Musicradar: Guitar FX Basics Video Lessons

A nice series of videos on Musicradar looking at 14 common guitar effects, from Distortion to Autowah.

Handy for anyone who has every wondered about a particular effect and what it actually does.

Here’s a taster with a video chatting about Compression:

Whitesnake: Lay Down Your Love Video

I got Whitesnake’s new album Good To Be Bad early last month and it’s a *corker*! All the songs are written by David Coverdale and, ol fave of mine, Doug Aldrich. This is sounding like a great partnership ( as long as it lasts ). The album is chock full of great riffs and catchy choruses.

Anyway in the words of ol golden tonsils…’ere’s a new video for yah!’:

James Hetfield Interview

Spotted on Blabbermouth, a 13 minute interview with James Hetfield by Los Angeles radio station KROQ 106.7 FM at the “Weenie Roast” festival on May 17, 2008. Here are parts 1 and 2:

markmcguigan.com: New theme

You may have noticed that I’m now just about up and running with a new Wordpress theme.

When things went a little wrong with the old theme ( still no idea what happened even after trawling through the code ) I browsed many many themes looking for a suitable replacement. I just couldn’t find anything that I liked so I took the step of looking through the premium themes aka ones you pay for.

Yes I *paid* for this theme I am using now. Outrageous I know. Having left the murky world of Software Engineering few years ago after 8 years of pain I am past the point of coding things from scratch. Especially these days with what little time I have.

So, things will do for now but I’ll probably tweak things further, colour scheme, logos etc.

Here’s to a new chapter at markmcguigan.com!

Guitar Idol 2008 Finalists!

The finalists for the Finals are being announced one-by-one so far we have:

• Gustavo Guerra
• Chris Feener
• Tom Quayle
• Muris Varajic
• Lyle Watt
• Fernando Miyata
• Peter Petchalov
• Marc Playle
• Gustavo Di Padua

Subscribe to the feed for updates.

The Jazz Guitar Bible

I received The Jazz Guitar Bible a few weeks ago as a birthday present from my lovely partner, Kate. I’m still getting to grips with it ( aka haven’t had time to sit down and start working on a piece ) but I’m very impressed with the range of transcriptions within.

I’m quite familiar with the format of the ‘Guitar Bible’ TAB books having copies of the The Rock Guitar Bible as well as the The Acoustic Guitar Bible. Essentially, high quality transcriptions from other Hal Leonard books are brought together in a handy single volume. Not only great for personal use but this is very useful for teaching as it gives me easy access to pretty decent TABs ( there are always a few that need a tweak ) saving transcribing time.

The Jazz edition contains transcriptions from a wide range of artists and sub-genres of Jazz, from the early Jazz of Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian through to bebop tinged Barney Kessel and Tal Farlow, the greats Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass, the funky George Benson, right up to modern artists such as Mike Stern, Pat Metheny, Pat Martino and Mark Whitfield. In fact there are 31 transcriptions in total resulting in a nice chunky 248 page book. There are plenty of notes here to keep the owner very busy indeed :).

Here’s a run down of the contents:

• Airegin performed by Wes Montgomery
• So What performed by Larry Carlton
• Angel Eyes performed by Howard Roberts
• Body And Soul performed by Tuck Andress
• Cheek To Cheek performed by George Van Epps
• Dinah performed by Eddie Lang
• Easter Parade performed by Herb Ellis
• I Remember You performed by Tal Farlow
• I’ll Remember April performed by Earl Klugh
• In A Sentimental Mood performed by Kevin Eubanks
• Like Someone In Love performed by Joe Diorio
• Misty performed by Barney Kessel
• Moonlight In Vermont performed by Johnny Smith
• My Favorite Things performed by John McLaughlin
• My Funny Valentine performed by Larry Coryell
• Nardis performed by Mike Stern
• Oleo performed by Pat Martino
• Rose Room performed by Django Reinhardt
• Satin Doll performed by Kenny Burrell
• Seven Come Eleven performed by Charlie Christian
• Solar performed by Pat Metheny
• Speak Low performed by Grant Green
• St. Thomas performed by Jim Hall
• Stardust performed by Les Paul
• Stella By Starlight performed by Bireli Lagrene
• Take Five performed by George Benson
• Tangerine performed by Jimmy Raney
• Yardbird Suite performed by Joe Pass
• Nuages performed by Charlie Byrd
• You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me performed by Chuck Wayne
• Girl Talk performed by Mark Whitfield

Greg Howe Video Lesson

Spotted on The Guitar Channel a sneak preview of the upcoming online lessons from Greg Howe on ghworkshops.com. A video lesson talking about his ‘hammer-on from nowhere’ hybrid picking thang:

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