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1,800 Guitarists Set World Record Playing ‘Smoke on the Water’

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Now that would be a sight or should I say sound to hear! I hope that they were all in tune. I wonder how far they got in the song?

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Anyway, those crazy (and I mean that in a nice way) Germans just seem to love their hard rock and where the mullet seems to never have gone out of style.

They had 1802 guitarists, ranging from 6 to 80 years of age, play this tune simultaneously.

It happened on Saturday, June 25 2007, in the village of Leinfelden-Echterdingen in the German state of Baden-Württembergwonder. Makes one wonder what the previous record is. Well if you really want to know it was in June in Kansas City in the US, where 1,683 guitarists got down and riffed together.

The Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan was trying to take part in a live link-up from England, but was prevented from singing along by technical problems. Now that would have been cool to be there if they did get the glitch to work right.

If the record is not exceeded by September, the record will go into the Guinness Book of Records.

Keep on Jammin’




The Guitar Resource

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Just like every other guitar player on the planet, you realize that there is always someone out there that knows more then you do. You may spend your time, like I do, by searching, and then figuring out different styles to play that will help develop a unique sound that you can call your own. This does take a long time. Or, you can search the web for sites that can dramatically speed up this process.

Some great guitar sites even expose you to different ways to listen and understand overall musical structures. Well, I think that I have found one that does all the above and then some. The site is called The Guitar Resource. This is like one stop shopping for technique!

The Guitar Resource has an article called Circle of Fifths that will help with everything from finger exercises all the way to chords and chord progressions.

Not only does the Guitar Resource provide information on how to play, but it has a great selection called How to Read Tabs that compliment and makes the site that much more informative.

The videos that he makes about his topics are top shelf! He has the uncanny ability to make you feel relaxed and he doesn’t talk down to you. His posts also make you sit down and think about what and how to achieve all this without all that dry musical theory stuff. It gives you the very basics and lets you go from there. If you want more detailed info, then just ask him. It’s just that simple.

The tools provided at The Guitar Resource are simple and straight to the point. You don’t need all the bells and whistles to achieve your goal, and I think that he has that aspect all sowed up since he started in March 12th, 2007.

I also found a fabulous book in the portion of his site called Recommended. The book is called the “Practical Theory for Guitar”. Yes it certainly is a must have for any guitarist regardless of his/her level. I looked at some articles and found it simple and straight to the point, so I’m seriously thinking of buying it! I have to hand it to this fellow, he certainly got it right on this one too.

If you visit the guitar resource be sure to check out the tabs that you will find across the top of the site. He has a section called The Store. Within the store you will find a featured product as well as a selection of categories such as Guitars, Amps, Strings, concert shop, guitar instruction, parts and accessories and whole lot more.

All and all, as the name says, The Guitar Resource it is a great resource site to fit all aspects of your guitar playing needs.

Keep on Jammin’

The Perfectionist

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This is another song from Saga that we played in Pylis. The song starts up with an acoustic guitar that then goes into an electric. My Gibson RD Artist fulfilled that dual roll quite admirably I must say.

It wasn’t until recently that I re-visited this song on my Larrivee L-03 acoustic.

The lyrics were just fascinating to listen to and the guitar forms are much more complex then I remembered. As you may or may not know, I’m not a lyricist by any stretch of the imagination. I just pay attention to the level of difficulty of the guitar, the overall structure and emotion that a song provides.

Later on I will start teaching people how I “interpret” how a song is played. So check out this song, and try to pick out all of the guitar progressions and remember them when I start video taping my version.

Keep on Jammin’

Part one of trying to win Max Webster Tickets

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Well faithful readers, I am very desperate to get tickets for the super-Canadian Music Event of this millennium!

I decided to go down to Q-107 at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Toronto and attempt to obtain some tickets to this cherished show.

I put on my jacket, picked up my guitar and made a sign. I was determined to grovel and beg Kim Mitchel, the D.J. and Mr. Max himself, to give my wife and I tickets to the show!

I finally arrived in front of the street level Q-107 booth with guitar and sign in hand. I just set up my sign, took out my faithful Larrivee L-03 and with Kim Mitchell’s back against the booths window, knocked on the window. He turned around and at first glance he must of thought that I was one of those “more then a little misunderstood” street people.

He then glanced down at my sign and started to laugh! He then started to say, through the glass, “I have no tickets for you.” He then opened a side door and said that the office was now closed, and he said that they should have more on hand”. I then asked him if I could come down this Wednesday and play the song “On the Road” for him and hopefully get some tickets for my effort. He said sure, but said “You would/may have to play it on the air.” I said I’d do anything for tickets.

So please listen for me to be playing LIVE at Q-107 online and click on the “Listen Live” button. I will also try to tape it and put it on another post. Hopefully, if this happens it will be around 6 pm EST.

The pictures should say it all.

Just before I left!

Begging for max webster tickets 3

When I got back from the mighty “Q”

Begging for max webster tickets 2

Keep on Jammin’, cause you never know when you might win some tickets to the original MAX WEBSTER!!!

The sweetest guitar solo ever

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Does any guitar player out there have a favorite guitar solo? Well I certainly do, it’s the one from the Rolling Stones, “Heart Breaker”, from their 1973, “Goats Head Soup” album.

This master guitar solo is played by a fellow not a full member of the group but player in the band, named Mick Taylor. This kaleidoscope of a mental voyage into another world of colorful and emotional notes, is the only lead that I have refused to figure out because some times things are made not to be reproduced but to be enjoyed and just put you in a certain mind set. I know that this sounds so unlike me but, somehow this solo just gets to me like no other.

When I listen to it, it just stops me in my tracks and I have to give Mick Taylor my complete and undivided attention. I just can’t think of any other way to describe it. I respect it like no other. It honestly freaks me out how the boys just blend off into the background and let him have full and total control of a song at that point. I still to this day don’t know how he pulled this one off being in a band with such head strong musicians!

He just squeezes and milks the hell out of his guitar and flies to such lofty heights then effortlessly soars down to earth and swoops up your emotions and takes them off to another dimension that we are afraid, but yet happy to just be brought there for such a short period of time! Then back to reality with the boys blowing the doors off the joint and do what they do best, straight forward Rock & Roll. No, I haven’t just had a huge flash back to the summer of love right in front of you, honestly!

This is a song that I will not figure out on principle. I had to give it a shot one time when I was with a student, who was my boss one time at Mr. Case in Toronto.

A Realization that I can play guitar

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I was just surfing while listening to one of my favorite Canadian musicians of all time, Bruce Cockburn (B.C.). I came to the realization that I am finally playing like a great guitar player of the 80’s, Mark Knopfler.

In grade 8, a song came onto the music scene that was really new and refreshing. It was a band called “Dire Straights”. The song that caught my ear was “Sultan of Swing”.

The guitar player was just a jammin’ on this tune. His name is Mark Knopfler. This popular song at the time was a song that I just had to play. I was taking lessons from the best guitar teacher of all time, in my mind, C. Peterson. I had requested that he show me how to play this tune and he said that he had already figured it out.

Mr. P. was just unreal at figuring out anything in on guitar. So off he went and started to show me the song. It was fun and challenging to play, just the way I liked it. After a couple of lessons, I could play the song pretty much inside out, which is the way he taught me.

While playing the song for many years, I decided to re-visit this song to see if there was any other way(s) to improve playing it. Mr. Peterson introduced me to the technique that Mark Knopfler used on the song but I thought that this guy was one of those off beat musicians that would fade after a short success, boy was I wrong.

I had listened to this song repeatedly over the years,and I noticed subtle tones that I had missed while playing. When I played it, it had a crisper sounding to it then what he had. His version almost had a muddled sound. In my younger years listening to the song, I had noticed that, and I thought it was just the recording technique at the time and that was it. So I then tried playing it with just my fingers and wow, it was really hard to play.

Being a classical guitar player, I was use to using my fingers but had to use my nails to attack the strings but, this guy used his thumbs and at a lightning like speed during his solo’s to boot! I tried and tried and tried but I could not get the calluses on the sides of my fingers that I really needed to pull of the song so I went back to the original way of playing the song.

Now fast forward to 2 years ago when I fell in love with the B.C.’s style of finger picking. The attack technique used here was different from my classical training but I loved the sound he got out of his axe. It was just plain fun to listen to.

So today while I was surfing and listening to B.C. at the same time, I was listening to this song called “It’s Going Down Slow” and “Mamma just wants to barrelhouse all night long”, from Waiting for a Miracle (1987). Today I can play these ones not bad and I just enjoy listening to them. It was at that moment that I noticed the similarities between both techniques and it had just dawned on me that, I can play guitar.

Keep on jammin’

Upkeep of your finger nails

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I am the type of guitar player who uses a combination of playing with a pick, pick with finger nails and nails exclusively.

My style of playing is that of a aggressive one. This is not to be confused with a THRASHING technique. I also playing with a lot of a dynamics’s. I mean having the ability to play any song very quietly/soft (PPP, triple piano) or very LOUD (FFF, triple forte). I find that being able to do this allows me to change the mood of the piece at any given time.

I love the straight forward playing with a pick style but having the tools to be able to incorporate all the fingers is useful as well. But my new re-found love is to get back to my roots and just use my nails. I played classical guitar for a while and did not play ANY ROCK at all.

I wasn’t a BRUCE COCKBURN fan until 1986, this when I was living in a dorm/frat house in Toronto (Bloor and Spadina). Here I would be able to play acoustic guitar for hours straight, but I sure as hell wasn’t! I started to finally listen to HOW he was playing. I had thought that he was using a pick because the only player in the world at that time, so I thought, that used his fingers was Mark Knopfler, boy was I wrong!

So listening to his music I found this thing called ” Open Tuning “. The first open tuning song I did was “Tokyo” by BRUCE COCKBURN. I played this tune for days on end! It was new, refreshing and something that I had never done before. So, one day I got out the phone book and looked up his name, found his number and called him. Sure enough, it was his number and his wife at the time answered and she told him “that he would not be home for some time.” Well at least I tried! True story.

Anyways, when I first started to take my nails seriously (this was in grade 9 remember),I had used MANY products to strengthen my nails. I had gotten use to shaping them to fit my attack. The long nails held out not bad but I was always pissed when they broke!!! This was just something that I had to get use to. After I had had enough of this style after 2 yrs., I went off to different ones. I loved to try different styles that I could bring to my playing.

So fast forward to July 8th 2005, my birthday. My wife was working as a ER nurse in a Toronto Hospital and I had just dropped her off at work, it takes literally 1 minute, we live just down the street, and I had a finally got up the nerve to try this fake nail thing, YES FAKE NAILS! When I was done I just had to go back to work and show her. She just laughed and laughed, not to mention her buddies as well, I work with them all so that was fine.

I just love them! I can play at any time without having to worry about them braking and not having them when I want to play. The only thing that I don’t like is the fact that when they grow out they look weird. They look like I have jaundice of the finger nails, they have a yellow hue to them. Women are lucky because they can just throw some nail polish on them. If I do first would be divorced or placed on the H6 Ward of our hospital.

The cost is around $10.00 and that’s not bad. Does anyone have any other ideas that they use for their nails other then the fakies that I use and please tell me how durable they are and be honest!

Keep on jammin’

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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