After the tremendous fun in getting the Epiphone Hummingbird, I would like to now let you know how it has been treating me. Before I get into it, it is important to note here that the guitar does NOT come with any sort of case, hard or otherwise — I ordered a soft travel case because that is how I plan on carrying the guitar when I go shorter distances. I can always spring for a hard shell case later when the need arises.
As a burgeoning — bludgeoning? — Bending Blues Guitarist, I am shocked, SHOCKED!, by the bad advice and the rotten technique I witness on the internets, and on YouTube, demonstrating the wrong way to properly stretch a new set of guitar strings.
Continue reading → The In Situ Strings Stretch Technique and How to NOT Stretch Your Guitar Strings
I love my ’65 Fender Princeton Reverb Amp — but there are times in a beginner Bluesman’s life when you need quiet and discretion while rehearsing or recording. Enter the Vox series of amPlug “speaker replacements” that allow you to practice and perform in private with some of the greatest sounds you will ever hear.
The 2010 World Cup is well under way and I am reminded of attending a game with my father in 1994. Sitting in a section of fans of the Italian team, we had a percussion instrument — I wish I could find its name but I have been unable to do so thusfar. It consisted of a couple of wooden mallets with cymbals on them that swung into a central mallet by shaking it. Plenty of people in the Italy section had them and we would yell and shake them hard, making a lot of noise.
If you’re a guitarist, and if you hope to learn and play popular music, you need to get your hands on the fantastic Tascam CDGT2 Guitar Trainer. The CDGT2 is a magnificent piece of machinery crafted to help give you the best, and biggest, confidence boost in your young and maturing playing performance.
I have reviewed a lot of amps. Some of them cost a thousand dollars. Some of them were only a few hundred to own. When I saw the VOX Valvetronix VT15 on sale over the weekend for around $150.00USD, I had to leap into the fray and pay me my money down.
In 2005, The Mountain Goats released an emotionally rich album called “The Sunset Tree.” The entire album was full of references to John Darnielle’s painful childhood and the years of abuse from his late stepfather. Around the same time that this album was released, The Mountain Goats released a vinyl only alternate version called “Come, come to the Sunset Tree” that had stripped down songs that were just John with his acoustic guitar.
Diction not only includes patterns of speech, Diction can also mean the lack of a spoken word: Silence. Silence is a frequently overlooked, but powerful, meme to employ in an effective life stage performance.
I have one hard rule about lyric writing: Use the Singular form over the Plural in every instance. “Boy” is better than “Boys” and “Snake” is better than “Snakes” and “Love” is better than “Loves.”
If you play the electric guitar, you likely have a stompbox or two — a “stompbox” is an electronic device that sits between your guitar and your amp to change the sound of your guitar in dramatic and subtle ways — and I have a whole drawerful of stompboxes that I bought, tried, and put away in my drawer.
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