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Archives for March 2007

The Harp Guitar

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This instrument, the Harp Guitar, is the sweetest and most challenging one to perfect. Some of the great musicians to play this instrument have been Robbie Robertson, Steve Howe, Pat Metheny just to name a few.

The Harp Guitar is considered beautiful to the eyes and ears. Even Gibson was a Guitar Harp producer. We have a great Canadian woman who creates these missing links to the musical past and she is, Linda Manzer.

I have chosen Michael Hedges to illustrate this to you today. Unfortunately, like all the great ones, he is no longer with us. He was only 43 when he pasted away from a car crash.

The Guitar Harp has the appearance of a mythical instrument from the days of Robbin Hood, the Lutes of 1265 C.E. (C.E. = Common Era, used to be called A.D.) or the Baroque period. An ageless instrument at that!

I have never seen one up close but if I could be alone with one for a moment or so, I would try to decode this thing once and for all. I have tried my luck on a Lute and it was really fun to play. I love the sound and the action on the Lute. The neck is wide and the length is short, which makes it easier to play in my eyes. I suggest that if the opportunity presents itself, you should take full advantage of the moment to broaden your musical horizons.

Keep on Jammin’, (even Harp style)




How to figure out what strings you really need

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If you want your guitar to sound it’s best when you play it, you have to determine what type of strings you need to compliment your style of playing. Take your guitar in to have the intonation on your axe set by the best guitar technician possible in your area.

Intonation on a guitar is what we call the action on your guitar. This allows you to play/hit your strings effortlessly. Trust me, it’s worth the extra few bucks and time to get this done correctly. The better the intonation, the better the chance of your strings staying in tune longer. The less you have to bend the string, the less they lose their tension. That should speak volumes in itself.

I am forever fine tuning my guitars. People tell me that I make it look like an art form – or maybe they mean I’m being anal retentive!

When you go into a music store tell them what style of music you are playing, and how you want the guitar to react. I recommend kissing this person’s butt by going to see them on a Tuesday in the A.M. if possible.

Going there on weekends is like going to the lions den. There are always way too many kids and rookies in the store to drive them crazy. Monday is the day they try to remember what they were told to do and start off where they last ended. It can be the craziest part of their work week. Besides, who really does their best work on a Monday? Makes sense, huh?

Bringing a coffee can go a long way. Yes, I’m a kiss up artist too.

After you’re done kissing up, ask the techie what type of set-up they are putting on your guitar. This will help you in determining or narrowing down what type of string you should use. You can even ask him or her what type of strings they would recommend for your guitar and playing style.

Remember, a techie is the person who works on guitars. They are players themselves in their own right, but having said that, they also might not the ones to help make your final decision about your strings. NO disrespect intended to all you masters of guitar maintenance! The techie helping you might be biased towards certain types of equipment and or a certain type of sound. The more opinions the better, so ask around for further input. Remember, knowledge is power.

Keep on Jammin’

BlackScene.com – Black dating site

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A new dating site has recently opened up. It’s called Blackscene.com and it was created specifically for those interested in the Black Dating scene.

Memberships is free, and there’s even a new forum where you can talk with other site members. As I look through the site it appears that it’s mainly for people in North America as the sign up form asks for a zip or postal code. I’m presuming that’s so that members can be matched up with those in their general area.

The site appears to be very easy to use, and the design and layout of the site are appealing. You can search for someone interesting right from the front page of the site if you’d like, or sign in and get a little more specific.

The site is unique I believe in that it’s designed specifically for black people. I like that when you reload the main page you can see fresh new people that have just put their profile on the site. It keeps things interesting.

Apparently there are a few 100 new members each day. So if you’re looking for a date, or perhaps even the love of your life sign up. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Getting the RD Artist ready for battle

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The other day I had to do a few errands like pick up some grocery’s and earth worms for our turtles. Oh BTW, we use to have lots of reptiles like, Chinese Water Dragons, and a HUGE Iguana named Napoleon that we called our son who I miss every day, and some turtles.

Before starting off I decided to go to the 12th Fret to finally start paying more attention to my electric guitar ambitions. I haven’t restrung my RD in years. Whenever I broke a string, I just put another one on from the pack that I bought ages ago.

Yes, I really do feel bad about not paying proper homage to this beauty but, I did not have any use for it for a long time.

While visiting the store, I ran into my favorite guitar technician Tim. This guitar master is very knowledgeable in his field. He’s the type of guy you can sit down with and ask for honest opinions about what direction you should take in any situation. Tim has the uncanny personal trait of making you feel relaxed and at home. He has that trustful older brother demeanor. He is also the proud papa of a 16 day old boy, whom I’m sure is a guitar prodigy to be.

So I told him what I was looking for and he started to ask me about what setting/intonation I was using. I felt a bit like a rookie when I told him I had no idea. So as not to directly acknowledge my stupidity, he started explaining my options to me. Ahhhh, finally dodging a big bullet. I was saying to myself, “thanx for not dwelling on that too long Tim!”

He asked what type of feel the guitar strings had in regards to malleability or flexibility and he directed my attention to the D’Addario XL EXL110’s. These electric strings are nickel wound and have a regular light gauge to them.

How you restring your guitar is the most important thing that you will ever do to your axe.

You have to make sure that the way you wind them around the tuning pegs are perfect in every way.

How you thread the string through the eyelet – or the little whole on the tuning head- is very important. The length at which you start winding it, the tension that you have on it, using your other hand, and how close they are placed together on the shaft of the tuning peg is paramount.

Imagine when you are measuring an angle. If you start a little bit off, as little as one degree, it will only get worst at the end of your project. Does that make sense to you?

The strings are on, and the windings look good. Now it’s time to start working them in! For further results, tune in next week!

Keep on Jammin’

Save on international calls

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If you tend to make long distance calls from home or even from your mobile phone you might be interested in getting some cheap prepaid calling cards online from a company called Pingo.

Pingo has particularly good rates for cell phone users. Looking at the rates it’s actually much cheaper to use a Pingo calling card than to simply dial a long distance call using your cell phone provider. You can save up to 90% on your long distance mobile calls.

We don’t even like to get long distance calls on our cell phone because of the roaming charges. Our cell phone provider seems to charge us for everything and we can’t do much about it since we still have a contract with them. Now that I know how much cheaper it is to use a Pingo calling card for my cell phone long distance calls I think I’ll give it a try. Really, the rates are very good. See the rates in the links I’ve just listed to see what I mean.

Another bonus, when you sign up with Pingo you’ll get up to four hours worth of free international calls.

We don’t make a lot of long distance calls. I’d say that most of our long distance calls these days are to the United States. United States calling card rates are quite low. 1.8 cents per minute seems to be the going rate, and that’s quite a contrast to the 20 cents per minute that we pay when we call using our home telephone line through our telephone company.

Check it out for yourself. I’m sure you’ll save some money.

The Canadian Guitar Festival

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The Canadian Guitar Festival is something that I have wanted to go to for a while now. Below are some musicians who have been there in the past and hopefully they might nudge you into going this year if you can. I realize that having these many videos in a row looks odd but I am just trying to showcase a great show.

Keep on Jammin’

If you are really interested in going, this is an excerpt form an e-mail that was sent to me this morning about the camping arrangement. It really sounds like it is going to be a blast! Hope to see you there.

“The festival takes place on a 24 acre spread known as the Odessa Fairgrounds and the camping is on site. The camping is considered ‘dry’ with no running water or AC but is on the grass as it were..
We have showers on site, indoor washrooms and portable toilets placed in closer proximity to folks throughout the property.

A camping spot is guaranteed if you want one (given the space we have) but your site is what you choose when you choose it. There really are no bad spots. So when the tickets go on sale, all you need do is purchase a camping pass ticket for yourself and any other in your party over the age of twelve and you’re set for the weekend.

Del Vezeau

Vezco Productions Inc.
163 Main St
Odessa Ontario
Canada K0H 2H0
613-386-8878
1-888-506-1418
613-386-8879 fax
vezco@cogeco.ca
www.vezco.com
www.canadianguitarfestival.com

The early St. Pius X Elementary School

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If memory serves me correctly I started off playing in grade 5 at St. Pius X elementary school in Brantford.

My teacher was believe it or not, Mrs. Lord, yes that is correct! What a name for a Catholic school teacher. She was a guitar player who, played it for us in our music class. She played and we sang. She was playing some type of classical guitar and at the time I thought she was GREAT!

She played and we sang songs from the radio, which was in the early 70’s, and they sounded perfect. Songs like ” Seasons in the Sun”, ” Starry starry nights”, ” Alone again, Naturally” (which is a song that I still play today and is a long time favorite of mine) and I think she also played ” Natures way” as well.

We all started off learning the basics like, how to hold the guitar and the pick. This I found odd because she didn’t use one. She said that she felt more comfortable playing the guitar like that. She then taught us about the strings that we would be playing.

Then we progressed to chords! They were very basic ones. Anyway, I then remember her telling us that in our next music class she was going to show us how to play songs! I thought that would be a blast.

I guess everyone was excited with this new part of the curriculum, I know I was. I had a bit more of a leg up on everyone on this part of schooling. Imagine that mom and dad, I was at the head of the class for once!

Keep on Jammin’, I did

Compare and learn more about loans at SelectLoans.co.uk

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I hate having to apply for loans. Don’t you? It’s like the bank has all the power and you stress while you wait to hear whether they’ll say yes or no to your request.

The only loans I’ve really had to deal with have been student loans from when I went to college, and the loan for our car. Our credit rating wasn’t so hot when I applied for our car loan and I ended up having to accept a loan offer from my bank that was at a higher interest rate than I thought I should have had to pay.

It’s too bad that I didn’t know about places like SelectLoans.co.uk when I was searching for either unsecured loans or secured loans. I could have just used the site to compare loans and perhaps to get quotes from different loan and banking institutions in order to get the best rates.

If you think that you’re going to need to take out a loan sometime in the near future you should check out the SelectLoans.co.uk site as there are a lot of great resources there that discuss mortgage rates, financing and interest rates amongst many other topics.

I do think that loans are a necessary evil that pretty much everyone will experience at some point in their life. Unless you have a great job and earn lots of cash you’ll have to take out a loan one day for a car or a house or some other type of expense. The best thing to do when you get a loan is to make sure that the required payments are reasonable and to pay the minimum or greater each month so that you can get that loan payed off on time.

I know some people that take out loans to pay off their credit cards, and then end up getting more credit cards and take out more loans to pay off those bills. I don’t believe in that kind of behavior. It’s a bad cycle to get into and eventually those kind of people will fail to make their payments on time or over extend themselves and end up with bad credit ratings.

How do you feel about loans? Do you know people who’ve gotten themselves in trouble by taking out too many loans?

451press needs blog writers – earn money blogging

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Hey Gang … my wife, Tricia, writes for a blogging network. It’s called 451press and they are looking for some new writers to take over existing blogs. Check out my wifes page to see the list of blogs that they need writers for – there’s a huge variety of topics to write about, so I’m thinking that some of you might be interested.

Oh yeah, you can make some money by be a 451press writer too. Check it out.

Keep on Jammin’

My second amp – a Silvertone Sears modell 26122

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I can’t believe what you can find out there online.

I was writing a post today and as usual, drifted into la la land. Or should I say down memory lane.

I came across this guys site and he had the same amp that I had when I was in grade 7, I think. It was called a Sears-Simpson 12-watt head .

This amp was purely for looks. It had a huge cabinet that was very impressive to look at for the uninitiated guitar player wanna be. I do believe it only had a 12 inch speaker but the big black box made it look like many more were hiding in there.

sears-simpson26122.jpg

I just kept this thing around and used it to play through until I was given my HIWATT. After a while I had a great idea on what to do with this under utilized big black box. I just to put it underneath my HIWATT to make it look even bigger. Boy was I the cat’s meow back in the day.

The speaker box was very light but durable. I never tried to hook it to the HIWATT because I thought that the speaker cones (the little round things in the middle of speakers) would end up being shot out it to the other side of a room.

This is the amp that I had to use my BOSS Distortion DS-1 with because it had no distortion on it at all. Now I know why it didn’t, because it was a bass guitar amp! This was a true case of size over substance.

Keep on Jammin’

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