Thanks to Jon @ Guitar Noize for pointing it out

Oh and if you’re wondering why the drummer in the video isn’t Chad Smith, well let’s just have Chad explain who the guy is:

Tonight after successfully surprising myself at completing an exercise which was going up to a reasonably decent speed, I gave a go at another jam over a backing track. That’s what I’ve been doing a lot of lately so didn’t let myself become completely rusty but those fingers of mine do need a regular workout if they’re to follow the path my brain is taking. Anyway, I couldn’t find a lydian BT so I put on a Dm one and started playing.

Normally, I tend to play within a few pentatonic shapes I know how to expand into minor / major / lydian / myxolydian tones but tonight I just picked my starting note and followed along the intervals. Half way through I realised I had no idea which shape I was in, so I just kept going along the interval. On the one hand it meant I found myself limited on where to go next while jumping strings, which does denote a need for more focus in that area, but on the other, it allowed a more melodic play than usual, something I’m not entirely displeased about. Ok so ballads aren’t exactly challenging in terms of improvisation but still it’s nice to realise you can find variety in things you’ve played along before that tends to always sound the same when played within a certain framework.

Big Foot is out on 2 August 2011, and if you watch the video until the end you’ll find that the new album will not in fact be called Chickenfoot IV but

Chickenfoot III

I love these guys!

Get your boots on!

The great thing is, if you order the new album from the shop on Tony’s website, you get to download the whole thing as a free bonus immediately. So while you wait for the physical disc to come through your letter box (which in my case will probably be in about 2 weeks), you can still listen to the whole thing, which is what I’m doing right now

So if you’re still here reading, get yourself over to Tony’s website and order your copy today, you can even get yourself a t-shirt or even a webcam lesson with Tony (not something I went for, learning from the greats kinda overwhelms me).

Still not convinced? How about a couple of free samples below?

Be sure to let me know what your think

• Mon 12/09: Bristol Academy
• Tue 13/09: Newcastle O2 Academy
• Thu 15/09: Glasgow 02 ABC
• Sat 17/09: Manchester Academy
• Sun 18/09: Birmingham Academy
• Mon 20/09: London Shepherds Bush Empire

Yep, they’re apparently coming to Glasgow, and on a Thursday, which means I should be able to go.

Now those dates haven’t been confirmed on their website that I can see and tickets aren’t available yet for pre-booking (at least in Glasgow) but Classic Rock is a good enough source for me that I trust their info to be solid.

I will update as soon as I hear something a little more official.

PS: Thanks Jenn for the tip

Edit: The pre-order for the Newcastle tickets will open on 17th of June, with a pre-sale on Wednesday 15th June at £25 a head according to the O2 academy twitter account

Edit2: Have amended the Glasgow venue from the Academy to the ABC (price per ticket is £25 by the way) and added links for venues

You have released several instrumental albums that they are all so different from each other. How do you find your self musically in these days (Approach/style/influences)?

As always, searching for deeper and more interesting ways to interpret melodies that I like, without repeating myself. That’s it, making it still sound like me without repeating myself. Influences can be non musical as well as musical, but musically I like a lot of current Japanese music.

For the whole interview, head over to live4guitar

Watch The Spirit Carries On episode 3

So now you’ve clicked to read more you’ll know that the new drummer is Mark Mangini. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised, watching all 7 drummers being auditioned, it’s probably the one they felt more obviously at ease with, and also probably the one who we saw the most of. Coincidence? Maybe not. I have to admit I had a slight preference for Marco “The Jackhammer” Minnemann. Just check the video below:

You might be forgiven to think that because he played with Paul Gilbert that made him an automatic favourite but it wasn’t. Not only was he an incredible drummer, he also had this thing I call “musical euphoria” emanating from him, which I found really inspiring. It’s a topic I want to blog about at some point soon because I realised just how important this aspect of musical expression is.

But Mark was the obvious choice and so Dream Theater will carry on to the next level of their career, which I shall be following, and I’m sure you will too

Anyway, enough of my life, there’s an interesting multi-part documentary which is very interesting to follow. Last October, drummer Mike Portnoy announced that he would be leaving Dream Theater after 25 years with them. Now, I’m not necessarily a huge fan of Dream Theater, though I love Petrucci’s stuff but after spending most of the day listening to their music, I’ve gained a new appreciation on just how awesome they are. Seriously you can’t listen to 15min long tracks and appreciate the amount of effort put into making that kind of music. Theirs is truly epic in its own way.

So if you like DT, you’ll probably appreciate The Spirit Carries On where they audition the 7 best drummers they could invite to be the next Dream Theater lead pounder, check it out:

Episode 2 is out. The choices are getting tough, who do you think will make it?

So meanwhile I’ve been mostly noodling over backing tracks as this is something I really enjoy doing and allows me to check where I’m at. And tonight I was finally able to record one of those sessions (not on video sorry). So have a listen below and please if you have any feedback let me know.

(If you’re having problems with the embedded movie, just visit this link to play it)

So it’s understandable that the recent tragedy in Japan would be close to his heart. And so he recently announced the following:

I am going to LA right NOW to the climate controlled lockup where all the guitars have been in their cases since January 2000. All guitars I used on all the Megadeth recordings, tours, videos, everything WILL be auctioned off. When I get to the lockup I will do my best to sort out which was used for what ( I suck at that…I`m sure many of you guys know better than I do) and notate as many details as possible.

Pictures, descriptions and how to bid will all be up on my US website as well as my Japanese website within 2-3 days. I have NEVER sold ANY of my guitars before, this is the only way these guitars will leave my possession. I urge you to please spread the word and most of all BID HIGH. You will be putting a huge deposit in the `karma bank` as and have some pretty cool guitars to show for it. DO IT!

Now that the guitars have been inventoried, we are putting together the auction itself. This will take a few days to put up, as we are going to every length to do this properly with emphasis on authenticity, efficiency and most of all, making sure that 100% of the proceeds go directly to earthquake relief. So in the meantime, I`ll put up a pic or two a day of some of the guitars that will be auctioned

There will be more details on his official website within the next few days so if you fancy grabbing yourself a piece of heavy metal history, now is your chance and you will contribute to helping out thousands of people who have been affected by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Me? Well unfortunately there’s no way I can afford a new guitar, even from one of my top idols like Marty but I’m sure many people will find much to their liking, so please bid as much as you can, remember it’s for a good cause!!

No embed I’m afraid but you can catch them all on the Guitar World Website (and thanks to Guitar Noize for the tip)

At what stage are you with the album? Have you finished tracking?

“Last week, we finished 99 percent of the drums, bass and guitars. Because we’re not always in the same room together – or the same town – there’s always a little bit of hesitation of where to go with the finishing touches. In this particular case, Sammy and I have been watching each other as to how we’re developing our parts over what the entire band did when they were together. So the songs are still developing lyrically and vocally, and I don’t want to commit 100 percent what the guitars will do until I hear Sammy’s finished vocals.

“We’re at a very exciting point in the development of the record. I think I can definitively say that the album sounds heavier and that it sounds like Chickenfoot. [laughs] I can’t say too much about the lyrical aspect because I haven’t heard everything Sammy’s going to do – he wanted to come back from the book tour he’s on before he made up his mind on a couple of songs.

“But I can tell you right now that the sound of the album is tremendous. The guitars are out of this world, and we haven’t even done the real mixes yet.”

Wait, aren’t Joe’s guitar parts usually out of this world anyway? In any case the next Chickenfoot album will be out some time in the autumn. (umm, and then you’re gonna tour and come to Scotland right? Right? … Please?)

Meanwhile, head over to MusicRadar for the full interview

I guess the main thing is really identifying what I’m not terribly fond of, and it’s normally the arpeggios and sweep picking exercises. For the former, I think the main reason is just being tired of always playing along a Am C G Em chord progression, all the time. It just gets old. I get the point of the exercises and they’re very good warming up exercises (the last couple of weeks were anyway). But it’s previously been a pain to practice (literally), mostly because of awkward barred chords digging in my nerves. The sweep picking, I’ve ranted about it before. It’s my weakest point, I never manage to really practice it right and again, maybe it’s how it’s presented in the programme, but all you get to do is sequences devided in chunks of 7 weeks, where you do a chord progression in triads, first down, then up, then down adding either an octave or a 7th depending on the type of chord progression, then up again, then same again except you use legato and finally you put it all together in an impossible sequence of sextuplets. I’m not Rusty Cooley, this isn’t the sort of thing I want to play. So I do as much as I feel like doing, for the sake of doing it and then move on.

Now the question is, why bother? Steve Vai says, focus on your strengths, I guess I do that by simply spending more time on string skipping, legato, rhythm and so on. But should I just drop those techniques I don’t like? Wouldn’t it be crippling in some way? Guthrie Govan says he doesn’t like the word practice, as it’s got negative connotations to it. I can see his point, though in my environment, when you have no one to play with, practice is your friend. It keeps me sane, it keeps me hopeful that some day I’ll be able to stop practicing, and start playing.

My other issue is memorising things. I’ve now practiced 117 different licks, more or less every day for the last 20 weeks or so and there’s only a handful I could remember. The trouble is, I don’t have the time to revisit past exercises to commit them a little more to memory. I have to rely on my fingers and my ears remembering them to bring them to the surface next time I noodle along a backing track.

Speaking of which, and on a more positive note, I’m now starting to feel my music playing. I have this one backing track I spoke about before (I think), which is modelled on cheesy typical 80′s rock ballads, and I love it. It’s the one BT I can put on, switch to my heavily reverbed distorted mod and play something truly soulful as opposed to random notes along the pentatonic minor shapes. Anyone got tips for more BTs like this, please leave a comment. I really need to try to record something over this soon.

Finally, we started looking at various ways to play sus2 chords during the lesson and the sus2 power chords are really cool. Though I either hear Dream Theater or The Gathering whenever I play them. I guess that’s why they’re called “prog chords” Altogether I think until I can get my fingers to keep up with Metal speeds, my preferred style to play is some kind of Prog Bluesy Ballads

Still, I’m still liking the hybrid picking exercises and this week we introduced what I can only call a “metal run” on the legato exercise. While you think it might be easy to play sequences of the same triplet over and over again, once you start gaining speed what you have to really work on is the hand to hand coordination and that can really go out of the window even if the picking is just fine. The exercise was supposed to stop at 120bpm but as with previous exercises, that’s where I started, only I could only take it as far as 144bpm before  I lost the plot.

Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been interesting boogie patterns to work on in the rhythm section. I certainly wouldn’t have known to change the rhythm to a “triplet feel” if it wasn’t for guitar pro. Certainly some interesting stretches and patterns to find there.

Finally I’ve been playing a bit of Gary Moore again recently, I wonder why…

“It’s my new diet, just walk by the food” … Yeah ok so nothing much musically

Guitar.com: Guitar music has taken a bit of a back seat as of late. Where do you see the future of guitar heading?

Gilbert: Well, as much as technology might advance and gear might have more complex sounds to offer, it’s very comforting to me that the E-chord that I learned when I was 11 years old STILL WORKS. I don’t have to discard my old playing like an old laptop. Everything that I have ever learned to play is still valuable and valid. So I think that the true advances in guitar playing have to be made by players rather than by the gear. We just have to keep playing with strong rhythmic and melodic intention. We have to play in bands that have good singers and good songs. We have to make the girls dance and the guys headbang. There is no single future. It’s the individual future of every one of us who steps onstage and makes people want to listen.

for the whole interview, check out guitar.com

But instead of weeping and pointing out just how big a loss this is, let’s celebrate the immense contribution he made to the world of music and how much an inspiration he was to many guitar players, myself included. Here is a live version of the aforementioned Parisienne Walkways:

Just listen to that vibrato

Of the new things I now try to incorporate in my playing, unison bends is probably the most prominent one. I’m still waiting for this shift in my head of seeing all those things I can play instead of the regular pattern I always seem to fall into. Today I did exercise 100, which means I theoretically know 100 licks I should be able to play. Since the majority are blues / rock types, there’s plenty of experiments to try. Sadly it’s a bit like spending hours learning Japanese and having conversations with your anime collection, the progress is still very slow. Still tonight was rather fun, as the 100th lick was the first country music lick and it also introduced hybrid picking which I’ve never tried before and though it takes a bit of getting used to, it’s actually really fun to use.

I’ve also had more time to try and strengthen my knowledge of Mighty Turtle Head and although the fastest I’ve been playing some bits is still just at 90% speed, it’s getting there. Last lesson I’d had so little practice I could barely remember what I was supposed to play. Speaking of lesson, we started looking at sus 4 and sus 2 chords which are really quite nice chords and got me thinking into trying to compose again, but there’s just one problem.

(yes this is the part I start moaning so you can stop reading now if you want)

I want to write music, my own music, I really do. I’m not looking into doing my own version of Sisters or Fives or I Cannot Tell A Lie but I would like to work out a simple chord progression of my own and a melody over that. The problem is more that I can’t find any inspiration anywhere. Part of me expects that by listening to all sorts of things eventually music will start popping in my head but I don’t think that’s how it works, at least not for me. On the other hand I don’t want to write formulaic music where you know certain pattern works, you’ve seen some styles of picking, mix the two together and you’ve got a basis. This might work in principle but it would only produce some dry instrumental piece.

On a positive note, I have really enjoyed a particular backing track lately which has led me to think that I can really do something with 9th and 13th notes in the minor scale as those are the ones that resonate the most so I#’ll have to do more exploring with those and see where it leads me. It might be another dead end but it might also be the start of something.

So it’s not all bad, maybe when I have some free time for long enough next time, I’ll do another video as a check in to see where I’m at…

Photos © Ibanez - from Facebook

While he was there, the guys at Music Radar took their chance to briefly catch up with him, here’s an excerpt of their interview, with something I find quite exciting:

Last year, the film you co-produced, Crazy, was released. Do you have any other such projects happening?

“There are a couple of things I’m working on that I’m very excited about. One of them is a whole new division for Favored Nations. I’m partnering with a company in New York, and what we’re going to do is develop a completely new model for a record company. It’s still way early to talk about, but it’s going to be very contemporary. Ever since I started my first label at the age of 20, I’ve always been aware of how the music business works. Trends can happen, and things can change, but there’s always opportunity.

“The other thing is something that’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s called Guitar TV – an internet station, 24/7, streaming all of the greatest guitar performances ever. Basically, it all started when I asked myself, ‘What would I like to see?’ That’s how a lot of good ideas come about. So we’re going to be launching that at some point. Guitar TV is going to be all guitar, every genre, the greatest performances. Being it Joe Pass, Eric Johnson, Hendrix, Satriani – all the greats, here they are.

“Not only that, but it’s going to have some really cool features. At any point, you can click on it and go to a Wikipedia page and read about the artist. You can click on another place and go to their website. You can click and buy their CDs. And what’s really cool is, you can click on the guitar the artist is playing and learn everything about the instrument. You can even find where you can buy the guitar, too. It’s crazy! The whole thing is built, and the man who’s going to be running it, Andy Alt, is talking to companies about content. I can’t wait to get it off and running. I figure, if I want something like this, there’s got to be other people who want the same thing.”

Now let’s hope it won’t suffer the fate of Pandora in this country. For the whole interview, head over to Music Radar

Last week, I’ve been both tired and ill (still am, at its worst, hopefully) and so skipped both Thursday and Friday sessions, which tend to be the two techniques I less enjoy practicing, that is arpeggios (I normally don’t mind but lately it’s been nerve biting barred chords on the lower neck) and of course sweep picking. Since today’s exercise on alternate picking is relatively easy, I thought I’d catch up on those two and make up for lost time.

The arpeggio exercise went reasonably well (though I now know why, see later), but I was surprised at just how easily I went all the way to 112bpm playing 16th notes in sweep picking. A feeling of pride and achievement was filling me up when I suddenly realised something was in fact really quite wrong. Last week, I’d been practicing bits of the solo of Satch’s Mighty Turtle Head and in order to cope with the speeds involved and to get the patterns under my fingers, I’d slowed down the loop to 45% of the normal speed. Unfortunately, Guitar Pro kept that setting (despite a crash earlier) and so I was proudly playing sweeped triads at 45% of 112bpm… oh dear.

So if you think what you’re playing is too slow, then it probably is, in particular if you really were struggling the week before just as you did in previous weeks. These things do get better eventually but this is a slow and hardly noticeable process unless you take regular snapshots of your upper limits at regular intervals in your practice. As it stands I could really only play that exercise at 76bpm by really putting some serious attention to it, and even then it was quickly quite messy.

In other news, I’ve been outdoing myself with the legato exercise last week. By that I mean, taking it to, I think 156 bpm (though we’re talking 8th notes for this). Now if I could only translate that performance into something tangible and musical when I play over a backing track, it would be even better.

Lastly, the rhythm exercise was using finger picking to introduce the “Travis picking” pattern, which I found quite interesting. Having started to look at sus4 chords, I’m now pondering possible experiments with chord progressions involving both 7th and sus4 chords using this pattern, this could yield some interesting results. I do enjoy finger picking for some strange reason, at some point I’m really going to need an acoustic if this grows the way I expect it to.

Well now, they’ve worked with him to release a signature amp that reproduces as accurately as possible the sound of Appetite for Destruction. Check out the video below for more info:

I’m now on week 11 of the Guitar Aerobics program and it’s going pretty well so far. I’ve made some pretty radical decisions to really not overstretch it when I can definitely see my limits and I think it’s important to recognise the benefits of just the right amount of practice instead of trying to go the extra mile which might just break everything. What’s more is that I’m starting to find short licks I can apply to my playing that make things just a bit nicer and different so I’m hopeful that it will definitely have benefits in the long term.

Yesterday during our first lesson of the year I had a good chat with Mark about progress and basically what I discuss above and it made me realise how much beneficial it would be if only I could find people to play with. But I’ve mused on this before and I’m not really sure it’s the right time yet. Part of me feels like I ought to seize the opportunity when it presents itself with people I already know or people I’m likely to meet in the future rather than actively go seek out other musicians for the sole purpose of playing but we’ll see what it’s like in the upcoming months. I know if I wait until I feel that I’m ready to play with others, it’ll just never happen because I’ll always find some excuse to tell myself I’m not yet ready for it. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge. So folks, if you’re playing and live in Auld Reekie give me a shout. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be free having a family and all but I can keep an open diary

Anyway, we started looking at suspended chords, which are much easier to understand than I feared and sound pretty cool too. That too made me think about sitting down and working out my own chord progression I can then feed into Guitar Pro and play some solo over. I’m just not entirely sure where to start. This damn analytical mind of mine means I can’t simply pick up the guitar and start strumming, it doesn’t work like that for me, I have to sit down and work it out, then play it back and tweak it as I go, so it’s a longer process.

Finally, I’ve made some time to properly practice Mighty Turtle Head which I’ve been not so much ignoring but unable to find time for in the last month or two so it was nice to loop through the solo and just practice it at manageable speeds. It’ll take a while to get it faster but once it’s under my fingers I can just take it in steps and hopefully become more comfortable with it. Then perhaps I can go back to earlier tunes and do the same for parts I’ve never quite worked out properly.

Last year you put out the solo record Fuzz Universe, and you were quoted as saying it was “a giant step closer to the ultimate rock guitar sound and playing of my dreams.” Would you say something similar about the new Mr Big record?

“I keep tweaking those knobs, and I keep liking it more. I was at my studio today, still trying new tone experiments. I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but I love the constant exploration for the most satisfying tone. It’s not just how it sounds, but also how it feels to the player. Different tones inspire different directions of playing. I’m still giddy that you thought I played something that sounded like Leslie West, so I hope I’m heading in a good tone direction.”

For the whole interview, head over to Music Radar

But I’m told from La Chaine Guitare that the show went ahead, and was great so it’s good to hear everyone who could make it definitely had a good time. I’m just gonna hold out for the next chance to see him, perhaps when Mr Big tours Europe.

Meanwhile, here’s an audio interview made last year by La Chaine Guitare with Paul before Mr Big show in Paris (follow the link for a transcript of the interview by Jenn).

I will be back later with more guitar posts, I’ve been a little busy lately and now I don’t even know if I can access my old crummy guitar for a little bit of unplugged practice while I’m over here…

To be fair this was my third take but I’ve done worse in terms of putting something out there that took several takes for me to be happy. If you’re so inclined to participate as well, follow the rules below and you might end up with one of the prizes provided by T-Rex effects

1) Subscribe to http://www.youtube.com/milanpolak
2) Then download the backing track http://goo.gl/UU2X8
3) Video your response solo
4) and then post your video in response to this video (put name of the competition and your full REAL name in the title!): http://www.youtube.com/video_response…
5) Promote your video
6) Win!

Backing Track chord sequence is:
part a) Amin9 / Dmaj (A Dorian)
part b) Fmaj9 / Cmaj7 / Fmaj9/ Cmaj7 – Gmaj (A Aeolian)

What we are looking for: great improvisation or composition. great tone, note selection, a ONE TAKE solo, no harmonies, no double tracking, just you with the backing track.
Multiple submissions are allowed and there are no country or age limits!

IMPORTANT: please DON’T delete your entry once it is posted and approved!!! Each entry goes through a process of being watched, commented, approved and added to a list for the jury. This is a very time consuming act and deleting your entry afterwards messes up that list (apart from the time wasted)!!! Also, DON’T post your video as a response to any other video as it won’t be on here anymore due to YT policies…!

The prizes you can win are:

1) T-Rex ToneBug Chorus/Flanger
2) T-Rex ToneBug Phaser
3) T-Rex ToneBug Distortion

and finally, the judges for the competition are:

Laurie Monk: http://truthinshredding.com/
Julian Puttins: http://www.youtube.com/petruccifever
Joop Wolters: http://www.youtube.com/joopwolters123
Michael Pagaard/T-Rex: http://www.t-rex-effects.com
Milan Polak: http://www.youtube.com/milanpolak

So if you’ve entered or are going to enter, good luck to you and please let me know what you think of my entry as I’m always keen for feedback. Deadline to enter is 20th December 2010.

What if … pigs could fly, well I dunno, what if … hen had teeth? You get the idea. The album marks the return of Mr Big in its original line-up (that is to say, with my favourite guitar player, Mr Paul Gilbert) since 1996. Bravewords.com says:

What If… was produced by Kevin Shirley (AEROSMITH, RUSH, IRON MAIDEN) and the release will be followed by a World Tour which will kick off in South America in March and will hit Europe in early summer.

I will report further once European dates are known. I’ll be crossing fingers that there will be more than just the one date in London like last year but perhaps it’ll depend on the response to the album’s release. In the meantime, here’s the setlist for the album:

1. ‘Undertow’
2. ‘American Beauty’
3. ‘Stranger In My Life’
4. ‘Nobody Takes The Blame’
5. ‘Still Ain’t Enough For Me’
6. ‘Once Upon A Time’
7. ‘As Far As I Can See’
8. ‘All The Way Up’
9. ‘I Won’t Get In My Way’
10. ‘Around The World’
11. ‘I Get The Feeling’
12. ‘Unforgiven’ (exclusive bonus track for Europe / North America – not on vinyl edition)

And here’s the promotional video for the first single to be released: Undertow

Awesome tune if you ask me, it sold me on the album (as if I needed much convincing )

Last Saturday was my favourite session: legato, not so much because it’s the foundation of fast playing (I don’t think it is necessarily) but because it seems to be one of those things which come a little more easily. Not that I can reproduce that when jamming but as always I keep the faith that one day it will start to pay off. This time round I pushed myself a little, the exercise was quite straightforward and by the time I reached the final round at 120bpm, it still felt too slow for me to play so I kept pushing it in sections of 12 to see how fast I could play the exercise. I made it to 180bpm and decided to stop because of time, not because it was getting harder. I might have been able to reach 200 if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t want to undo the things I try to train myself to do by breaking meaningless records when I’m not in my top shape to play accurately. But who knows, maybe next week.

On Sunday I didn’t practice for personal reasons so this got pushed to the following day. That rhythm exercise was reasonably easy and satisfactory to play but I found something interesting. As the exercise basically consisted of 4 ascending arpeggios to play while letting the strings ring at all times, my picking hand started to anchor itself to the scratch plate to make it easier to pick the arpeggios. Now I know it’s a standard way to play but despite having tried to play this way before, it always felt awkward. This time though, it was the most logical thing to do and made the picking easier and more relaxed, and thus easier to accelerate. This will probably only work in this circumstance but it was interesting nonetheless.

On to week 8 and there’s not so much to report on this week’s exercises so far. Playing with Guitar Pro does make it easier to reach the final 120bpm mark so I can really focus on tidying things like making sure extra strings don’t ring, adding some emphasis here and there for flourishing and so on. It makes the exercise more interesting and personal in some way. Finding ease in playing at certain speed over and over again is also very meditative in some way, you can focus on really being into the music, the repetition really reinforcing the concentration.

On today’s bend exercise I would say that although it helps to have supporting fingers to properly do a bend, once you reach certain speeds it just becomes too many fingers to move at once and so you can use the exercise to strengthen individual fingers so they can easily perform the bend without requiring support, a bit like having extra wheels when learning to cycle

As it happens, I’m getting a pretty good feeling about using Guitar Pro as an aide to my routine. Yesterday, I did an arpeggios exercise and it went down pretty well. This may be because it involved barring the cords with the ring finger which is somehow easier than using the index finger the way I was struggling a couple of weeks back. But really having this loop constantly going that you can leave at any time and rejoin when you’re ready is just what I needed.

In fact, I’m sure I spend more time on one particular tempo than I did when using the track on the CD. In a way that means more time spent on technique practice but in essence this could be anything. I could decide to practice an AC/DC riff and just loop it until I get it, don’t worry, I won’t shook you all night long just yet Now today’s dreaded sweep picking exercise went down much better than I feared. Sure I didn’t get past 56bpm but I wasn’t expecting to even get that fast considering I was going for 8 groups of sextuplets within 2 bars. That’s 48 notes to play in total, not impossible obviously but one needs to have a pretty good grasp of the technique to pull that off. What I did notice though is new sore areas on my finger tips due to repeated play, almost as if it forces me to use an area of my finger I wasn’t really using before. Or you know, it could just be the repetition that was reaching its break point.

The point though is that I was feeling more confident and prepared to play that sweep picking exercise and I could even afford the luxury of focusing on not letting the notes ring too much. Ironically I noticed I was playing the F# diminished arpeggio wrong all those weeks, oops, but it took me almost no time to re-adjust which is telling me something.

I don’t know, maybe I’m having too high hopes but for now I’m enjoying the apparent progress

Relentless

There are so many live and best-of albums that I’m not actually sure which nth studio album this is. It was apparently highly inspired by musican and composer Niccol Ganini and therefore includes highly complex musical arrangements… as you would expect

The album was produced by Yngwie himself and features Tim Ripper Owens formerly of Judas Priest and Iced Earth on vocals. Here’s the track listing:

1. Overture
2. Critical Mass
3. Shot Across The Bow
4. Look At You Now
5. Relentless
6. Enemy Within
7. Knight Of The Vasa Order
8. Caged Animal
9. Into Valhalla
10. Tide Of Desire
11. Adagio B flat minor Variation
12. Axe To Grind
13. Blinded
14. Cross To Bear

At least he’s keeping up with the Viking Theme For more information check out Yngwie’s official website

Check it out:

The satisfaction from today really was the fact that at first it was a little tricky to catch on but once I had it under my fingers, it was reasonably easy to jump from one speed to the other. I had to force myself to stop on the very last tempo because it was getting a little messy and I don’t want to force myself to play if there’s a block. It’s best to take it back one step where it’s comfortable and try again on a faster tempo later.

Also following last week’s lesson I got a new backing track, very much in the style of Mark Knopfler and it feels strangely nice to play along. It’s a similar kind of oddness to the one which feels much like La Grange, though I’ve never been either a ZZ Top or Dire Straits fan, I can really dig some of their tunes and the groove that comes with it. Part of it is the comfortable zone they sit in where it’s neither too slow nor too fast, in many respects, metal / shred does feel very scary still but I’m sure that’ll change soon enough. Perhaps I should experiment with more Hendrix-like rhythms too

Trippy

Edit: Some more information posted by Joe on Facebook earlier:

Directed & Edited by Jon Luini and Arthur Rosato, filmed by Jon Luini, Chris Sentovich, and Boris Karpman. For those interested, the footage comes from the first show of the tour in Napa, three shows in Europe (two in Paris + Amsterdam), a few snippets from recording of the album at Skywalker Sound, and a green screen session shot for the LED wall footage used at the live shows.

On Sunday the rhythm exercise was a little different from previous weeks as it involved adding flourishes to the chord progression. Well that wasn’t too bad until, again, I reached a certain tempo. You see, this chord progression though simple in nature G-D-C-G does involve a transition between C and G which has no pivot finger. And believe me transitioning chords at high speeds without anything to hold on to is difficult, regardless of how stupidly common those chords may be.

Yesterday the alternate picking exercise was similar to the one from the previous week, except it involved groups 16th notes instead of triplets. So of course that means more notes to the beat and as they all have to be picked, you find your limits pretty quickly. In my case I managed until 96bpm but beyond that my hands just weren’t responding. And that’s an interesting thing because although at this limit speed, things can get shaky depending on how focused you are, once you cross the line it’s like pulling the block too many in a game of Jenga, everything falls apart, quite literally.

So today when I was out thinking things through I decided to take a different approach to the daily practice and try to combine it with learning how to better use Guitar Pro by entering the lick in Guitar Pro and playing over it this way as opposed to over the provided drum loop which only lasts so long. Of course, today’s exercise was also over a new rhythm, which was interesting since it meant I had to figure out how to map that drum loop in GP6 as well. It took me a wee while to work it out, no thanks to the fact that I know virtually nothing about drums, what parts are called and so on, other than if you hit them hard, they make a lot of noise I got there in the end and was able to set out to practice with Guitar Pro at my own pace, which was great. Essentially it meant, not being stuck to a 90 seconds routine where you constantly try to work out how to play the lick over the drum loop. With the guitar playing with the RSE, it’s almost like you’ve got another player playing alongside never making a mistake. You can take a break, pick it up again when you’re ready, it’s brilliant The best part is, I managed to pace myself to play up to the final 160bpm loop, which I’m quite happy with, though as it involved a few bends, by fingertips don’t quite agree. If I keep going like that I’ll have scales on my fingers … pun intended

At any rate, I eventually pulled myself together and had a wee jam over that groovy backing track I rather like. That helped a little, though tonight’s exercise being sweep picking, it’s almost like I’m forcing myself to stare into the chasm of my shortcomings. No one likes to realise that they’re utterly rubbish at something, no matter what it is. But when you have the drive to get better at it, you just push on, and so I did but reasonably, not with a mind of blowing up the world record of the fastest way to self-destruct your own hand. As it turns out, even working steadily at 40 bpm is hard when you’re focusing on sweeping, and something tells me, it ain’t gonna get much faster for a while yet. Still I’m sure it’ll be worthwhile eventually, one can hope.

And I almost messed up my hand some totally different way having discovered a game on Linux called “Frets on Fire”, basically a Guitar Hero emulator. Not sure I’ll be playing that much, it’s painful…

When I got home I did my daily exercise, which I was hoping to have done before going but couldn’t for various reasons. The exercise, funnily enough, on arpeggios, was easier than last week, mostly because it combines both low and high strings (it’s a 6-5-2-3 pattern) and so I wasn’t struggling too much with the finger barring the chord shape. Still by the time I got to 120bpm my hand was starting to feel quite sore, which I blame on the amount of pressure, and thus tension, I need to put on the strings to keep the barred chord ringing throughout. that got me wondered about the necessity to keep going for the sake of finishing the sequence up to the designated speed. What I need to focus on is not how fast I can play something, but how well I can play it, and in that regard it might be of better value to do an exercise slowly for longer than just moving on from one speed to the next. For some types of exercises it’s not really a problem to do that, but this week it’s been obvious that there is a certain limit I ought to respect lest I mess up my hand, which would definitely defeat the purpose.

So we’ll see how tomorrow’s exercise on arpeggios go but I suspect I might stick to 40bpm and do the same tempo more than once just so I get it right.

With alternate picking this week, the problem I was having was getting my head round doing triplets slowly. This was interesting in that doing them slowly (i.e 40 bpm) was difficult because I tried to do 1__23 instead of 1_2_3 and fitting the regular pattern within 2 beats was surprisingly challenging, not to mention frustrating. But then, arriving at certain speeds it made it rather hard to keep up and 120bpm was certainly quite hard. I keep telling myself that with time, I’ll figure out how to relax into playing faster and there’s no point trying to force through obvious limits as it’s more likely to do harm than good.

Yesterday I also found the exercise to reach a limit at 120bpm. It was basically octave shaped alternate picking across the E shape of A minor pentatonic and was quite easy until it felt like it was going out of control and my mind wasn’t able to keep up with my fingers, it’s quite hard to explain. It wasn’t an utter disaster but I was surprised by the difference 12 bpm makes.

Paradoxically, today’s bend exercise was supposed to have a “tricky” picking pattern… Well I didn’t have any real trouble with it and pretty much sailed through the exercise, so that just confirms where strengths and weaknesses really lie, and it’s good in a way that I can start to identify which bits I ought to work on more often, and which I don’t have so much problem with.

Finally today I went back to Guitar Pro for some work on Mighty Turtle Head and I’m definitely pleased I invested in the software. One great thing you can do is isolate a piece you want to work on and loop it at the speed you want, and well I did just that and you can get things under your fingers pretty quickly when they loop nice and clearly. I think when I have time I’ll have to return to previous tunes and after fixing the tab, getting some serious work done on some of the weaker areas of the piece.

Sweep picking was a little better but again I couldn’t get past half the 8 speeds you’re meant to practice at. I think it’ll be some time before I can play clean sweeps at a decent speed. If the exercise maintain that same chord progression for the next few weeks then I may end up playing the right triads in the right order eventually, not that it’s difficult in principle but when doing it at speed it tends to go tits up. The backing tracks I consoled myself on where enjoyable but didn’t come up with anything too memorable.

Tonight however, I really enjoyed the legato exercise which mixed some slide and hammer-ons and triplets for good measure (pun not intended ). And I really surprised myself how smoothly I could keep playing those different legato and tempi at speeds up to the final 120bpm. It is quite gratifying to see progress get through your fingers, dare I say in real time (though this would be clearly delusional). I gotta remember to sneak triplets with 8th notes pairs next time I do a jam, you never know what might pop out.

Today was the bend exercise and again it was relatively simple to practice, and so with these simple exercises you can start taking little aspect of the practice and really focus on them. So today I chose to make sure I’m controlling those excessively ringing notes which often happen in licks with bends in them. It wasn’t a complete success but just being aware of practicing that was enough to make it worthwhile. Afterwards I had another jamming session as usual (time permitting) and then caught the following video:

I’ve been following Dave Weiner’s lessons on and off for a while but sometimes they hit the nail right on the spot, so I got myself another jamming session in Gm with a different backing track (as the one before was already in Gm) and it’s quite interesting to focus on just playing 2 strings. One thing for sure is that my hands aren’t quite ready for on-the-spot fast licks so a little more practice before I can start hammering the Kirk…. ahem

I was kindly sent a good batch of Guitar Pro files having recently acquired it to better my learning of songs. There’s more to pick from than I’ll ever need (in fact some of them will probably have to be weeded out, not being too keen on some of the French stuff) but I took the chance to hunt down the file for The Mighty Turtle Head and spent some time going over it with my tab sheet and make small corrections. Luckily it was overall pretty well transcribed, and now it’s mostly a matter of working out the best audio settings for each instrument. Since the original was for Guitar Pro 3, there’s room for improvement sound-wise. If anyone has sources for Guitar Pro 6 sound banks, repositories, libraries or any way to make instruments sound more like people like Satch that would be helpful.

But that wasn’t the only song I checked of course, one I pulled out again, that I think I already had, though possibly in PowerTab format was Iron Maiden’s Afraid To Shoot Strangers* which is quite possibly my favourite tune of theirs, and thus has been on my mind to learn for some time. I did give it a go some time ago but never really followed through much, this could be my chance to really increase the amount of songs I know reasonably quickly. You know, sneak in an AC/DC here, a Motorhead there and before you know it, I’ll know more than the handful of Metallica and Megadeth riffs I could vaguely pull out not even 3 years ago. Having said that, I’m also intending to figure out if I can learn one or two of the easier Marty Friedman songs, though maybe I should hunt a good transcription first, the version of Jewel I just heard almost made my ears pop…

* I know, seeing what day it is, Hallowed Be Thy Name might have been more appropriate, what can I say? I don’t do greeting cards holidays

The main thing was working on those issues I’ve been having with sweep picking which have been somewhat frustrating me. I could cheat and say, well I’ll just do what Paul Gilbert does and use only string skipping techniques but really the longer you delay mastering a technique, the harder it gets when you finally get to it. So a few helpful tips should hopefully make things better in the future. What I’m gonna have to do on Fridays is instead of just steamrolling through the daily exercise (resuming tom… later today), I’ll do some extra warm ups and sweep picking exercises, then maybe I’ll finally be able to play the whole of A tout le Monde’s solo which I should have mastered months ago.

After I got home I just jammed a little over that nice groovy backing track in G. I tried applying some sweep picking on there but I’m not sure it was the right tempo for that. Oh also I don’t know that I mentioned getting my copy of Guitar Pro 6 so I’ll be looking for good on-line scores of the songs I’m trying to learn and some more

The concert was this part Friday the 22 October 2010 at the Clyde Auditorium (SECC) in Glasgow. It was a pretty rainy day and I’d never been to the SECC so it was a bit of a challenge. Still I was able to grab a train that drops you off at the Exhibition Centre (that’s the name of the station) and it’s a 5min walk to the concert hall.

I got there with over an hour to spare, and was one of the first to get in when the doors opened at 7pm. Although I booked my ticket pretty much as soon as booking opened on-line having stupidly missed out on Slash’s concert, I still didn’t really have the best seat (Joe doesn’t walk along the stage much and he was playing on the opposite end of the stage I was facing).

The opening act was Simon MacBride, an guitar player I didn’t know of but who turned out to be most excellent. He’s an Irish guy who basically plays in the style of Joe Bonamassa, so mostly bluesy but with some shred thrown in for good measure, and a very similar voice too. I might hunt down his albums as I quite liked his style.

Joe came on stage around 8.30, the line up wasn’t quite the same as that of Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards. Accompanying him were:

• On drums: Jeff Campitelli
• On Bass: Allen Whitman
• On Rhythm Guitars: Galen Henson
• On Keyboards: Jem Godfrey

So I was a little disappointed that Mike Keneally wasn’t touring with Joe but apparently he has commitments with Steve Vai… still I can’t complain as Jem did an excellent job, though the keyboards were a little quiet at times, but maybe it’s just because of where I was sitting.

Great selection of tunes from Joe, I took notes of each song played and only managed to fail to recognise 3 of them, I won’t tell which ones Here’s the setlist:

• Ice 9
• Hordes of Locusts
• Flying in a Blue Dream
• Light Years Away
• Memories
• War
• Premonition
• Satch Boogie
• Revelation
• Pyrric Victoria
• Crystal Planet
• The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing
• Dream Song
• God is Crying
• Andalusia
• Littleworth Lane
• Why
• Wind in the Trees
• Wormhole Wizards
• Always with me, Always with you
• Big Bad Moon
• Crowd Chant (encore)
• Surfing With The Alien (encore)

He also brought back the LED backdrop he had on the Satchafunkilus tour but frankly it didn’t really serve any purpose other than the occasional psychedelic display. Overall it was a gig a little longer than I expected but really enjoyable. I took a couple of photos and a short video with my phone but really they’re so bad I don’t think it’s worth bothering posting them.

Meanwhile, I seem to favour certain rhythms to play over. For instance, I can’t quite say why but trying to jam over the Blue Noize backing track again, I just can’t seem to find the right notes to play over it. I can find 9ths but other than that it’s pretty empty. For grins I tried other backing tracks at similar speeds and was able to find a nice groove, so it really is hit and miss, though I don’t despair that one day it won’t matter so much. Incidentally, I’m really starting to enjoy string-skipping experiments I put in my playing, this really adds a nice flavour.

Finally, The Mighty Turtle Head is going to be a challenge, but, I’m hoping to make it easier to practice with my copy of Guitar Pro 6, assuming I can find either the right file to download or the right settings for the right sound. Either way, there’s a lot of work ahead.

Can’t say I’ve had as much trouble with the other two, the legato exercise remains reasonably easy, and the rhythm part, though not a smooth ride does allow me to really focus on those chord shifting positions, which hopefully will pay off one day. And apart from all that it’s been mostly playing along backing tracks, which is as fun as ever. A new one I got is played in the rhythm and style of La Grange which is a nice boogy tempo I really have fun playing along.

In different news, I’ve finally ordered a copy of Guitar Pro. I was going to get the download version from the Arobas Music website but it turns out cheaper to order the disc from a 3rd party and wait a few more days. I couldn’t find anywhere else I could purchase a license which is why I’ve done it that way. Hopefully it’ll get there next week when I’m home on holiday.