We actually jammed! New song in the making

Justin and I got together yesterday for the first jam session in over two weeks. Those weeks felt like an eternity, but there was finally some free time for us to get together and play. With my amp still in limbo, I needed to use the Fender amp while Justin used the Mesa/Boogie rectifier you can see in the picture. We got a new song going while messing around a bit, and it sounds promising. The opening riffs are dueling clean guitars, which sound great if we get the right harmonies. Justin and I tend to have good ears for that kind of stuff when we play together, so I think this new song will turn out very good. Once we have a solid foundation for what we want it to sound like, I'll put together an audio sample for you all to hear.

James played drums for us for a little while yesterday as well, but with a broken snare (pretty much the most important piece of the set), he had limited resources. He could still use the snare, it just didn't sound right. I was able to get some video of him playing. I apologize once again for the lack of brightness in the video, that's just how it looks when I record using my digital camera, which is about 6 years old. Here's the video:

I thought I'd put that out there, to prove how good James really is at drums. He does a great job for what he has to work with, which isn't all that much.

Next post, which could be later today, I'm going to discuss my equipment and what I plan on doing to get new equipment in the future, for which I believe I'm overdue.

Midterms slowing us down...

This has been a slow couple of weeks for us. Only one small jam session has taken place in about 12 days, and James, Justin and Mike have all been swamped with midterm work. Almost every time I called to see if anyone wanted to jam, they all said they had either a paper to write or big test to study for. They weren't lying; they all have midterms for all their classes this week. James is majoring in finance, Mike and Justin entrepreneurship, which can make for some interesting yet challenging courses. This was certainly the time of the year where we would be slowed form jamming, and there were no surprises there. Justin has classes off today, so hopefully he'll want to get a little jam going this afternoon at least, before I go to work. I'm itching to play, because I've been very busy with the guitar when I've had free time at my apartment. Hopefully I'll have something worth posting about later today, but for now I'm in jam session limbo...

Finally have some audio for you; a review of another man's blog

I found a website at zshare.com that allows me to upload and host audio files, so now I can embed them in my posts. Here's my personal rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary". I apologize again for not singing, that will happen in due time...But I worry more about the guitar work anyway. Here it is:

If the embedded file doesn't work, click here to download the MP3.

Hopefully it does work, though...

Now I want to focus on the main topic of this post, which is...another blog. It was quite a surf session for me looking for a blog about someone having his own small musical group. I was actually shocked at how hard it was to find something, but I eventually came across Beethoven's Yard; the author's name is anonymous, unless it's Beethoven! He writes mainly about his ventures in a small music group, and tells brief yet detailed stories about trials and tribulations that come up with every gig. He seems to know a lot about music; at 43, he's had plenty of time to learn. That's the biggest difference between him and me is the age difference, and the fact that he actually performs concerts. So I guess his blog is a more far advanced (time-wise) version of this blog.

His posts are typically pretty long-winded, but I give him a mulligan on that, as he's probably not a professional writer. His stories are interesting however, especially for someone like myself who doesn't have a whole lot of experience playing live music for audiences. He also has a comfortable look to his blog; it's very easy to read.

That's all I can say about that, until next time my friends...

Head is out for repair; spotlighting one of my favorite guitar players

Yesterday was a pretty miserable day for me. Not to mention the weather was disgusting, I had to go get my broken Line 6 head at the house to bring it somewhere for repair. I searched up and down the internet to, almsot fortuitously, run into a music repair shop right on campus at Berklee College of Music. If there were any group of people I'd trust 100% with fixing my equipment, it would be Berklee alumni. The guy said it could end up costing close to $200, but that was before he even looked at the amp and he said that only happens if the main function source of the amp is broken, and mine is most likely just a case of overheating. The first time it broke, Line 6 tried to charge me $120 to replace the part, but I argued that off. It'll be about 2 weeks before I hear from them again. Their website can be found at this link. Just crossing my fingers at this point, hoping it won't be too long, hard or expensive to fix the head.

Now I'd like to spotlight one of my favorite guitar players. His name is Andy McKee, and anyone who surfs Youtube even occasionally must have come across one of his videos. He is a classical acoustic guitarist, and he plays only with his fingers. After you watch the below video, you'll understand why he doesn't use, or need, a guitar pick.

His finger movements are uncanny, especially with his thumb. The way he plays, he sounds like 4 or 5 guitars at once. That's an ingenious cover of Toto's "Africa," which made me actually like what I previously thought was just another piece of 1980s cheese. This video has nearly 3 million hits on Youtube, which at its time was a tremendous number. His most-viewed video, "Drifting" has over 7.5 million hits, putting it in the top 50 most-viewed music videos. He has 5 videos ranked in the top 20 for all-time ratings for music videos, all with at least 4,526 ratings.

I'm sure he's translated his monumental success on Youtube into something bigger in terms of sales, but I really feel he's missing a huge marketing opportunity. He doesn't really need a band, because his guitar work and percussion styles work well on their own musically, but lyrics and vocals is something he could definitely add. I would keep them to a minimum, as to not take much away from the guitar, but if he could put together a song with a nice hook he could experience even bigger success.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll be posting later today with another video!