A few days ago I was thinking about how Eric Clapton’s music evolved over time. I don’t say “evolved” as in “it was bad-now it is good”, far from me such an idea, just that Clapton’s music changed over time as the music business itself. I am not a big fan of Clapton,not in the way I could say about other artists or bands. I can not say that I know all his songs and everything he does or did, but Eric Clapton always had and always will have a special place in my heart.

My first contact with Eric Clapton’s music was when I bought 2 tapes, one with Metallica and one with Eric Clapton (as you may see, my taste in music was not quite oriented at that time as Clapton and Metallica had nothing to do one with the other). The tape was kind of a best of, at that time, so it offered me kind of Clapton’s best works. From that tape I remember Layla, the electric version, and Bell bottom blues. I kept this second song till now in my memories, without listening it again for a long time since I have lost that tape and I can say that it left a strong mark on my musical path.

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Judging by my personal experience, I think that there is no guitar player in this world who never dreamed of being rich and famous. I think we all dreamed and wanted it with all our heart. I know I did! From high school to the end of the university years I have dreamed about this. I was ready to make sacrifices for this, to go anywhere for this and do (almost) everything.

I remember that at one point there was this show on TV, organized by a national television channel, where bands all over the country came and play on a professional stage on the beach, being broadcasted all over the country. Of course every band in this country wanted to get there and play. So we wanted too!

We went there, we tried on the first day but there were too many bands and we came in late, so we didn’t succeed. Because it was already too late (in the night) when we realized we will not make it for that evening, we couldn’t go anywhere to rent a room for the night(private rooms at the local people, cheaper than at the hotels). Of course, we were young and with no money so we didn’t afford a hotel so…we slept outside, on the beach.

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This article could have been named “How to buy an electric guitar” but it isn’t. It isn’t because I have no clue about which would be those great things to check when buying an electric guitar, because I consider that no matter what, the sound comes before anything. I just know that I tried to find out from the internet, I have tried to follow my heart and still I can not make up my mind. So I have named my article How NOT to buy an electric guitar! So:

For a long time, I am a big fan of Ibanez electric guitars. I just love Ibanez guitars, for me they are like the best thing a guitar player can have. Of course, if you love electric guitars, you have such a fetish too for some brand or an other

So, after fantasizing about Joe Satriani’s models and about Vai’s JEM 7V I lowered my expectations a bit and I kind of made up my mind about what guitar should I buy. I decided on Ibanez RGX350DX, white as milk and beautiful. It won in front of Ibanez S520EX which was my next choice. However, I could not just buy it without listening to it. Unfortunately, here in Romania, there are not too many places you can go to really test an electric guitar before buying and more than this, to test a particular model would be kind of a great chance.

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As you have already seen, I love strong screaming voices, I am in constant search for new and old ones. Also, I am looking for anything new that I can find out and even, at one point, I imposed to myself that each and everyday to find something I didn’t know(in most of the cases this means to find out about a rock band I didn’t know about).

One of those days I was looking on YouTube for some music and I have found about a great voice that, to my shame, I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT!!! When I have started to listen it I felt shivering down my spine: how could I not know about this band? How could I not know about Steelheart when they play since so many years and when Mike Matijevic has such a great voice that is just made for electric guitars?

I was looking for more and more and I can only say that for 3-4 days I played on and on “She’s gone” and “Can’t stop me loving you”. Steelheart’s “She’s gone” is one great power ballad that shows the voice of Mike Matijevic in it’s full power and shows his easiness to get those high notes. I was just amazed, really! She’s gone is great but the voice of Mike Matijevic gives it the real value. When I have found Can’t stop me loving you I thought that these guys just needed to be great, they had such a great music, but just unknown here in Romania, at least from what I know.

Looking for more information, I have found their website, www.steelheart.com. What I have read there turned me upside down and to be honest I have perfectly understood why they didn’t make it big even if they had what it takes and most of all, they were on the wave at one point: life is what that hit them, fate, call it however you want. I am not going to get into details but Mike Matijevic, or Miljenko Matijevic by his real name had an very ugly accident in the beginning of their career and that was what cut them from the start. Despite the difficulties he faced, he seems to recover after some time. I have found some songs after Steelheart came back on stage, about 4 years later, losing the exact period when the musical style they play lost ground before other musical genders. Anyway, Today, Steelheart goes on tour constantly, which can only make me happy and Mike Matijevic seems to have the same love for live performances that I have seen in his early days videos, which is great. However, seems that,even if the electric guitars remain somehow the same,the musical style changed a bit to match today’s musical taste, which is not quite good from my point of view, but I guess everybody’s got to eat.

I can only say that at this moment, my favorite videos list on YouTube contains Steelheart and I am trying to get some recorded materials on CD for my car CD player since I became somehow of a fan. Steelheart rules!!!

I couldn’t stop myself thinking what would have Miljenko Matijevic been if it wasn’t that stupid accident he had on stage, where would he be today? Maybe next to Ozzy? Maybe next to Dave Coverdale? Steven Taylor? Anyway, Steelheart became one of my favorite bands of that great period which was ruled by hair metal, heavy metal, hard rock and electric guitars!

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Personally I consider a musician should be good in what he does from a technical point of view. I mean, if you put an electric guitar in the hand of a guitar player he should know his way around it. This is because I listen to bands that have skilled musicians. I like Joe Satriani, I like Vai and I like bands like Helloween, Dream Theater, Iron Maiden, Vanden Plas, etc and the music they play is sharp, clear, with elaborated musical phrases, with a lot of instruments and a lot of those speedy glitters that we all love.

But this is just a point of view. If you take Kurt Cobain for example and his almost famous out of tune notes and his proverbial lack of technical skills and judge him by this scale, then there would be have no place for him on stage, but if you judge by the fact that he was part of a movement that totally changed the music in only a few years then we should pay him the respect he deserves.

The only observation I could make here is that I am not convinced that Kurt Cobain was aware of his creative process, I just think that he did what he felt and it all probably came naturally to him, without thinking too much about it. I think that this is the essence of the music he made and of the feeling he transmitted. Actually if you think about it, the feeling is what really counts when you consider music such as Nirvana used to play. When you take a band such as Dream Theater there is so much you could appreciate so even if you find that a song doesn’t quite transmit a strong feeling you can always find some technical thing that makes you love it.

So, is Dream Theater better than Nirvana? Is Steve Vai better than Cobain?

I think there is no way to compare musicians. There is one for every one of us. That is what makes the music so beautiful, the fact that you find at any moment something that moves you, depending on your mood. Do you think that Joey DeMaio, the bass player of Manowar, well known for his passion for “true metal” and his disrespect for
”posers” doesn’t listen blues? My personal opinion is that he also has his moments when Steve Ray Vaughan or BB King put him in that state where nothing else counts but blues.

I posted this because I had a discussion with a friend of mine some time ago about a band here, Vama (Veche) is called, and about the lead singer which is an actor before being a singer. Or is he a singer before being an actor? Well, personally I think that exactly this duality gives him the possibility to express himself the best on stage; he has the potential and the training to express a large scale of feelings and this makes it easy to communicate with the public even if sometimes he can not control his voice very well.

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For today’s post I will go a bit back in time, before joining a real rock band. I was about 18-19 at that time I think. I was playing the guitar with a very good friend of mine, Mihai, who plays in the same band with me even today. So I was doing the solo guitar while he was doing the rhythm and also singing, but we decided to find a lead singer that do only the voice part. So we got together and tried to agree on what we will be looking for. Because we both loved the same music, it came naturally. We put up an announcement and it sounded like this:

“Rock band is looking for lead singer able to sing Manowar, Helloween and Iron Maiden. Call – number here”

Well, as you see, we didn’t ask for much, we just wanted a lead singer able to sing like Eric Adams, Michael Kiske and Bruce Dickinson at the same time. Well, how hard could it be to find such a lead singer? Did I mention we were about 18-19 years old?
Well, keep that in mind, please.

Tune up your electric guitars; we are going for the kill!

So we started to print these flyers with the announcement and glue them to anything we could find in our city. For a few days, nothing happened. But one day, the phone rang. A guy told me that he phoned for the open position in the band, as a lead singer. Well, what do you know?!!! We have a candidate. So, on the phone, I started to ask him a few things, you know, have you seen what we ask for, can you sing Manowar and Helloween? Yes, no problem, he says. Well, what do you know, he sings Manowar and Helloween. And can you also sing Iron Maiden? Of course, I can, I can sing anything, I can sing Elvis, I can sing…and he named a few bands that were strangers to my ears. Well, what do you know, he plays all those things. Let’s meet the man!

So we agreed on a meeting the same day. I met my friend and we both went to meet this wonder singer that God sent to us in only a few days.

To not give room for mistakes, let me draw the whole picture: we were 2 18-19 years old, long hair high school dudes in worn out jeans that were looking like the clothes of the homeless guy you see on dark streets, ear rings, with heavy metal in our brains and of course, we had guitars with us. Acoustic guitars that is, since we wanted to hear the clean voice.

So, we were waiting for a guy close to us, with same heavy metal culture, crazy for electric guitars and screaming voices, our lead singer!

And there he was, in all his beauty! A 45-50 years old dark skinned guy (gypsy that is), with a crazy colored shirt! I felt earth should open and eat me right that very moment. I was looking at my friend; he was looking at me and both to this guy before us.

…it’s you? Yes, it’s me. And you said you can sing Helloween?! Helloween, how you call it, Elvis, anything, I can sing anything, anywhere, at weddings, parties…
Well, that was it. Thank you! You know, we are looking for a lead singer that sings heavy metal, at about 18-19 years old…

Well, I don’t know if the man knew what heavy metal is, but he really understood what I meant, it was clear that he was also confused to see us and we were not quite what he was expecting, so he was probably happy to leave also.

After this, Mihai’s mother told us that she saw us with that man, she was passing by and she was a bit scared, what do with do with that man?! She knew him from the neighborhood…Of course, anything but playing hard rock!

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14 years ago I have started to play the guitar (acoustic guitar,I mean), looking up to all those cool bands that I liked at that time. I remember that the dream I had it was to start a band that would play the same way my idols did. Of course I was fascinated by electric guitars and stuff…Of course, my idols of that time was Manowar, I was a fan of this band, which, by the way, I still am! Manowar rules or as they say, other bands play, Manowar kills…whatever…

Charmed by electric guitars

I remember it was this band in my city, a band that was already 8 years old at that time, I think, that played kind of a progressive, fusion metal, they said, hard rock in my opinion. So, it was this band, Kapela, which had a really good visibility in my city, 8 years of activity and really good musicians. I remember that when they were 8 years old, they had a concert in a local club where you had to pay to enter. I wanted that much to be there and I did my best to be there but I didn’t succeed. I remember I was fascinated by this band at that time, I was fascinated by the image of the solo guitar player, with his hard rock image, with long hair, boots, chains, leather jacket and a lovely Yamaha electric guitar that it was kind of an icon among us, local rock fans.

I didn’t know the guys back then; I was only going to their concerts (I told you about the one I couldn’t get to). I remember that at that time they just returned from a professional recording studio here in Romania with 2 songs they recorded and I managed to get the recordings, I don’t know how I did, but I got them. I was playing these 2 songs on and on on my cassette player, they sound so damn good, with heavy electric guitars, loud drums, bass guitar, etc. It was cool!

Then, something happened; the solo guitar player had a misunderstanding of some sort with the rhythm guitar player, the rhythm guitar player also started a media career, didn’t have time for the band anymore and they split (today he is one of the famous journalists and TV icon in my country).

Also, before this, the bass player immigrated to Canada to also start a career in media, he used to work in television while in the band, he also filmed and produced the first clip ever in my city, with real rock look and feel, he was good at this. The bass player was also the lead singer so the band was in need of a lead singer. They found one and he also took the job as bass player, they went back in a 3 people formula. This guy had a really beautiful voice, fan of David Coverdale but also Take That…I know, I know, something sounds wrong, but that was the truth! He didn’t quite match a Megadeth-like band, which Kapela was before he joined the band, but he didn’t have a band and they didn’t have a lead singer, so…And you know what? When I have first seen them at a concert in this new formula it sounds really good in my opinion, I said yes, they are there!

Italian rock evenings (or meeting the public)

So, there were those concerts in my city, in an Italian pub, where once a week the owner used to organize rock evenings where the ones who dare could play. The guitar player of this rock band I was telling you about was a usual guest at this rock evenings, I was also going there each time, to look and after a few session, to play the guitar with a few friends of mine.
And you know what? Today, out of those people coming to play there, 3 are professional musicians with great success here nationwide, so I can really say that it was a prolific bunch of musicians. See the keyboard player of this band here, Voltaj is the name, and a successful composer, producer and sound engineer, the guitar player of Parlament, and the guitar player of Spin. This is the guitar player I was telling you about a bit earlier.

Joining the band

Soon a common friend introduced me to this guy, the guitar player I was speaking about,Bogdan. We went along fine, he invited me to the rehearsal room, we started to jam together, and without knowing he asked me if I would like to join the band as a rhythm guitar player. Well, what do you think I did? I joined the band!!! Doh! It was one of those great moments in my life, a moment that I will always remember since it was a dream come true at that moment. So now the band had again 2 electric guitars, bass and drums, we were a classic rock band, don’t you think?

To that time I was already wearing long hair, boots and leather jackets with chains and spikes. Of course, every rocker who respects himself should wear this, right?
By the way, if you put electric guitars over spiked leather jackets which one do you think will suffer? Trust me, the electric guitars lose the fight all the time, spikes don’t come easy on guitar’s wood. Take this as a tip!

So, after a few weeks of rehearsals, 2 I think, we had a concert, the first one, open air, with a few thousand people, man, I was nervous.But, everything went fine, my friends told me that I fit in there just fine, it all sounded great so…rock on, man!

I played in that band a little over a year, a year when I learned a lot about electric guitars, about acoustic guitars, about playing together as a band, about rehearsals, about recording, by the way, we recorder 3 tracks together, we were planning an album, the second, they had a first one released a few years ago, we were on TV on a national channel, etc. But the story went wrong, issues between me and the lead guitar player started to appear, mostly during long nights, after the shows, he likes to party, drink, meet girls, I have never been quite the drugs, sex and rock and roll type, to be honest.

However after one year I decided to leave the band and follow my initial dream, with some old friends of mine. I was already playing in a parallel band, an other style, a more commercial one. So I decided to leave the band and go on with this other band I joined.

Soon, the lead singer of Kapela joined me, happy with the fact that he will not play the bass anymore and focus on his voice. Also, shortly after leaving the first band, the drummer also joined us since we were short of a drummer, and left Kapela, even if he was the founder of it.

What can I say, it was a beautiful period, I will speak in an other post about it, about how we evolved, how we grew together, how we learned together to form a band and act as one.

But more about it, next time, until then, long live rock and electric guitars!!

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If you think about it, I don’t think that any other musical instrument influenced the 20th century more than electric guitars. I think that electric guitars are to the last century what piano and the rest of the historically related instruments were for their time. Of course that if you think about Mozart, Beethoven, they used to compose their music on piano, or how you called it back then. I am sure that if they would have lived today, they would have given a great importance to electric guitars and probably they would have been rock stars. I am not joking, I mean what I say!

Think about Steve Vai, Satriani or Yngwie Malmsteen, gods of electric guitars, right? I have the conviction that born under an other star, a few hundred years ago, their names would have been listed near Mozart’s name and Bach’s name. Today, electric guitars are what drive the rock, blues, country music scene the same way as piano did some time ago.

Will electric guitars gods be remembered a few hundred years later?

Well, this is a really good question, and most of all, difficult to answer because we don’t have a way to compare what is going on with the music industry these days. Think about the fact that they didn’t have too much to do back then so composers, music people were seen as important figures of those days. Today, everything changes fast, electric guitars are a presence of the last 70 years I think, you can not predict how the music will change and if electric guitars will still be part of the next 100 years’ music. But who knows, maybe people will still remember and kids will learn in school about Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or Andy Timmons…

What do you think?

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I discovered a good initiative while reading a blog about electric guitars: guitars blogs want to get together, well, then, here they are:
Guitar Noize | IG Blog | Strat-O-Blogster | Guitar MX | Mad Stratter | Guitarz | Building the Ergonomic Guitar | Guitritus | Musician’s Notebook | GuitarToyBox | IGUITARGOD | Mr. Blues Guy | markmcguigan.com | Acoustic Guitar Player | iFingers Guitar Experience | Play Like a Girl | Electric Guitar Review | Guitar Novice | Truth in Shredding | Thumbrella | Music Ramble | The Soul of Rock and Roll | Guitar Lifestyle | GuitaroJam News | Music Gadgets | The Guitar Channel | The Guitar Resource | Guitar Stuff | Axe Victim | Guitar Flame

So, you, reader of this post, if you own a blog about electric guitars, acoustic guitars or any other type of guitars, add your address to the list and have a post about it. The other blogs will see you and notice you and you will get links and visits from the other blogs.

The funny part is that you are not obliged to do it. If you like the idea, post it on your site. By the way, don’t copy this post since it will be seen as duplicated content. Just copy the code below, add you blog to it and publish it on your site:

<a href=”http://www.guitarflame.com” title=”electric guitars,acoustic guitars,guitar tabs”>Guitar Flame</a> | <a href=”http://www.guitarnoize.com”>Guitar Noize</a> | <a href=”http://igblog.wordpress.com”>IG Blog</a> | <a href=”http://stratoblogster.blogspot.com”>Strat-O-Blogster</a> | <a href=”http://www.guitarmx.com/blog”>Guitar MX</a> | <a href=”http://madstratter.com”>Mad Stratter</a> | <a href=”http://guitarz.blogspot.com”>Guitarz</a> | <a href=”http://buildingtheergonomicguitar.com”>Building the Ergonomic Guitar</a> | <a href=”http://www.guitritus.com”>Guitritus</a> | <a href=”http://www.musiciansnotebook.com/”>Musician’s Notebook</a> | <a href=”http://guitartoybox.com”>GuitarToyBox</a> | <a href=”http://www.iguitargod.com/”>IGUITARGOD</a> | <a href=”http://www.mrbluesguy.com/”>Mr. Blues Guy</a> | <a href=”http://www.markmcguigan.com/”>markmcguigan.com</a> | <a href=”http://www.the-guitarplayer.com”>Acoustic Guitar Player</a> | <a href=”http://www.ifingers.co.uk/”>iFingers Guitar Experience</a> | <a href=”http://lorinator.feminoise.com”>Play Like a Girl</a> | <a href=”http://www.electric-guitar-review.com”>Electric Guitar Review</a> | <a href=”http://www.guitar-novice.com”>Guitar Novice</a> | <a href=”http://truthinshredding.blogspot.com”>Truth in Shredding</a> | <a href=”http://thumbrella.blogspot.com”>Thumbrella</a> | <a href=”http://www.musicramble.com”>Music Ramble</a> | <a href=”http://www.soulofrocknroll.com”>The Soul of Rock and Roll</a> | <a href=”http://www.guitarlifestyle.com”>Guitar Lifestyle</a> | <a href=”http://news.guitarojam.com”>GuitaroJam News</a> | <a href=”http://www.musicgadgets.net”>Music Gadgets</a> | <a href=”http://richmurray.typepad.com”>The Guitar Channel</a> | <a href=”http://theguitarresource.com”>The Guitar Resource</a> | <a href=”http://www.guitar-stuff.net”>Guitar Stuff</a> | <a href=”http://theaxevictim.blogspot.com/”>Axe Victim</a>

So, do you have a blog about electric guitars, acoustic guitars, guitar tabs or anything related to this? Join this!

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OK, it may sound fancy but I will explain you in just a second why I named my article “Electric guitars or the universe of sound”.

I named it this way since more than acoustic guitars, electric guitars open a world of sounds that reveal infinite possibilities. There is a lot of science in how an electric guitar sounds, in the way the sound is set by the guitar player or by the sound engineer, the sound needs to have certain mathematical level of trebles, of bass, but if you listen to those guitar heroes that you look up to, you will see that they all have their unique sound.

Electric guitars sound different because of many parameters that should be taken into consideration, from the wood type the electric guitar is made of, to the amplifier parameters and all the way to the particular way the player knows his way around music.

Even the position where the guitar strings are pinched matters when you speak about sounds of electric guitars and that is why all those guitar heroes sound that different.

I picture electric guitars sounding in a “visual” manner

I am a visually oriented person and I “see” everything, including sounds. Maybe it is difficult for you to understand what I mean, but picture this: let’s take a 70’s electric guitar player, let’s say Jimi Hendrix and his astonishing way of playing the guitar (by the way, I am not a big fan of Hendrix, but I do appreciate his perspective of the music) and Joe Satriani, a real God of electric guitars, in my opinion.

When I picture the sound of Jimi Hendrix’ electric guitar I see it as a tape running, flying, twisting in the air, but as a colored tape, I mean like a 2 faces limited thing, in one word…a tape. That, in my opinion defines the whole period of the 70’s from the point of view of how electric guitars sound.

When I think about modern electric guitars, when I think about how Joe Satriani makes his futuristic sounds, I see an infinite, fluid, conic shape, with a small base, some kind of a 3D tube that narrows to the infinite end, reflecting a silver-like light. This is the way modern electric guitars sound. The whole music of Joe Satriani sounds like surfing with the aliens, if you know what I mean…

I don’t know if you agree or not, this is my way of seeing the music, this is the way electric guitars make me feel and imagine music. Various electric guitar players give me different feelings, different impressions.

For example, if I think about Slash of Guns N’ Roses I think of him as having an incredible equilibrium, the way a cat has. Remember, a cat is said to always fall on her feet; this is what Slash makes me feel. Each time I see him playing his Gibson I have a damned ugly feeling that, look, now he’s going to miss a note, see…now, not yet…aaa, he’s going to miss the next one..But you know something? Despite this feeling of insecurity that Slash always throws on me, he always manages to put there as many notes as needed in order to make the song work. Without being one of the best electric guitar players around, Slash has other qualities, in my opinion. He is very melodic and has his unique style of playing. But that will probably be the subject of an other post, sometimes in the near future.

I could speak like this for hours about electric guitars, about how they sound and how various guitar heroes play and how they sound, but for the moment I stop here hoping that you have understood why I named my post “Electric guitars or the universe of sound”…

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