SRV plays ‘Little Wing’ and ‘Third Rock From The Sun’

Totally. Utterly. Awesome.

Bluesjamtracks Site Update and Guthrie Govan special Download edition of ‘Erotic Cakes’

Bluesjamtracks have had a little site spruce up with some cool added sections to the Website.

First off Jan Cyrka has uploaded his Hoodlum Corner lessons, which I fondly recall many years ago from Guitarist Magazine, covering a myriad of topics.

In addition there is now a new ‘Album Downloads’ section which has Mr Cyrka’s fine solo albums for sale as well as a Special Download edition of ‘Erotic Cakes’ by Guthrie Govan which features:

Brought to you in conjunction with Cornford Records, this official download-only version of Erotic Cakes contains two folders - the original album (in 192k mp3 format) plus the bonus material.

The bonus folder contains the following:

Exclusive ‘live in the studio’ version of Fives in mp3 audio and mp4 video formats.

Full transcription of Fives, in PDF and Powertab form.

Fives backing track, with the lead guitar removed.

PDFs of the CD booklet and inlay.

How cool is that!?

Steffen Schackinger

Browsing my youtube channel subscriptions the other day I spotted a man on the Candy Rat records channel with an electric guitar!!

Shocking, as this is the very channel/label made famous from some stunning acoustic players such as Andy McKee, Antoine DuFour etc.

The man in question is one ‘Steffen Schackinger‘, a danish guitarist who has recently released a debut solo album called ‘ElectriGuitartistry‘ on Candyrat Records.

I enjoyed these videos so much I decided to buy his album :D. Yay for youtube video promo!

You can definitely hear the Steve Morse and Eric Johnson influences in his playing, amongst many others, but for me the album stands out due to its subtle mix of styles, stunning playing and tone from Mr Schackinger. You can hear tinges of Jazz, Country, Folk, even Classical on the album. Clearly indicating Mr Schackinger’s wide range of musical tastes which I think helps make this album stand out amongst the crowd.

Check it out!

Metallica post new song on MySpace

Metallica have posted a new song on their MySpace page called ‘The Day That Never Comes’ from the forthcoming album ‘Death Magnetic’ released September 12th.

At 7:56 it’s a bigun and gets going around the 4 minute mark.

Swing to Bop

I would like to big-up a new and spiffing blog from a mate of mine, Matt, called Swing to Bop. Great info on chord theory, arpeggios etc. as used in swing jazz guitar and beyond as well as video lessons and cool links to related videos. In Matt’s own words:

For the last year or two I’ve been trying to ‘convert’ over from being a largely rock-based guitarist to someone who plays music with more of a jazz style. In the past I’ve tried to make progress but have become bogged down or stuck several times frustrated by just how much had to be learned and by what seemed like a steep learning curve.

So, when I tried again a couple of years ago, I decided to start a historically informed learning process rather than trying to jump straight in. Contemporary jazz guitar and jazz harmony & theory can be intimidating, difficult and cluttered with terminology: everything is altered scales this and tritone substitions that and it’s never clear to the beginner what is being altered (and from what?) or what is being substituted and why.

So, I decided to go back to the beginning and start with the basics, with jazz as it was first played on the guitar in the 1930s and then working forward historically, picking up the new harmonic innovations as they evolved and became incorporated into jazz playing instead of trying to learn them all at once, ready-formed.

The idea being that a newly introduced harmonic innovation would make sense to me when placed in the context of what had gone before. Often a particular way of improvising over a particular chord or set of changes seemed mysterious to me — why do it this way? I know it’s a substition, but a substition for what? — but became clear once I’d learned the antecedent technique or harmony.

One great side effect: a lot of the guitar music of the 1930s and 40s is really great. Gypsy jazz, classic small group swing, western swing, early RnB and rock’n’roll, jump blues, etc. often feature really swinging, aggressive playing that’s idiomatic to the instrument, the guitar doesn’t sound like a poor cousin to the horn players or pianist and the musical vocabulary employed plays to the guitar players’ strengths rather than weaknesses.

So, this blog, I’m going to try and document some of the stuff I’m learning or have been learning and maybe link to some musical clips, videos or sheet music as I go.

Check it out!

How To Make A Pickup

Cool series of videos from Premier Guitar looking at making pickups at Seymour Duncan:

Greg Howe: Guitar Channel ‘Sound Proof’ Review

Great review of Greg Howe’s ‘Sound Proof’ over on the Guitar Channel.

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