Captain Beefheart's 10 rules for guitarists are also useful life rules for anyone: "
Never Point Your Guitar At Anyone: Your instrument has more power than lightning. Just hit a big chord, then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.."
posted by tombola
on Jun 19, 2007 -
34 comments
JGuitar, a rather useful tool for those learning the guitar or experimenting with alternate tunings. You can even bookmark a
certain tuning.
posted by signal
on Apr 18, 2007 -
6 comments
"If you had Bruce playing with you," Dylan wrote, in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles, "that's all you would need to do just about anything."
Bruce Langhorne has quite the
discography. And a
hot sauce, to boot. And he's led quite the life. Here is Richie Unterberger's interview with Langhorne in Parts
One and
Two. And
here he talks with Unterberger about working with
Mimi and Richard Fariña.
On a personal note, I will add that his hot sauce is hot indeed. Will buy it again.
posted by y2karl
on Apr 13, 2007 -
6 comments
You really shouldn't miss the snazzy ukulele stylings of the great
Roy Smeck, strummer and showman extraordinaire, who was not only fast as greased lightning, but for whom the ukulele also occasionally functioned as a
wind or
percussion instrument. The man was indeed a
wizard of the strings: just give him a slide and watch him lay down that
Hawaiian sound. And as you'll see
here, he was still going strong in his later years.
[most links to YouTube]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Mar 23, 2007 -
15 comments
So you wanna be a rock and roll star. Here's a place to start.
GOSK, or the guitarist's online survival kit, is a very handy guide to both
scales and modes as well as all
chords in all positions on the neck. In order to put it all together, and map modes to chord progressions and really start jamming,
this little php widget is pretty helpful. Though in all things, even if you want to
learn from the masters, you should never forget
the basics. However, if you decide that using these online utilities to improve your performance is too much, you can always go
back to school, or else forego training entirely and
emulate rock star attitude and style in real life situations.
posted by psmealey
on Mar 20, 2007 -
18 comments
Finger tapping is a very fast guitar technique in which the picking hand is used to "tap" individual notes on the fretboard, while the fretting hand can either remain stationary or be used to do
hammer-ons/pull-offs to create even faster playing. Popularized in rock music by
Eddie van Halen (YT, great visual example) in the late 1970's, the technique has become almost essential for speed/metal guitar players. Although finger tapping has been dismissed as "wankery" by some, I think that the intense, jazzy stylings of
Stanley Jordan prove them wrong. (
here is Stanley playing two guitars!) For more tapping madness you can enjoy the furious, virtuous insanity of
Dragonforce (
full video), and be sure not to miss the speed genius of
Mr. Batio. Tapping isn't just for metal though, you can do it on a
bass or an
acoustic (amazing video).
Want to learn how?
This lesson should get you started.
posted by baphomet
on Dec 21, 2006 -
117 comments
The Riff-O-Matic will help you learn to play rock & roll guitar, or at the very least, will help you play several of the most famous riffs in rock & roll history. Using a combination of sheet music, tablature notation & embedded (flash) audio & (windowsmedia) video, the site will get you up & playing the intro to Stairway to Heaven in the guitar store in no time. If you don't have time to learn whole songs, there's even an abridged list of the
10 Greatest Rock Riffs of All Time.
posted by jonson
on Dec 18, 2006 -
35 comments
Here is the
Mississippi John Hurt Blues Foundation, the website, which is the creation of one Frank Delaney of Spokane. There's a great deal of guitar related material and a page of mp3's by fans, which includes several interesting originals by one Fred Bolden, a grand nephew. I always knew he had a son who played guitar and wondered why no one had ever tried to record him. Now there is a grand nephew playing, if nowhere near as sublimely as his great uncle, in roughly the same style.
Here is an interview of John Hurt from 1963, courtesy of Stefan Grossman's guitar video empire. It is a real delight.
Consider this a follow up to this
post. Not all of the links there are good. The
Mississippi John Hurt Guitar Tab Book, for instance, is now available only in
PDF format but well worth the download. And here is
an illustrated discography of John Hurt by another Stefan, Stefan Wirz, a subject of yet another
post back in the day.
posted by y2karl
on Oct 4, 2006 -
19 comments
For murder ballads, here's your
Mississippi John Hurt's Louis Collins and your
Grayson & Whitter's Ommie Wise. Then, for some early white blues bottleneck guitar, here's your
Frank Hutchison's K. C. Blues. Not to mention
Charley Patton's Screamin' And Hollerin' The Blues. All courtesy the Internet Archives
78 RPM tag. where there is way more--like Bix Beiderbecke's first record,
Davenport Blues, Louis Armstrong's
Ain't Misbehavin' and Geeshie Wiley's
Last Kind Words, among many others. Then, for more,
Nugrape Records has an
mp3 page. The standout there, at least for me, is Gus Cannon's
Poor Boy Long Ways From Home. As for their namesake, the Nugrape Twins, well, the Archive has the mp3 of
I've Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape. And don't let me omit mentioning
PublicDomain4U. They have
Mississippi John Hurt's Frankie, for one.
Tyrone's Record and Phonograph Links will lead you to more 78 RPM goodness. And don't forget the inestimable and erudite vacapinta first
directed us to
Dismuke's Virtual Talking Machine.
posted by y2karl
on Aug 25, 2006 -
48 comments
Hans Reichel (
previously) is a man of many talents. His own
site (flash/sound) is fun (often funny) and chock full of agreeably wacky sounds, but can take some time to navigate. Reichel hasn't made it easy for you if you happen to be in a hurry. You may well get stuck somewhere and just give up. That'd be a shame, though, cause you'd miss getting acquainted with the
guitars he makes and plays. Or how he
designs fonts. The
mixing board shenanigans are not to be missed (once you get past those curious little fellows in the brown hats), plus you can sorta kinda play his
daxophone yourself. And of course conduct your own little ensemble of
meercats when one of them finally comes out of hiding and says "Hallo! Play with me".
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Aug 3, 2006 -
6 comments
...Record collectors are typically thought of as irascible loners, but in the Washington of the ’50s and early ’60s, there existed a group of scruffy young blues and folk fans who could’ve given the Illuminati a run for their all-seeing eyes. They thought of themselves as the guardians of a tradition the rest of the world had either forgotten or misinterpreted. They adopted fake names. They invented strange mythologies. They hatched plans to bring their favorite historical figures back from the dead--or at least back from the commercial oblivion to which the music biz had consigned them. But most of all, they inspired admiration and awe. Though they never used the term themselves, this bunch of vintage-78 obsessives was known by others as the East Coast Blues Mafia.
The Thong Club
via FaheyGuitarPlayers
posted by y2karl
on Jul 13, 2006 -
20 comments
Guitar Virtuosity with feeling and sophistication... I forgot just how good a guitarist
Allan Holdsworth is. A similar player is
Scott Henderson, who these days is much more in touch with his blues/funk roots. His outside playing is delicious. Notice how they both build up their solos instead of starting off with all guns blazing with nowhere to go.
posted by BobsterLobster
on May 31, 2006 -
28 comments
Made most popular to many Americans as the closing song for the Grand Ole Opry programs, Will The Circle Be Unbroken was written in 1907 by Ada Habershon, an intensely religious young woman and acquaintance of
Dwight Moody and
Ira David Sankey. The music was "composed" by
Charles Gabriel, a popular songwriter and composer of the era who is often solely credited with the song, but while he may have put the notes down on paper, the tune itself already existed as the African-American spiritual Glory Glory / Since I Laid My Burden Down. [lots more inside]
posted by luriete
on May 26, 2006 -
18 comments
Kid Congo Powers , noted guitar stylist, teenage president of
The Ramones Fan Club, erstwhile member of
The Cramps,
The Gun Club, and
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (also known for his collaborations with
Julee Cruise,
The Legendary Stardust Cowboy,
Khan and others) has produced a
two part online autobiography of sorts for
New York Night Train. It includes
oral histories, available as transcriptions or MP3s, pages from
his Cramps scrapbook, a vintage
Creem article,
free MP3s from his back catalogue, and, of course, his
recipe for enchiladas.
posted by jack_mo
on Feb 12, 2006 -
6 comments
While my guitar fiercely weeps Next on YouTubeFilter: Prince shares a stage with Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and George Harrison's son Dhani, at Harrison's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No, scratch that: Prince ain't sharin' with nobody -- that stage is all his.
posted by Artifice_Eternity
on Feb 9, 2006 -
106 comments
The Six String Sonics are about reinventing the guitar.
The conventional guitar has many limitations. For example, it binds the player to chords that one can hold with one hand, or melodies that can easily be reached with one hand. As a result, guitar compositions have come to sound very similar to each other. We created Six String Sonics to rid the guitar of these limitations, and make room for more possibilities in composition. A
video of their debut perfomance.
[embedded MOV file]
posted by KevinSkomsvold
on Feb 3, 2006 -
43 comments
I'm not really a fan of this style of guitar playing but
THIS was good. It takes a minute before he starts to nail it. It's worth the wait. (embedded video-possibly slow download-worked for me)
posted by snsranch
on Feb 2, 2006 -
58 comments
So You Think You Hate Country Music? Then listen to this. The roots of American country music may surprise you. In this series of NPR programs, trace the gradual development of real country music through the first half of the 20th century. Learn how a woman's instrument of the late 1800s, the parlor guitar, became the the central symbol of country and rock; see how African-American musical forms like gospel and blues meshed with the development of country and early rock and influenced the traditional forms in turn; listen to German-Mexican hybrids of accordian style; find out why women had so many honky-tonk torch songs to sing in the late 40s. The series contains hours of content (narrative, interviews, music tracks), and a multitude of excellent links for deeper digging.
posted by Miko
on Feb 2, 2006 -
111 comments
