My Online Guitar Lessons

Showtime people! We party before the show at Mike’s with some Little Caesar’s Hot and Ready Pizzas. I ate too much, for the record. So we load up our vehicles and head over to the show.

We talk to the girl that invited me to play the show and who put on the whole breast cancer fundraiser. We find out when we are up, and get our equipment set up as much as possible at the side of the stage. We talk to some of the other bands, almost all of them known by our band through previous shows, school, or childhood memories. We get all dressed up ready to play, then find our own little table at the back to watch the show and sell our invisible merch to our hundreds of gorgeous and single lady friends.

To see a review of the bands and how our performance went, check out the lead guitarist Mike’s blog here.

The band who won the battle (Corporate Saturday) did an amazing show, even though they did an acoustic set of their usual full band music. They actually have a CD out in music stores, and be sure to check them out as they are a great group of guys with some awesome music.

Until next time, stay sweet.

Jesse

Well, I’ll tell you who else to go. We tried out one kid name Pat who Mike used to jam with, but unfortunately he was not dedicated and didn’t leave us with a good impression. So we’ve gone through 3 drummers so far. At the beginning of the summer, we had a friend Christian who we wanted to play drums for us when we started up a band. Since then, he has been living 3 hours or so away working for the summer. So that’s a no-go. Or is it?

Luck would have it that Christian has exactly one week off before our show, leaving the day after even. So 4 drummers later Christian comes down and we practice our butts off to get our set down before the show. Our set list is as follows:

Face Down- The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

All Around Me- Flyleaf

Sorrow- Flyleaf

The Kill- 30 Seconds to Mars (We did this one acoustic last show)

Amazing Because It Is - The Almost (A song we got the best response from last show, Crystal nails it)

That’s What You Get - Paramore

So we do the best we can and put it all together between the 5 of us…

Last Friday, (4th of July), our band played a battle of the bands against some great local talent in support of breast cancer. While we didn’t take home the trophy, what a great learning experience it was for us.

I blogged previously about my acoustic show with my good friends Crystal and Mike, and since then, our band has expanded. When we took what we learned from that show, we decided that we needed to change our musical direction somewhat. We decided that Crystal was such an amazing singer that she should lead, and leave me and Mike up to the guitar work. That was fine with us, and we also decided we wanted a fuller sound, including a drummer and bass. We turned from a small acoustic show to a full band when we had another opportunity to play live.

We looked at our previous setlist, took our favourite songs out, and incorporated them into a new set. Half of the songs we chose to cover had a female lead vocalist; bands like Flyleaf and Paramore. Now it just came down to learning and practicing the new songs as a band. We luckily found a bass player - Andrew - who Mike used to play with in a previous band. So now we were up to a four man band, and looking for a drummer. This is where it gets interesting. We decide on a band name and take some promo shots for some flyers for our show next Friday, July 19th.

However, we are still stuck for a drummer. We literally ask everyone we know for a drummer, and come across a few prospects. We started with my friend David who I jammed with previously, who picked up the songs quick and it looked like we were ready to go. Then after a few practices, he informed us he could not make the July 4th show. Now we look for another drummer. We get a recommendation from David for this amazing drummer named Justin. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to practice with him before our first show, as he left the week before the show for a few days. 2 drummers down, who else to go?

Okay, so it has been some time since I’ve last posted. I’m not going to make any excuses like me being away in Atlanta and Chicago last week and how I haven’t been putting the time in it like I should — so I won’t.

Check out my good friend Mike’s latest guitar project where he tricks out his old Jay Turser. His blog about it can be found here.

Watch this short little photo montage of his latest endeavor - the paint job.

It seems to be more and more popular these days for guitarists to play a flurry of notes all over the fretboard at blinding speeds. I won’t lie to you and say I don’t want to play faster, but when does it reach the point of being too ridiculous? When does it just become boring to see someone play insanely fast.

In my opinion, I think it happens when you lose the heart in it all. Can you play fast and from your heart? I don’t see why not. But when technique and skill take over meaning and passion in guitar playing, I’d say it’s gone too far.

What do you think? Name some guitarists you think play fast with feeling, and others who just play fast. Of course, it’s all up to opinion.

Just play from your heart.

Last December there was quite a bit of buzz over the revolutionary Gibson Les Paul Robot guitar. The first shipment of 4,000 hit stores on the Friday and were sold out by Monday.

One of the most passionate requests was for an SG Model of the Robot Guitar, and Gibson answered those demands. Check out the full guitar specs and story of the Gibson Robot SG Special here.

My guitar teacher put it this way, “In performing, you want to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses…in practicing, you want to find your weaknesses, and work through them until they are no longer a weakness.”

He asked me to play some songs I had been working on, while he analyzed and pointed out my weaknesses. While at first putting me on the spot, I played some riffs I was practicing for him, and he noticed a few things:

1) My timing - Something I had told him was my weakness before playing. The thing was, my timing wasn’t off because I can’t keep a beat, but I was being timid with my picking hand. First of all, I had been using a hard pick to try and speed up my picking. The only trouble was I wasn’t being aggressive in my picking. In trying to minimize my picking movements, I had lost my timing and tone with the hard pick. He then handed me a .60mm Dunlop, which is like a sheet of paper compared to the Dunlop Jazz III’s I was using before. He then told me to exaggerate my picking movements and play as aggressively as possible while maintaining tone. When making more deliberate movements, my timing had actually improved. The thinner pick forced me to work harder, as well as being able to control the aggressiveness of my picking more than with the thicker pick.

2) Left hand speed - Something every guitarist wants to improve, as you always need to play just a little bit faster. There are many exercises which can help build left hand strength and speed, which I fully recommend. However, if you’re not doing them right, they can actually be more detrimental than good. I have a disease in my playing I like to refer to as “flying fingers”. Not flying as in really fast fingers, but flying as in the fingers that aren’t fretting a note like to “fly away” from the fretboard. This distance between the fingers not playing a note and the fretboard slows down my playing a lot more than I thought it did. Keeping the fingers close to the fretboard, even when they aren’t playing a note is something many guitarists need to focus on.

3) Practicing with distortion - Don’t. No cheating allowed when practicing scales and hard riffs. You’re giving yourself the illusion of playing it right when you might be sacrificing tone and accuracy. I have been guilty of this for quite some time, but playing everything clean helps me to see my mistakes and weaknesses as they really are. It is frustrating at first trying to get it perfect without any fancy effects to make you sound better. But this way if you practice to perfection clean, once you add the distortion and effects, you’ll be a much better player.

I challenge you to sit down and either record and critique yourself, or get someone else to analyze where your weaknesses might be, so you can really focus on practicing through - not around - your weaknesses.

Just saw an instructional video by Greg Howe, and I was quite impressed with the technique he uses.
He calls it “Hammer-Ons From Nowhere”, and what a cool concept.

I guess he is building a lesson workshop website that he’s plans on releasing in the summer at www.ghworkshops.com.

Be sure to check out his instructional video, as well as some of his songs where he uses the technique- such as “A Delicacy”.

We got up on stage without an introduction or saying anything to the crowd first. We just stepped up to our mics, and started playing through our set.

Not being professional showmen or anything, I feel we did pretty well. Our nerves were quite calm as we have all been on stage and performed before, just not in this setting.

We should have interacted a little more with the crowd - introduced ourselves at least - but I guess we just wanted to play. We made it through all our songs almost perfectly, and the feedback we received from everyone after was positive and encouraging.

I had a friend record the show so hopefully I’ll get the DVD soon and upload it to YouTube and get it up on my blog soon.