Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

Since I have purchased that TonePort recording interface I can tell you I have no time anymore. No time to do anything…but record!! I learn with every day and every second and I love it! I record various pieces, not necessarily complete tracks, but I feel every moment spent this way like a big step forward. You know, I feel like a sponge in a bucket of water, first time after a few good years when I have this feeling.

You know, every new thing I learn on guitar, helps me, I am eager to learn new things, but guitar playing is not a secret anymore, it is something that I do since a while and I don’t have that feeling anymore, but with this home recording, I really feel every second, every note…

While in studio, you learn things just watching the engineer there and I consider I have learned a few things while recording various songs during these past years but really nothing compares to these days in front of my home computer, spending quality time with my blue guitar…

No, really, before making fun, let me tell you that I have just finished a raw version of a cover song that we play since a few years and I was more than happy about the result so far. Of course, there is a raw version and I have so much to add to it, like proper drums(at this moment it only has a “control” track), I need to call my colleagues to record their takes (I recorded everything myself so far but hey, I am not a one man band, you know?)

Spending time recording opened my eyes regarding the guitar possibilities. For the moment, so far I had the impression that the Fender Stratocaster emulation on my Variax guitar doesn’t have personality. Well, I was so wrong, for this song I can tell you that I couldn’t find a better match than the Strat, of course, through a particular setup.

At this moment I can not upload the song here anything since I speak about a cover, a song from a professional touring band here so until I am sure about the copyrights I won’t risk, but I will contact the band since my drummer of 8-9 years ago is with them at the moment, as a keyboard player. If I can only find his phone number…

Here’s the band, not the song, cause I only have one unplugged version of the original song, it hasn’t been released on anything else, as far as I know. By the way the guy I speak about is the keyboard player in the first video.

Enjoy!

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GuitarMx speaks today about “Chickenfoot” project and that is what started me…

If you are not familiar with Chickenfoot, well, let’s say that it’s going to be a 4 stars band, and I don’t mean like 4 out of 5 possible stars. I am referring to the fact that Joe Satriani will be playing the guitar, Sammy Hagar, former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith will complete the band. Of course, each of you may see it from an other angle, but me, I look at it from the point of view of the guitar player: Satriani will be there.

OK, now I ask myself if this project will actually become a real band or it will be just a fun thing to do while on holiday. If I well remember, Red Hot Chili Peppers took a 1 year holiday, by the way…

They say that the sound is close to early Zeppelin, not quite my music, if you know what I mean, but frankly it will be fun to listen Satch and his airspace guitar playing Zeppelin-like music, it’s something totally different than what Satriani used us to listen.

I think it will make a very interesting experiment, considering Satriani never-ending quest for out-of-this-world sound. It will be interesting to put this new record they will produce (seems they will go in the studio now) next to Satriani’s digital Engines of Creation, I guess we won’t even find common grounds for comparing them.

I ask myself, will we recognize Satriani on this record? Satriani has one of the most recognizable guitar sound and way of playing in this world but this is exactly because he adopted this futuristic music. Early Zeppelin music means 68-75(?), let’s say, and this is not an era where Satriani’s music will fit…

But I am sure it will be a great experiment and I am looking forward to listening it, since no matter what it will be close to, the value of these people got together for an album is a guarantee for some good songs.

What’s your opinion on this one?

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Today I am in an acoustic mood again, so after browsing YT for a short while, when I found this video I immediately wanted to share it with you.

I really like this kind of music, relaxes me and makes me think of a quiet evening by the fire, with a glass of red wine, playing my acoustic guitar after a long day at the office. Should be also winter or autumn, I think, but not necessarily…

By the way, did you notice that when it comes to playing the acoustic guitar, there is no moment of the day better than…the night?

And now sit back, relax and let the song flow…

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Following 2 articles on this blog, Jack Pribek’s and IG’s guest posts here’s another statistic chart about acoustic guitars being sold (on eBay this time). It is interesting that Martin and Gibson are on the first 2 positions. If you would have asked me before this chart, I would have said Ovation is doing better, but it may be a subjective view.

The chart is a gadget from TeraPeak and shows you more views, like average price, total sales, etc.

The same for electric guitars, select electric guitars on the above chart. Here Fender seems to be the leader, in front of Gibson. Well, I guess the fact that Fender has a line of cheaper electric guitars comparing to Gibson, may be a reason…

Later edit: I was totally confused by the curvy lines on the website stats(on the small chart there are bars, not curvy lines, so it is obvious), Gibson is doing better. Stupid me…

By the way, stats are based on stats gathered in the past 30 days.

What do you say?

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It’s time for a little fun! I decided to put up an “ideal” rehearsal room. It should look like in the picture here.

Unfortunately there was no “lead singer” position in the software that helped me draw this, but he could be late or out for some beer.

Of course, we will put the beer in the refrigerator on the left, next to the Pinball machine. Also, I think we all understand the need for a pool table and don’t think dirty things, kids are watching!

What do you think?

By the way, I used this software to draw that.

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These last few days I tried to get to know my new toy, the TonePort interface, to learn it, to play with it, etc. In order to test it, I also took the bass guitar at home, to see how it sounds recorded through my new toy. I have found one great bass tone, a rock tone, full and sharp and I had the time of my life playing the bass in front of my computer.

But! Cause there is always a but, isn’t it? I am a guitar player, used to press light strings against small frets, my guitar is kind of a juwelry, small and nice, easy to use and easy to play (with). Now, the bass guitar isn’t anything close to this, isn’t it? Large frets, heavy strings, larger and heavier than a regular electric guitar!

I have always had fun playing the other instruments in the room, don’t you dare tell me you have never played drumms while at the rehearsal studio to everybody’s dispair! Or bass! I know we had a lot of jam sessions where we switched instruments and this is always a great moment! But when trying to record something, this is not always the easiest thing to do, since you need to be accurate and play every single note as clear as possible. While with the guitar this should not be a problem, while playing the bass, it suddenly becomes one because sooner or later something goes wrong! For example, I have observed that my pinky doesn’t quite want to behave when playing bass, after all, the low E string is almost half of my pinky so I guess it has it’s reasons to missbehave! 

The fact is that after trying and after a bit of rehearsal, my small home recording session went fine but really made me think about my buddy and bass player in my band and man, and all I can say is…

…RESPECT! 

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I have this audio CD in the car with Bon Jovi and Hammerfall that I listen quite a lot, I think it is one of the best “music for driving” CD that I’ve ever had.

Well, there is this cover on the CD that Bon Jovi did after Mrs Robinson, on acoustic guitars; I think it is one of the best covers they have made. Actually, I think that beside Knocking on heavens door that I have on the same CD, I don’t know other covers they played, but I really like how Mrs Robinson sounds played by Bon Jovi. OK, if you want, I could make a joke and say that the best song they have ever covered is Living on a prayer, the unplugged version, cause sounds nothing like the original version, has a life of it’s own and can be put on the same CD with the original version without thinking you listen to the same song again!

What really got my attention at one point is the bass guitar which is kind of loud, in my opinion (or the EQ settings on my car CD player boost the bass a bit too much, but I haven’t notice that on other songs). That bass line makes all the money!

Listen the song and share your thoughts here!

Later edit: after embedding the video here I have seen other covers of Bon Jovi. Still, Mrs Robinson rules!

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I just wonder, beside English “speaking” bands (and here I include every band singing in English, including bands such as Scorpions, Gamma Ray, Helloween, which are not native English speakers) and also beside bands singing in your mother tongue, in case you are not native English speakers, what other bands have come to your attention during all those years?

To me, at this point, the band that comes to my mind is Heroes del Silencio. I used to listen them a few good years ago. Ah,and also Ramstein! Yes, Ramstein rules even I don’t understand a damn word from what they say there!

What other non-English speaking bands do you listen to?

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After receiving my new toy, the USB recording interface, I can tell you that I spent a good deal of time playing with it, searching for the right tone, also playing with Ableton Live software and I am quite happy with the result so far.

My intention is to record at home my musical ideas in the best possible way, without spending too much money on gear and I think that this little toy is the best solution I have come up with, so far.

The fact is that when learning how to use the software, I have tried to record a few tracks that are familiar to me, pieces from one of our own songs, that we (aka Tentatii, the band) recorded about 6-7(?) years ago here in a local studio in Pitesti so today I just felt the desire to listen that song again and I said to share it with you here.

I remember there was a period where we were looking for our own style, we came after a period when we tried to follow the trend with summer songs (well, don’t blame me, OK? We tried…). We had 2 songs with very crowded drums at that moment, and when this song came to being, I remember we practically constrained the drummer to keep a steady beat, without any moment of “creation”, if you know what I mean. He complained about this a lot but in the end we did it like this, even if he kept complaining about this for the whole recording session. He still reminded us once in a while about this song for a few years after that day…

So, the song is called Poate ca maine (Maybe tomorrow) and because it is in Romanian, I will give you a translation, as close as I can, even if it may not sound too “English”. It goes like this:

1) You’ve never even told me that you intend to leave
I didn’t know I will be alone during too cold nights 

You left and never even looked back for a moment
You left me all alone, me and my sadness 

2) Sometimes I stare to nothing/emptiness, I dream of blue nights with you
 We used to walk hand in hand, we used to have a single meaning (direction?)

I wish we could be in the past and maybe we could change something
Sad moments to smiles, but maybe it is better this way

Chorus: Maybe tomorrow, something will change
Maybe tomorrow,  I’ll belong to someone else
Maybe tomorrow I won’t regret a thing,
But today I’m lall alone, me and my sadness 

The fact that we decided to simplify things reflected on my guitar playing as well: no solo! Period! So instead of a solo, there are a couple of notes that are more part of the rhythmic section than of a solo section, but in my opinion they work well with the song.

I remember how this song came to being, the bass player came with it as a ballad, on piano and sounded lovely, …too lovely, if I may say so. I think the whole “catch” belongs to the drummer who instead of playing it as a ballad, played a fast rhythm. Then the lead singer came with a different chorus that the original one and voila!

Poate ca maine
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I think I will start a new page on this site, called My music, or something similar, since this is the 3rd song I upload here already.

What do you think?

PS: That’s a song just made for Fender, I wish I had a Strat at the moment we recorded the song, but I didn’t. By the way, the picture is taken at one of our gigs in a local pub, but I’m not in it. Also, even today, this is the “opening song” on our gigs, since it has a good rhythm and gives you a good start, and people can actually sing it.

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Well, my dear friends, yesterday I have received my little toy, TonePort UX1, the USB recording interface from Line 6. I ordered it on Wendsday and I received it yesterday…That caused a lot of frustration, to be honest,but OK, it is here…

So, when I’ve got home with it, I was already impatient and I couldn’t wait to install it. I could tell you right from the start the same thing I have observed when I purchased the guitar, the guys from Line 6 give a very big importance to marketing. Everything is packed up nicely, beautiful packages, it gives you that special thrill, like you are a kid waiting for the toy that Santa is going to bring you this Christmas! Well, this is how I’ve felt, anyway…

The package brings one USB recording interface (Line 6 TonePort UX1), 1 USB cable, 2 CDs and a lot of papers for registering, if you want. Speaking about marketing and support, I don’t think they left something out, I felt that when installing the software and the hardware. On the 2 CDs it was written very large, to not miss it, which CD to install first, which the second, they were very careful to inform you to not connect the hardware before the installer reaches a particular point, etc. I was impressed by the fact that they put a lot of weight on explaning to the customer how to do things right. I liked that a lot, because, even if I am a computer professional, I realize not everybody spends his days around computers.

I installed the Ableton Live software also, plugged my guitar and wheee…or not!?!!! WTF? Play, damn it! 

If there is anything that I hate in this software world, is to read the documentation of a product. I am impatient and I expect everything to work from the start and I have the conviction I can usually learn any software without too much reading…Well, in this case the damn thing didn’t wanna start!

Back to school, then. Of course, the device is not connected in anyway to the sound card of the computer, so in order to make it work, to hear it using your sound card you need to take the line out from the recording device and plug it to the line in of the sound card. Pretty obvious, but I expected it to know about the sound card, one way or the other.

After overcoming the fact that everything on the recording device uses large jacks(1/4) while on the computer everything works on small ones, I still haven’t been able to play it using my computer. My mic line has a problem and i can not record a mic, seems my line in also has the same problem!

Head phones maybe? Yes! It work, finally! Let’s roll!

And the adventure begins

Man, I knew from the start that this toy is loaded with a lot of amps, but come on! After playing like 10-15 tones there I’ve got really dizzy! The software comes with 3 predefined tone sets: clean tone, cruch and heavy, each of these folders containing around 25(?) tones. Now think of the fact that you can adapt any of these tones and save them as your own, in another set, user defined. Man…

I can tell you that I played them all until the end of the evening, but I couldn’t find “my tone” among all those tones there. The same as with my Variax modeling guitar, which has it’s models based on famous electric and acoustic guitar models, tones there are based on famous tones that somebody once used. Like for example I could find a tone named Achtung, based on The Edge tone, or another one called “Aint talkin bout love” or something similar, based on Eddie Van Halen’s tone. What really made my day from this point of view was the tone named Hell’s Bells. Now you do the math and tell me the original band! I had a lot of fun with this tone since I couldn’t make a tone on my BOSS processor for You shook me all night, because I am not very good at cutting gain on my distortion. I can not feel it, seems something is missing, so I need to turn the gain on, losing ACDC’s spirit. But when the tone was already created, played using the Gibson Les Paul model, sounds nice! Yeah!

I was able to find a couple of tones there to get somehow closer to what I want, it was a tone called “80’s rhythm guitar”, pretty self describing, I guess, pure distortion, a bit too open in my opinion, but OK, it’s a preset. Also, the tone that I found to be the closest to what I want is called Blizzard and is based on Randy Rhoads’s tone. I will probably start working on it from there. I will see…

The next thing I tried was to create a tone from scratch. Damn, system overload!!! Let’s look at it this way. Suppose you are a very experienced, professional guitar players, with a lot of money. How many amplifiers would you be able to gather in order to really find the tone? More than 18 in one single room? And if you manage to put them together in one single room, how many cabinet sets do you think you would be able to gather? More than 18-20?! Well, and if you managed to do this: NOW COMBINE THEM, EACH AND EVERYONE OF THEM! Damn it!

Now add the line of stompboxes, a few on every position, like 2-3 types of delays, 2-3 types of wah, etc. And when you think it can not get any worse than this, think of how the sound is taken from those cabinets. With a mic. Aaaa…which kind of mic? There are 4 types, changing them changes the sound that much that you can not even compare. Ah, yes, now that you have chosen a mic, start moving it closer to the cabinet or very far away, on the other side of the room…get it?

…now multiply this by the number of available guitar models on my Variax guitar!

I reached a conlusion that I could virtually create any tone I want, combining the guitars with the amps I have there. This thing is a great learning tool, gives you the feeling of different types of amps. Very interesting to observe, when you play a particular tone, sounds lousy, then you look at the tone description and you see it is built for a humbucker and you play it using a Tele. Change the guitar to a Les Paul, and everything rocks! Really! I had the impression that my Stratocaster model on my Variax guitar does not have personality! Man, I played it using SRV tone!!!Yes!

At about 1.30 AM I went to bed. System overload!! Too many guitar tones available!!

By the way, all these tones are updatable, I mean you can buy upgrades from the internet, the software is integrated with the web site. 

Another interesting thing, even if does not add any value to the device itself, but makes your life easier, you have a player where you can play an mp3 from the harddisk or from the internet in order to jam along.

Want more? There is a digital, chromatic guitar tuner, there is a metronome, that can be adapted to play clicks or drums.

Nothing about Ableton Live for the moment cause I couldn’t make it to record anything, but I will try again this evening. By the way, today I spent at least 1 hour in the morning playing the damn thing before leaving to the office! The cool thing is that the TonePort is always connected to the computer, it does not need power, it takes everything it needs from USB, so I let the cables connected also, all I need to do is to plug my guitar and start the software! Now we’re talking!

Also nothing about the preamp models, about voice and bass models. Not yet.

Still want more? I know I don’t!

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