After this last year of blogging here at GuitarFlame.com, one full year when I put everything on the table and you learned to know me with every post I publish, I have realized that I would also like to know more about you.

I already know a bit from the comments you write on my blog and by reading your blogs or RSS each day, but this time I would like to know a bit more.

So, I have created this survey (the banner you see on the top side of my site with “I would like to know you better”) and I ask you to give me like 1 minute from your life to answer 10 simple questions. These simple questions will help me know you better, to create better content for the year to come.

I assure you these questions will not ask email addresses, name, will not ask to recommend this site to a friend, or anything like it.

After enough people will answer it (I don’t know how many, I don’t have yet something to compare to), I will publish the results here, because I think that all of you running blogs about guitars will be interested in knowing what is the general profile of the people reading guitar blogs, isn’t it?

So, how about it? Would you care to help me on this one?

It will only take a minute.

A minute from your life…

Thank you!

Click here to start the survey!

Lately I have become a fan of smartphones. I don’t own one at the moment, I have a “regular” Nokia phone, but I plan that somewhere in the near future to buy a new phone, maybe an E-TEN glofiish X800, or an Asus P320, but not at this moment.

Now, where are the mobile phones connected to guitars?

I must admit, the idea of this post came to me after reading an article on GuitarNoize.com about Sonoma Wireworks FourTrack, when I suddenly remembered about my lovely and trusty Korg guitar tuner that I recently broke. Well, not completely since those green lights still show where I am relatively to the pitch, but the display is totally dead, black, crashed (one day I put the tuner first and the multi-effect second in my gig bag, on top of the display of the tuner. That was the day when my guitar tuner died! RIP!).

The lights are not enough since the tuner has the capability to tune the bass also, by pushing a button, so I don’t know anymore if the button for the bass has been pushed or not, or if the pitch was altered by 1, 2, 3 half steps (another button). However, I learned to know that if it doesn’t hear the B string, must be on the bass setting, thus I push that button again and I find my way around it.

If at home I can easily tune my acoustic guitar by ear (or using the guitar tuner from the TonePort interface), on stage with all the noise around I’d better have a tuner. So, I definitively must buy a new one.

And now, finally, the connections with the mobile phones. Damn, it took a long time to reach this point, isn’t it?

One of my friends downloaded on his smartphone one of those great little applications, a software guitar tuner. Man, it comes handy for those moments when you want to tune your acoustic guitar and don’t have a tuner around.

Just start the application, get the mobile closer to the guitar and just tune the guitar! Of course this can not be used for electric guitars on stage, because there is no cable connection, only the mic of the mobile phone, but hey, for tuning the acoustic guitar in a relatively quiet place, it does the trick!

There are many options out there, I found a few myself, like 4Pockets Guitar Tuner ($19.95 on Amazon), or HandDee GTuner ($15) for example. You can find more for yourself, if you think they come handy.

By the way, how do you tune your guitar? Do you have one of those small tuners, have a tuner on the guitar processor or by year?

Buy from Amazon

BlackBerry Bold 9000 Smartphone
E-TEN glofiish X800

I usually don’t post over the weekend, but today, 16th November, it’s a big day for GuitarFlame.com and for me.

Today, this site celebrates 1 year since the first post, 1 year of constant posting and searching for new ideas, 1 year of meeting great people, finding about new technologies and guitars, 1 year of new experiences.

I want to tell you I have enjoyed every moment of it, I loved answering every comment and writing every article. I have had some good articles (I like to believe so) and a lot of bad ones (I take credits for them too)

During this year I have met people that were here before my blog came to being, I loved speaking to them, exchanging emails, comments, stumbles, chat by Skype-phone, during this time I have seen disappearing blogs that I have looked up to since day one (IG’s blog, for example) and during this time I have started again to rehears with my band, after about 2 years with no activity.

I have had a contest, which was a great thing for me, new thrills, you know, I had great people guest blogging here, Dr J, Jack Pribek and IG. I promised these guys I will guest posts on their blogs too, as a return favor for taking the time to write a post for my blog. Unfortunately, I haven’t managed so far, so I think I will just publish a TO DO list one day…

I have received a lot of request to publish news about various sites, products, etc, I have stored them in my local TO PUBLISH list, one of these days I will do it.

I have started a dare, a contest with myself, to reach in 5000 visitors per day in 6 months. Some may say I’ve failed. Some, as in STATS NUMBERS. Well, I gained a lot more. I have only reached 550-650 visitors per day, but, as a commercial here in Romania says, a small number, but, mine! How true! I worked hard for everyone of these 600 visitors per day. By the way, trust me I have worked for those spikes of 2500, 3500 visitors in 24 hours too! (Thanks, fellow stumblers!)

Also, for those of you wondering, yes, I have made some money from this blog, I guess around $600, not much, but hey, they paid the bills for hosting and for a part of my guitar, you know, but honestly, I didn’t put too much weight on this, even if I constantly try to find something to make this site bring in some money because I would like it to work a bit for itself, it is 1 year old now, this blog it’s a big boy now! However, that’s not a priority and for sure it is no secret that sites make money. Some of them, big money. Well, not this one.

Thanks to your support for this blog I have gained again my interest for everything that guitar means, I bought a new guitar, my surfer-blue Variax that I really enjoy, I started to experience home recording and man, I learned a lot about blogging! Before this site I was not into blogging much.

By the way, this first year anniversary was celebrated a few days before by a new and lovely spike, with a few days when my traffic was somewhere between 1500 and 2500 daily visitors. Well, thanks for the present, guys!

So, for this, I just wanted to write this post and tell you that you are all part of it, because without your constant participation here, I wouldn’t have gone that far. For me, GuitarFlame is not just a site, it is not just a blog, I like to believe it is a nice community, made of everyone reading my posts and commenting here.

To all of you I want to say thank you for being part of it!

Happy 1 year birthday, GuitarFlame.com!

Following the post about Axl’s new album, I got my hands on Angel Down, Sebastian Bach’s new record.

I must tell you, I am impressed, if you want, at least because of the phenomenal voice of this guy. I have always loved Skid Row and Bach never lost one bit of his voice over the years, sounds like he is still 19-20 yo. Usually, after a certain age, singers cool down and take easier paths, see Bon Jovi, for example. Screaming is not in trends anymore, after all…

Says who!? Bach wasn’t told about it… Don’t ask him to be tender and smooth, cause his voice is not made for this. Instead, he will burn down the house with one single scream. This is what he does and man, he rules.

From my personal point of view, Sebastian Bach is like the perfect voice for metal, next to Eric Adams (Manowar), Michael Kiske (Helloween) and Dickinson (Maiden). And I will add here Mike Matijevic (Steelheart), I really consider him as one of the “might have been” leading rock voices around. He only missed the train, what a pity…(man, if you read this, you rule!)

Coming back to Bach (not THAT Bach, for one of my dear friends who looked at me a bit lost when I showed him a picture with Sebastian Bach in a rock magazine about 10 years ago), I am happy he made that record and I think the friendship of Axl Rose helped here because no matter what he said, he didn’t manage to make that record until this year. I can only imagine them speaking…come on,man, are you gonna put that record out or what? hm…I don’t know…only if you’ll do it too…aa…wtf, OK! Let’s do it!

I recommend you listen Falling into you, a lovely power ballad and Back in the saddle, to see how well his voice works with Axl’s voice…

Here’s another one, this is what I could find on YT

By the way, are the 80’s coming back?

Buy Angel Down, Sebastian Bach’s latest record from Amazon

As you may know, I am a bit of a recent fan of Line 6 technologies, especially after I purchased a TonePort UX1 recording interface and the Line 6 Variax 600 Guitar, so I try to stay in touch with what’s new around Line 6. Well, it was interesting to find out that

Line 6 Announces Unlock Code to Access Additional POD(R) Guitar Technology in Guitar Hero(R) World Tour Music Studio

Now, that’s very cool, a cheat for a game, so what else is new?! But wait, what Line 6 has to do with Guitar Hero (R)?!

The sound modeling technology of Line 6’s POD, which is integrated into Guitar Hero World Tour’s innovative new Music Studio. Thanks to the incredible processing power of the next-generation video game consoles, we placed the actual tone algorithms into Guitar Hero World Tour to give players the tools to choose their own sounds for the music they create. For the first time, gamers will have the ability to compose and record with the same technology used by professional musicians
(Marcus Ryle, Line 6 Founder and SVP of Research and Development) read the press release here

Damn! Line 6 powers up Guitar Hero sound engine?

What do you know?!! I play Guitar Hero at home everyday and I didn’t even know about it!!

I am a bit confused…can I still wear that t-shirt with “I play real guitar?”!

By the way, today I have been called by the guys I purchased the guitar from(Variax dealer), to come to a workshop they plan 2 weeks from now. OK, I said, send the invitations over here! By the way, would you like to play a song there? Well, why not? So in two weeks from now I will join that workshop, should be interesting…

These days everybody speaks about Axl Rose and his upcoming album,Chinese Democracy, so I can not stop myself speaking about it.

I have said it before that I don’t believe anymore in Axl, not without the rest of the band, especially after 14 years of pause, 14 years of never ending stories about how he will make the greatest album ever.

But here we are, waiting for the big day, the day when Axl Rose’s latest album will be released.

I am really looking forward to it, to see what it brings, and I will probably buy it. However, I will buy it as a new beginning, a new era in Axl’s musical life, not as a new album of GNR. For me, GNR died the moment Slash and Co walked a new path. I don’t blame them or Axl for breaking up the band. I don’t have the right to do it, they are the band, I am just a fan, so I just take the facts as they are. And the fact is that GNR split back then, Axl went one direction, Slash & Co went another way. Or as my friend and bass player would say, they went the same way, opposite directions…

Now after 14 years, GNR releases a new album. I don’t buy that.

That’s not GNR out there, that’s just a solo album of Axl. And I do buy that, I buy it with a fresh and open mind, waiting for a great release of a proven musician.

That being said, I just ask myself, if Axl wouldn’t have had the legal rights for the name GNR, would have his new album started that much buzz worldwide or would have been just another solo album out there?

So, what do you think about it? And more than this, what do you buy? A new GNR album or Axl’s solo album?

After I posted yesterday about Green Day playing Queen, I started to look for similar performances and I found videos from that concert for Freddie Mercury from 1992.

I have watched it a lot of times and it still manages to surprise me every time, as a great exercise of how to match (or not to match?!) a voice to a particular song, given the fact that a lot of singers joined the show that night.

The fact is that all the guys singing there were professionals and I guess we can not argue their professionalism, value or voice but still, some of them were not from that movie. I mean, I love Guns, but Axl should have picked other songs, seriously…Or just other stage, I don’t know…

But that’s not the point of this post (I wonder how many times I said this already on this blog!!).

The fact is that I have started to think about Queen and Paul Rodgers project. I remember when it all started, it created a bit of a buzz here, as I guess it did the same all around the world.

However, I can not stop myself thinking that Paul Rodgers is not the best match for Queen’s music. I don’t know why, but he didn’t move me in any way. If you would ask me about ONE ARTIST that really impressed me when playing Queen’s music, well, that’s George Michael…

When I listened George Michael singing Somebody to love, I had the impression that he is 100% there! Perfect match (you know, like in Terminator, with Arnold’s bionic eyes scanning around). I had the impression that George Michael is like THE VOICE for Queen, or what is left after Freddie died.

It may be also because George Michael has an educated voice, maybe more than other singers there, he controlled it every step of the way, never missing a damn note, never losing breath, giving me the impression of a work extremely well done, by the book.

I don’t know, but the fact is that Somebody to love, for me, is the image of that show and George Michael is “the voice that should have been” after Freedie passed away, not Paul Rodgers, for any “Queen plus” project.

Or…if you don’t see George Michael there, who would you see?

By the way, does anybody see Paul Rodgers in there?

Yep, I like a couple of Green Day’s songs, but come on, I’ve never seen this one coming!!!

Green Day playing Johnny B Goode?! Yep, now I’ve seen it all!

Maybe only this one beats it, the same bunch playing We are the champions…

Well?!

Later edit: seems I am in the Queen period today…how about this one?

I am curious about one thing, your participation will be most welcome…

When rehearsing with the band, at one moment, quite short, I guess, the number of songs you learn and rehears with the band will be higher than the number of songs that you can actually rehears in one single rehearsing session.

Considering cover bands that should have a list of at least 40-50 songs (am I wrong here?) to play in a show of 2-3 sessions at a party, all these songs can not possibly be practiced in one session.

So, how do you do it?

I have spoken to a friend of mine that actually does this and he said that they study the songs at home, individually and at the rehearsal they only go through the difficult parts, like breaks, tempo changes, points where they feel they should go through at least once or twice together but don’t play the easy parts.

I think I have heard a pro band saying once that they actually don’t rehears anymore, they do it on tour, because they spend anyway a lot of time together. OK, I guess that when you play every 1-2 days the same set that is already stuck in the mind of the audience, every show is a rehearsal so another rehearsal wouldn’t help that much. Maybe only for new songs…

Personally we play a few songs every rehearsal, but lately we haven’t met that often, so practice would be needed…

So, how do you do it?

A few days back I announced the winner of Willie Nelson’s contest, Dr J.

Today I read he received the box set.

I can tell you this really made my day since this was the first contest ever on GuitarFlame. It was a very interesting moment and I think I will do it again on the first available occasion!

Dr J is one of the regular visitors here, guest blogger on GuitarFlame and he actively comments on this blog. And seems to be a lucky person also so I had all the more reasons to be happy for him.

So, I just want to wish Dr J, happy and pleasant audition!

Man, I love this moment!!