weekly classical guitar lessons and teaching myself fingerstyle guitar.

I used to not have tabs for the music that I played in my videos. I just listen and pick them up directly from the sound source in videos available on the internet. However, recently, I have started playing with original tabs whenever they are available to me by courtesy of the authors.”

(Taken from his MySpace page)

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