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Wednesday, 22 July 2009 22:15 |
 By: Jake McVey - GJD Contributor
Hello, GuitarJamDaily friends!
I recently opened up for country’s "new" artist, Darius Rucker. As many of you know, he is not new to this industry. He was with Hootie and The Blowfish. Of course I had to play a little prank and sent a letter to Darius saying, "Hootie, I have your blowfish hostage.” It’s always great to break the ice....
Well, from where we left off last time in GJD, once you get the right people on your team bus and put them in the right seats -- then what?
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Thursday, 25 June 2009 14:32 |
Hello Friends and Fans,
Prashant Aswani here and I wanted to introduce myself and tell you about a series of new columns that I will be writing for GuitarJamDaily featuring some of my specialties. On the menu we have:
1. Production: Making an album from beginning to end. Creating an initial concept or genre. Making a harmony into a fully developed song with a hook and melody that leave the listener wanting more. Creating parts that give continuity to the rhythmic groove.
2. Tone search: Finding that perfect lead tone that fits the song. Isolating frequencies so the tone cuts in a mix. Exploring pedals and amps and guitars and pickups and mic pres.
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 09:59 |
By Jake McVey - GJD Contributor
I recently got introduced to GJD, and, after talking with Ken Volpe, I was asked to talk a little about Life on the Road from an up-and-coming artist's perspective -- day-to-day trials and struggles, and all that entails, as a new, 'breaking-edge artist.'
So, first, let’s get introduced.
My name is Jake McVey, born and raised in Southeast Iowa. After graduating school and performing locally and regionally for 5 years, I decided to take that giant leap and dive-in headfirst. I have been touring full-time for the past 2 ½ years.
And what a dive into the deep end it was! Sell your possessions, sell your truck, and sell your home. Buy a bus and throw in the fishing pole!
My whole approach to this music business was a little different from the normal one. Simply put, it was because of that word business. Like most everyone else: you get into this for the love of what you do, taking those given talents and striving to perfect them. But that darn word business sometimes can get in the way. You can only do what you love to do if the funds are there to support it. Otherwise, it’s just an expensive hobby.
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Thursday, 14 May 2009 14:13 |
 By Carl Verheyen - GJD Contributor
Over the last 10 years I’ve put all my energy into my solo career and tried to step back from the day to day grind of studio work. But I still keep a hand in it, especially the high quality projects that come in now and again that you just can’t turn down. One of the biggest “culture shocks” in this dual career existence occurs when I fly home from some faraway land and the next morning find myself on a major studio sound stage with a 105 piece orchestra and some difficult music in front of me. I go from the elation of playing my own music in front of a live audience for weeks on end, with the confidence and road-honed chops of a well-oiled machine (my band), straight into the frying pan of sight reading a motion picture score with some of the best musicians in the world.... and a whole lot of them!
Never mind the jet lag, your adrenalin takes over when you find yourself in the hot seat. I think the challenge is rethinking your role as a musician. A band leader and solo artist on a concert tour must constantly make decisions based on his or her own artistic integrity, such as set list choices and the ebb and flow of “the show.” I work very hard at being the best improviser I can be, and make sure each show is a unique event when the band plays live. But none of these skills come into play when working with an orchestra on a movie date.
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Thursday, 16 April 2009 10:27 |
 By Chip Lovitt, GJD Contributor
I was a Jeff Beck fan even before I knew who Jeff Beck was.
Back in 1965 I was a rock-crazed 12-year-old with a cheapo electric guitar and Fender Princeton Reverb amp, and a voracious appetite for 45-rpm single records, especially ones by bands of the post-Beatles British Invasion.
I’d been hooked, line and sinker, by the Yardbird’s first smash hit, “For Your Love.” When “Heart Full of Soul” came out in the summer of ’65, I was mesmerized by the stinging, fuzzed-up guitar intro and solo. But since I didn’t have the Yardbirds’ albums, I didn’t know who played them. Months later, I heard another Yardbirds’ hit, “Shapes of Things,” and was knocked out by its reverb-drenched chords and the wailing guitar solo. But I still didn’t have a clue who was creating these powerful new guitar sounds. Then in May 1966, I found out when I bought the Yardbirds’ next smash hit, “Over, Under, Sideways, Down.” The song featured this fiery, psychedelic sitar-like sound that again, did not sound like any other guitarist I’d ever heard. Then I turned the single over, put the turntable needle down and out poured this racing, revved-up blues-boogie rave-up called “Jeff’s Boogie.” Who was this Jeff guy, I wondered.
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Thursday, 26 March 2009 11:22 |
 By Chip Lovitt - GJD Contributor
March marks a special time of year for the Allman Brothers Band. It was on March 26th back in 1969 that the original members of the band, including session man turned bandleader, Duane Allman, met at drummer Butch Truck’s house outside Jacksonville, Florida, to play together for the first time.
March is also a special time for ABB fans in the New York area, too. Beginning in the early 1990s, the Brothers have taken up a weeks-long residency at New York’s Beacon Theater for an annual series of shows. They’ve become a spring ritual for New York-based fans, and the 40th anniversary shows promised to be the best of all—for a variety of reasons.
One is the fact that the band is tighter than ever. Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks have gelled into perhaps the most powerful one-two guitar punch in rock music. Whether trading blues-rock riffs or exploring the sonic possibilities of slide guitar, the pair are masters of their craft and fully capable of duplicating and building on the trademark twin harmony lead guitar sounds made famous by Duane and Dickey Betts. Gregg Allman is in great voice, and the remarkable rhythm section of drummers Butch Trucks and Jaimoe and bassist Oteil Burbridge is one of rock’s most powerful and propulsive.
But what also made the 40th anniversary shows noteworthy were the special guest stars that joined the Brothers on stage each night. In the days before the show I caught, guests such as the Band’s Levon Helm, Phish’s Trey Anastasio, Robert Randolph, Sheryl Crow, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas, John Hammond, Jr., Boz Scaggs, and Johnny Winter all dropped by to jam with the band.
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Wednesday, 18 February 2009 15:49 |
Carl Verheyen – GJD Contributor
I believe the longer you play the guitar, the more defined your style becomes. This is not only true as it applies to improvising, but when it comes to chords as well. Most of us began by playing all the open position “cowboy chords” on an acoustic guitar. In my case this was exactly what the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Stones and The Who were playing and therefore exactly what I wanted to learn. This vocabulary is also essential for country music, bluegrass and many styles that fall under the banner of rock. No matter how advanced you become on the guitar, you’ll still need these rudimentary chord forms.
At 12 years old I was shown the barre chord, and the world opened up a bit more. I was in a band that played “Just Like Me” by Paul Revere and the Raiders, so I had to learn to play them fast. This chord family gave me a working knowledge and the ability to play major, minor and dominant 7th chords in any key. I felt I had arrived!
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Tuesday, 03 February 2009 15:10 |
 By Phil Keaggy - GJD Contributor
Little did I know that when I started on the guitar in 1961, I’d be here in 2009 writing to fellow guitarists on GuitarJamDaily.com about my experiences in recording and production of music. I have been fortunate enough to be directly and indirectly involved with dozens of recordings over these past decades.
One of my most recent endeavors involved me doing some guitar work for a friend of mine in Kansas City. My signal path was as follows: I recorded my electric through a Line 6 Pod to a Line 6 DL4 rack mounted delay. I then ran stereo out of the DL4 to a Berring analog to digital converter. The final destination was to a stereo input into Pro Tools. Doing this enables me to dial in a sound or delay on the fly, making adjustments as I select phrases to play. I also may change the various reverb, modulation and delay settings as I go. Once a phrase is recorded, I may also tweak the wave file in Pro Tools using an Audio Suite Plug-in.
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Tuesday, 13 January 2009 01:50 |
 By Jim Basara - GJD
The dry winter season is upon us, and if I was forced to pick the single most dangerous environment for a guitar (other than in the hands of Pete Townsend when he’s in the mood to smash one) it would be cold, dry air.
I love getting paid to repair guitars, just like a doctor is happy to get paid to fix people. But just as that doctor hates seeing people injured because they were stupid, I hate seeing guitars that are injured because their owners were neglectful. Yet every winter there comes a rash of “neck injuries” that could have been avoided if the owner made just a little effort to control the environment for their guitars. If you had a beautiful car, would you choose to park it under a dripping pine tree, or where it was constantly being sprayed with ocean spray? Of course not. So why do most guitar players not spend a small amount of money to keep properly maintain the guitars they claim to love so much?
The principle is quite simple. Wood, like our skin, needs moisture to keep from drying out. If wood, like our skin, dries out, bad things happen. The effects include finish cracking, neck warping, back and top separation and exposed fret ends. Neck warping is probably the most common. Remember that neck tension is set when the neck is humidified and supple. If the neck dries out, it becomes brittle and weak, and the neck tends to reverse warp under the pressure of the truss rod. Thinner, unfinished necks are the most prone to such problems. Jackson necks, for instance, are famous for this, and I have reshaped a variety of these necks because some poor soul let the humidity drop to under 20% in their house for a week or two. All of the effects of dry conditions can be major repairs and some can be absolutely catastrophic. Having the top of your multi-thousand dollar instrument crack because you didn’t spend $20 on a case humidifier can qualify you for this year’s Darwin Awards.
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Monday, 22 December 2008 23:07 |
By Carl Verheyen - GJD Contributor
Last month I talked about the modes and how they applied to the contexts of various chord progressions. You can begin to see how the modes work over certain chords, because chords are nothing more than stacks of notes from those scales. Now you need to know where the chords come from. Follow these simple directions and this will all be revealed!
Here is how you start:
1) Write the C major scale out using whole notes on the top line of a 12 stave piece of manuscript paper.
2) Over the first note C, go up a third to E and write it above that first C note. Go up another 3rd to G and write it above the E.
3) Now you have a C triad. Do the same on the next note D. It becomes D F A, a Dm triad. The next chord becomes E G B, an Em triad, and so on up the scale.
4) Stack 3rds on each note in the scale until all 8 notes are harmonized in 3rds.
5) Go back and stack one more 3rd on each chord. This puts the 7th on the chords, making Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7, Bm7b5, Cmaj7
6) Carry the 4th note of the C major scale, which is F down to the next stave and write out the notes from F to F on that line.
7) Go up to the 4th degree and flat that note, which is Bb.
8) Continue as before building the triads first and then adding the 7ths all the way through the key of F. The chords in the new key become Fmaj7, Gm7, Am7, Bbmaj7, C7, Dm7, Em7b5, Fmaj7.
9) Continue through the flat keys: C F Bb Eb Ab Db and Gb by bringing down the 4th note, writing out the scale degrees, adding the existing flats from the above line and flatting the 4th degree. This teaches you key signatures as well as the diatonic chords in each key.
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