Steve Vai Band - Open Auditions
Steve Vai has planned a tour of Europe this summer in June and July, and will be touring the United States in September and October. In anticipation of this tour, Vai is holding open auditions on May 2nd and 3rd in Los Angeles. According to his website, he is looking for a bass player and a violin player that can also play keyboards, guitar or horns. The open auditions will be in addition to other, invite-only private auditions that Vai is holding.
If you are a bass player or a violin player and think that you have the chops to play with Vai, perhaps this is your shot! The auditions will be held in LA from 5:00-8:00 PM on May 2nd and May 3rd. The open auditions page lists two songs that will be audition pieces: “The Crying Machine” and “Freak Show.”
Rush “Snakes & Arrows”
Alex Lifeson and Rush are releasing a new album called Snakes & Arrows this Tuesday, May 1. The most recent issue of Guitar One magazine features an interview with Alex Lifeson about the new album, as well as a transcription of the Rush song “The Trees.” You can preview the first single from Snakes & Arrows called “Far Cry” on Rush’s website.
Al Di Meola - New CDs
Al Di Meola has in the past few months released two CDs: “Consequence of Chaos” and “Diabolic Inventions and Seduction for Solo Guitar, Volume I, Music of Astor Piazzolla.” The “Consequence of Chaos” features 15 new pieces composed by Di Meola, and “Diabolic Inventions” contains music composed by Astor Piazzolla. He’s currently on a tour of Europe supporting the albums.
String Theory Podcast Series
String Theory is a podcast series consisting of several different shows: My First Guitar, Three Chords and the Truth, Alternate Tunings and Gearbox. Each show interviews guitarists about their experiences with the guitar. The most recent episode features Warren Haynes, and some recent past guests are Michael Manring, Keller Williams, Tim Reynolds, George Gruhn, and many more. Upcoming guests include Pepe Romero, Shawn Mullins, Richard Lloyd, Will Kimbrough, etc.
You can listen to the podcasts directly on the String Theory site, or you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or any other podcast-capable music player.
National Guitar Workshop
The National Guitar Workshop is gearing up for its annual summer workshop series. Each summer, the National Guitar Workshop hosts week long courses at campuses in several locations, including LA, Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Nashville, San Francisco, Virginia and Connecticut.
The Connecticut campus is the main campus and hosts the most events, with LA hosting two weeks of courses and all other cities hosting one week of courses. Some of the cities host special summits focusing on a particular genre of music. For example, the Nashville campus hosts a Country Summit, the Chicago and Austin campuses host a Blues Summit, San Francisco offers an Acoustic Summit and LA hosts a Rock Summit. Special guests are scheduled for each location, including appearances by:
- Steve Stevens, Michael Angelo, and Mike Stone (Seattle)
- Stu Hamm, Gilby Clarke, Allan Holdsworth, Greg Howe and Jennifer Batten (LA)
- Leo Kottke, Steve Oliver, and Harvey Mandel (SF)
- Larry Carlton, Michael Angelo, and John Molo (Virginia)
- Sonny Landreth, Cindy Cashdollar, and Will Ray (Austin)
- Bob Margolin, and Hubert Sumlin (Chicago)
- Johnny Hiland, George Marinelli, Will Ray, and R.L. Castleman (Nashville)
- Scott Ian, Johnny A., Michael Angelo Batio, Gary Hoey, Billy Sheehan, George Lynch, Eddie Angel, Joe Beck, Duke Robillard, Ronnie Earl, Rory Block, Pat Metheny, John Patittuci, Ben Verdery, Andrew York, and Manuel Barrueco (Connecticut)
You can visit the National Guitar Workshop site to learn more about the guest artists.
I’ve never been to the National Guitar Workshop, but it looks like an interesting week of learning and collaboration with other guitarists and bassists.
Guitar World June 2007
The June 2007 issue of Guitar World magazine features an interesting look into the recording of the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album with secrets revealed by the Engineer of the sessions Geoff Emerick. This issue was particularly timely for me, as I’ve recently begun reading Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick. I’ve always been interested in recording techniques, so I’ve found this information to be fascinating, considering how groundbreaking the Sgt. Peppers album was. The magazine also features the tab for the Beatles All You Need Is Love.
lala
I’ve recently signed up with CD-trading service lala. So far, I’ve really enjoyed the service. If you’re not familiar with lala, it is a CD-trading service where you provide a list of the CDs you have and a list of the CDs you want, and lala connects you with other traders. The service is based on the number of trades you make, so if you agree to send one CD to another user, you’ll get one CD from your want list. Each CD you receive costs $1.00 plus $0.75 for shipping; you do not pay any additional fees for sending CDs to other users. There are no subscription fees or monthly fees; you just pay for the CDs you receive. In essence, lala acts as a facilitator between traders and they receive a commission for connecting the traders.
I’ve made about 10 trades on lala so far, and it’s been extremely easy to do so. I equate the user experience of trading CDs with that of getting and receiving DVDs from Netflix, although with lala you own the CDs that you receive. Essentially, lala sends you the shipping materials you need, and when a user requests a CD that you want to trade, you simply package the CD up in the materials that lala sent you and then drop it in the mailbox. It’s as easy as that. I think that the reason that lala has been as successful as they have been is because of this process and the ease of shipping and receiving CDs.
Another feature of lala’s site that I’ve found useful is being able to preview music directly on the site. I’ve actually spent a lot of time on the site simply searching for bands and listening to music I haven’t heard before. This feature makes it really easy to discover new music, which appears to be a core component of lala’s philosophy. More features include the ability to send messages to people you’re trading with, and the ability to view other users’ collections.
Although I’ve been really happy with the service so far, I do have a few minor nits to pick. The home page is extremely busy with a lot of information thrown at you at once. This is both good and bad. The good is that it highlights some of the features of the site that I might not have noticed before. However, it also obfuscates some features. I received an e-mail the other night indicating that I had received a trading message from another user. I visited the site, and it took me a few moments to actually figure out how to view and respond to the message. A “Hot Tags” section also dominates the home page, and it just lists the popular tags for the day, which I don’t find all that interesting or useful. All in all, these are minor nits that don’t interfere with the trading experience on the site.
Although they are not legally obligated to do so, lala donates up to 20% of trade revenue back to the artists. I think that this is a great way to support the artists, who would traditionally receive no compensation for traded CDs, even though selling and trading original CDs is legal. lala also has a charitable founation to help support performing musicians by subsidizing the cost of healthcare and legal services.
If you have some CDs laying around that you don’t listen to anymore and would like to trade them for CDs that you want, then I’d highly recommend checking out lala’s service. It’s extremely easy to trade with other users, and I’ve discovered several new artists through the lala site. For another review of the lala service, you can check out Ars Technica’s review of lala.
Dream Theater’s Systematic Chaos
John Petrucci and Dream Theater have recently announced that their new release “Systematic Chaos” will be released on June 5th, 2007. Dream Theater has also recently signed with RoadRunner Records and announced a tour supporting the new release.
The Guitar Blog Milestone and a Thanks!
I’m excited to say that this post marks my 100th post since I started this blog in early 2005! Since then, I’ve stopped and re-started The Guitar Blog several times, and I’m still trying to clarify the direction I want to take this blog in. However, I have some exciting plans for the future!
I want to thank all the readers who have read and visited this blog over the past few years, and I hope that you continue to enjoy visiting in the future. Thanks!
Legal Online Guitar Tabs
I remember back in ‘94 spending many hours in my college library (this was before ubiquitous campus Internet) going through many of the guitar tabs located on the Online Guitar Archive’s website, OLGA.net. Unfortunately, the OLGA was forced offline last year due to legal issues from the music publishers.
Well, there’s good news and bad news on the legal online guitar tab front. According to technical news site Ars Technica, Musicnotes has announced a licensing agreement with the Harry Fox Agency that will allow Musicnotes to publish user-created guitar tabs beginning this summer at MXTabs.net, so long as the ad revenue generated is shared with the music publishers. However, copyright owners must also agree to allow Musicnotes to publish the tabs before they can legally be put online, thus making it likely that guitar tabs will be slow to make it online.
It seems somewhat ironic that both Musicnotes and the music publishers will be generating revenue based on user-generated guitar tabs. There are plenty of ad-supported sites already publishing guitar tab created by users, so the idea certainly isn’t new. It’s just a shame that the OLGA isn’t part of the deal, considering that they had/have a huge back catalog of guitar tabs.
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About
Welcome to my guitar blog! My name is Josh, and this site is my attempt to celebrate the guitar, its history, and its players. Read more...
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