So, get in touch with Elek and find out if he wants to show up ok dude? This Saturday is fine with us.
Love ya LIVE BUDDY!
Stick
Gemini, the band that should have been …
This is a band that played in my back yard for my little sister Anne-Marie’s 16 birthday party.
The band consisted of Steve B (bass), John E (lead/rhythm guitar) Danny T (keyboards) and Eddie C (drums). These guys were very modest in their ability to play. They played a lot of the Cars to a “T”. They took a the simple and direct approach to their playing and it was a pure joy to listen to them.
They were my childhood friends that I jammed with them here and there, we mostly partied! The guitar player John is the person who I have known the longest. I knew Johnny since I was 4 yrs. old, really! his nick name was “e nhoj”, that’s John E spelled backwards, not a lot to do in Brantford during those formative years.
Anyways, he had made his own guitar in tech class and it was HUGE! The guy was a ladder with legs! He was the one who helped me learn how to ride a bike, he was the only one of my friends who was tall enough to hold me and the bike steady to push me off and hope like hell I went a couple of feet down the driveway, really! His hands were massive, he found that playing other guitars were too small and uncomfortable to play for long periods of time. So he decided to make his own guitar. His guitar neck was around 1-2 inches thick. When I played it, it made me fell like I had the hands of a 3 yr. old. I wish that back in 1975 we had the internet because the blog called “Building The Ergonomic Guitar” would have been valuable for him.
Then there was Stevie B, now that guy is a colourful character. The bass player. He still hangs around BIG JOHNNIE in the big city of Brantford or “droftnarb”, please try this out @ home with your name or someone else’s, it’s best played while heavily intoxicated! Steve is now a recording artist and transplanted bass player to guitarist. When I get the link to his site I will update it so you can hear his GREAT CHOPS!
The drummer Eddie was the drummer in that KISS tribute band that I played in. He took lessons and was in a polka band as well.
Dannie, on keys, played his faithful Farfisa keyboard, just loved that sound honestly I did!
Johnnie and Steve are coming up to our place on the Danforth to help install a “Tin Ceiling” in our living room on the weekend and HOPEFULLY will bring their axes! I might even attempt to record us in “intoxicated slur-round sound” and let you all get a laugh!
Sing-cerley
Chris P (sirhc p)
The Christian Rock Band
Mrs. Lord, I think, arranged for a Christian Rock band play at our elementary school one time and this is what sent me on my journey to where I am today. To this day I am still trying to to find out what the the name of that band was.
They had showed up at our school with this touring bus that looked like the Partridge Family bus and it was amazing to look at. It had real groovy colours and patterns in the design. It looked like the Big Top just pulled in, well to a little kid anyway.
They were a 5 piece band with long hair. There was 3 men (guitar, drums and bass) and 2 women(Keyboards,flutes and tambourines).
When we went into our class, after the beginning/morning bell rang for us to go in, the anticipation was so thick that you could cut it with a knife! The morning had pasted and we where called in for the afternoon. As they were doing their sound check, my heart was racing so fast and I was literally bouncing off the walls! Mrs. Lord knew that I was going to go inter ballistic so, to make sure I wasn’t anymore of a distraction then usual, she asked me if I would see how the band was doing. Thank God the door was open or I would have bolted right through the damn thing.
As I entered the gym, the regular lights were out, the bands lights were being worked on and they were tuning and talking to each other. It was at this time that I think that I had an outer body experience!
I just stood there right in front of the stage and absorbed everything I could. I saw these glittering drums these big tall black things with lights and knobs on it (it must have been a Marshall, full stack) these things that a women was playing on the right side if the stage, that sounded like an organ one time and then the next moment sounded like a whole herd of violins that sounded much better then the grade 8 class ever did!
I had never heard a keyboard with such a full, wild sound like that before. Our church organ/keyboard had a traditional sound and feel, but seeing and hearing this electric keyboard\organ thing was wild! This was a change from the organist at our church which was always a man. I was trying to listen to both the guitar player and keyboardist but I was just in ahhhhh with what they were doing.
Finally the whole school was asked to go in and the event that was going to change my life was about to start!
When we were all seated on the floor, I didn’t sit with my classmates. I sat right in the middle and if anyone would have tried to ask me to go to where my class was sitting, I think that … well they wouldn’t be with us anymore.
The lights then went down and this very eerie music that made me feel very strange and scared, started to play! Then after minute pasted, a flash of light appeared and the transformation had begun. The lights were flashing and the POWER CHORDS brought me to another place in my mind!
Throughout the whole show I thought that I was the one that they were playing for, nobody else! I watched intensely as they played, the drummer was sooo powerful and the guitar solos made me feel like I was literally floating in the air. I finally looked around and saw kids holding their ears and running out of the gym, what the hell where they running from?I thought, GREAT, I hope they all leave and I can have this experience all to myself.
When the show was over I started screaming like some crazy girl at a Leif Garret show. For those not familiar with this guy, go and google him! Then everyone started screaming and screaming! Finally they came out for an ovation! They did this acapella thing that was a lot better then the harmonies that we did for mass and that stuck with me too!
After the show, we could go up and ask them questions and I told the guitarist that I too was a guitar player and he said that was great! He said keep practicing the basics and go VERY SLOWLY with it at first and then I will get faster later. Mrs. Lord then added that I was a good guitar player and she wanted to see if he would listen, and he said yes. I wasn’t nervous about anything back then so I played the band some songs and they liked it!
I got a chance to see them pack things up, and I watched them drive away. The guitar player drove away with one of the women in the band on the back of his motor cycle, wow, I knew then that this is what I wanted to be!
Has anyone ever had an experience like this in their life that changed them in such a drastic direction?
Keep on jamming everyone!
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’
In the begining …
Hello everyone on-line!
This is my second attempt at blogging on my own so wish me luck, I’ll need it!
So, my name is Chris and I’m originally from Brantford, Ontario, Canada. This site is dedicated to the progression (or regression) of my journey on becoming a guitar player.
This page is here to express new idea’s on how to look at guitar playing from a different approach as well. I am known for being quite a task master in my approach to teaching. In a way you may say that I’m an old school teacher in how I teach/practice, ask my wife.
I take apart every song that I figure out and put it back again. I attempt to have/play as many strings as possible to give it a FULL FAT sounding tune. I love to input as many parts (little obvious runs) from the other instruments into this as humanly possible, instead of just playing/strumming a simplistic melody.
I try to incorporate inverted chords that allow playing in other positions on the neck that make it easier to achieve what the other instruments are doing in order to have that BIG sound. I know that you’ve heard this before but going over and over and over the very basics will help you achieve this easier, and in some cases, when you break down a song and put it back together, some of the basics that you were taught and did not get at first will come roaring back into you head saying “that’s what that thing is used for!!!” It’s like when you were in school and your too afraid to ask the teacher to go over as certain part of a study because you think that your the only one in the room who didn’t get? Come on, everyone has been there, done that and got the t-shirt right? You want to ask the teacher to repeat something and you look around at your fellow students and they look as if they got it, but more then likely they didn’t! this reminds me of the words ” when I look in their eyes, they’re running too” from Jackson Browne running on empty.
So that’s the end of this lesson, so until i blog again, when figuring out tunes on your own, listen to what every instrument is playing and pay attention to what licks each one is using when approaching a certain part of each song!