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Showing posts from August, 2009

Look ma, NO HANDS!

Django Reinhardt is a gypsy jazz guitar icon still to this day for his amazing playing, both in the chordal and lead department. The thing that always wows new comers to his music is when they learn that he did it all with severely disfigured fingers on his fretting hand. Django is an amazing inspiration for anyone feeling the urge to make excuses for their lousy playing with familiar calls like 'my fingers are to short' or 'to fat'. This next guy takes that idea to a whole new level. The audio is slightly out of sink but if you watch long enough you'll see its the real deal... this guy is playing guitar with NO HANDS, (or arms for that matter)!

New Steve Vai DVD - Sept 29th

A sizable and colorful line up feature on Steve Vai's latest live release. All the members are new except Dave Weiner and Jeremy Colson. Interesting instrumentation and some cool 'toys' also make an appearance. Video production looks top notch with lots of angles, panning shots (love those) and attractive staging. Its available on blu-ray aswell as dvd and cd. Links below the vid...

Instant Vocal Harmonies - cool toy!

I just ordered myself one of these awesome pedals, the Digitech Vocalist Live 2. You run your guitar and vocals through it and it creates vocal harmonies based on the chords you are playing. Pretty amazing stuff! I look forward to doing a demo with it and posting it on here soon... once Ive dusted up my vocals a bit that is :) (Harmonies kick in at the 1 minute mark.)

Humourous harmonics :)

Mattias IA Eklundh is one of my favorite guitarists. On top of that I would have to rank him as the funniest guitarist ever! If your wondering "is this guy always this chirpy?" check out any of his other videos and you'll soon realize the answer is a definitive yes! Think your pretty good with harmonics? This short video will give you some homework!

Channeling spirits, before their dead?

I had someone refer to Craig Ross the other day with words of praise so decided to check him out. He's the guitarists for Lenny Kravitz and Im glad to say I was suitably impressed. He really captures that 'classic 10 minute solo that makes the audience all go nuts with its energy - instead of boring them senseless' vibe. As any guitarist knows, playing a long solo and being able to keep the crowd into it is 'tough', plain and simple. What I find amusing is he seems to have really channeled the spirit (and hair) of Jimmy Page in his playing, which is funny cos Jimmy is still alive!

How well do you know your Rock'n'Roll?

Spot the references to band names... Click on the image for full size version This was a great thing that Virgin put together a few years back. Spot all rock and pop references in the image below. Lots of fun and quite challenging. There are over 70 to find , once you've guessed all you can check back on Tursday for answers (in the comments section).

iTunes, called me a whore...

'Morning Motivators' is an iTunes compilation I came across that features a bunch of songs that by their thoughts will make you feel good about yourself and start your day with a go get em attitude. Cueing Track 9, Gwen Stefani - 'What You Waiting For?' It seems like a logical pick by the title. It brings up themes of go get em, just do it, take a chance in life. But things go awfully wrong as soon as you consider the key catch line in the song... Wake in the morning to have Gwen Stefani tell you to 'take a chance you stupid whore'??? Nice work iTunes, I don't think that one was quite as well thought through as it could have been :) See what other not so inspirational lyrics you can find yourself. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMix?id=200949029&s=143460&wm=1

Tommy Emmanuel - 3 Minutes Of Inspiring Words

I landed on this this is a recent interview of Tommy Emmanuel and though it shared some good simple wisdom. Its the sort of stuff that some may scoff as being the same old, but when its coming from the mouth of someone like Tommy you realise getting good at your instrument is about the fundamental things like being dedicated and loving music in general. "Sometimes the best advice is not what you haven't heard before but rather what you already know, but just need reminding."