It doesn’t need to be complicated to kick fucking ass.

A few weeks ago, I saw “It Might Get Loud”, the guitarists’ documentary of The Edge, Jack White, and … thanks to Jack White I forgot the name of the legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist… John Bonham… no he played drums. Shit. It’ll come to me.

All kidding aside, I owe it to Jack White. He personally, single-handedly rekindled (via a gallon shot of gasoline to the fire) my drive to play the guitar again after a not-so-brief hiatus. And if you’re a White Stripes fan, check out their latest live compilation of the tour they did in Canada a few years ago. It’s on DVD as well, which is great fun.

I’ve got Catch Hell Blues stuck in my head this week. Jolene had that title last week, and I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself became ingrained in my DNA the week before.

What I liked about his interviews on either DVD was this: It doesn’t matter what you play, or how you play, or how much you know. Play what YOU want, what sounds good to YOU. Please yourself, and give it all you’ve got. This is just a strong reiteration from Zen Guitar: Enjoy yourself with your guitar, no matter what you play. Only feel comfortable improvising with the first interval of the minor pentatonic? Then, brother, jam on that for as long as you can, as long as you want, and let your spirit loose.

As I wrote on my facebook page a few days ago, you’re not splitting the atom, you’re playing your guitar. It doesn’t need to be complicated to kick fucking ass.

-Don

Well, this has been an interesting week. I started a C# programming course online, and I finally received Planet of Rock’s ‘Hard Rock Guitar Style’ backing tracks double CD package. I ordered it 12 days ago - I thought PoR was based in California, so shipping shouldn’t have been a long process. Well, turns out, the CDs came from Thailand. (I actually initiated a PayPal claim, since I thought something happened and I needed to protect my $15.)

Now that they’re here, though, I’m going to give them a pretty good review. 18 tracks and there’s quite a lot to like. With, at my count, four of the 18 tracks being slower ballad-y numbers, plenty more are hard charging ditties, and a good number are just straight forward rock-ish. Pay no attention to the dumb track names (a ballad named “Lucifer’s Love“? that’s just icky.) One of them is sweet old-school “And Justice for All”-era Metallica, named fittingly, “Masters of Metal.“  There are some sample clips on the product page so you can hear that you’re getting real honest-to-goodness studio recorded rock music.

CD one has ‘Hard Rock‘ and ‘Heavy Metal‘ styles of backing tracks; the second CD has ‘Rock Ballads‘ and ‘Soft Rock‘ styles of tracks (note: ballads is misspelled on the cds, as ‘ballards’ indicating that there’s perhaps a bit more Thailand in the production of these otherwise decent CDs than you’d think otherwise.)

High-quality rythym guitar, drums, and bass music make up the 33 backing tracks on two CDs. No vocals, no lead guitar. They’re instrumental music tracks. Backing tracks are made primarily for you to practice your lead / solo / improvisational skills against. Backing tracks also make you adjust to the music - tempo changes, key changes. Your musical imagination really gets to working, as you work to come up with different arrangements every time you play a track.

One of the more evocative tracks is titled Think Pink in Gm. It’s on the second CD in the Soft Rock category.It really hearkens back to the “Wish You Were Here” days of Pink Floyd, and when listening to the track on its own you can just hear David Gilmour playing soulfully - it invites you to do so yourself!

I wish that this Hard Rock guitar style backing tracks package came with the following information: beats-per-minute and the musical key that each track is recorded in. If you’re really a noob, you’ll want to stick with the tracks that are slower than others, and it’d be handy if that was labelled somewhere. And while the key of a few of the tracks are printed on the CDs themselves, it would’ve helped if the tracks came with documentation indicating what key they were recorded in, you could go right to a particular scale or set of scales instead of trying to figure out what key your playing would work best with a particular track. Some might also think the tracks are a little vanilla. Well, that may be, but the idea is to have a library of tracks to choose from. I am sure that at least some of these tracks will get your motor running.

The CDs aren’t shipped in a fancy jewel case and don’t have any documentation, just simply labelled discs sent in a padded mailer.

I love backing tracks for practice and just plain fun guitar playing. You can check out a better written article on the topic here.

Happy Weekend to all!

-the Noob.

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Just released is the title: Rock 101 - Combining Licks and Chords by Jody Worrell. It’s a downloadable Quicktime video lesson that will teach you an essential rock guitar technique. Jody will walk you through a series of guitar parts that switch between chords and licks. This is a technique that is often used in a “single guitar” setting to add diversity to your sound. Detailed instruction is given for each riff and then it’s practiced along with a jam track. The download also includes a .pdf of the tablature. Rock 101: Combining Licks & Chords package. 26 minute video instruction, printed material, and a jam track to practice against.

Within the past month, I’ve purchased and enjoyed Blues Licks 101 and Rock Rhythm Guitar audio/video lessons, both at a $4.99 price-tag each.

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They’re professionally created videos - no YouTube quality here. Stereo audio backing tracks, and high quality printable material. The full package. If you haven’t seen their stuff, check them out. Terrific, professional video/print/audio instruction for five bucks? Ain’t no better deal than that.

Perhaps you’ve heard of GuitarRising, the soon-to-be-released (how many times have we been whispered that) guitar play/instruction ‘game’ that, unlike Red Octane, uses a real -gasp- guitar plugged into your computer.

Boing! Disney, very quietly, is releasing their own real-guitar-game, tentatively titled Star Guitarist.
The gang over at GuitarNoize posted the Wired.com video of Disney Star Guitarist. Since I’m a lazy mofo tonight, I thought I’d just post a link to their page, saving myself the backbreaking trouble of embedding the video here.

Please say that there’s more music involved than the High School Musical 2 theme, or a shredding rendition of “Beauty and the Beast.” But think - if you’ve spent hours upon hours wasting time - I mean playing - Guitar Hero, you could’ve actually been learning bonafide guitar skills on something like this. Will this and GuitarRising be the death knell for GuitarHero? Instead of red, blue, and orange plastic buttons that are half the size of a credit card, you have to learn how to play real (colored) strings. The ‘game’ can be used by any regular electric guitar, and the included 3/4ths size guitar is playable as a regular instrument (made by Washburn.)

I’ve uploaded snippets (approximately 20 second .wav files will open in a new window) from 5 drum tracks to give you an idea of how cool they really are:

Getting the drum track out of the box and into your amplifier/speakers is a snap. Three steps, really: (click the images for a larger version)

Step One:

Press the Songs/Drums button (shown by yellow arrow on the left) so that your screen looks like the screen indicated by the orange arrow (middle). You may need to use the left/right directional pad (smaller circular button indicated by the yellow arrow on the right) to make sure that the DRUMS tab is highlighted on the screen.

Step Two:

When you turn the large rotating knob (indicated by the yellow arrow on the right) you will scroll through the available drum tracks listed. Note that there are three numbers on the left side of the drum track names  - these numbers indicate the beats per minute (BPM) that that particular drum track is recorded at. Want a slow, smoldering bluesy drum track, or one that doesn’t blister along at a rate too fast for you to play along with? You’ll wanna stay under 100 BPM probably. Lots of great drum tracks for that. Also, by default, JM4 will play a few second sample of what the drum track is like.

You like the sample you heard? Ready to play?

Step Three:

Hit the second footswitch button (indicated here by the yellow arrow) that’s marked ‘Play’. Your selected drum track will begin. And it ain’t no midi 80’s Commodore 64 bleep fest. Quite often the drum tracks start off with a count off, or drumstick clicks. Close your eyes and you can imagine Carmine Appice is there in your garage, whaling away at the skins all for you! What an awesome investment in your guitar-playing future you’ve made!

Hit the same silver footswitch button to bring the drumming to a stop. Take a breath. Stretch fingers. And… begin again.

I really have an affinity for nice fretboard inlays. Dots are boring. The C-1 Plus has these cool ‘vector’ inlay designs. I also really love the string-through-body design, a unique touch.

And the color is gorgeous. I like how it is metal- and heavy alt-appropriate without making me feel like the Prince of Darkness. I made an offer to a fellow who was selling his on eBay last week… I wasn’t sure I had any luck with the offer, but I received the email with an invoice to pay my seller, and I got it! UPS tracking says it’ll arrive tomorrow! I just may feel a cold coming on… *cough* and may not make it into work Tuesday.

UPDATE March 1, 2009: UPS delivered my C-1 Monday afternoon as they quoted. This is a phenomenal guitar! What surprised me the most initially was the light weight of the guitar. The Schecter C-1 is a feather compared to my respectable Jay Turser 200D Les Paul copy. The fretboard inlays are truly gorgeous, and the curves of the guitar’s body, not just the ouside but the arching and contour Schecter gave this guitar is awesome. I liked this upgrade from Jay Turser to Schecter like going from a Ford Taurus (which I own) to a 240 Kompressor. There are little dots along the binding on the upper side of the neck to indicate the 3, 5, 7, 9th etc frets.And the frets themselves are like buttah! Manufacturers of some cheap guitars, in an attempt to cut costs, do zero finishing to the frets themselves, and I’ve picked up a few guitars that nearly broke the skin of my hands, the edges of their frets were so rough. Not on my Schecter C-1 - polished fret ends! This is quality, baby!

And I now understand the hooplah over Grover tuners. Precise adjustments can be made with high quality hardware. I’m going to love improving as a guitar player with my Schecter.

I don’t notice much of a tonal difference, but I ascribe that to the fact that I run through the Line6 JM4 box, with *some* sort of amp or effect. The previous owner described it correctly regarding its oh-so-slight neck twist, which is entirely unnoticable to me. The guitar was in probably better condition than I was expecting, too - there are no marks or scratches anywhere on the guitar. Buying a used guitar is certainly a way to get something that might normally be a little cost-prohibitive. Maybe you’re after a Schecter C-1 Plus yourself? Try here!

Again, I must repeat: I’m not an accomplished guitarist, nor am I an accomplished Line6 JM4 user either. Yet.
But I was having fun with my guitar and the JM4, and I created another very brief recording. I thought, though, that my soloing would be recorded for a longer period, but I guess however long you lay down your first loop is the length of time you can overdub on it. Makes sense to me now.

Anyway, this little recording is a little more mine, in that I added my own little simple chord progression for rhthym. I started with a slower drum track, “Undead.” I then added my own few chords for rhythm - just two string chords, A 5th, B 5th and C 5th; then moved directly down to a F 5th (root on the 5th string), E 5th, D 5th. The rhythm was recorded using an effect from the JM4’s “70’s” style, called “Alright Now”

The solo, don’t laugh, was recorded using the built in effect from Ben Moody, called “Firefight” and it’s a great, psychedelic, ripply, trippy, bubbly effect that sounded really fun on top of the distorted, grungy “Alright Now” rhythm bass line.

The solo was played in the A minor scale. I only recorded 11 seconds - I learned the difference between recording and overdubbing on a loop. I had fun dinkin’ around with it, though.

The JM4 makes practicing and experimenting too much fun.

Low Bubbly in .wav format

Time for you to meet the Minor Scale:

The tone of the minor scale is nice and moody. If you want bright, happy tones, go talk to the Major scale. The minor scale has personality for days.

Notice that bump in the middle, on the third (G) string, where your index finger has to come back a fret? Yeah, that’ll help build character in you. Dexterity. Adapt.

Start on the 6th (thickest) string, 5th fret, that’s the A minor scale. Practice it up and down, up and down, up and down. Have a sandwich, Practice it up and down, up and down. After a while, you’ll find some cool notes, which ones sound great together in succession. It’s how lots of the uber-wealthy guitar gods got that way. Practice it, see what parts of it move you.

If you’d like to see an excellent, free video of a skilled instructor help you out much better than I can, check out Peter Vogl here at FreeGuitarVideos.com. There’s some free printouts that you can use to practice with.

I’ve found all of the instructional materials top notch at FreeGuitarVideos.com and Watch & Learn Musical Instruction. I particularly like Jody Worrell’s Basic Blues Licks101. I’ll do a full review of that $4.99 - 30 minute video/tablature/backing track  bargain package in a later post.

I have had the best damn time playing with my Line6 JM4 Looper/Effects/Jam box. It makes practicing a total joy. I like to explore among the 100 or so preprogrammed jam tracks. The screen tells you what key the song is in, and you can practice your pentatonic scales, or minor scales, or Dorian scales, whatever you want. The backup band never gets tired, doesn’t make snide comments when you miss your notes, doesn’t drink your beer never to replace it, or flirt with your wife right in front of you.

Heck, even my $100 special sounds good using this thing. It’s a strat-copy, and flicking between the pickup selectors gives even more tone variables to your playing.

I just started seriously exploring the minor scale, and playing along to a cool, slow (or mid-tempo) jam is the best way to drill that weird scale pattern into your head.

The JM4 is really a 5-in-one guitar center.I’ll be doing a full, in-depth review of it soon, but for the time, here are the main features as I see it. The JM4 gives you:

• Hundreds of Prerecorded (not midi) song tracks/drum tracks
• An Internal memory Looper
• A Recorder (via separate SD memory card)
• A Guitar Tuner
• Effects out the wazoo.

Everyone should have a Line6 JM4 box.

I’ve wanted a Line6 JM4 Looper box since my guitar instructor, Will, showed me his last year. After scrounging around the house and finding a bunch of stuff to sell on eBay, I made enough to buy a JM4 - it was a factory rebox unit with a full guarantee and I got it for a great price, $259 with free shipping.

I can’t say enough good things about the JM4 and it is my intention to do a full review with sound and video as soon as I can. But on this Saturday night, I jammed along to the build-in track, “Unexcited” a cool bluesey number, in B.

Okay, I am not very good. My brain knows the minor pentatonic scale, but my fingers aren’t intimately familiar with it. There are some flubs, it’s less than 2 minutes long (I wouldn’t expect anyone to sit through a recording of mine for any longer than that,) and the recording just starts with no intro and no outro. Keep in mind, the amount of money I’ve spent on lessons could probably buy a decent used couch in the classifieds.

But I’m proud of it. Have a listen. Noob’s ‘Unexcited’ Jam (9.6 MB, 1:40)

Guitar: Jay Turser 200D (Les Paul style)

Recording device: Line 6 JM4 Looper Pedal

Audio Editor: Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)
Backing Track: “Unexcited“