Guitars, tips and great music discussions
I imagine that having an extra digit on your left hand must have it’s con’s, but the pro’s might just make it worth it!
Playing a 7 string guitar would come in quite handy with a hand configuration like this? When playing difficult chord progressions like the ones that Bruce Cockburn and John Mayer use, wouldn’t it be nice to have another finger just hanging around the old fret board?
Wow, keep on Jammin’
I never did have an interest in the sound that Traynor amps had so I didn’t pay any attention to them. No great guitar player played on one except my most influential guitar teacher Chris P. Even the place that he taught at, the old “Alonzo’s Music” on Colbourne St. in Brantford which is now called LA Music, was stacked to the ceiling with Traynor amps. Ah, but Mike Defo from the Brantford 80’s band “Vigilance” used Traynor guitar and P.A’s. Boy did I envy his playing as a young guitar player!
Peter Traynor is a longtime friend to Dominic Troiano, both from Toronto area , who made these Traynor amplifiers that are the most famous amplifiers that ever came out of Canada.
Troiano and the boys from “Bush” were the first band to take that equipment across the border and play it in the USA.
Peter Traynor isn’t a wealthy man, because he sold out to the person that was funding him.
Anyway, it’s a company called Yorkville Sound. It’s probably one of the biggest corporations in Canada, but it is Bush’s amplifiers that were made by Peter Traynor that actually broke through in the United States and made them money.
Traynor went well out of his way to make sure he got it right for them. He was a great innovator. He’s a genius and a very important person in the Canadian culture of music. After the infamous accident in Death Valley on their way to Vegas, they played the gig, and it was all that Traynor gear – the guitar amp, the bass amp… they just dusted it off, stuck things back on, and it all worked. Talk about Canadian toughness, I guess he got that toughness from our way of dominating the ice in HOCKEY!!!
I was inspired to write this post after reading a “Bush” site about John Prakask, the great bass player from the band.
Keep on Jammin’
Boy is this guy good. His name is Steven King and I will be watching out to see if he will be playing in Toronto any time soon! Also, check out the positioning of his middle pick up on his guitar, neat huh?
He may come across to some guitar players as the typical technically perfect musician with a lack of feel, but that’s ok, he’s really good at what he does. The best part comes at 1:02 of his performance.
This was the feeling that I got when listening to this type of player when I was 13 – 14 years old. I couldn’t get my thick head around the idea that this was great or, to a greater extent, cool music to play for audiences.
Then again, I was in a Kiss tribute band at the time, see earlier posts from this era of my career. Once again, my best and most influential guitar teacher was looking out for my development without me even realizing it.
He started teaching me little ditties to play that were both cool and technically satisfying for me to play at the time, and also some kids my age thought that it was good to listen to as well. Later on, I started to play “Suite Case” blues by Rik Emmett of Canadian Super Group Triump, from the Just a Game album. This direction of guitar playing has truly stood the test of time with me.
So take a little listen to this style of guitar picking. You might even try to decide if this is a style that you may want to add it to you own repertoire of techniques. Also go to youtube and input his name to find more of his work. You’ll envy this guitar guru!
Keep on Jammin’
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’
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’
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!