Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

Just a short one, since English is not my mother tongue and you, as native English speakers may identify here and there one or two mistakes on this site…So, next time you will see something that doesn’t sound quite right please think of this video and laugh! With me, not at me…

Not guitar related, but funny to watch and listen…

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…when I feel like being mean!

And for that, my dear friends, I propose you another website strongly related to our musical education as guitar players and musicians in general, a site where you will experience great sensations, where you will have a lot of fun and a lot of pain! You’ll see what I mean in a minute…

This is a site that I like to visit once in a while when I feel like testing my limits. And limits is the word here…

Without other words, I give you Good-Ear.com, a site dedicated to ear training (www.good-ear.com).

No much to say there, beside the fact that you need to recognize intervals, major/minor/7th chords, scales, perfect pitch notes, a lot of things to make your day…

And by the way, after testing your ear, come back and let me know how you find it!

Isn’t it great, or what?

Buy from Amazon:

Mel Bay Country Electric Guitar Ear Training Course
Mel Bay Rock Guitar Ear Training Course
Mel Bay Blues Guitar Ear Training Course

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This morning, GuitarMX blog features a video about how to play Pantera’s song Walk. While the video is great and you can actually learn the riffs there, the subject of this post is about what Dennis Hodges, the instructor teaching the song, said about the tuning Dimebag Darrell used for that song and for the whole album actually.

As Dennis Hodges says, Dimebag Darrell and the bass player started at one moment to tune the guitars down a quarter of a step! However, for this very song they are also tuned down a full step so in order to correctly play the song along with the tape, you need to tune your guitar down 1 step and a quarter! Damn!

While tuning it down one full step does not intrigue me, there are various reasons for which they would do it, from heavier sounds to putting less pressure on the lead singer, I am intrigued by that quarter of a step! Imagine you need to tune your guitar so your low E string is right between D# and E! Now, why would they do such thing?

What could be the reason for this? Somebody put some light on this for me, please!

By the way, I dare you tune your guitar this way without using an electronic guitar tuner! Ha!

Also, if you watch the video on GuitarMx site, pay attention at the end of it how the guy in the video uses his fingers to go from a G to a G#. I just noticed it because I didn’t understand at first why is he playing that way…He uses fingers 1 and 3 for the G chord and right next to it 2 and 4 for the G# chord. I would have gone forward half a step but his chords make an interesting moment to watch and talk about!

Buy from Amazon:
Razorback Dimebag Classic Black w/case
Cowboys from Hell
Vulgar Display of Power

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I am kind of excited, I have just ordered one of those small USB recording interfaces from Line 6, TonePort UX1.

I have conducted a small research about it since 2-3 weeks in order to purchase one.

The fact is that my target was TonePort KN37, but under any circumstance I wouldn’t have paid around $450 for it. I found one on Amazon for $199 and I was thrilled, but I’ve got mad at them very quickly when I’ve discussed about delivering it. They don’t deliver to Romania such gadgets, only books, CDs and some other things that don’t really interest me. Oh, well, no musical instruments, damn!

So without too much thinking I called the guys that sold me the guitar, they had it on stock, so I ordered the UX1 interface. I know, I dropped 2 things that really interested me, the main one being the keyboard, KB 37 featuring a 37 keys keyboard.

The idea is to use it as a MIDI controller for the recording software. Think Ableton Live, think Reason, think whatever would need a MIDI controller. Personally I would have wanted it for controlling the drums software, to create drum loops, but OK, I am not going to pay for this $450, UX 1 will do.

The second thing that I missed by buying TonePort UX1 and not TonePort UX2 or TonePort KB37 is the phantom power feature which is available for the other 2 but not for this one. Oh, well, I’ll manage…

I said a lot about what I have missed, but I realize I didn’t say anything about what I will receive, so here it is, why did I buy that toy? What is it that makes the value?

Well, these TonePort USB interfaces act as a small, desktop, integrated recording machines. Period. You are supposed to just plug them and start recording. They bring the power of POD, bring effects, bring amplifier emulators, etc. You can record guitars, bass guitars and microphones. Or, as they say it on Line 6 site:

• USB studio recording interface
• Sample rate conversion: 16 and 24 bit at 44.1, 48 and 96 kHz
• Gearbox amp and effects modeling software for Guitar, Bass and Vocals
• 23 guitar/bass amp models with 29 cabinet models
• 6 vocal mic preamps for amazing, studio-quality tracks
• 29 stompbox and studio effect models, including Overdrive, Delay, Reverb, Wah, Flanger, Chorus, and more
• Single XLR input with mic preamp
• Single instrument input
• Line 6’s exclusive low-latency ToneDirect monitoring
• Works with leading recording software on Mac® and Windows®
• Includes Ableton Live Lite - Line 6 Edition recording software

I am quite excited, as I said, to receive it, I paid it online but unfortunately the payment will be processed tomorrow so they haven’t yet sent it to me, they will send it tomorrow. I will wait another day, I guess, not a big problem.

After receiving it, you should expect a review of the TonePort UX1 and a review of the Line 6 Variax 600 guitar, which I said I will write but, as you can see for yourself, I haven’t yet writen.

By the way, you can find more about them on Line 6 website here.

Also watch this YouTube video about it, should keep you busy for the next few minutes!

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A few days ago, my blogging buddy Jack Pribek of pribek.net released his most recent song, Market Street for download on his site. I like his new idea of releasing one song at a time, since it gives you the thrills waiting for a new song.

Dr J quickly put up a picture video for it and published it on YouTube and his site and challenged everybody to make a new video for Jack’s new song. How about it? I support this also, so people, if you have any skills in this area related to making videos, let’s see your work! The theme is Market Street and the mp3 you can take it from Jack’s site! It may be, as Dr J’s says, the next viral thing on the internet, who knows!?

Well? Do you have any video for this new song?

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I am a VW fan since a long time, I love these cars and I remember dreaming of having one while in high school. Well, I still don’t, I own another brand of car, but my love for them still remained the same so when I’ve seen these commercials with Slash, John Mayer and Christopher Guest I immediately thought of sharing them here with you!

So here they are, Slash, John Mayer, Christopher Guest and VW giving away First Act custom guitars when buying a VW! Unfortunately, the promotion is long time gone, but still, it is nice to remember!

“…any customer that purchases or leases a designated Volkswagen model from the new 2007 line - including Jetta, Jetta GLI, GTI, Rabbit, New Beetle and New Beetle Convertible - will receive their own completely customized First Act GarageMaster electric guitar that will play seamlessly through the car’s existing audio system…(WordCarFans.com)”

Well, should we go now and buy one of these? What do you say?

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One of the things that I really think about for a long time is what skills a performing artist needs on stage and I am not speaking here about musical skills, studies, licks or tricks …

Be an entertainer

What I speak here about is social skills, that quality that separates a singer, a guitar player, a musician from a real performing entertainer (in the good sense of the word). And before jumping to slap me because you didn’t study long years how to play the guitar just to entertain people, think about it for a moment.

Entertaining people does not mean necessarily making them laugh, OK? It means making people feel good at your shows, no matter you are Sepultura, Iron Maiden or Shakira. Think about Manowar and the motorcycles they use in some of their shows when going on stage, think about ACDC and Angus Young’s almost trademarked jump.

I know that some of you may think that music is what really matters, not acting foolish on stage, but in my opinion that matters also. It matters because it is part of THE SHOW, it is part of the whole thing going on there.

We have here a band where the lead singer is also an actor. It helps. It really helps. The guy does not have the best voice, he has range, OK, has a particular sound of his voice that differentiate him, has good songs, but he often sings flat on stage, loses his air and he really couldn’t care less because what he does on stage is not singing, is acting, is performing, is entertaining the audience.

What makes them different is, beside the songs, the fact that they seem to live every moment on stage and the public feels it very well…I have paid some thinking about this since we don’t have this on stage every time and we should really invest some time in this.

Teaming the beast

Also, speaking about social skills, I guess one of those skills you really need (at least at first) is the capacity to overcome unpleasant moments.

I remember one interview of two famous Romanian stand-up comics performing together. They were explaining how in one of their shows, in a club, some guy from the public started to make fun of them and didn’t want to stop. At one moment, one of the artists kind of blocked not knowing how to answer to what the guy from the audience was screaming at them, moment when the other comic, with over 20 years experience in this, decided to answer back and shut the mouth of the poor bastard in everybody’s laughing. Call it experience, but it is also part of those social skills you need on stage.

At one moment we had such a show where it was a mixed audience, rock and hip hop (small town, not that many bands, make a show, call everyone there. Bad idea!). At one moment hip hop fans started to throw things on stage at rock bands. Hip hop fans are not hard rock fans and will probably never be…well…

The reason that started this post is a video with Paul Gilbers and a stage “moment” he handled great! Take a look and let me know what you think!

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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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