Did you ever happen that while soloing to reach a point where to feel a bit lost, asking yourself OK, now what?!! I don’t speak about stopping the solo, just that I found myself when jamming in situations that needed to be resolved in a fraction of a second and I had no damn clue about where to go next. What do you do then?!

I remember speaking to a friend of mine (and band colleague back then) about this, about 10 years ago. I came up with speed as my solution!! When you don’t know what to do, you fall into one of those speedy licks, that’s a solution all the time! Well, my band colleague, who was kind of a local legend among rock fans in my city and way more experienced than me, said that the solution (for him) is not the speed but pentatonic scales (and man, he was a shredder, and still is, but a classy one!).

Really?! Well, it took me a while to fall on to the same conclusion he found, that the pentatonic scale is a winner scale in (almost) all the situations no matter what you play. The fact is that I have found myself over time in hard/heavy soloing as in blues (doh!) or pop-rock solos and all the time a good old note extension in a pentatonic scale was just what the doctor ordered.

I have payed some thinking on why is that and I I got to the conclusion that this happens because of the specific melodic feeling of the pentatonic scale, plus the fact that it has a relatively low number of notes so it kind of falls right on all kind of chord progressions, plus that the scale is so friendly and easy to improvise in.

How about it, am I right or what? What’s your “escape”? Is it the speed? Arpeggios? Or just good old pentatonic scale?

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Reading Dr J’s blog this morning, I have found and interesting article about bloopers in famous songs and really it made my day! Of course, as the article says (and how right the author is), the mistakes were probably left there for giving a note of realism to the song.

I think that this is indeed, a good way to do this. Usually artists are seen as stars, people out of reach, perfect people, but they are just humans. Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Sting, they are all people.

I remember that while in high school I loved Nirvana unplugged concert. Do you know what really attached me to that recording? May sound stupid, but it was that mistake that Cobain makes on The man who sold the world, when while soloing he misses a note, sounds flat and…they let it there on the album.

I loved that part, it was so true, uncovered, real! I remember that while playing this song we were even playing that mistake and used to laugh about it. That was the “human touch” of that album. OK, beside the fact that acoustic albums were the hip things of the time, music back to people, less complicated music, etc.

The fact is that mistakes happen. I know I had some also. Like for example, after recording a fast-drummed punk-like song, while home listening the song, something was bothering me without knowing exactly what it was. So I played the song on and on and I discovered that among all those fast drum hits it was one that was off-timing. My colleagues made fun of me, come on, let it go, there is no such thing. It was, and back in the studio for an other session, we expanded the drum track (midi drums) and indeed, we have found a drum hit not being where should have been. Fixed!

Also, for a pop-rock song, we had some chorus background voices entering on the 4th verse of the song. Split vocals, that is. By mistake, the mixing engineer moved one part of the split vocals on the 3rd verse so instead of having split vocals on the 4th verse, we ended up with a voice singing on the 3rd verse and an other one on the 4th verse. Well, I can only say we let it like this cause it really gave a more “human” feeling to the song.

Things like this happen and if you have ever recorded anything, than I guess you have your share of “bloopers” too.

Now, for the funny part, one that really makes me laugh is (or at least I consider it to be a “blooper”) of a very famous band in Romania, Iris, band that I really love and respect.

They used to play heavy/hard for 15 years gaining an undisputed fame here, switching to a bit more commercial music (still rock), these days. They have now 30 years in music business and going strong.

So, they recorded this song, cover of Bad company, Feel Like Making Love. If you listen the last part of the song, the lead singer, instead of feel like making love to you says can’t you see I’m making love to you?!!!

It sounds funny to me due to the meaning of it. Don’t bother me, girl!Can’t you see I’m making love to you?!!

I have listened the original song to see if there is the same thing there, well, it isn’t. I just think the lead singer missed it when recording and let it like this.

Is it a blooper or not? What do you think?

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I was reading this morning on From The Woodshed blog about how Joe, the guy behind the blog, works his way on the guitar by structured techniques and not just by ear. That kind of made me think for a minute. I remember when I started programming, I didn’t know a lot of stuff, but I used to keep a paper and a pen on my desk and used to write down all the new terms I was hearing around me and then searched for them on the internet and in the documentation. That helped me a lot since I learned a lot when doing this. If I think about it, this is a form of organizing yourself, which, to be honest, is not one of my forms of expression, if you know what I mean…

I proposed to myself to also be more organized in this area of music and guitar. It is not difficult to do it, just that you need a bit of dedication. I think I should also write down what I want to learn or practice and take it one at a time. I want to practice more scales, well, put it down on paper to see it and remember it.

Personally I would like to work more my tapping techniques. I am not a tapping and arpeggios guitar player. I love power metal and heavy and Satriani and stuff, but I was never able to put enough time to study this properly. The fact is that while at a party in my university years, I had a stupid accident that left me with a cut tendon on my left hand.

I had surgery for this (the doctor say that if it wouldn’t have been my guitar playing she would have let it like this since it is not a major thing! Damn it! It’s good I play the guitar!!). After the surgery I had to recover but my little finger on the left hand didn’t fully recover the same mobility like before so I couldn’t manage to use it properly for arpeggios so I just managed to play an other way.

So, to those thinking that guitar playing is over in such cases, well, trust me, it isn’t!You just need to find other way of expressing yourself. Music is not just about technical skills but about expressing yourself.

Regarding this thing with my finger, in that period I was in the studio with my previous band, Kapela. We were recording a demo album that was never released,unfortunately. However, I felt terrible, I was really pissed off about this thing with the surgery. I had a large (literally: LARGE!!!) bandage on my hand with a wooden stick inside it, to keep my finger on the right position. Well, imagine me going to the studio with this thing on.

I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to record anything since I had only 3 fingers to use (I don’t count the thumb so even at that time I had 5 fingers, really!) My part in the band was rhythm guitar and the guys were really cool to understand me and support me back then. I managed to record my parts after more takes, with a bit more attention.

I do have some pictures from the studio back then, with my monstrous bandaged finger, all my friends used to laugh at me back then, I was the only one not feeling like laughing, really.

Anyway, time passed and now I am loving every moment playing my guitar, even if I don’t do those elaborated arpeggios. But I don’t stress myself about it, music is about feeling and expression. By the way, I do solo guitar and I don’t complain, my fingers work very well, thank you! Including that little finger. However, no arpeggios, OK?

PS: This post started in a direction but led me to an other one. That’s OK for me. OK for you?

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During struggling period with the band, we’ve had our share of “unique points of view” from one producer or an other.

I remember one time (we used to play pop rock at that moment) we went to a record company in Bucharest, introduced by somebody, to speak about our “future” in music.

So, here we are in this guy’s office, 4 people on one side of the table, namely THE BAND and one person on the other side
, THE PRODUCER-MANAGER.

I will call him producer for the sake of this post.

The guy listened to what we used to play back then, he had the tape there, knew what was our musical direction, pop-rock as I have already said.

Producer(to the drummer): So, how old are you?

Drummer: 34

Producer: You’re 26. I see you wear long hair. You’ll cut your hair and die it.

Drummer: —silence—

Producer(to the lead singer) : What’s your age?

Lead singer: 31.

Producer: You’re 25. How do you wear your hair? (the lead singer had kind of a baseball hat)

Lead singer,taking off his hat: I shave my head.

Producer(to me): How old are you?

Me: 26

Producer: You’re OK. The hair is OK (I had short hair at that moment) we need to work a bit on shirts/outfit but it will work out. (I was wearing my hippest t-shirt, totally out of rock but totally into new trends, IMO, so my self pride was hurt a bit cause I did my best at that moment to look hip and trendy, you know, to have that “artist” look, sun glasses in my hair, damn, I looked good!!!)

I don’t remember what the guy told to the bass player but he was OK too, except the hair that he needed to arrange a bit. If I well remember that started a bit of a resistance from his side cause he had enough hair, as we used to laugh, for a shower and a strong wind, after wearing it long for years (Steve Harris fan for good!!! Iron Maiden rules!)

Producer: Well, now about music. You need hits, you need something to work in dance clubs, to make people dance.

We were already disoriented so anything he would have said would have been taken for granted, we were kind of groggy already. Shortly speaking, he pointed us to a famous local band, Voltaj , playing kind of a dance music with rock instruments, after 20 years of struggling in heavy metal world. You need this kind of music to make it!
See the video below for an idea.

So we left his office arguing if we’ll do it or not. Some of us wanted, some of us didn’t want or at least not feeling OK about it. Anyway, the whole thing failed at one point, frankly I have no idea why, maybe axlfuckingrose remembers.By the way, he’s the lead singer I am speaking about, my mate in this band since 1998 and since 1997 in an other band, Kapela, I will present him to you at some moment as a guest blogger here. In the meantime here’s his site (in Romanian, poetry and pictures)

Well, so that was some story we’ve lived to tell. There were more during years, I will tell them here also but the whole point is how much are you willing to change to make it big with your music? Will you change the look? The music? The band??!

How much are you willing to take and what will make you snap and say no? What’s your boiling point?

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Yesterday while driving I was listening to this show on a radio channel here about the first tape one’s bought. Boy, that made me think!!!

I remember that I asked my mother, I think I was 12 or something to buy me a cassette player and I went with her to a shop nearby and bought one of those 2 rooms stereo cassette players, I even remember the brand name, if it is even a brand…It was called International. Well, that was it! I had my stereo, just that I had no cassette to listen to so I went to a store nearby that was our local half bookstore/half anything else that had anything to do with paper, pens, cassettes, whatever…

I didn’t even know what to buy, you imagine that back then, in Romania we didn’t have any music televisions to give the children any musical taste, even a bad one. So, for I don’t remember what reasons I picked a tape (that was as much as I could afford at that moment, I was 12 or 13), payed for it and went home to listen to it.

Imagine that the tape I picked was Jimi Hendrix!!! Without any musical culture at that moment, with a dubious musical taste and nobody to lead me through music (my mother didn’t have anything to do with music, so…) I picked something that was out of my league for that age…

I played that tape wanting so much to love it, to have something to speak about the next day with my colleagues…but all that I could get was a head ache (no kidding, it is real!) I could not listen more than one side of the album. I don’t even know what album was that!

How unfortunate was that? One of the most important electric guitar players of all times to make such a bad impression on me? I totally hated it and switched to rap music, which I listened until I was about 16 I think when rock music asked it’s share…

A few years later I tried to come back to listen that tape, but I still didn’t like it. I think that the first impression counted a lot in my case since, despite the great appreciation that most guitar players show to Jimi Hendrix and despite my intellectual appreciation for him, I still don’t like his music. If somebody asks me, I rather say I like other kind of guitar players, and it is true, but I think that it is really related to this first experience with rock music, is related to that first tape I bought…

So, do you remember the first cassette you’ve bought? Or was a vinyl?

What’s your story?

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This year, since we are in the beginning of it, I have thought about setting (bold) goals (and this includes my websites too). So, for this website, since it is quite new (started on November 21th) and I feel a good feedback I set up a quite HIGH target, due in 6 months starting today. So, here it is:

My target is to reach 5000 visitors per day 6 months from now!
Starting date: January 18th, Due date: Jujy 18th
The traffic must be stable, not to be 1 day spiked traffic from social networks,traffic that disappear the next day. I am not speaking about unique visitors but about all visitors since a big part of a blog traffic is made up of returning visitors.

Will I make it? Will I fail? Well, I think that I won’t fail, you can not fail in any way. If you don’t get 5000 per day and you get 3000 per day, it is great, you have 3000 each and every day, that is no failure!

At the end of each month I will post the progress and how I got there, what I did to get that progress. And most of it, I am counting on you, people, since to get that traffic you can only count on your visitors to spread the word around.

So, please be part of it! Digg it as much as you can, Stumble it often, I get good visitors from Stumble upon, send it to Del.icio.us, to whatever you want! Send it to your friends or just tell them about it! Let’s see what happens!

All I can say about it is that I will try to dedicate myself as much as I can in the next 6 months to this goal and do whatever I can to achieve my goal. I will probably ask you often to help me with one or two things from the goodness of your heart and sympathy for a fellow guitar blogger.Yeah!

So, subscribe to RSS feeds now and follow the progress each and every step of the way!

And have a post about it on your blog! That will help a lot! Thank you!

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This will be a short one. I remember when I started to get interested in guitars that something started to burn me inside, I just needed to learn to play! I had a high school class mate that used to bring the guitar to school back then and each time I used to see him playing, I felt such a strong urge to learn it myself.

He usually brought the acoustic guitar, a big one with a full and warm sound. Once he brought a Fender like electric guitar that it looked sooo  damn good! Red, if I well remember…

So I wonder: what actually makes us want so much to play the guitar? Why do YOU started to play the guitar?

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I was thinking about every guitar player’s dream, about that part where you are the solo guitar player and everybody is cheering you, loving you, adoring you, in a spot where everybody would love to be. It is somehow like in that movie I saw some years back with one guitar player that was no good, selling his soul for becoming a great guitar player playing astonishing solos. Of course…

Anyway, every guitar player wants to be the bad ass solo guitar in a famous rock band. Every guitar player dreams it….

But! There is a but here… I had the opportunity to go with this friend of mine in ‘97 to get a job (my friend, not I) as a professional guitar player in the local theater big band. He was good, really good. Now, as I have already told you a few times before here, he is one of the best rock guitar players in Romania, in my opinion. So, he got the job as the lead guitar in a big band with about 30 instruments, a band that used to play along the lead singers working for the local theater.

There was that other guitar player there, about 45 or something, the second guitar. Of course he didn’t have leading parts, he was always there but nobody saw him. However, I couldn’t help myself thinking that if that guy wouldn’t have been there, the music would have been missing something…

If you think about it, you can not play a guitar solo without somebody being the rhythm guitar, to keep you on chords and to help you be creative. I don’t speak about somebody playing C, F, G only. I am speaking about a better guitar player. A bit of 9 here, some 7+ there, a small 13 chord, well, you know what I mean… Did you ever notice that if you play with a rhythm guitar who is a great at playing chords, you just become more creative, you feel the music better and you are better, playing better solos? It feeds you with his chord harmony instead of playing those plan C, F, G…

That guy there is the second guitar that nobody knows or notice.

I have been in this second position while playing in Kapela (I am not saying I was that guy that inspired the lead guitar, I was not in such a position, unfortunately). I was there for about 1 year and all that I had in front of my eyes was to be the lead guitar in an other band. Of course, the dream…

I am sure you are familiar with TV shows such as “So, you think you can dance?” Next time you watch it, watch the second guitar there and see how important is that part: rhythm, chords, melody, technique but no glory. Is it right this way?

Take the man out of the band and see how it sound. Then, if it sounds bad, put him back in the band and put the lights on him, giving him those moments of glory that he deserves. I say that because our similar TV show here had such a moment, cheering the rhythm guitar while playing on a large screen some great moments with him on stage. Unfortunately it was because his sudden death  a few days ago, he was 70 or something…

But he had his part. Unfortunately, one moment too late…

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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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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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