Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

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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Hello again, my dear online friends! I am back from my sunny holiday and back to my computer! I must admit I don’t know if I will find it easy to come back to the same rhythm as before since sun, sand, water and beer can really take you out of writing shape! I will probably need a few days to come back to the same rhythm as before. So…

I had a very relaxing holiday, a lot of days spent without doing anything else than relaxing, drinking beer on the beach, swimming and meeting friends (we’ve met 2 of my cousins who also spent their holiday there so we had company for a lot of days and a lot of beers)

At one moment we decided to cross the border and take a trip to Bulgaria, a bit fearful, to be honest since Bulgarian police has not the best reputation around. I payed extra attention to traffic signs and speed limits and it was OK. We spent one full day at their Golden Sands resort where prices were the same as in Romania. only that there were a lot of foreigners, a lot of Italians IMO, the beach was tidier and more animated.

In one word, I like it there and decided to go back for a full holiday at one moment. However, 2 observations from Bulgaria:

• They have no alcohol free beer!! What?!! 3 different bartenders looked at me lost when I asked for alcohol free beer. No, we have not such thing. And what do you drink when you drive? Well, water, juice, alcohol free cocktails. Reasonable…but where’s my beer?!! One of the girls serving cocktails on the beach told me she remembers she saw alcohol free beer in stores a couple of years ago…hmm. We have about 4-5 sorts of alcohol free beer that come to my mind this very moment!
• Their traffic signs are absolutely horrible! For ex: you get to a point where the speed limit is 20km/h because a particular situation there, a dangerous turn or something. OK, then the turn is over and I find myself in front of a clear European road where the limit would be 90km/h, but there was no sign that the 20km/h speed limit is over!! I told you I payed attention to those signs, OK?!! WTF!?!! This situation was very frequent in Bulgaria and it was very annoying since I was trying to avoid being stopped by their police! So I decided to apply a different rule there: I try to guess the reason for the speed limit (like that curve) and once the reason is gone, I drive with the theoretical speed limit for that part of the road. Pretty wild but I managed to get home safely, without breaking too many rules there, beside a few red lights…whatever…

When coming back in the evening, I had to admit that we(Romanians) should be a bit more careful with cleaning our beaches, but hey, that’s the Latin spirit I guess, compared to Slavic spirit of our neighbors. As for the rest, if I compare the wild cars I have seen in Mamaia(Romania), I have never seen them anywhere else. My brother in law was absolutely crazy when he saw some latest moment cars, like BMW X6 or latest Mercedes or Aston Martin. Well, nobody said there are no rich people in Romania, right? We could also judge by the yachts, if we think about, we visited the marina in the last day there, for fun.

At the end of this trip, I just want to make a few notes regarding my blog here:

• A big thanks to IG for his great post about seeking guitar teachers that got quite a few good page views while I was away! Thanks, man! I owe you one!
• My traffic was steady at around 550 visitors per day in the last 3 weeks and my RSS subscribers increased while I was away, so I should probably go more often in holidays, my traffic would probably increase!! I will leave again at the end of this week in the mountains for a few days so please, please subscribe to my RSS feeds!!
• Guys, comment on this post here about Willie Nelson, to enter the drawing for the free collection of 4 CDs of Willie Nelson’s career! It doesn’t hurt and it is free! Really!

That’s about it for today, a pretty long post but hey, the man is back to business!! So stay close!

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I remember one day I stumbled upon IG’s blog on the internet and I was just amazed of how well the audience followed his blog. I couldn’t stop asking myself why this was happening, especially since I was on my own quest of building an audience for myself, so I subscribed to his feeds to see why. Soon, I have understood it and ever since I read his blog almost every single day. Now, because I am away, he was very kind to lend me a hand here. So, without any more words, I give you IG!

Howdy Guitar Flame readers. This is IG here, of IG BLOG, guest posting for Ovidiu. Thanks for having me!

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the serious need for guitar teachers.

Consider this: The last time the U.S. instrument industry reported sales results, sales of acoustic guitars in the $350 price range decreased by almost 15 percent from the previous year. Sales of electric guitars in the same price point declined by 24 percent from previous record levels. That’s almost one third.

Why am I talking about cheap guitars? Because that’s the kind of guitar that is typically purchased by the first-time guitar player, the newbie. This group of folks is the new generation, the ones who will continue the tradition of guitar playing. And the numbers suggest they are not very happy right now.

Why not?

A recent American Music Conference survey on music-making asked people to list the barriers that kept them from taking up a musical instrument.” The top response was “inability to find a good teacher,” which rated well ahead of “lack of time,” “it’s too hard to learn,” “can’t afford an instrument,” and “don’t have enough talent.”

Access to decent guitar instruction is critical for those who want to play guitar and are looking to take the next step to act on their dream.

And the weird thing is that the guitar industry is not doing anything about this. I remember the music shop close to my house when I was a guitar hungry teenager. Although I didn’t quite realize at the time, the guitar lessons I took at the shop were critical for me to stick with guitar. But, over the past decade, thousands of similar independent shops that offered lessons have shut down, mainly due to instrument sales competition from Guitar Center and internet retailers.

And this is the nail in the coffin right here: You Google “guitar teacher” and the city of your choice, and you’re likely to get an endless list of online teaching methods that don’t relate at all to the frame of mind of a beginner. Because there is no substitute for the living and breathing guitar teacher when it comes to going from “I just bought my first guitar” to “I can play a cool three-chord song.”

A three-chord song.

Teach a beginner a three chord song, and you’ve just build his or her interest to play guitar for a really long time. There are hundreds of thousands guitar players capable of teaching three-chord songs and inspiring a lifetime of playing. But, somehow, I just don’t see our current guitar selling infrastructure connecting these guitar leaders with the newbies.

IG BLOG (guitar – life) dishes out inspiration and ideas to guitar players everywhere

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I’ve just sent my newly purchased Variax guitar to the company that sold it to me for fixing it since I couldn’t make it start again since that single hour of playing/testing it. I  expect it to return in perfect condition, in a couple of days, ready to rock!

On the other hand tonight I will leave for one week to the seaside where I am going to stay away from everything that means work. Well, not everything since I will take my laptop with me for reading emails and maybe answering a few comments here and hopefully I will be able to post once in a while an article or two, when time (OK, my wife) will allow me get close to my computer!!!

So, I don’t know how well I will be able to keep the rhythm of posting new articles, but hey, everybody needs rest once in a while! And I hope by the end of my one week holiday my guitar will be ready and willing…

And since the weekend is here and I will not be present to entertain you, please take a bit of time to enter the competition for winning the most recent 4 CDs collection of Willie Nelson, One Hell of A Ride, read again the article that generated the highest number of visitors in one day and ever on this site, the funny top 10 list for a successful power metal band, read the article and watch the movie that generated the highest number of Diggs, over 100 diggs WITHOUT REACHING THE FIRST PAGE ON DIGG!!! By the way, why don’t you digg it, maybe a few diggs more could make it move even if so much passed since that moment!

And also, why don’t you read my reports on how my site traffic went so far. Here’s the 5th report since I couldn’t manage to write the 6th and last report (but I promise I will one of those days). This 5th report will lead you to the rest of the reports too.

By the way, the picture in this post is from Mamaia resort, here in Romania where I am heading to this very night, the most expensive resort on Romanian seaside where rich people pay up to $15.000 for a bottle of champagne at whild night parties…Don’t ask…

So without any more words, I wish myself a happy holiday and a lot of sun and good weather! Thank you!

Talk to you again from the seaside later! Bye!

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