The Amazing Guthrie Govan!

You have to check out these quicktime video clips of Guthrie Govan’s recent Cornford Hellcat demo in the States. They are truly inspirational !

S-PU-4

This Saturday sees another UKMG related Scottish Jam, or the snappliy titled S-PU-4.

This time we’ve put in a bit more preparation and have a list of songs to jam over, namely:

Thin Lizzy – The Boys Are Back In Town

Lenny Kravitz – Always On The Run

Jimi Hendrix – Hey Joe

Focus – Hocus Pocus

Stevie Wonder – Superstition

Eric Clapton – Stormy Monday

BB King – Let The Good Times Roll

Gary Moore – Parisienne Walkways

Van Morrison – Moondance

Even though I know most of these songs very well I have never really sat down and learned to play them. The jam has allowed me to finally learn those harmony parts from ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ and nail that fanastic riff from Lenny K’s ‘Always On The Run’.

I’ve always enjoyed jams since the very first days of playing the guitar. In those early days I would head up to my mate’s and we’d jam over Metallica songs or ‘attempt’ to play some blues. At first year University I was lucky enough to meet a few other musicians and have the occasional jam session, one even involved a funk jam with Bagpipes! Sadly though as the work load increased my playing time decreased and I definitely lost a few years of ‘guitar time’.

I’m happy that now via UKMG I’m getting in touch with other musicians and once more have the chance to meet up for jam sessions. It’s all well and fine composing/playing at home but the real ‘magic’ comes from playing with other musicians and feeding off that energy.

In other news, UK dates have finally been announced for the G3 tour of Europe featuring Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and one Robert Fripp. Yay! . I am very happy to see that they are coming to Glasgow ( or Glascow as it says there, pff ). Of course I will not be limiting myself to just one show, oh no.

“Trevfest” Contribution

After a UKMG friend had a heart attack some of us got together and each provided a short solo snippet over a backing track to lift his spirits and to show our appreciation of what a top bloke he is.

I opted to noodle over the funk backing and so whacked on the POD, plugged in the GMC and after some jamming came up with this short solo.

“Trevfest” Contribution [Download MP3 - 424 KB]

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Escher LEGO!

Escher LEGO!, more here

Rock!

I recently came across a useful resource site for rock called Rockdetector.

Enjoy .

Gigtastic and Greymatter Upgrade

This Friday I shall be ‘depping’ again for a mate in the Ceilidh band Teannaich. I’m always grateful to be given the opportunity to play as playing live is simply a blast . The band play traditional music with a modern twist with the band lineup incorporating electric mandolin, electric fiddle, electric bass, electric guitar ( through a Marshall ) and drums. When everyone but the drummer has a wah wah pedal it’s safe to say the music is quite different from the ‘usual’ Ceilidh band setup .

With the mandolin and fiddle playing the melody lines and the bass and drums locking into the most important part of Ceilidh the music, the beat, I have a interesting job of comping along and maybe even nabbing the occasional ‘rock’ solo or doubling a fiddle line. I’ve found that it has forced me to focus on my improvisation skills especially over non-rock time signatures like 2/4 or 6/8. Where I have felt the most benefit though is from simply playing with other musicians and soaking up the energy from the crowd. It is truly an amazing sensation.

For an idea of what sort of music gets played check out the clip from the Teannaich track Funky Molly off their CD ‘Lucid‘.

P.S: Today I have upgraded to Greymatter 1.3. As well as the usual bug fixes the newest version now includes emoticon GIFs as well as Music and Mood input for entries. Very nice indeed.