Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

That is right, I dare you again to guess the guitar player in the left image. Somehow looks like him today so there may be a great chance to guess right.

Well, what do you say?

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A few days ago, my wife asked me to tidy a bit my “office room”, where I keep my desk, computer, etc. Looking through the stuff there I have found a promotional brochure of Carvin guitars, brochure that I have received when testing a Carvin guitar some time ago. I was very happy about this so I sit and started to browse it.

I saw this guitar, I am not sure what was the exact model, but I found a similar one on the internet, for the sake of the example. I found it very strange that the guitar (of course, a Carvin model) had a Floyd Rose installed on it, but no lock on fret zero (see the picture).

I am used to the double locking tremolo to have both parts, the lock and the floating bridge, but this one had no lock! I ask myself how efficient could it be and what is the actual advantage of not installing that lock?

It is considered that a floating bridge gives a weaker sustain, while through body strings give the stronger sustain, thing that I don’t dare to argue cause it is obvious. But, as far as I know, and of course, can be considered an argument if you judge by the above example with through body strings, the thing that actually lowers the sustain is the floating bridge, right? Not the lock! Because it doesn’t have mass to resonate and sustain string vibration the same way through body strings have.

Then what’s the use of a Floyd Rose system without the lock?

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I was thinking these last days about a particular topic: guitar players that studied music with keyboard players. Here I think about two guys. Two, because nobody else comes to my mind at this point. I am thinking of Frank Gambale and Joe Satriani.

Frank Gambale is quite famous for his strange way (I would call it) of playing riffs. I know, he plays fusion jazz or whatever you want to call that music and to a metal head or at least to a rock addict or even to a blues guitar player, it may seem strange, because in all the above enumerated styles, patters are more obvious, while in fusion/jazz, well, not quite.

Do I make any sense so far? Judging by my standards, Frank Gambale, which I like, by the way, plays strange. At least to my ears and this is exactly what makes his music interesting.

I asked myself at one point why and how could he think of those patterns and lick. The answer came from himself: he studied music by listening to keyboard players! He said it, not me! This is a very interesting way of learning to play the guitar, don’t you think? When you study guitar music to play it on guitar, patterns are more likely to match your finger possibilities, you can easily stretch your fingers to reach those notes, because the original song is played that way, but when you try to match keyboard music on your guitar, man, I can only imagine how difficult should be to play the licks, because they are not designed for guitar!! They are designer for 10 fingers reaching notes in particular fixed positions.

I had a class mate who used to play piano since he was a child and I remember him saying about guitar that it is a strange instrument. Why? Because I can not imagine why you can find the same note in more than one place! On piano I always know where that note is, he said! Guitar is a very stupid instrument! Right!

Ok, we could use this to our advantage, right? When you can’t play a note in one position, you can always play it in an other position, there is the same note. It may have a different flavor depending where you play it and how, but it is the same note in the end.

Personally I have tried only once to play some piano music on guitar, OK, twice, and actually just a few arpeggios, because I liked how they sounded, but this can not be called playing the guitar by piano music. What can be called like this is Frank Gambale’s music. I can not tell if the way he sounds is only because of his piano music education or because his further education in fusion/jazz, but it does sound strange.

Also, if you have the curiosity to study his picking style, you will see he does it differently, he even has a guitar method oriented towards this, but that is an other story, not related to his piano music background, but does contribute a lot to the way he sounds.

On the other hand, when I listen to Satriani, if I wouldn’t have seen it on Wikipedia, I would have said he always studied guitar by listening to guitar, which is not true.

So, do you know other guitar players that studied music by listening to players of other instruments? Frankly I can not think of anybody else right now? How about you?

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I don’t think it has anything to do with music, but I think this might be the world record for right hand speed picking!

That reminds me of that joke with some guy stopping two police officers on the street asking them something in English, then in French, then in Spanish, then in German, without the policemen being able to understand anything. After they guy leaves angry at the two officers, one of them asks: Did you see how many foreign languages this guy knew?! Yes, answers the other one, but what was the use?!

So, does this have anything to do with music or not?

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That made me smile, it is something else compared to the crunchy, mad metal of Metallica! That’s just Kirm Hammett goofing around

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A few days ago, I have received an email on behalf of Deep Purple, offering me an open door to Pandora’s box: information about Deep Purple’s Summer Tour 2008 straight from the source.

At first I was thrilled, you know, I don’t receive everyday direct emails from people representing monsters of rock, even if I understand this is part of a marketing campaign oriented to promoting Deep Purple’s Summer Tour 2008. Then, after a bit of thinking and browsing their website, I realized I don’t know what to ask them. What could I possibly ask that hasn’t been asked before so many times in the last 30 years?!

And to be honest, I don’t think I have the heart of an interview journalist…

So, I thought that maybe you could help me here and together we could put up a list of relevant questions regarding the Summer Tour 2008, questions that I will forward directly to Deep Purple.

Come on, how often you have the chance to speak directly to Deep Purple? Free your dirty minds and let it all out, people!!! Let the games begin!!

So, what questions would you ask Deep Purple about their 2008 tour?

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Today it’s 19 again, so it’s one of those days when I share my past month statistics for my dare of 5000 visitors per day. I haven’t had the time to do it properly yesterday or today until now, because I keep on cleaning windows and furniture since yesterday evening. Easter is coming and my wife launched the operation “spring cleaning reloaded” and in such situation there is no much room for negotiations, computer or playing the guitar. Damn!

So, shortly, here is what happened:

I’ve got ’stumbled upon” again!

Via Guitar Mx, I found about a top of “the greatest” guitar riffs of all time, put together by Telegraph.co.uk. I didn’t want to publish again the same top, but I have observed a few songs that didn’t make it on the list, even if they have famous guitar riffs. Among these, Satisfaction (of Rolling Stones). So I shared my thoughts about that top and you know what? It made it on StumbleUpon and that particular post had 1459 page views that day, and 2580 page views by today. It was again one of those days when my traffic was again nice

I had 1350 visitors the first day , then 860 then 460. The most interesting thing is that the traffic after that spike seemed to settle at an average around 250-300 visitors per day, which I consider good. I know I am still far away from my target, but it’s a good step forward, in my opinion.

On 16 I started again to receive visitors and the first moment I thought I am on StumbleUpon again but that was not the (only) reason. That day I had 815 visitors, half of them coming from the fact that an article of mine about Sungha Jung reached the first page of MetaFilter.com and that brought me 400 visitors one day and 566 visits by today which is again good because I wasn’t even aware of the existence of that site. That is if I don’t count the PR7 link from the first page, even if I don’t think it counts because I was there only 2 days.

I had 100 diggs but I was not on Digg’s first page!!!

This was one of the most amazing experiences I had this month. Really, I’m not joking! I found this guy, Rick Renstrom, which was born, I guess, with physical disabilities, which would have stopped anybody from even trying to think about playing an instrument! Well, not him! Rick Renstrom became a great guitar player! I was just amazed about his performance, so I had this article about him that suddenly started to get dugg! And it kept on receiving diggs! When I woke up the next morning after I posted the article, the article had 53 diggs, it was first on the upcoming list in music category on Digg, so far away from the next article, and I was on the upcoming list in Entertainment, in the middle.

I was sure I will get on the first page! 53 diggs in the morning and counting? I have even spoken to the guys hosting my blog, warning them about sudden traffic! By the end of the day I reached 100 diggs, I can tell you my adrenaline was high, I was very nervous, waiting for that big rush of people on my site and…nothing!?!! Nothing at all?! The article has got 100 diggs and didn’t make it on the first page?

Damn! So if I do the math, I can tell you that 100 diggs in 24 hours brought me 98 visitors from Digg. If I also count the 97 visitors from StumbleUpon, I can say that the article could have done much better, I was waiting for the big wave, the 20.000 visitors or more!! That’s what I was waiting for! Well…

If I draw the line and count, I can tell you that this month meant:

• 9993 visits
• 14500 page views
• 1 SU spike of 1350 visitors and about 2 smaller ones that I don’t count
• 100 diggs on one single article (but no front page)
• 9% direct traffic
• 36% search engines
• 55% referrals
• an apparently steady traffic of a 250-300 average per day, traffic observed in the last 10 days.

I have started to work on adapting my blog layout, so in a few days I will change a bit the way my blog looks, so stay close for the upcoming change!

Anyway, just a reminder, if you don’t know already: subscribe to RSS to get the news every day and never miss a post! It’s that easy, you know?!

Anyway, you should also see the first report and the second report of my monthly statistics.

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You can not argue that this guy developed a strange talent…

I can’t help myself asking what actually determined him to learn to play the guitar with that damn spoon?

Now, stumble that and digg!! Thank you!

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I find via PRWeb that Joe Satriani is going to teach guitar on WorkshopLive.com website.

For the moment I couldn’t find this news on WorkshopLive.com site or on Joe Satriani’s website but sounds like a good idea. Sounds to me like a “give back” thing, a man who received so much from life, trying to return something to his fans. I like that.

Ok, Satriani is well known for his guitar teaching history due to the fact that he has such famous students, no need to count them again here, so this choice may have come natural if you think about it, considering he has experience in teaching guitar.

And with his reputation and fan base, I think WorkshopLive.com has done it this time!

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Gary of Thumbrella posted this strange 3 necks guitar on his website.

Two things I have to ask about this guitar:

1) What would you do with the middle neck? How does it sound actually, cause it has no hole under the strings.

2) Why would you put a bass guitar on the same box with a 6 string guitar? What would be the use of this?

Ah, I get it. Actually it is an ergonomic “band guitar”, you have there the solo, the rhythm and the bass guitarists playing all together on the same guitar.

And as usual, the rhythm guitar is squeezed between the solo guitar and the bass guitar and he doesn’t actually need to be heard so that’s the reason they didn’t assign him a hole.

That explains it…

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