Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

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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If you love electric guitars or acoustic guitars, you surely know what guitar tabs are. If you don’t know, you need to find out, since they started to become a matter of great dispute these days.

So, what guitar tabs really are?

For those of you that don’t know what they are, guitar tabs are a form of musical notation for the guitar. Instead of writing down the notes on a classical way, guitar tabs represents the notes as positions on the 6 strings of the guitar. This way, beginner guitar players find it easy to learn a song by learning where they should put their fingers on the guitar neck. It is way easier than by reading music in the classical way.

Why guitar tabs have became a matter of dispute

Well, as almost anything it moves in the land of music business, guitar tabs are considered a kind of copyrighted materials, a transcription, a copy of a song, so if a song is copyrighted, so is any copy of it and so are guitar tabs.

This is actually what National Music Publishers Association considered when they sent an email to one of the biggest guitar tabs resource site on the internet, asking them to close any activity regarding distribution of such musical transcription.

There are many sites that distribute guitar tabs all over the internet; some of them are very famous and a lot of beginner guitar players visit them regularly in order to learn a song or two.

The fact is that as far as I know, 30% of the revenue of NMPA come from selling guitar tabs so such websites distributing them for free on the internet hurt their revenue because people will go and download them for free instead of paying to get them from the official source. So, as usual, the main reason for such disputes is the money flow.

Some of you may know the mother of all guitar tabs website, Olga.net (Online Guitar Archive). Olga has been online since 1992 and they reported 1.9 million visitors a month before lawyers representing two US groups: the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and the Music Publishers Association of the United States (MPA) sent them a particular letter, asking them to remove all 34.000 guitar tabs they offered for free on the internet, which they did and close the business. Well, as Cathal Woods, the person running the site said, Olga.net was not a business, but more of a website that managed to get the money for the hosting and other small monthy expenses and that was about all. But others are real businesses, so they have a lot of money to lose.

I have seen a few weeks ago, somewhere on the internet that a particular website that I am not going to name here since I don’t remember which one it was exactly, chosed an other method of overcoming this situations: sharing the revenue with the music business industry. It’s a solution, to live on, in the end.

So, are all guitar tabs sites going to be closed in the near future?

To be honest, I don’t think so. The reason for which I don’t think that all those websites will be closed down to the last one is the fact that they are distributed all over the world, so not all are USA or Canada based. Some of them are based in countries where USA music business industry doesn’t have such power so I don’t think they will be able to close those websites down, or at least not in the near future. This is a cool overview of the movement that affects the guitar tabs websites, I don’t judge id this initiative is good or bad, I don’t say that websites distributing free guitar tabs are right or that the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and the Music Publishers Association of the United States (MPA) are right. I just look at the facts from a distant point of view.

Anyway, I guess we will just wait and see what is going to happen.

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I have always thought about that summer camp I was telling you about and how this Guns’N Roses unplugged ballad made the change. If it weren’t those acoustic guitars maybe I would have still loved rap at this age, even if I doubt, since probably rock would have finally broken through one way or another. Today, the acoustic guitar I have in my room is one of the 3 things I need, along with my computer and my digital camera. I play every day and it clears my mind when I get back home after a long and busy day. I am also in love with electric guitars, but that is another story, I can not play the electric guitar every day since I live in an apartment and I do have my neighbors, you know…

For me, acoustic guitars are one of the most beautiful things on this earth, the sound is that pure and clear and in the middle of the night, after a few drinks with your friends at a party, this is all you need.

An acoustic guitar is the best way to bring back the long gone past

Do you realize that there is nothing better to bring back the memories of the past than an acoustic guitar, a bunch of old friends and a bottle of wine? Of course, this is if you know how to play that guitar. If you have that magic trio, then all that songs that you have thought forgotten come to life again and everybody will start singing along. That is why I love acoustic guitars, for the fact they remind me of all those lovely high school parties, of late night college fun, of playing on the seaside by night or by late nights around the fire in the mountains.

The acoustic guitar was part of my life since many, many years and I don’t know if I could live without it. I love electric guitars, I love how Joe Satriani makes those alien sounds and how Steve Vai pushes the music to where no man has gone before, but most of all, I love “Patience” of Guns’N Roses, I love Mr Big’s “Be with you” and the whole unplugged movement that started, in my universe, with Nirvana’s unplugged sounds.

That is why I love acoustic guitars…

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I remember the feeling I had when I first started to like rock music. I was in a summer camp, during high school period and it was this girl, one of my class colleagues, who was a big fan of Guns N’ Roses, and I mean really big fan of Guns N’ Roses and their music. I remember back then I used to listen rap and dance music and totally rejecting anything related or only close to rock music.

Back then, Guns N’ Roses’ “Don’t cry” was in heavy rotation on radio here in Romania and I had a lot of chances to listen to it, but I was just…turning off the radio just to not listen anymore since I was feeling that inside me, something is changing with each note I was hearing and I just didn’t want to. I was such a stubborn teenager back then, I guess…

So, I was running away from “Don’t cry” because I felt that anytime I was hearing it on radio, on TV or anywhere else, my love for rap music was fading away and it seemed less and less interesting, personal and close to my soul. Instead, rock music was gaining more and more of it. “Don’t cry” was getting to me and I was running away, I was fighting the feeling that was growing inside me for the lovely electric guitar sound, those starting riffs of Slash’s Gibson guitar and Axl’s scratchy voice. Of course, back then I had no idea what guitar Slash had, I only knew a thing or two about electric guitars but not much.

Anyway, I remember that a few months before this, I had bought an acoustic guitar of smaller size from a friend of mine (back then I didn’t know that acoustic guitars come on sizes so it didn’t make too much difference to me). I can not tell you now why I bought it, I was listening rap, no rock, but I think I just found that brownish acoustic guitar one of the things I must have so I’ve bougt it and how handy it came from that moment on.

Coming back to my story, I was in this summer camp and this girl brought with her 42 tapes (I am dead serious!) with Guns N’ Roses and some other rock bands, but mostly Guns N’ Roses. Of course Guns N’ Roses doesn’t have that many tapes, but there are compilations, best of, albums, live shows and this girl had them all! And I really mean all, plus tones of black t-shirts with Guns N’ Roses and the skull. We had some Walkmans with us in this camp and I remember borrowing tapes from her and starting to listen.

And the acoustic guitars broke the defense line

I remember the moment I dropped the defense line and I let myself in the hands of music…And, most of all, I remember the song that made this change possible…

It was not “Don’t cry”, even if it is of the songs I really love even today and it was part of my transformation. It was “Patience”, a song that broke my heart in two, a song that I found so sweet and clean that I could not resist anymore. I came back an other person, I came back a rocker. I remember sitting in the dark while driving back from the camp, at night and listening Patience over and over again, I remember the acoustic guitars, the clean sound, the sparks in those treble sounds and Axl counting in the beginning…one..two…

And so a rocker was born, a guitar player and an avid seeker of new sounds, thanks to Guns N’ Roses, thanks to Patience, thanks to acoustic guitars and their lovely, clean sound. And thanks to that girl…

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Welcome to GuitarFlame.com, my dear first reader! This post is the first one out of what I plan to be a long and successful collection of posts, articles and miscellaneous thoughts about electric guitars, about acoustic guitars, guitar tabs, about rock music, bands, songs, etc. Generally speaking I will be posting here about rock culture, about what it means to me and about what it means to this big, big world, from my personal point of view.

Of course, you should not take my posts as being nothing more than personal opinions, reflecting my personal taste in music. I don’t know how many of you will like what I will be writing here and how many of you will be coming back for more but I will surely do my best to keep the flame burning here on GuitarFlame.com.

By the way, if you have come that far, please be kind and bookmark this site using the social sites below or just push CTRL + D, even if at this very moment the site may not seem very much (yet). Come back from time to time, you will have what to read!

Ah, and by the way, tell your friends too about GuitarFlame.com!

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