Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

Warning: this is not related to guitars!

Did I scare you away? Well, if not, then read and watch forward!

Because most of the videos we share online each and every day with our loved guitar players, moments of joy, love and even happiness come from YouTube, it is very interesting to watch this presentation below regarding YouTube audience.

Take the time to watch at least the first minutes of it.

By the way, they also speak about Ozone, the Romanian/Moldavian boy band and their Numa Numa song(Mai ah hii).

I told you it is not going to be about guitars…now share it with the rest of the world by stumbling it and digging it!

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A very interesting thing I didn’t know about: the Xavian scale, Steve Vai’s “own” scale. Well, did you know about that? A very interesting topic that I have never thought about. Really, it shows you how deeply involved in his music Steve Vai really is.

For me, all those scales out there contains some of the same 12 notes in a “standard” chromatic scale and honestly I have never thought about another way of dividing the space between 2 octaves. Well, I guess somebody else did…

Think about taking this available “space” and divide it in another number of equal intervals, not in 12 as we commonly know. Divide it in 10 spaces, or in 8, or in 9, or in 20 spaces…whatever… The result? Well, you could name it “another chromatic scale”, I guess. This is exactly what Steve Vai did: took this space and divided it in 16 equal spaces and then, by experimenting a lot, he took 10 notes out of 16 and built his “own scale”, Xavian. Speaking about playing like Steve Vai…

Of course, you won’t be able to do this with a regular guitar, no matter how good you are, since it is not built for this. Vai couldn’t do it either so he asked Steve Ripley to build such a 16 intervals guitar for him. He also has a 24 intervals guitar…

Seems that Deep down into the pain song is the only record where he actually used the Xavian scale. Listen closely the end of the song. I know that Steve Vai uses strange modes all over his music, but his own scale with notes outside the known Universe, man, that’s weird…

What do you think about this? Read more about this here and come back and comment, I would like to know your thoughts on this!!

Stumble and Digg this!

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A few days ago, Carol (She-lives) awarded me with Brillante Weblog Premio 2008.

Last week, Jon of GuitarNoize appreciated my blog as “excellent” and named it among the few sites in his list of “who’s who in guitar blogosphere”

A few months ago, Jack of Pribek.net rated me E for excellence (read my list of bloggers that I also awarded back then). Because I haven’t had the time to do it so far, I will say it now: thank you, guys(and gals), for your nice words! I am always happy to know that somebody out there appreciates my posts.

That fills my heart with a strange feeling of satisfaction and happiness. Really, I feel like some kind of balloon right now!

It is very interesting how much motivation such things can give you. This blog is not about money and not money is what keeps it running. This blog is about electric guitars, about acoustic guitars, about rock and blues music, about me, you and everything around music. Such appreciations along with my love for guitars keep this blog running.

So, again, I want to say thanks you for you reading my blog and a bigger thank you to those of you that took the time to subscribe to my RSS feeds(by the way, if you haven’t done it already, subscribe now and get my posts everyday by email or RSS)!

And for all of you, read on because so many post are still waiting to be written here! If I only had the time…

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Lately I have decided to put much more weight on reviewing guitar related websites because we spend so much time on the internet these days, so today I am going to speak about www.guitar123.co.uk.

Guitar123.co.uk is a site dedicated mostly to guitar enthusiasts located in UK and presents guitars by type and brands, telling you where you can buy them from and at what prices. The main advantage (and I think the value of the site) is the fact that once you decided what guitar are you going to look for/buy you can see a list of shops that sell that particular guitar and their prices. Pretty convenient, I’d say, especially if you are located in UK.

The fact is that this site is a start-up at this moment, the guys behind it still work to grow it so every passing day will bring new guitars and new opportunities for the guitar enthusiast.

Considering the fact that things are still moving, what I would add if I would build this site is a subscription form where people enter the email address to be informed about new guitars, or a “inform me about this particular guitar” option. Maybe you found what you are looking for but you are not yet happy with the price. I think it would be interesting.

A feature that I really enjoyed is the fact that they present a YouTube video with that particular guitar, where it is available. Yes! That one is a good thing, because I can not remember how many times I have been searching for YouTube videos for a particular guitar after reading a review and seeing prices, because I just wanted to see how that particular guitar sounds. Having a video embedded right on the site helps the visitor make an idea of how it sounds. Like for example you look for a Fender Telecaster or a PRS guitar and beside models, prices and resellers you see the promotional video of this great guitar.

For the moment, only 4 types of guitars are available, electric guitars, electro acoustic, acoustic guitars and bass guitars but I am looking forward to modeling guitars and midi guitars since I have my Variax guitar from UK so I am curious about the prices there…

And speaking about prices, I find it somehow difficult to convert prices to USD or Euro, I wonder if an online converter would help. But again, the site is dedicated to UK guitar enthusiasts so I should keep my mouth shut.

So, to conclude, if I were to live in the UK and didn’t want to spend my last penny on buying an overpriced guitar I would pay this site a visit to feel the market and find the best price around!

What do you think?

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One of the things I deeply admire at great guitar players and great musicians in general is the capacity to express so many nuances in their music in a few simple notes and it has always been a dare and a constant quest for me to express this.

The reason that started this post is actually Dream Theater. I really love their song “Another day” and each time I listen it I find myself charmed by all those nuances there…Listen for example the starting riffs, 3 simple notes or the solo guitar theme/intro or even the drums!

Now that I have started this, I think that if I would need to define Dream Theater in one single word, that would be NUANCES, nuances all over. This is actually the result of their musical studies at Berklee School of Music, result of theory and practice, I’d say, and I guess that even if you are not a big fan of progressive rock you agree with me that no other rock band can be represented by this word better than Dream Theater: nuances…

Here’s Another day for you! Enjoy and comment!

Am I right or what?

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A quick and funny one, from Guitarist.co.uk site:

New AC/DC album to weigh in with a whopping 15 tracks

The wheels on the chariot of the gods of rock are finally turning again…
AC/DC have confirmed that the title of their new album will be Black Ice as widely rumoured, with the first single being Runaway Train.
Reports that one of the songs includes an F minor chord cannot be confirmed at this time.

What?! Reports that one of the songs includes an F minor chord cannot be confirmed at this time!!

Really, I am also interested to find out about the album, but about the fact that hey, listen…ONE OF THE SONGS INCLUDES AN F MINOR CHORD!! Man, this is mad!

I don’t know, maybe I am not THAT familiar with ACDC’s chord choices,but is this something out of the ordinary with Angus Young or what?

Their albums have never included a minor chord so far, or what?

I think that’s a news for the really eager fan! Man…

PS: That article is not against Guitarist.co.uk site, in any way, I really like the site and I read it often, but I just found the news hilarous and I just had to point this here! Man…

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At last rehearsal with the band we decided to cover Don’t cry from GNR, after all, it must be pretty easy, we all like GNR and this it’s a song we sing and play since high school, we know it by default, right? Eh, when listening the song I was surprised by a few nice progressions there, that I didn’t expect, that helped the song a lot. But that’s not the subject of this post.

The subject is actually the guitar solo or the guitar behind the solo, to be more exact. I didn’t pay too much attention in the beginning to the chords behind the solo, presuming they go by some repetitive chords like the chorus for ex. How wrong I could be!

After working this part with they guys in my band, I could say that my impression is that the solo was created first, and then they created a backup track to support the solo, which is totally strange from my point of view. I say this because the chords under the solo don’t follow any pattern, the length of a particular chord depends on the particular passage the solo plays and not the other way around.

My way of soloing is to actually improvise over a common pattern in the song, like the chorus or some intro, f.e. and I have never written a solo that I needed to back up later. I have some passages in particular songs that I needed to explain to my band mate playing the other guitar when he joined the band and I did need to find chords to match a particular progression but I was the only guitar player in the band at that moment and the only melodic backup was the bass line, which can be pretty free; I think this does not apply to GNR since Slash was never the only player there, isn’t it? Then?

My opinion is that Slash worked the solo without the second guitar player, in a free way, making the solo sound nice and then they searched for some backup chords to match the solo.

Listen here and tell me your call on this.

PS: When embedding this video here I was totally charmed by this song and listened every note of it until the end, totally forgetting I have this post under editing!!

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I guess today I am in an acoustic mood, who knows, I have watched a few videos on YT with live performances with just a guitar and a voice and I have decided to post here a video of Avril Lavigne live.

The reason for which I post this video here is that I really liked how the rhythm goes on guitar and how they both managed to transmit energy and freshness with only one guitar, no drums, no bass. I like how the guitar player plays the fast rhythm passages on acoustic guitar. If you would have asked me I would have said that punk needs electric guitars. Well, how about it, works great with only a voice and an acoustic guitar if you have the right artist.

How do you find it?

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I guess that if you run a blog that has a certain level of success, you receive a number of emails from people asking you to speak about their products.

I know I receive my share of such emails and I don’t write about all those products, because many of them are just plain useless, but, once in a while I receive something that starts my interest, like for example that thing with the high quality guitar cables, or the news about Dean Zelinsky leaving Dean guitar.

Well, today I have received 2 such emails, one of them being about a site that publishes guitar tabs, Songsterr.com and comes with a particular angle. Or as they say, in their own words:

Songsterr (www.songsterr.com) is an online guitar tab player that solves the biggest problem of guitar tabs. Tablatures do not represent the rhythm or lengths of the notes – only their pitch. It can be very difficult to get a feel of the music simply by studying the tab without playing it through. With Songsterr you can see and hear the song as it is being played with a realistic guitar engine, thus you can get an idea of what it should sound like and how fast it should be played.

I have seen plenty of guitar tabs websites on the internet. Damn, my initial intention was to also publish guitar tabs, don’t ask me why, but when I visited this site, well…how to put it…it was the end of my productive evening.

I spent my evening playing various songs there, enjoying every moment of it. By the way, Sweet child of mine intro can be quite a finger twister…

I don’t know how accurate those tabs are, those that I have tried were fine. Interesting that they have the possibility to slow down a song to half of the speed, for you to try it slowly. You can also position the cursor on a particular position on the song and play it from there.

In one word? Fun! Why don’t you try it and write your impressions here?

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A few days ago I said I am back to blogging, since my trip is over! Well, not quite, since my long time friends called me and told me that a trip in the mountains is planned for the end of this week. Well, could I refuse my friends when it comes to a camping trip? It’s about those university friends that I’ve got drunk with so many times, spent countless hours in the mountains and partied long nights with, friends that remained my best friends through the years, so hey, I’m in, no doubt about it!!

So, Friday, since I was in holiday, I could spend my day shopping for everybody for the trip. A mad day…

Friday evening, after a long and demanding day, I took my wife, one of my friends and his wife, jumped in the car and wheee!!!

We’ve met the other 2 friends and their wives in the mountains. For me (I was driving) it was a crazy chase against time on cross mountains serpentines but at 9.15 PM we were there, found the other guys in the dark with flash lights and all we could do is install the tent at my car’s lights and drink a bottle of our local drink (think of whiskey, ouzo or vodka, to get the point) that my wife magically brought us from my father in law and fell asleep since Saturday we planned a long and demanding day!

Well, not quite, I forgot, since Friday it was my wife’s name day, my friends brought a cake with them and threw a small party for my wife while eating. I also had a bottle of champagne and some chocolate bonbons so it all ended up great!

Saturday we woke up at 6 AM, had a quick breakfast and headed for the mountains. The plan was to reach the second highest peak in Romania, called Negoiu, 2535 m high, after a 5 hours hike.

I have been there 4 years ago with the same friends, I knew the difficulty of the trip, I knew exactly what to expect, so from my point of view, because of my wife after-surgery hand condition, the target was another one: reach a lake 1.5 h away from the peak and stay there with my wife until my friends will return from the peak. I knew this from the very first moment they told me about the trip, but I wanted to go either way, even if I knew I won’t reach the peak this time.

What I can tell you about the trip UNTIL the lake (Caltun is the name) is that I totally forgot about the strong wind there. The most part of the trip was on peaks/cliffs and the wind was so strong there that we just couldn’t breath so I had to put my hand over my nose and mouth a lot of times to be able to breath properly.

The wind was so strong that was effectively blowing us off the cliff and considering the fact that on 3-4 moments we had to walk on a trail that was 30 cm wide on the very peak of the mountain, with deep falls on the left and on the right, that was quite an adventure. Also, on 3-4 moments we had to climb narrow passages on chains. Only one of the girls knew what to expect from the trail so the other 3 were just plain scared about it, but hey, once started, we needed to end the damn trip!

Until the lake we had to reach another peak, of 2390 m high that was in the way and this was quite an adventure because we had to climb it first up and then down on our way back and it was a real curse!

Once we reached the lake, me and my wife remained there, as I have planned from the very beginning, along with the wife of one of my friends who said stop, too much, I won’t risk my life further! OK, so the rest of the gang headed for the peak.

As I have previously said, I have already reached that peak 4 years ago, so it was nothing new for me to get there again, even if I felt a bit bitter for not joining my friends, but there was no way to leave my wife in the middle of nowhere at 3.5 hours away from the closest facility. The only things there were that glacial lake, a metal shelter where you can enter in case of need, a lot of heavy rocks and hikers passing. So I stayed.

What I’ve missed

To make a bit of an image of what I have missed by not going there, let me tell you a bit about my experience of 4 years ago with this peak: after climbing/hiking for another hour you get to a point called Devil’s Pass, a place that is only 2 m wide, between 2 mountains, about 40-50 m long (my personal appreciation, not measurement), made of one big rock on top of another one. In order to get on that peak you have to rely a lot on the strength of your hands and intensively use the heavy chain that is installed there.

Now, my personal experience is a bit more intense: 4 years ago I was climbing that passage with my friends, about 20 m above us there were some other guys climbing it, and suddenly somebody on top of us started to scream - Attention!!!Attention!! Falling rocks!

Fuck!I felt my blood suddenly freezing inside me seeing a rock of about 30 cm diameter falling toward us from a height of 20 m, hitting one corner of a rock, then the corner of another rock, then another rock and suddenly jumping in a totally unpredictable direction…. We didn’t know what to do, where to shelter, in what direction since the direction of the falling rock was totally unpredictable and being forced to keep the contact with the chain gave us so little options…

Above me there were one of my friends and his wife, the falling rock hit the “ground” at her feet and then flew above my head, to my right and finally somewhere down the mountain. There were only a few moments in my life when I felt my life so intense, that was one of them, when I had the impression I really faced death.

We continued our climbing, reached the peak, took pictures at a height of 2535 m and climbed down the pass fearing the event may happen again. It didn’t but we all promised to not get there again. But, well, I think that “never again” lasted for 4 years. At least for my friends…

Going back to the camp

After my friends returned from the peak totally exhausted, we started our trip back to the camp. The 2390 m peak that we had to climb down the first time, proved to be very demanding when we wanted to climb it from bottom to top on our way back. Again, the chains and the windy peaks…

I remember some girls saying that it’s more than enough, they will never get back there again risking their lives, I remember reading the text on the backpack of the buddy in front of me when climbing the passages with chains on heavy winds: “candle in the wind”! Man, what a dark and unfortunate thing to read when walking a path of 30 cm wide on chains on heavy winds!!!

The only thing we were happy about was the fact that it was sunny, because 4 years ago it was raining and we had to walk that path on fog. I remember one moment when we were on one of those passages, in the fog, we couldn’t see the valley on the left or on the right, we only saw the cloud/fog below us so we walked that 2-3 meters passage on our knees and hands, almost crawling . After the first guy passed it, he gave a long stick to the next one, in order to make a bond between us, to lead it and support it. May sound corny, but it is the truth.

The mountains where we’ve been this WE are very rocky and dry, no forest there, no tree above a certain altitude. Our water ran out on our way back so we suffered from thirst big time. That weakened us all, especially the 5 that went for the peak. One of the girls looked pretty bad, exhausted, one of the guys had to stop very often since he couldn’t walk anymore, even if he is one of the most determined guys I know and his wife walked on like a ghost, one step, then another one…

The fact is that when we reached the civilization, she got sick, she turned yellow from exhaustion and effort, she couldn’t eat or drink anything for a period of time. Well, pretty good if you consider that last time we’ve been there, 4 years ago, my wife made a crisis of gastritis because of effort and pushing herself too much, one guy and one girl suffered 2 long weeks from some stomach inflammation from drinking bad water and one guy couldn’t walk 2 weeks on one of his knee because of his knee being injured on climbing rocks.

Myself I had a pretty wild disease that was caused by some animal interaction that kept me 3 months visiting the hospitals, disease that I tend to consider as being started by the same visit in the mountains. But I can not be sure since doctors couldn’t tell what it was…

We got back to our tents late in the night after we had our dinner at a cabana where we started the trip.

Today we took it easy since everyone complained about some kind of issues: back pains, swollen feet, sun burns, stomach aches, etc. Myself I am OK, if I don’t consider the fact that my face is burning because of the sun and that I have a red stripe on my right foot between where my boot ended and where my pants started…well…

We started a barbecue (planned and long waited), had a couple of beers and headed back home since tomorrow my holiday will be over.

And I guess tomorrow I will be blogging again about guitars since I’ve got my guitar back and it works fine!!

And to make an impression about the Devil’s Pass, here’s a small movie that somebody took there. Not us, but it shows you what I am speaking about.

What do you think?

PS: By the way, the trip was in the same area I have written about here , with the same friends. In this area there are the 2 highest peaks in Romania, Moldoveanu and Negoiu, I have conquered both, plus the 3rd, Vistea Mare, plus another one called Omu (The Man) which is in another mountains but very famous.

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