Rooooaaarrrrr: Traynor YCX 12 Blue

I picked up my extension cab for my YCV50Blue amp yesterday afternoon when I got my new Les Paul. This thing rocks. I didn't have a chance to crank it so I went home for my lunch break and blasted it. Nice. It really fills in the sound. I drove back to work with my ears ringing. Check it out:

My First Gibson!

Wowowowowow. I went to try out a Gibson Studio because I wanted to upgrade from the Epiphone I just got to celebrate my new promotion and raise. I look up and see a Gibson Vintage White Classic Les Paul. My jaw drops. Check it out:







OK back to playing. I'll write more about it tomorrow. Woohooooo!

New Guitar !!!! .... Already?

Yep, it is what it is. Didn't I just get a new guitar? Why yes I did, but I'm going to see tomorrow if I can return it and buy a real Gibson Les Paul. Why? Because I got a promotion and a nice raise last Friday.



I went to the guitar store and checked out the Les Paul Studio models. Sweet. I want the Alpine White one with gold hardware. I'm going to see if they can take it back, taxes and all, and give me a credit to buy the Gibson Model. It goes for $1200 US so I'll see how much they want for it. $1200US is about $1140 Canadian. I think I saw them at $1500, which is quite a spread. I'm following the exact same guitar on Ebay with the auction finishing in 24 hours. If I can get a good deal I might go that route.

Still practicing with the lesson I got off ebay that I mentioned yesterday. I did the Super Chops Workout #1 which covers alternate picking and Hammer on/Pull offs. It really is a workout. You start on the first string and alternate pick 1 2 3 4 then 2 3 4 5 up to the 12th ascending then descending. You do this for all 6 strings. Then there were things like 1 3 2 4 and 1 4 2 3 up and down the fretboard for all 6 strings. Then hammer on starting on the 6th string 1 2 3 4, then when you reach the first string pull off back to the start ... up and down the fretboard again.

My left hand is sore. Rock on!

Ebay Guitar Lessons: Part II

I had a chance to check out both courses.


I popped in the DVD for the first one is the Jam Guitar DVD. Pretty much garbage. First off, the guy who does the video is a geeky dork. I think I'm like most other guitarist wanna-be's out there: "I wanna be that guy" is what I should feel. Euh not this one. The stuff he teaches is so basic that it's crazy, plus he just sits in front of some drape for a background. The production quality is in the crapper. He'll be showing the notes "This is C, D, E oops no this is E" I'm just gonna leave it with a rating of 1 1/2 sloppy strings out of 6. The only reason it gets 1/2 sloppy strings is that it might be usefull for a TOTAL beginner. Waste of money at $9.95. There are tons of better learning videos on Youtube.



The second video is called How I Got Killer Guitar Chops While I Was Still in High School: Confessions of a High School Shredder
Wow! What a title but what a package for $19.99! The course comes with 3 CD-ROMs: 1 e-book and 2 audio CDs for the exercises. The author taught himself a disciplined approach in high school to really improve quickly. He went on to go to University for music and and later write a bunch of books. The course contains a systematic approach to improving your guitar skills. He encourages you to use the Student Log to track your progress. The excercises are grouped under Alternate Picking, Hammer-Ons and Pull Offs, Stretching, Tapping, String Skipping, Sweep Picking, Scales, Arpeggios, Songs, Additional Areas of Study, Super Chops Work-outs (his own combination of stuff). You track your date, duration, and metronome tempo used for each exercises. I did the first two exercises of Alternate Picking which wasn't too bad because i had been practicing that a lot with scales, so I could get 200 beats per minute fairly easily. Then I tried two Hammer-on / Pull off exercises. I did each for 3 minutes with a tempo of 120 bpm. My hand cramped up.

I'm super stoked about this course. I had been looking at a way to give more structure to my learning and this fits the bill perfectly. I haven't gone through all of it but I will give it a tentative 5 sloppy strings out of 6 because I can truly see how this will help any guitarist improve dramatically by using a structured approach vs. going at it randomly. The only thing I'd like to see would be a bit of video thrown in for motivation, though I really don't mind the format it has been presented in.

Cheerz.

Ebay Guitar Lessons

I got two sets of CDs/DVDs in the mail today. I found them on Ebay and I'm going to check it out.

The first one is titled How I Got Killer Guitar Chops While I Was Still in High School: Confessions of a High School Shredder. This one seems pretty interesting. It came with 2 audio CDs and a CD with and e-book with hundreds of pages.

The second is called Jam Guitar DVD. I'm going to throw it in my DVD player and check it out right now. Apparently you can go to their website to download the tabs.

I'll write little reviews later.

Six String Bliss !

I've been listening to podcasts for about a year now. I find it's a great way to distract myself at work. I was looking for a great guitar podcast and I found it: Six String Bliss.

It's a weekly show produced by Pipes and PT. They typically do a Guitarist Of the Week (GOW) where one of the two picks a great guitarist to review. This is great because I've learned about guitarists I had never really paid attention to. It also inspires me to check out the guitar work on new albums. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

They also pick a song every week, usually from the Podsafe Music Network that highlights great guitar work .. very very very inspiring stuff. They review stuff they've tried, interview industry professionals, think up cool little contests and they're funny as heck to boot. They're just a pair of laid back guitarists who like to share their passion for guitars with the world.

I'm on a mini marathon, having listened to episodes 13 to 30 in the past two weeks and I plan on listening to all of them (84 episodes so far).

I also have to introduce myself in their forum section. Seems like a nice little community in there.

Check 'em out:

Pedal Board II

I got two pedals this weekend. I'm cleaning out the basement and decided to sell most of my CDs and XBOX old school games since I didn't use any of them (I have the XBOX 360 now). I grabbed an Equalizer pedal because I know I'll be tweaking my sound a lot, and got a new Heavy Metal Pedal because my old one hums too much. I wanted to play with the settings, but being the lazy guy that I am, I decided to find a way to not have to bend down all the time. Eureka! Put the pedal board on a the wtf is that called? The thing that holds music sheets?

Now I can teak my sound on the comfort of my couch while watching Sunday Night Football.