The talented Martin Miller’s Fusion Series 1 package is now available from jamtrackcentral.com:

Martin Miller is one of the most exciting young fusion players around at the moment. With this in mind, we are proud to have him join the JTC artist roster and we can now announce his debut package has officially arrived.
This package contains three outstanding rock/fusion tracks and comes with shortened solo tracks, extended jam tracks, full length hi-res videos of each track being played by Martin and, of course, completely accurate TAB.

Have you noticed our new slogan…’the no.1 in guitar improvisation’? Well, Martin really sums this up. He tackles these three original jam tracks with mind blowing improvised runs and he has included some notes to help you improvise over these great jam tracks too.

3 Full Hi Quality Videos in MP4
3 Solo Tracks in MP3
3 Extended Jam Tracks in MP3
Completely Accurate TAB in PDF and Powertab Format
Hints and Tips From Martin

Here’s a taster of what is on offer:

Been meaning to blog about this for a while, check out these fantastic shots from the Erotic Cakes gig at The Black Stuff pub in Udine,Italy:

Orange Amplification is proud to announce the Signature #4 Jim Root Terror Head and cab, developed in association with the famed guitarist.

Jim Root has the incredible honour of showcasing his skilful playing with two of today’s best in American hard rock– the multi-Grammy nominated Stone Sour and the Grammy winning Slipknot. He has a wide range of playing styles, which come together to create a unique, uncompromising sound and tone.

The Signature #4 Jim Root Terror Head is modelled after the dirty channel on the same amp that Jim Root plays in the studio and on the road: the Orange Rockerverb 100. This all-tube, 15-watt amp is capable of far more than high gain rock and metal though. With a full 3-band EQ players will find it easy to dial in everything from vintage rock, blues and beyond. The addition of a tube-driven FX loop allows the user to take the tone in any direction they want.

His new Signature #4 Jim Root PPC212 cab has been developed alongside the head to bring you Jim’s full tone! The new cab is finished in black vinyl with a specially developed black version of the Orange basket grill cloth and proudly features the signature #4 plate on the front. With a closed back design, the cab has a tight bottom end and delivers Jim’s signature Orange tone.

Said Jim of the name on the signature head, “With this amp, simply giving it the number I use in Slipknot seemed logical. I’ve not been to apt to splash either band logo or artwork all over things, but this will be the beginning of the end of that…maybe”

To complement Jim’s own style and image, the Signature #4 Terror Head is formidable and attention grabbing, featuring the vintage ‘Pics Only’ logo in white on a black chassis. The rear of the amp has both the Slipknot and Stone Sour logos.

Specifications

Volume, Gain, Bass, Mid and Treble Controls
12AT7-Driven FX Loop
1 x 16 Ohm and 2 x 8 Ohm Outputs
Switchable Between 15/7 Watts

This is a simply essential tool for any guitarist from any playing background. Quality built for the huge sound, lush tones and high gain necessary for rock and metal music, but versatile enough to be useful in any situation!

Jim Root will be personally launching his signature #4 products on the Orange Booth #4890 Hall C at NAMM at 2pm on Saturday 21st January.

Joe, over at the fantastic deftdigits.com site, very kindly asked if I would like to post about a favourite player of mine for his great ‘Discover a Guitarist‘ series.

I decided to write up a post about Guthrie Govan, seeing as he is finally now being recognised the World over for his supreme musical talent.

So head on over and read about how I became aware Guthrie Govan and his music with some great old video footage.

Not only that, but you also get to see some early pics of Guthrie without a beard!

If you haven’t seen it already I wholeheartedly recommend you check out this brilliantly filmed movie featuring highlights from this year’s amazing Monkeyfest:

Early bird tickets are now available for Monkeyfest 2012!

Great to see that the Guitar Pro app for the iPad now has the very handy Notepad functionality that was added to the iPhone version last year.

I use Guitar Pro quite a bit for teaching and personal use, so I’m happy now that the Notepad feature has been added to the iPad app. I can now add licks/song ideas on the go anytime without having to be sitting at my main machine in the studio . These can then be exporting and worked on some more in the main app if needed.

What is really awesome about this new iPad version is that using the iPad’s great touch interface you can add articulations to notes added in Notepad, e.g sliding between two notes on the virtual fingerboard to create a slide. Very cool.

One thing to watch out for, when I updated my existing version of Guitar Pro for iPad the fingerboard would occasionally disappear, a quick uninstall and install sorted this though.

Guitar Pro for iPad is available now in iTunes

The reviews for the new affordable line of guitars from Suhr, Rasmus, are beginning to crop up, check out this Musicradar review of the Modern M200:

The combination of vintage and modern tones makes this a seriously versatile guitar in the truest sense of the term. No matter what style of music you play, this Rasmus model hits the modified S-type bullseye.

None of the aforementioned doom merchants had actually tried a Rasmus before they unleashed the negative vibes. As ever, the proof is in the pudding and today’s special for the doubters is a big slice of humble pie.

We like the fact that your money appears to have been spent on the important stuff – playability, pickups and hardware.

Rob Chapman has just announced an amazing competition to WIN an endorsement with Chapman Guitars, here’s the official blurb:

Chapman Guitars is a growing guitar company founded by YouTube guitarist & educator Rob Chapman. It is based on the principle of having Rob’s fans collaboratively design guitar models with him through a series of polls conducted on the Chapman Guitars website.

To celebrate two years of running, culminating in over 30,000 subscribers on YouTube, Rob is launching a competition that is open to anybody, of any age, anywhere in the world. The winner of the competition will receive a full endorsement with Chapman Guitars; a one-off SveeArt custom Chapman Guitars ML-1 “Heart of Fire”; a Chapman Guitars ML-2 Standard and a bag of Chapman Guitars accessories (including picks, strings and a hand-made leather strap).

In order to help Rob find the best of the best, he has turned to two of his friends and top producers in the industry: Eddie Kramer and Misha Mansoor. Rather than judge solely on guitar prowess, Rob, Eddie and Misha will be judging the competition together, looking for guitarists with passion and personality in their performance.

The competition launches on September the 2nd, and will run for two months. For details on how to enter, watch the video hosted on Rob’s YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/robchappers

The backing track for this competition is available from here:

http://www.guitarplayback.com/happy-satch-mood

Many thanks to Svee at http://www.sveeart.com for his amazing work on the Chapman Guitars ML-1 “Heart of Fire”

Good luck!

Rob Chapman, Eddie Kramer, Misha Mansoor and the Chapman Guitars team

A new lesson has been uploaded to mastertheguitar videolessons entitled ‘Learning the notes on the all six strings‘:

Description

In this MasterTheTheory! video lesson, building on your knowledge of the notes on the E and A strings, you will learn how to easily work out the notes on the D, G and B strings using a quick intuitive method. Before long you will know the notes all over the entire fingerboard!

Who is this lesson for?

This lesson is for players of all levels, from beginners who need to know where to play power chords, barre chords, scales etc. to experienced players who want to fill in any gaps in their fretboard knowledge and be able to gain a greater insight into their playing.

The lesson is provided as a downloadable (160MB) zip file containing:

Full lesson, totalling ~10 mins, with detailed diagrams in 720p HD MP4 Video
High Quality supporting PDF documentation and exercises to aid you in your learning
HTML Page arranging all of the above in one easy reference point