That Was The Year That Was….This Is The Year That Is….

Another year in the bag and a great year it was too! Here’s a ramshackle rundown of some stuff in 2007:

Albums

Alter Bridge - ‘Blackbird’: Truly immense epic rock. A great follow up to their debut album.
Robben Ford - ‘Truth’: A modern blues master doing what he does best. Awesome tones and playing.
Cosmosquad - ‘Acid Test’: Dark and brooding fusion rock from Jeff Kollman and Co.
Dream Theater - ‘Systematic Chaos’: Hard, heavy, fast, mind boggling. Well it’s Dream Theater innit.
Symphony X - ‘Paradise Lost’: A surprise hit for me. Great tunes and great playing from Mr Romeo.
Andy James - ‘In The Wake Of Chaos’: A new UK guitar hero? Great technique is commonplace these days, being able to write good music is a different matter. This album has both. Fantastic stuff.

Gigs

Didn’t get to many gigs this year but the ones I did go to rocked mightily. Of course went to see Mr Vai again and throughally enjoyed the new slant he brought this tour playing material from ‘Sound Theories Vol.1 “The Aching Hunger”‘ with duelling violins etc.

Also went to see Ray LaMontagne, stunning life performance. Brilliant songs of course, but his voice is amazing to behold live.

My Music n stuff

Continued to have a pop a Recording Collective tasks when I had the time. Apart from that, not much in the way of recording my own tunes this year, what’s changed there? ;).

Most of my time of course is dedicated to teaching and continuing to record videos for MasterThatRiff!

Teaching has continued to be a success thanks to the support of my students as does MasterThatRiff thanks to its subscribers and those who manage stumble across it. It’s still a big surprise and a thrill to have had the videos feature in two publications. The Finnish newspaper Keskisuomalainen and the magazine Premier Guitar.

So what’s in store for 2008?

Well we’ve got new albums from Joe Satriani and Paul Gilbert to look forward to as well as a tour with them both! \m/. Also, new Extreme album and tour hopefully!

Exciting new material from Bluesjamtracks featuring transcribed solos from Guthrie Govan. Very much looking forward to stealing some licks ;).

Hopefully I can continue to record material and maybe if I have the time ( which seems unlikely ) actually start to do ‘proper’ recording!

But I suppose the big project for 2008 is to start recording the pre-recorded lesson material I’ve been thinking about since I started teaching. Now that I’m a bit better at using the video camera ( there is still plenty of room for improvement ).

Watch this space :).