For me, The Eagles ranks up high. The 1970’s. California. Bunch of guys playing guitar and writing songs about girls and life in the fast lane.
Check out Rolling Stone magazine’s recent photo album: “Eagles’ Long Run: Photos from the Seventies and Beyond.”
Here’s ol’ Glenn Frey in the back of a cargo truck making sure all the guitars are behaving.
Photo courtesy Rolling Stone.
Next week I’ll be on vacation. That means no work. No kids. No computer. No guitar playing (ouch). No blogging on guitar (aagh). Nothing. Just me and the wife hanging out in San Francisco, California.
Anyone live there or is familiar with San Fran? I’m looking for stuff to do, especially stuff having to do with music and/or guitar.
There are two camps of guitarists. One that digs guitar instrumental music. And, another one that doesn’t.
If you dig guitar instrumentals, check out BHP Music. If you don’t, check out BHP Music anyway and give yourself another chance, ok?
I was finally able to take out for a test drive two of BHP Music’s catalog CDs, GET THE LED OUT! Led Zeppelin Salute (released Feburary 2008), and GUITAR MASTERS, VOL. 1 (released May 2007).
What can I say? Brian Tarquin, producer and mastermind behind BHP Music is a guitar and recording geek, and it shows in his productions.
GUITAR MASTERS, VOL. 1 basically leaves you wondering when the second volume is coming out. Talk about a big ol’ guitar party. I’ll let Premier Guitar magazine do the talkin’ in their review of the CD. Pay really close attention to the track listing and all the guitarists contributing to the project. Wow. My favorite? Track 11, “Frankenstein,” with Texans Doug Stapp and Scott Stine. Ok, ok, second favorite: “54-46 Was My Number,” a reggae tune by Toots & the Maytals featuring Jeff Beck.
And GET THE LED OUT! Led Zeppelin Salute? I mean, guitar instrumentals of 12 classic Led Zeppelin tunes. That’s all one has to say about that. It’s guitar-playing for sport, the stuff of guitar geeks, a peek at how the boundaries can get pushed and shoved.
Also with GET THE LED OUT! you get four pre-Led Zep rare tracks: three (”Thumping Beat,” “Cause I Love You,” and “Wailing Sounds”) from 1970 with Jimmy Page, Daniel Edwards, John Bonham and singer David “Lord” Sutch, and one from 1968 (”Burn Up”) with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and singer Keith de Groot. Rarities my friends, worth the listen and a debate on whether Jimmy Page’s guitar riffing alone could’ve sustained Led Zeppelin without Mr. Robert Plant.
And right now you can sign up to win copies of these two CDs right here (sign up before June 15). Also, check out some cool BHP Music studio videos.
Last week music publisher Alfred Publishing gave Guitar World magazine online the right to offer guitar tabs for songs by artists owned by Alfred Publishing, such as Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Green Day, The Eagles, and Santana.
Guitar World offers the tabs at Guitar World Tabs, which was launched in early January 2008 to provide “right-cleared” guitar tabs, or legal guitar tabs. To pay Alfred for the rights, Guitar World uses a pay-per-view and advertising revenue model.
The two patted themselves on the back, with Guitar World saying the deal “is a victory for us and a victory for Alfred Publishing artists who will finally be compensated for their online guitar transcriptions.” Alfred added that they are “pleased to find yet another way to embrace new business models to better represent our large roster of artists and their copyrights, while simultaneously helping to empower a new generation of customers to learn, teach, and play music.”
The “right-cleared” tabs, which are user-created, are indeed way better than your average Internet tabs, featuring chords, lyrics, tempo, and often solos and licks.
So, here’s how you get going. First, you gotta sign up and become a user, which is free. I signed up as “igblog” and had way too easy of a time getting started.
Then, you search for tabs. I looked up Van Halen’s “Best of Both Worlds,” since the guys in the band want to do the song. And there it was. Comes up as your typical ASCII text tab, submitted by user “smatter,” who has submitted 18 tabs (13 Van Halen tunes and 5 Beatles tunes). According to the site’s stats, there are 49,691 users signed up at Guitar World Tabs. User “ibenhad” is the busiest tabber, with 64 submitted tabs. But, the two votes he has are negative (the negative vote icon is a graphic of a hand shooting the middle finger).
Back to my song. “Best of Both Worlds” looks pretty good. I think it would be cool to move to the next step and give it a try. Trouble is, I don’t have my guitar with me at the time and… well, you can’t print the tab.
I feel like I just bought a bottle of milk at the grocery store, but I am not allowed to pour the milk into cups or glasses, I can only drink from the bottle each time I want milk.
How can they “empower a new generation of customers to learn, teach, and play music,” when you can’t print the tab so that you can keep it around and learn it? I suppose I can copy/paste the tab, but, what a hassle. You gotta switch programs and open up Word, paste the tab onto a new document, delete any weird characters that get copied from the ads on the web page, change the font of the document to the proper ASCII font so that the tab lines up neatly, reduce the size of the font so that there aren’t any weird breaks, then print it.
Printing is already a hassle when using the non-legit tab sites with their crazy ads that mess up the printed pages, why not earn kudos and a happier group of fans by letting us print Guitar World tabs from a printable-version browser window, the same way that MapQuest lets you print driving directions so that they print nice and neat?
Next, I consider the “pay-per-view” option, what Guitar World calls “premium tabs.” According to the site, 60 out of 2,337 tabs are premium. I rank the premium tabs by score, and “Melissa” by The Allman Brothers Band tops the list. Hmmm? Guitar World wants $0.99 for it, and they have a nice way to view the premium tabs so that they show on screen in full notation mode, just like the tabs that come with the print-version of the magazine. Yummy.
Let’s buy the puppy, I say. So, I start the buying process, only to find out that $0.99 is the cost of a “monthly subscription” to the tab itself. If purchased, Guitar World will charge me $0.99 per month for the individual tab, until I get off my butt and cancel the subscription.
And, what about printing? Forget it, premium tabs cannot be printed.
So, I hit the “logout” button.
You know when you’re so close to something, that you totally lose sight of it?
Alfred and Guitar World are losing sight of it. Very similar to how the big music labels are losing sight, refusing to understand reality.
I think Alfred and Guitar World are making decisions mainly to please a group of lawyers back at the corporate office, instead of trying to figure out ways to help you, the guitar player, by bringing you value with a great learning experience, so great that you’ll want to go back for more, and even pay for it.
You see, it’s not about guitar tabs. You can get those free online. Sure, lots of times they are incorrect, but most players are able to work around that and get the gist of the tune. And, frankly, lots of times players can figure out enough of a song just by ear.
But, it sure would be nice to have really good tabs that you can actually print. For free. As a way to get you to SOMETHING ELSE far more valuable.
What is that SOMETHING ELSE? I don’t know at this moment exactly.
What I do know is that the music publishers and labels (which are often siblings) basically want you to buy into their music artists. They have access to the artists that all of us want to have interactions with. As a music fan and guitar player, I want desperately to interact with the artists and would buy into an experience where the artists are sharing meaningful insight with me. The kind of stuff that shoots up my motivation to play guitar and makes me go back for more.
Easy-to-print guitar tabs? They’re just the icing on the cake.
For my birthday yesterday (I turned 34), my family gave me these sunglasses:
I mean… You know, there’s GEAR that I want/need, and they know about it too. Ok?
Like, I want/need an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb pedal to beef up my solos with my band, since I am now the only guitar player. I also want/need an attenuator to tame and brighten the Fender Hot Rod DeVille amp that I use.
I could also use a couple of guitar stands so that I can finally stop laying my guitars flat on the floor of the office/music room in the house (I sound like a broken record: “hey guys, watch where you step or you’ll destroy the guitar on the floor”).
But… No.
All I got was the pair of guitar sunglasses. I suppose it’s “the thought” that matters? Not sure that guitarists hungry for gear are hip to that idea.
Super fast metal guitarist Mike Schleibaum of Darkest Hour has a new advice blog: AsktheDude.net.
Sweet stuff if you want to become a metal guitar machine and have lots of questions about, like, anything dude. Just visit AskTheDude and email a question. Here’s the most recent question:
Dear Dude,
My band is currently circulating a four-song demo, but I haven’t sent it out to any record labels yet because it sounds like what it is: a demo recorded for a few hundred bucks. We want to show labels that we have our shit together as a group, and I think having awesome gear and a really nice-sounding demo would help prove that. We’re saving up money to buy better gear and make a crisper recording, but how much does production quality matter when shipping out demos? What do we need to show labels in order to prove that we do, in fact, have our shit together and are ready to make this band our careers?
Dude, good question.
Oh yes, if you have XM Radio or are willing to try a free demo, Mike “The Dude” Schleibaum will be taking questions live and spinning deathly metal tunes on XM Radio’s Liquid Metal Channel #42 today, Monday, May 12, at 4:30 PM EST.
Alrighty, I think we’ve had enough Hug Your Guitar Week, don’t ya? Thought I’d share my own hug…
…from this morning at my volunteer gig for my local church. Not sure if it’s a smile I have, or a “way too early to be up playing guitar” attempt at smiling. But, hey, playing guitar is fun anytime, and twice on Sunday.
All of ya, hope you had fun and enjoyed meeting some of the folks sharing their Hug Your Guitar Week photos. Remember, keep on huggin’ and strummin’!
I now give you G L Wilson, of guitarz.blogspot.com:
“The guitar,” G L writes, “is a 1970s-era Japanese-made Sanox Sound Creator. It does sound good plugged in, but to be frank it’s more of one to hang on the wall than a player because it’s taken a few knocks over the years and is rather fragile. It also weighs a ton.”
See-thru kinda hug for Hug Your Guitar Week.
We’re getting close to the end of Hug Your Guitar Week, and I now present you with Mark:
Librarian extraordinaire, comic book expert and commentator, family guy, guitar spanker.
Send your Hug Your Guitar Week photo to igblog at aol.com. Only two days left!
Which took place this week, here’s a great compilation of photos from the show in New York. I had to snag this one of Warren Haynes doing a top-of-the-line blues face:
You’ll also see in the photos that actor Chevy Chase was among the performers. Hello? Why didn’t anybody tell me that Chase was a fellow jammer?
And here is another highlight piece, this one focusing on the a big “could’ve been” from the show: an opportunity for a Phish reunion.
But, at least folks at the Jammy Awards got to see guitarist Trey Anastasio of for-now-defunct Phish in action:
Photo courtesy Metromix New York.
I think I know why Jason Castro was booted out of American Idol this week. My theory is that he just wanted to go home and get a real gig using his new, custom-made guitar from Luna Guitars.
Yup, the Florida, U.S. based guitar maker gave guitars to American Idol’s final five, as well as judges Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson. Jason Castro played his Luna, named Trinity, this past Wednesday during his last appearance on the show. I fell in love with Trinity, check out the sound hole:
Also, Luna Guitars made an electric guitar for left-handed American Idol rocker David Cook, so we’ll have to stay tuned and see if he plays that baby as the show approaches the final showdown. The current season of American Idol marks the first time the show allowed contestants to perform with musical instruments.
Check out Luna Guitars. Photo of Jason Castro and Luna Guitars staff courtesy Luna Guitars.
JP from Strat-O-Blogster just took this week’s precious guitar holiday up a notch. Here’s a teaser:
Click here for the rest.
Forget my guitar. I myself need a hug.
Looks like Yo is wakin’ up to the sound of rock and roll, the perfect moment to hug the 6 string:
And Alex from Belgium. Well, he just prefers to hug the guitar the regular ol’ way:
Keep on huggin’ them guitars this week, up until Sunday night.
Heck, hug them every day for the rest of your life! But, send your Hug Your Guitar Week photo for posting before Sunday, pleeze, to igblog at aol.com. Let us know you really, really care for that marvelous piece of wood.
Going on this week, which is Hug Your Guitar Week. Here’s Derek…
…who says: “Here are two of my Fernandes Les Pauls and me doing an impression of a man with no neck. Over the years I’ve accumulated a number of guitars including a Gibson and 4 Fenders but in the event of a fire it is these two which I would grab and run with. The Sunburst was a lucky find (I’d never even heard of the make) and was bought 10 years ago in preference to a new Gibson LP Studio, the Fernandes sounded, looked and played much better. The Goldtop took me over 2 years to find on ebay - from a guy who lived 20 miles away from me!”
And here’s Pat, who’s huggin’ his seriously ill guitar…
…Pat says: “Some guitars need hugs… or they will simply cease to exist. This one has a funny condition, that the guitar repair dude at Mom2Pop Music store said ‘Hey, I’d like to take your $580!’ To him I said, ‘It has sentimental value, but not that much!’ So I put some thought into it, and clamps to it, as you might see in the photo. It’s a ‘Japan’ no label left, Classic nylon string guitar. Very old now. Used when given to me by best friend’s wife, 22 years ago. Jack Pribek used to pick it up and practice his scales. Then he would pull out a file and take the frets down, or shave down the nut to his liking… all the rug rats have used it, drawn on it, and so on. I played it in churches, and at Guitar Preservation classes two of us taught to middle schoolers. Then one tuner cracked, so I fixed it with a nylon sleeve, that continued to buzz. I discovered replacement tuners for this simple guitar, and was really happy about that. Then it developed a weird sag, I think someone sat on it… is all I can figure. So, you see the guitar is a very worthy instrument, especially this one, deserving lots of love and hugs. I would say a guitar is better even than having a boat.”
Oh yes, last but not least, check out Jesse:
So, c’mon and get with it. Hug your guitar and send me your picture, igblog at aol.com. Hug Your Guitar ain’t over till Sunday night baby… Hug it, lick it, spank it!
Talkin’ ’bout Joe Bonamassa and the blues earlier this week made me wanna do a blues playalong for ya.
I kept it nice and easy. Key of E for easy scale access. Sort of slow tempo (60 beats per minute) to slow you down a bit and make you focus on singing licks in your head first and then letting your fingers do the work.
You can stream it below (little over 6 minutes long), or download it by rick-clicking here with your mouse and choosing download or save as. Enjoy!
…
Production notes: Bass and drum loops, Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-3. Guitar tracks, some kind of Ibanez guitar I keep around, played through a Line 6 POD X3 LIVE amp modeler. Recorded using a Mac Mini and Garage Band, going into computer with Digidesign MBox.
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