FreeJamTracks.com:

a website dedicated to giving you free jam tracks

nuff said - it time to jam!

Free jam tracks are available in MP3 and WMA format and in multiple styles, including blues, reggae, rock, metal, country, and jazz. The tracks are well-done and sound fairly professional. You can also get jam tracks for bass players and drummers. If you’re interested, you can also read about the equipment used to create the tracks.

Amazon.com publishes a daily deal each day featuring MP3 albums that are on sale for $2.99. Today’s MP3 Daily Deal is Sonny Landreth’s From the Reach, which features Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Robben Ford, Vince Gill, and others.

For various reasons, I don’t typically buy anything from Amazon, but this is a great deal on a great album. If you haven’t yet purchased From the Reach, do so today at Amazon.com for only $2.99. (This is a one-day deal; tomorrow the price will be raised back up to $8.99, which is still a good deal on a great album.)

Stevie Ray Vaughan, in an October 1984 interview with Guitar Player Magazine, responding to the question “Do any of your guitars have maple necks?”:

Lenny does. It has a real clear tone, and the pickups are microphonic-you can hear it when you hit the pickguard. But when you play it soft, it sounds great. When I first got the guitar, it had a rosewood fretboard, but it was thinner, and that bothered me. So I put a copy of a Fender maple neck on there that Billy Gibbons gave me. I like the rosewood necks usually, because, for one thing, when you sweat, you don’t get blisters. It seems like the finish on a maple neck gets hotter, and there’s more friction. As hard as I play and as much as I sweat, I get sore enough as it is. There’s a fatter sound on the rosewood, as far as I can tell. It’s not as bright. The ebony fretboard seems a little clearer, but it’s fat, too.

I’ve previously expressed my preference for rosewood fretboards. It’s interesting to hear Stevie Ray’s opinion on the matter.

The Associated Press reported last week that a young 8-year old blues guitarist named Tallan “T-Man” Latz was recently banned from playing in bars in Wisconsin:

An anonymous e-mail sent to state officials complained that Tallan was too young to perform in taverns and nightclubs because of state child labor laws. His booking agent even got an anonymous letter threatening her with death if she keeps booking him.

While I think sending death threats and being jealous of another guitar player (especially an 8-year-old prodigy) is ridiculous, I actually agree with the decision to ban Tallan from bars. While Tallan is obviously a unique talent, I don’t see the benefit in regularly putting him into a bar environment at such a young age. He’s still able to play at other venues, just not in bars.

I think we’ll be hearing a lot more from Tallan in the future, but you won’t be hearing him in bars in the near future. Here’s a video clip of Tallan playing with Les Paul this past June:

Joe Bonamassa discussing why he chose the Les Paul as his instrument of choice:

“One night, I was doing this classical thing I do using the volume control, and I was playing it on a Strat,” Bonamassa said. “When I finished the show someone came up to me and told that I sounded like Stevie Ray [Vaughan] playing a violin. Well, bless his heart, and God bless Stevie Ray, but it sounded nothing like Stevie Ray. And please don’t get me wrong, I was heavily influenced by Stevie, but what it showed me is that if you waltz up there with a Stratocaster and play anything remotely resembling the blues you’re going to be compared to someone else.”

Unfortunately, I think he’s right. If you strap on a Strat and play a blues lick, you’re going to be compared to Stevie Ray. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I imagine it can get frustrating if you’re trying to make a name for yourself as a guitarist and songwriter.

Many athletes are superstitious. Whenever they get on a streak, they try and do the same thing before each game. For example, they may wear the same shirt and the same socks, or they may eat the same food before each game.

Are musicians similarly superstitious? I.e. if you gig regularly, do you have a pre-gig ritual that you must follow before every show? Do you have to listen to the same song before every show? Do you have to have a group hug before every show?

I haven’t gigged in a long time, so I don’t have any pre-gig rituals. However, if you gig regularly, let us know if you have any pre-gig rituals!

During one of John Grisham’s recent book tours, Grisham answered questions posed by readers. One reader posed the basic question “How can I become a writer?” I thought Grisham’s response was fantastic. He essentially responded by saying “Do you want to be a writer, or do you want to write?” It was a very thought-provoking answer, and I think the same logic applies to the guitar.

I think most of us got into playing guitar because we wanted to be a guitar player. We were inspired by our favorite guitarist(s), and we picked up the instrument to try and recreate the music that we loved. Moreover, many of us wanted to be a famous guitar hero that other people look up to like we looked up to our heroes. Wanting to be a guitar player is not a bad thing. However, at some point, those of us that stick with the instrument must make the transition from wanting to be a guitar player to wanting to play guitar.

You might be wondering, “What’s the difference?” The distinction is this. Wanting to be a guitar player is an external motivating factor. The focus is on how other people perceive you. By contrast, wanting to play guitar is an internal motivating factor. You are playing guitar because you want to, not because you want others to perceive you as a guitar player. If you want to play the guitar, you will do so even if no one else knows about it. It takes a lot of hours woodshedding in order to be a great guitar player, and most of those hours are spent alone hunched over the guitar. And, spending all that time requires a great desire to play the guitar.

Although I think wanting to play guitar is more important than wanting to be a guitar player, I’m not suggesting that you can’t want to do both. In fact, some of the best artists are those that love the guitar so much, they can’t think of doing anything other than being a guitar player and playing the guitar all the time. The choices are not mutually exclusive. However, I don’t think you can ever be a great guitar player unless you want to play guitar all the time.

I love t-shirts. I feel like a good t-shirt sets the tone for the day. If I’m in a guitar mood, I’ll put on a guitar-related t-shirt, and the shirt will help keep me focused on the guitar throughout the day, even if I’m not around my guitar. It’s also a great conversation starter; it lets people know that you’re a guitar player. And, one of the things that I’ve wanted to do ever since starting the Guitar Lifestyle Web site in 2005 was to create a guitar-related t-shirt. To that end…

I’m very pleased to announce the availability of the Guitar Lifestyle t-shirt! The Guitar Lifestyle Web site is currently being redesigned by my friends at Purr Design, and the Guitar Lifestyle t-shirt sports the new logo design that they have come up with, which I’m very fond of. The shirt is available in several different colors: Military Green (shown), Black, Cardinal, Navy, Red, Royal, Brown, and Charcoal.

The shirts are fulfilled by CafePress, which is a well-known online provider of custom-made products. I have the Military Green shirt and am very impressed with the quality of the shirt. The shirt is pre-shrunk and 100% cotton.

If you love the guitar and guitar-related t-shirts like I do, show the world with the Guitar Lifestyle t-shirt!

Would you buy a guitar from Best Buy? You may have that choice soon. The Associated Press is reporting that Best Buy is planning on opening up music centers inside as many as 85 of its existing retail stores:

The nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add even more locations in the future, executives told The Associated Press.

Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include roughly 1,000 different products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland.

There are already 10 stores that include music centers in California, Illinois, and Minnesota. In addition to instruments, the music centers will have sheet music and other guitar accessories. It sounds like they’ll have a variety of instruments, from beginning-level instruments to high-end instruments.

I think it’s great that more people may be exposed to a wider range of musical instruments, but I think I’ll still be buying my instruments from music stores. A lot of buying a musical instrument involves asking questions, and I’m not sure that Best Buy can compete in that area. I’d be surprised if they are able to hire and staff the music centers with knowledgeable sales people, but maybe I’ll be proven wrong.

Julian Tan of Guitar Pug recently listed several guitar-related applications that have been created for the iPhone. Having recently purchased an iPhone, I’ve been looking for some cool apps to throw on it, and Julian’s list is a nice round-up of the ones I’ve found. Julian’s list includes:

Guitar Toolkit - This seems to be the most popular guitar-related app on the iPhone so far. It includes a tuner, a chord finder, a metronome, and tuning tones.

Band - An app by MooCowMusic, Band includes a collection of virtual instruments that you can use to create music. Instruments included are drums, piano, bass guitar, and guitar. Crowd noise is also included.

Pandora - Pandora is the iPhone version of the popular Pandora Radio streaming music service. This one looks particularly interesting to me.

Julian’s list also mentions a few other apps, so go check it out!