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Farewell Gary Moore, Thanks for everything

Sunday, February 6th, 2011

I was utterly shocked to hear the sad news that Blues / Rock Guitar Maestro Gary Moore passed away earlier this morning while on holiday in Spain. He was only 58 years old. For those who read my posts, you will remember my recent ramblings about learning Parisienne Walkways, a song I’m still hoping to fully master one day. A song which also introduced me to Gary in the early 90′s when the live version made it back into the charts and became quite popular among my circle of friends back when I was in High School. Until very recently I’d never realised just how versatile a player he was and made a mental note to keep an eye on his future tour dates to go see him when he would next come to a venue near me. This sadly will never happen anymore.

But instead of weeping and pointing out just how big a loss this is, let’s celebrate the immense contribution he made to the world of music and how much an inspiration he was to many guitar players, myself included. Here is a live version of the aforementioned Parisienne Walkways:

Just listen to that vibrato :)

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Guitar Practice Log – Country Hybrid

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

I’m now on week 15 of the Guitar Aerobics program. I’ve not really reported much on it lately because it’s mostly been same old, same old so nothing inspiring to share. Having said that there was an interesting bit of acoustic playing at the end of week 13 that still gets my fingers tangled up but sounds pretty cool, something to get back to when I have spare time (which in guitar time means “not terribly often”).

Of the new things I now try to incorporate in my playing, unison bends is probably the most prominent one. I’m still waiting for this shift in my head of seeing all those things I can play instead of the regular pattern I always seem to fall into. Today I did exercise 100, which means I theoretically know 100 licks I should be able to play. Since the majority are blues / rock types, there’s plenty of experiments to try. Sadly it’s a bit like spending hours learning Japanese and having conversations with your anime collection, the progress is still very slow. Still tonight was rather fun, as the 100th lick was the first country music lick and it also introduced hybrid picking which I’ve never tried before and though it takes a bit of getting used to, it’s actually really fun to use.

I’ve also had more time to try and strengthen my knowledge of Mighty Turtle Head and although the fastest I’ve been playing some bits is still just at 90% speed, it’s getting there. Last lesson I’d had so little practice I could barely remember what I was supposed to play. Speaking of lesson, we started looking at sus 4 and sus 2 chords which are really quite nice chords and got me thinking into trying to compose again, but there’s just one problem.

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Steve Vai interviewed by Music Radar at NAMM 2011

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

Last weekend the 2011 version of NAMM in Anaheim, California, saw many of the usual artists coming to present new products, signature series and so on. Steve Vai was there as he often is, this year to present his new Ibanez Euphoria signature model, an acoustic model not too dissimilar to Joe Satriani’s JSA Series as you can see below:

Photos © Ibanez - from Facebook

While he was there, the guys at Music Radar took their chance to briefly catch up with him, here’s an excerpt of their interview, with something I find quite exciting:

Last year, the film you co-produced, Crazy, was released. Do you have any other such projects happening?

“There are a couple of things I’m working on that I’m very excited about. One of them is a whole new division for Favored Nations. I’m partnering with a company in New York, and what we’re going to do is develop a completely new model for a record company. It’s still way early to talk about, but it’s going to be very contemporary. Ever since I started my first label at the age of 20, I’ve always been aware of how the music business works. Trends can happen, and things can change, but there’s always opportunity.

“The other thing is something that’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s called Guitar TV – an internet station, 24/7, streaming all of the greatest guitar performances ever. Basically, it all started when I asked myself, ‘What would I like to see?’ That’s how a lot of good ideas come about. So we’re going to be launching that at some point. Guitar TV is going to be all guitar, every genre, the greatest performances. Being it Joe Pass, Eric Johnson, Hendrix, Satriani – all the greats, here they are.

“Not only that, but it’s going to have some really cool features. At any point, you can click on it and go to a Wikipedia page and read about the artist. You can click on another place and go to their website. You can click and buy their CDs. And what’s really cool is, you can click on the guitar the artist is playing and learn everything about the instrument. You can even find where you can buy the guitar, too. It’s crazy! The whole thing is built, and the man who’s going to be running it, Andy Alt, is talking to companies about content. I can’t wait to get it off and running. I figure, if I want something like this, there’s got to be other people who want the same thing.”

Now let’s hope it won’t suffer the fate of Pandora in this country. For the whole interview, head over to Music Radar :)

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Guitar Practice Log – If it’s too slow…

Monday, January 17th, 2011

… then it probably is. Let me explain.

Last week, I’ve been both tired and ill (still am, at its worst, hopefully) and so skipped both Thursday and Friday sessions, which tend to be the two techniques I less enjoy practicing, that is arpeggios (I normally don’t mind but lately it’s been nerve biting barred chords on the lower neck) and of course sweep picking. Since today’s exercise on alternate picking is relatively easy, I thought I’d catch up on those two and make up for lost time.

The arpeggio exercise went reasonably well (though I now know why, see later), but I was surprised at just how easily I went all the way to 112bpm playing 16th notes in sweep picking. A feeling of pride and achievement was filling me up when I suddenly realised something was in fact really quite wrong. Last week, I’d been practicing bits of the solo of Satch’s Mighty Turtle Head and in order to cope with the speeds involved and to get the patterns under my fingers, I’d slowed down the loop to 45% of the normal speed. Unfortunately, Guitar Pro kept that setting (despite a crash earlier) and so I was proudly playing sweeped triads at 45% of 112bpm… oh dear.

So if you think what you’re playing is too slow, then it probably is, in particular if you really were struggling the week before just as you did in previous weeks. These things do get better eventually but this is a slow and hardly noticeable process unless you take regular snapshots of your upper limits at regular intervals in your practice. As it stands I could really only play that exercise at 76bpm by really putting some serious attention to it, and even then it was quickly quite messy.

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Marshall launches the Slash AFD100 Signature Amp

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

I don’t normally do posts about amplifiers because I generally don’t know much about them, but this one’s interesting. Back when I first started my “musical enlightenment”, Marshall amps for some reason I can’t quite remember were in my mind the top of the range kind of amp you could own if you wanted to play metal or rock of any kind. This was probably due to the fact that Slash was flogging them quite a bit whenever I’d read an interview with him.

Well now, they’ve worked with him to release a signature amp that reproduces as accurately as possible the sound of Appetite for Destruction. Check out the video below for more info:

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