Now if that isn’t the greatest saying of all time, then I don’t know what is! It’s a phrase that the Grateful Dead use to use.
Keep on Jammin’
Michael Hedges
This is a player who should be in everyones’ music collection. Michael Hedges is so innovative, crisp in the clarity of his unique style and most of all provides a very refreshing new experience. Just listening to the creative levels of his guitarmanship makes your mind wonder off towards a different level of consciousness. Just listen to the video and you will see what I am referring to.
Just off topic a bit but, I thought that I was the only one who was constantly tuning my guitar between songs. The beginning part is useful to a player who is attempting to play his style of playing, it certainly helped me out.
He refers to his style as “violet acoustic” which is a style that I might be considered to use frequently as well. Actually, aggressive acoustic is more appropriate. Michael Hedges has this gift to be able to dampen strings, which is called “Right hand string stopping” by classically trained guitarist. This is applied to the bass strings of the guitar by your thumb. Michael however, brought this to a new level of playing.
He insisted that you should dampen every individual note that is not worthy of hearing. Michael thought that letting a string ring out is like contaminating the chord structure of a song and not giving the listener the clarity of sound that you want them to hear, and I quote “It’s just, why let it ring by default of any thought? Be responsible! Don’t let things just go on because you started them.” This poses a huge problem for most guitarists. That is, it is very difficult to do this while flying around the fret board at warp speed.
The only way to achieve this level is to apply the old adage “slow down, I’m in a hurry”. Did ya ever hear of that one?
This means that you have to slow down so much that, when you play a piece fast at such slow speeds paying attention to every single minute detail, it allows you to play almost error free. I do this all the time when I practice and I may lose my marriage to my wife one day because of it. Her mind is so agile and crisp that she can do things flying around at MACH 5 and absorb things while executing it almost perfectly.
I have to give credit where credit is do so, thanx Brian @ RiffDreams for this great new guitar experience.
Keep on Jammin’
My first Rock Bands Concert … a KISS tribute one at that!
I mercifully skipped grade 7 for you all and went right to the good stuff.
Well I just have to let the cat out of the bag and swallow my pride on this one! Yes I was playing in a KISS tribute band and was Ace Frehley. Well in all honesty, the majority of the tunes were KISS tunes. I was the only one in the band who did not belong to the KISS Army though.
I was into more challenging music but the only guys I knew that could play were these guys! Don’t get me wrong, these guys were my best friends for the longest time! Eddie, was the drummer and had extensive gigging with a “Polka Band” and Brian, the guy in my previous posts was the other guitar player. We didn’t have a bass player at the time due to the fact that no one we knew played the bass.
When I was in grade 7, I remember playing with the Muroz brothers. It was fun because they had taken lessons and could play their instruments well. I think we played some Queen, Led Zeppelin and some pop tunes of the day. I forget why we broke up but I guess that is how it goes. Sorry, I just had to write a bit about the grade 7 thing!
Anyways, we would practice and practice for hours on end. I keep trying to get these guys to slow down and take apart the songs that we were playing and it did sink in to some degree. I’m sure that they would tell ya differently but it’s my blog so there!
As we grew older we found that other schools had band and that they were playing live at their schools so we had no choice, let’s do a live show. Our first and only show was to be played at “St. Bernard’s” school. This was what we thought was our big break!
During this time I had been introduced to another band in the making. They were both in high school and they were just who I was looking to play with. They were Tony, the keyboard player who sounded like a god on that thing, and Harry the guitar player who could play quit well technically but lacked the feel that you need!
Anyways, when we played the show, I had a blast! My soon to be band mates where in attendance and the show went on. Brian, who was like Gene did this wild guitar solo in the audience with the help of MANY GUITAR EXTENSION CHORDS while i was lying on the stage moving these knobs on my old ” BOSS BF-1 FLANGER”. Our band was named “Duce” and when we played it to start off the show, the words go something like this, “Get up and get the hell on out of here!” and there goes Brian singing it directly to a nun, I almost blew a nut laughing so hard on stage!
So, how was that?
In the begining … part II
If memory serves me correctly I started off playing guitar in grade 5 @ St. Pius X elementary school in Brantford. I was 9 years old.
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 for us in our music class. She played a classical guitar and at the time I thought she was GREAT! She played and we sang songs for 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 fav of mine, and I think she also played ” Natures way” as well.
We all started off learning the basic 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 like that. I thought nothing about playing without a pick for many years to come. She then taught us the strings that we would be playing.
Now she started out with chords! They were very basic.
She broke the class into 5 groups of 4 or 5 students. Each group had their own guitar and we each got a chance to practice on it. I can’t remember how civilized we were about sharing it, but I do recall that it was a blast.
The one thing that I do know was that, it was as easy as walking is to most people in the world. I remember having my fellow students look at me like I was cheating or something like that. I can see in my mind, a buddy who was having so much trouble in trying to play it that I went over and told him to relax then I broke it down to show him and then he finally got it. To my amazement I recall everyone looking at me and then they followed what I was saying! It got to a point where I was the top of the class in something!!! Mrs. Lord seemed to be so impressed that she eventually let me play guitar with her at our school masses that we had in the gym.
I don’t know if I told you this but, I, supposedly, was a LITTLE BASTARD as a kid! I found out through a cousin of mine that my grandfather, on my mother’s side, use to say Oh no, here comes that LITTLE BASTARD again~!@#$%^&*()_+!!! So, I was a little hyper-active kid. I’m man enough to admit it now! I guess as the old saying goes, we are the people that our parents warned us about. I was a very athletic kid at the time but not always the brightest light on the tree!
Keep on Jammin’