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John Mayer, love him or … at least try to learn something from him!

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Boy, John Mayer, who seems to everyone else on the planet except me; to be the best guitar player from an technical/artistic aspect, is a girlie guitar player? For me, this is the biggest crock of shit coming from these musically challenged people who happen to listen to him, even if it just in casual listening!

My guitar playing approach, is to (1) listen and see how difficult and unique the playing approach is and (2) well … that’s it!

I live to be able to pick guitar players brains and incorporate them into my own distinct style of performing! After all, there is no suck, in my thinking anyways, performer that has come up with a definitive original style that is completely theirs and theirs alone! Everyone has certain influences that help them create their own style.

When I listen to John Mayer, I see different colours of sounds. I am aware that basic chords are … just chords, in the primary position. But what John does is, rip them apart and put them back together in a refreshing way that helps cut through the different direction/genres that are out there right now.

I had the chance to see/copy a show that John Mayer did in Chicago (my brother lives there and what a place to see, if you have not been there then don’t just surf there, go there!). Buddy Guy was playing with him for 2 songs and wow, what a treat for the uninitiated. John Mayer was ripping these chords off and Buddy Guy was blasting away these solos and then trading off with John. Man, if that guy, John Mayer or Buddy Guy for that matter, walked into a music store and I was there playing guitar, I might just put mine down.

I am currently figuring out a song of John Mayer’s called “Neon” in the acoustic version. This is a song that I can play technically but the fine nuances will take me a while. It’s like the time I was figuring out how to play Lady Madonna”, the piano part that is, on the guitar. It was the first time that I attempted to use a pick (Jim Dunlop, 1 MM) and every other finger on my right hand to play the song. It took me around 1 whole year practicing it until I felt comfortable to play it on stage.

The thumb slapping on “Neon” is fun, as usual! The best album to listen/figure out this on is “Inside wants out”. I have become accustom to this technique by playing “Who put that bullet hole in Peggy’s kitchen Wall” by Bruce Cockburn. I also put in a bit of a bass thing in there to really create the big sound!

So, who is the young girl or soccer mom, who listens to John Mayer Now?




My first Rock concert I’ve ever played in … in grade 6 that is.

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Well I remember that being in grade 6 was quite a musical experiment to me.

A new kid named Brian came into our school that year. He seemed very cool but different from the rest of us. He spoke with a funny sound in his voice (that’s how I explained it when I was in grade 6 anyways). He was smart and a good soccer player. He also had a older brother who started hanging out with my older brother.

His brother liked and had all of the same music that all of us listened to, as well as some UK sounding style bands that we never had hear of. The guitar playing and singing was quite interesting. They also lived besides my brothers girl friend at the time. Soon we would start going over there to see them as well as her.

Brain and I got along great from the start. One day while in class, the teacher gave us all this assignment that was a report on what we liked and had to do a report on it in front of the class by years end. So, being off the wall as we were back then, we both thought that we should do a report on “Alice Cooper’s” new album, that everyone had, called “Schools Out”. We both thought that the best way to do a report was, not just to bore our fellow class mates by talking about it but, to sing it to them! This was also appropriate because it was almost the end of our school year.

We talked our teacher into letting us both do the same topic and that we would do it together in front of the class as well!

This was very exciting! So we listened to the words on it and sang it over and over again. We also knew that we had to give out information to the class for their own notes and asked my mother if she could do something for us. She was working on this thing called a “computer” at her work. I remember her bringing home papers that she read so, I asked her if she could go to work and do what ever she did with that computer thing and print these words out so we could give out to the class for the assignment. So, she did!

The day finally came for our report to be recited to our class and boy I was just bouncing off the wall with excitement! We had told our older brothers what we had in plan and they just laughed at the idea and said that it wouldn’t fly. By them laughing at our idea, it drove us with even more determination to make this the best report ever!

So when it was time for us to go up, we then gave out the copies of the song and walked up to the front of the class!
We had the teacher sign out the record player from the library so we could have the song playing while we sang it, in front of them. She then put the record in it and put the needle down! We had chosen ” Schools Out ” and sang our little hearts out! We even moved around like rock stars and ended our first rock concert, so we thought, with an screaming grade 6 class so much so that the principle came down just to see what the hell was going on.

Ahhhh, the simple things in life!

What was your first concert that you gave and how did it turn out!

Keep on Jammin’

Oh my God, what the hell, it’s got 2 necks

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Now that I was in grade 6 and my brother was in grade 8, other musical influences came into view for me. My brother Tim was the popular guy in school that everyone wanted to hang out with. He was an unreal defencemen in hockey, good looking and a very likable link of guy.

I too played defense and was quite talented. He had won more valuable defense men awards then I did but I had to try harder because I was much smaller then him. He was a rushing type of defense men and I was the crazy stay at home and take no prisoners type. As usual, I tried to be like my older brother, like most people in the pecking order of life. I always strived to catch up to him as much as I could. I even played on his team one time and that was really some so I thought.

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Anyways, he started out listening to music that did not get much airplay. Bands like early Zeppelin and bands of that era. I thought that if it was good enough for my older brother then I got to listen to this stuff!

At first, I was a bit of a pain asking him to replay some songs so I could think of them in my head and for the most part he did because some of the girls in his class thought that I was cute and that I was a good guitar player and in those days guitar players were someone who they liked to hang out with. So I ever so slightly gravitated towards hanging out with my brother and his circle of friends.

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One day one of my brothers friends, whose uncle happened to live on the same cul-de-sac as we did, had heard that I played guitar. As luck would have it, my life long friend John E., lived right beside him. We were playing soccer in his parents back yard when I fired one into the back yard of this guy.

When I went over to get the ball I met this guy, real skinny and with long black hair. He said “you must be Tim’s little brother?” I never met this guy so I said ya? He said that people on the street say your player too? I thought for a second and then said “oh ya, guitar”. He just laughed and said do you want to see something that I just bought, and I said sure! So off he went, inside his home, he lived with his parents and they of course knew my parents VERY WELL through the church.

It was a very warm summer day with a bit of a breeze, honestly I really do remember it, no shit! He came outside with this big black skinny box. I thought that it was one of those keyboard/organ things that was in the band that I saw, but it wasn’t!

He walked over to the standard back yard table in the 70’s, and placed this big black thing with one handle on it, on the table. He said “stand back because this thing will blind ya!” What hell is he babbling about! He was washing his motor cycle at the time and I saw a couple of dead soldiers beside the bike so I thought he was drunk or something. So I moved back and he began to open up this thing.

As he opened it up, the glare that this thing gave off was unreal! I was slightly blinded. When my eyes started to re-focus, I saw what I believed to be as a guitar but this was VERY, VERY DIFFERENT! Oh my GOD, what the hell, it’s got 2 necks on it!!!

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It was a candy apple red double neck guitar. The name on the top where the tuning heads were said “Gibson” At that moment, I realized that it was the same guitar that the guitar player Jimmy Page had! Holy shit, this must be Jimmy Page that I’m talking to!!!

I started to get that same feeling that I had, had when I saw that Christian Rock Band, flash pots went off to start the show. Now I know what their called, at the time, I had no idea what was going on but it looked sooo cool. I slowly approached this mythical device with eyes and mouth WIDE OPEN! He then said “What do ya think of it kid?” He then brought it out of it’s strange home and begun strumming it! He was strumming the 12 string part of the guitar and it was a strange but wondrous thing that I heard for the very first time. He began to play “Stairway to Heaven” and in my mind that clinched it, he was Jimmy Page, but his face was off a bit.

Has anyone had an experience like this before?

Just Jamming on my own!

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Well, now I was at a point where I was playing in school and at mass. I kept listening to songs on the radio over and over again. I was never a writer of songs, so I just listened to the guitar parts in every song. I remember trying to figure out the song in my head by paying attention to the low end of the song. What I mean is the bass part.

I put everything out of my mind and listened intensely at this. I hummed it in my head and tried to slow it down as well. Once I started out with the bass components, the chords just started to pop in place. My knowledge of chords was limited so, that is when I asked Mrs. Lord if she had anything more up her sleeve, so she gave me this book, and I dived into it. She had started me out on “The bar Chords”!

This was really cool because no one else in our class was doing it but me. This opened up some area that was fun for me! I tried to simplify what I was shown (imagine playing a B chord without barring the second fret) and tried making a more bassie/bottom end sound to the chord. That is when I started barring the chords the way everyone else does. This helped me obtain that rock sound that was being played on the radio at the time. For the longest time I tried to figure out how they got that sound, it must have been that big black thing with lights and knobs on it that I saw at the school concert.

How did everyone start out figuring songs at a young age, like this?

My first real guitar lesson

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Boy, was that exciting and boring all at once.

I went to this older man for lessons, who had me start on slide guitar because he thought that my fingers were too small to chord. I thought that he was an idiot but he knew what he was doing, so I thought. This was one of those “Royal Conservatory” school of guitar that I was enrolled in. It was a class none the less.

I honestly thought that Mrs. Lord showed me more then this guy ever could! He keep teaching us the dreaded “THEORY” stuff that drove me nutz! I could play everything that he wanted us to play BUT I memorized it all in my head, then went at it. I used the lesson that the Christian Rock Band guitar player told ” start out SLOWLY and the speed will come later”.

This drove buddy over the edge every time. He said ” Chris, why aren’t you looking at your sheet music that I gave you when I played it?” It was at that point that I told him what advice that someone gave me and he said ” I could do that later”. I kept trying to do it his way but I just found it way to hard!

A couple of years ago when I was going to College, they had found out that I had a learning disability, I was dyslexic! I also had a grade 9 mathematics trying to do college physics! They just thought, what the hell is he doing?

Anyways, I wish I knew that then so I could have done something about it at an earlier age.
Music and math is one of the same, so we are told, but every good musician that I ever met was pathetic at math.

I honestly think that it is half math (or just being able to remember patterns better then most, that is where I think I fit in on this) and natural ability.

So after getting totally frustrated, I quit!

Hey, does something like this sound familiar?

Hey everyone

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Bare with me as I get this new blog started. I plan to talk about music, playing the guitar, and possibly provide some guitar tabs. If I can figure out what would be the best way to do it I might even give short guitar lessons on this blog.

If you just came across this site by chance and you are a musician or have an interest in learning more about music come back and visit in a few days.

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