I was recently looking for a laptop case and stumbled across a company called Incase, which makes laptop bags, iPhone and iPod cases, and, to my surprise, guitar cases. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Incase is their design; these guitar cases look very nice.

In addition to their “Slim Bag” line of guitar and bass cases, which hold a single guitar or bass, they carry a line of cases they call “Dub Bag” that can carry two guitars or basses. This looks very handy for taking multiple guitars to a gig.

Here’s what Incase says about their guitar cases:

What makes Incase the performance leader?

• Protection: Each bag contains Incase’s unique layered foam system, constructed from the highest-grade materials to provide shock absorbing protection to keep the most important areas of the guitar safe.
• Experience: Incase expertly brings together versatility, functionality, and intelligent organization with a minimalist design to deliver an unprecedented portability experience.

Another nice feature of Incase’s guitar cases is a sleeve and pocket for your laptop so you can carry it with your guitar in one case. The cases have the standard case handle on the side of the case, as well as backpack-style straps for more easily carrying your guitar.

I haven’t used Incase products before, but based on what I’ve seen on the Incase Web site, I’m considering their laptop bags now and will consider their guitar cases if and when I need a new one. Let me know if you’ve used any Incase products before. I’d like to hear your experiences with them.

* Photo credit: www.goincase.com

It looks like the tour season is ramping up. We have quite a few good shows coming up here in Nashville.

Artist News

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Guitar Lessons

iPerform3D - A video lesson site with a twist: 3D graphics are used for much of the videos. Not sure I like the animation, but it’s an interesting concept (via Guitar Noize)

iVideoSongs - Continuing with the video lessons that start with an “i” theme, iVideoSongs recently launched featuring video guitar lessons

Music Business

Music 2.0 Book - Forward-thinking collection of essays by one of the authors of “The Future of Music” (via Dave Kusek)

Bands’ sales are feeling the ‘Guitar Hero’ effect - Evidence that being featured in Guitar Hero will help record sales

Guitar Community

The 50 greatest guitar tones of all time - Guitarist magazine has identified what they believe are the 50 greatest guitar tones in history, which is featured on the MusicRadar site

Musicians’ guide to rental rehearsal rooms - IG gives good advice about choosing a rehearsal space for your band

Just For Fun

Guitar Rising - A guitar game where you actually use a real guitar

In my sophomore year of college I started taking classical guitar lessons and briefly considered switching my major to Music Performance (I was a Business Administration major). However, my college guitar instructor gave me what I believe was sage advice: don’t. I was more than a little surprised when my primary interface with the Music department was steering me away from majoring in Music Performance. He went on to explain why.

First a little background. The university I attended had three music degrees: Performance, Theory and Composition, and Education. My career goals at the time were fairly simplistic: I wanted to play guitar for a living. The logical major, then, was Music Performance, the major that would allow me to spend the most time playing guitar in school. Classical guitarists have essentially three career paths. A select few classical guitarists become concert guitarists touring the world playing solo or with an ensemble. If that doesn’t work out, you can make a pretty good living playing weddings and other special events. Or, you can become a music educator and teach future musicians. Each of these are respectable career paths. Many guitarists do a combination of the last two and are music educators and perform at special events.

What my guitar instructor illuminated was that neither of the career paths available to performing guitarists (concert touring or special events) require a college degree. That is, if you’re an elite guitarist, you’ll be able to get gigs regardless of whether you have a college degree. Instead, my guitar teacher recommended that if I want to major in music, I should major in Theory and Composition or Music Education. Note that some schools offer additional music majors, such as a major in Music Business. As an aside, I ended up not changing my major for various reasons, but, in hindsight, I feel like my guitar teacher’s advice was sound. Majoring in one of these other majors provides a “fall-back plan” if you aren’t able to make a career out of performing music. In his book Practicing, Glenn Kurtz illustrates how he spent all of his college career preparing to become a concert guitarist only to find out that the career didn’t work out as he had hoped. What a discouraging realization that must have been!

I certainly don’t want to discourage anyone who has a dream of being a concert guitarist. Go for it! However, I would encourage you to be pragmatic in your college major selection and choose a music major that is not entirely focused on musical performances. I think that doing so will reap rewards in your career and will provide you with additional options in the event that your dream career turns out to be a nightmare.

Adrian Holovaty is known in the Web development world as one of the creators of a Python Web programming framework called Django. The framework is named after gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. In addition to being a fan of Django, it turns out that Holovaty is an excellent guitarist in his own right.

On his personal Web site, Holovaty has offered several downloads of his music. In addition, he has created a YouTube channel that includes several videos of him playing solo acoustic guitar. The videos include Holovaty playing his arrangements of several Beatles songs (Yesterday and Strawberry Fields Forever), Stone Temple Pilots (Interstate Love Song), Django Reinhardt, and others. There are also covers of several TV theme songs. Holovaty’s arrangements are very good, as is his playing.

Adrian plays a Gitane DG-250M guitar. This guitar is similar to the Selmer guitar that Django made famous and that is closely associated with “gypsy jazz” music.

Below is a video of Holovaty playing a composition of his own called “Discovery”.